【推荐2】Here are some inspiring and thoughtful books that give you a real thirst for life.

My Family and Other Animals

This is the first book in a much-celebrated trilogy by naturalist Gerald Durrell. The story is about the writer’s childhood spent on the Greek island Corfu. Durrell smartly shares his memories of amazing animals and their curious habits with the reader. This book encourages readers to appreciate the world around them in all its beauty.

Frost and Fire

Extreme weather conditions cause people。age abnormally fast. They now have only 8 days to grow up and get old. These days should be used to learn, get married, and raise children. Through all of that, people manage to fight and be jealous—as if they have decades ahead. This short story teaches the reader that even during a small period of time, one can manage to do a lot …or you could give up and not take any chances.

You Changed My Life

This is a true story that lays at the heart of the French movie The Intouchables. A tale of an inspirational friendship between two people whose roads were never meant to cross-a disabled French aristocrat and an unemployed Algerian immigrant. But they met, and it changed their lives.

The Code of the Woosters

Anyone who enjoys easy and light reading would find books by P. G. Wodehouse a source of lasting amusement. Stories of Jeeves, Wooster, and all of the chaos around them are written with a brilliant sense of humor. These novels are capable of lining your spirits p from zero to limitlessness.

【推荐3】Science fiction pioneer and writer Wu Yan won this year’s National Outstanding Children’s Literature Award for his latest work China Orbit. The book focuses on the development of the Chinese aerospace (航空航天) industry, and it was inspired by the planning and preparation for China’s first but canceled manned spacecraft, “Shuguang 1”, also known as Project 714, during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

“I collected many historical documents and stories and started writing decades ago,” Wu remembered. Partly based on Wu’s own experiences in the 1970s, the book is a combination of reality and fiction, and in some ways his own memoir (回忆录) was added into the science fiction. This innovative and unique writing method makes the book stand out and has even stirred up a debate on how to categorize it. Is it science fiction, popular science, children’s literature, or aerospace literature?

His fellow science fiction writer Liu Cixin, author of The Three-Body Problem, sees it more deeply, and believes China Orbit is not really children’s science fiction or popular science. He thinks it is too complicated to be classed under a single category. He speaks highly of China Orbit as a unique science fiction novel that vividly shows a child’s real-life experience in a military camp of a specific era.

In Wu’s opinion, China is a big market for children’s science fiction, but it still lacks extraordinary works. He warned people not to try to earn quick money from it after The Three-Body Problem frenzy and movie blockbuster The Wandering Earth because Chinese science fiction still has a long way to go. “We need to build Chinese science fiction step by step, with an accumulation (积累) of really great works. We need to innovate, and treat it as part of building China’s new culture,” Wu said.

【推荐1】Millions of us may lose sleep as most states switch to DST, Daylight Saving Time (夏令时) and put the clocks forward by one hour. The time change brings darker mornings and extends light in the evening.

Some policymakers want to make DST permanent to avoid the disturbance of constant switches. Marco Rubio, a government officer, says the formality of changing our clocks twice a year makes no sense. He points to the potential economic benefits DST brings. The key argument is that more light in the evening can stimulate people to go out and that translates into more people shopping in convenience stores for everything from water to sports drinks. Thus, there is a boom in spending.

However, the health impacts have been more complicated to figure out. DST increases evening exposure to light, which can make it harder to fall asleep at night. So in recent years, the time change has been reported to be linked to an increase in atrial fibrillation, a type of heart disease, perhaps due to the sleep disorder. Besides, evidences have linked the transition to an increase in attention problems and mood disorders.

“I am very surprised,” says Jay Chudow, a cardiologist. “It’s just a one-hour change, but this shows how sensitive our bodies maybe to internal clock (生物钟) interruption.” Actually humans’ internal clock is closely linked to the rising and setting of the sun. He emphasizes that restoring permanent Year-Round Standard Time (YRST) is the best option for our health and well-being, for the natural daily cycle of light and darkness is really the most powerful timing reminder that we have to match our body clock with.

So it seems there’s a divide between what’s likely best for our health and what may be good for the economy. Due to the economic burden and tight budget, it is not hard to guess which one will be given higher priority among policymakers this year.

【推荐3】When Thomas Edison hit a wall with his inventions, he would nap in an armchair while holding a steel ball. As he started to fall asleep and his muscles relaxed, the ball would strike the floor, waking him with insights into his problems. Or so the story goes.

Thomas Edison was somewhat right. Now, more than 100 years later, scientists have repeated the trick in a lab, revealing that the famous inventor was on to something. People following his recipe tripled their chances of solving a math problem. The trick was to wake up in the transition between sleep and wakefulness, just before deep sleep. In this transitional period, we are not quite awake, but also not deeply asleep. It can be as short as a minute and occurs right when we start to doze off.

Researchers recruited more than 100 easy sleepers, each of whom was given a math test with a hidden rule for the answer. By recording brain activity, they found that those who napped and were interrupted during the first phase of sleep were three times better at finding the hidden key to the problem than those who remained awake.

The creative effect happened even for people who spent just 15 seconds in the first sleep stage. But the trick didn’t work for those who reached later stages of sleep. “Our findings suggest there is a creative sweet spot during sleep onset,” says author Delphine Oudiette, a sleep researcher at the Paris Brain Institute. “It is a small window which can disappear if you wake up too early or sleep too deep.”

The study team also identified a brain activity pattern linked to the creativity-boosting phase: moderate levels of brain waves at a slow frequency known as alpha, associated with relaxation, and low levels of delta waves, a hallmark of deep sleep. Oudiette says researchers can now focus on this brain signature when investigating the neural mechanisms (神经机制) of creative problem-solving. The team has already planned an experiment to help people reach a creative zone by monitoring their brain waves in real time.“ Edison was great”, Oudiette says, “and now we have a lot more to explore.”