【推荐1】How does a place become a World Heritage Site (世界遗产)? It takes a lot of people to decide.

First, if a country wants one of its places to be on the List of World Heritage Sites, it has to ask the UNESCO (联合国教科文组织). The place must be important and special. The UNESCO put the Great Wall on the list in 1987 because, it said, it was a great part of Chinese culture and beautifully made to go with the land. When a country asks, it must also make a plan for taking care of the place.

Second, the World Heritage Committee of the UNESCO talks about different places and decides whether to put them on the list. The committee meets every June. Many experts help the committee to decide.

Third, after a new place goes on the list, the UNESCO gives money to help keep it looking good. If a place is in serious danger, it may be put on the List of World Heritage in Danger. The UNESCO gives special care and help to those places.

Then, countries have to give the UNESCO regular reports about places on the list. If the UNESCO thinks a country isn’t taking good enough care of a place, the site will be taken off the list.

【推荐3】My brush was tiny, more like something you'd use for nail polish. That was suitable because I was struggling to paint the toenails of my dragon shadow puppet(皮影戏偶). Mao Zhongbo, our teacher, noticed my struggle and showed me how to keep my brush from becoming overloaded with pigment(颜料). It was an unexpected personal touch from the resident master at a Beijing hotel.

Shichahai Shadow Art Performance Hotel is a step back in time. Surrounded by a forest of sky scrapers, this little inn is in a hutong. Once you open its massive wooden doors, you enter a calm space that directs your gaze to the framed shadow puppet art that decorates the walls. The mission here is clear: to educate guests about a dying part of Chinese culture before it's too late.

I visited here last winter. As a theater lover, I hoped to get a behind-the-scenes look into a completely different performing art. The inn provides English interpreters who help make the cultural offerings accessible to its foreign guests. These include performances in the private puppet theater at the hotel and several classes taught by master Mao.

One night, I watched Mao and several other hotel employees perform the classic tale "“Turtle and Crane". The animals' supple(灵活的) movements made me forget that puppeteers controlled them. Afterward, I tried my hand at controlling the many sticks needed to make each puppet move effortlessly. My awkward attempts to operate several sticks at once showed why it takes years to master something that looks simple. I asked Mao whether anyone could learn to be a shadow puppet performer. He paused, then answered, "Like ballet, some have a talent for this and some don't. Making a puppet seem real comes from the hands, the brain and the heart." It also takes passion.

At the end of my stay, I went to the lobby to get my dragon shadow puppet. I noticed Mao giving a class to a group of local youngsters, confirming me in my belief that he would inspire a new generation of masters.

【推荐2】In order to improve people's sleep, experts have encouraged people to adopt a variety of measures to overcome their stress-related sleeplessness. Among their recommendations: engage in regular exercise, establish a nightly bedtime routine and cut back on screen time. But many people may be overlooking another important factor in poor sleep: diet.

A growing body of research suggests that the foods you eat can affect how well you sleep, and your sleep patterns can affect your diet choices. Dr. St-Onge has spent years studying the relationship between diet and sleep. In this research, she and her assistants selected 26 healthy adults and controlled what they ate for four days, providing them regular meals prepared by nutritionists while also monitoring how they slept at night. On the fifth day, the subjects were allowed to eat whatever they wanted.

Their work suggests that rather than stressing one or two specific foods with supposedly sleep-inducing properties, it is better to focus on the overall quality of your diet. They discovered that eating more fat and less fiber from foods like vegetables, fruits and whole grains led to reductions in slow-wave sleep, which is the deep kind. In general, the experiments have also found that carbs have a significant impact on sleep: People tend to fall asleep much faster at night when they consume a high-carb diet compared to when they consume a high-fat or high-protein diet.

But the quality of carbs matters. In fact, they can be a double-edged sword when it comes to sleep. Dr. St-Onge has found that when people eat more sugar and simple carbs - such as white bread and pasta—they wake up more frequently throughout the night. In other words, eating carbs may help you fall asleep faster, but it is best to consume "complex" carbs that contain fiber, which may help you obtain more deep, healthy sleep.

【推荐3】People with less education suffer fewer stressful days, according to a report in the current issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.       

However, the study also found that when less-educated people did suffer stress it was more severe and had a stronger effect on their health.

From this, researchers have concluded that the day-to-day factors that cause stress are regular. Where you are in society determines the kinds of problems that you have each day, and how well you will deal with them.

The research team interviewed a national sample of 1,031 adults daily for eight days about their stress level and health. People without a high school diploma (文凭) reported stress on 30 percent of the study days, people with a high school degree reported stress 38 percent of the time, and people with college degrees reported stress 44 percent of the time.

“Less advantaged people are less healthy on a daily basis and are more likely to have downward turns in their health.^” leading researcher, Dr. Joseph Grzywacz of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, said in a prepared statement. “The downward turns in health were connected with daily stressors (紧张刺激物) , and the effect of daily stressors on their health is much more damaging for the less advantaged."

"If something happens every day, maybe it's not seen as a stressor.” Grzywacz says. “Maybe it is just life.”