【推荐1】Weird. That was how Kelvin felt when he signed a prenuptial agreement years ago with his then girlfriend. According to the agreement, the ownership of the house would go to the wife if the couple divorced, because the wife’s parents had paid the down payment for the house.

In China, most people are unwilling to sign a prenuptial agreement, commonly known as “prenups”. But overseas Chinese are showing a different attitude. According to a recent survey, 70 percent of overseas Chinese participants, mainly living in the US, said it is necessary to sign prenups before tying the knot. The survey covering 1,084 people was conducted by a Los Angeles-based dating company “2RedBeans” through the company’s mobile app.

“It shows that the attitude of overseas Chinese toward marriage has been influenced by Western values over the past decade,” said a co-founder of 2RedBeans. In China, more often than not, a prenup is considered to indicate distrust between a couple and the lack of faith in marriage.

US family law attorneys, however, say that prenups have many advantages, from protecting the assets (资产) brought into the marriage by one party to saving the other party from debt. The rights and obligations related to marriage vary from state to state in the US. “So if you get married without drawing up your own terms and conditions, you are by default (默认) submitting to your state’s law,” Kelly Rickert who has gained popularity for sharing family court stories said in a TikTok video. “Prenups are especially important in a community property state such as California, where all assets and debts acquired after marriage shall be shared by both parties,” she said.

One of her recent clients was lucky to have a prenup which allowed her to keep her property separate from the debt of her late husband, who had run up “astronomical” amounts of medical bills before he died of COVID-19. “Had they not had a prenup stating that the debt be attributed to the party who acquired it, the medical debt would have been shared and she would have had to pay it.” Rickert said.

This might be one of the reasons why many overseas Chinese are attaching importance to prenups. Overseas Chinese living in North America are generally high-income earners and come from middle-class families, so they more easily accept prenups, especially those under 30 years old, who are more likely to value financial independence and consider prenups necessary.

【推荐2】Every kid wishes to be an adult. But now as grown-ups, some adults find they cannot leave childhood behind. They become "kidults" (kid+adult). Being a kidult has become a lifestyle-choice among young people across Asia.

Some kidults collect toys they once played with. Hello Kitty, Garfield, and Snoopy have many adult fans around the world. It is not unusual to see a 20-something woman with a big, Garfield-shaped cushion on her sofa or a Hello Kitty mobile phone accessory.

Other kidults still enjoy children's stories and fairy tales. For example, Bloomsbury even published the Harry Potter novels with an adult cover. That way, no one else on the subway will know that an adult is actually reading a children's book!

"Kidults can be like vitamins to society. Adults who value their childhood and hold on to pure, child-like emotion may be needed in such a rough and dry society," said Lee Sojung, professor of Foreign Studies at Hankuk University. He added that kidult culture may fill the generation gap between adults and kids. It could give children and their parents books, movies, and cartoon shows to enjoy together. He may be right.

Tim Green-halgh, a professor, explained that some kidults just refuse to grow up. They cling to (舍不得放弃) childhood because life in a busy and stressful city frightens them. Kidults would like to forget their age and openly show their fear of society and adulthood.

"So, they can escape from increasingly complex and stressful lives that are hard to deal with." Greenhalgh said.

【推荐3】How to protect children Web fans from unsuitable material on-line while, encouraging them to use the Internet has long been discussed in the U.S.

    1    . But jungles (丛林) contain wonders as well as dangers and with good guides, some education, and a few precautions (预防措施), the wilds of the Internet can be safely navigated (引导). “    2     If we tell our kids they can’t have access (机会) to the Internet, we’re cutting them off from their future,” said an expert.

Most kids have started to use search engines (搜索引擎). Many of them are great for finding tons of interesting Internet sites, and they can also locate places where you might not want your kids to go.     3     A certain software contains only sites that have been selected as safe. But this can’t be wholly reliable, and the best thing parents can do is to talk to their kids and let them know what is OK or not OK to see or do on the Internet.     4    

A few other tips

●    5    . That also makes the Internet more of a family activity.

●Ask your child what he or she has been doing and about any friends they make on-line.

●And tell your children never to talk to anyone they meet on-line over the phone, send them anything, accept anything from them or agree to meet with them unless you go along.

【推荐1】Some people like to listen to the Beatles. while others prefer Gregorian chants. When it comes to music, scientists find that nurture can overpower nature.

A study shows musical preferences seem to be mainly shaped by a person’s cultural upbringing and experiences rather than biological factors. “Our results show that there is a profound cultural difference in the way people respond to consonant (和谐的) and dissonant (不和谐的) sounds, and this suggests that other cultures hear the world differently,” says Josh McDermott, a scientist in Cambridge.

Some scientists believe that the way people respond to music has a biological basis and that this would overpower any cultural shaping of musical preferences , effectively making them a universal phenomenon. Some musicians, by contrast, think that such preferences are more a product of one’s culture. If a person’s upbringing shapes their preferences, then they are not a universal phenomenon.

The trick to working out where musical preferences come from was to find and test people who hadn’t had much contact with Western music. McDermott and his team travelled by aeroplane, car and canoe to reach the remote villages of the Tsimane’ people, who are largely isolated from Western culture.

In their experiments, McDermott and his colleagues investigated responses to Western music by playing combinations of notes to three groups of people: the Tsimane’ and two other groups of Bolivians that had experienced increasing levels of exposure to Western music. The researchers recorded whether each group regarded the notes as pleasant or unpleasant.

The Tsimane’ are just as good at making acoustic (声响的) distinctions as the groups with more experience of other types of music, the scientists find. Most people prefer consonant tones, but the Tsimane’ have no preference between them. “This pretty convincingly rules out that the preferences are things we’re born with,’’ McDermott argues.

“Culture plays a role. We like the music we grew up with,” agrees Dale Purves, a scientist at Duke University. “Nature versus nurture is always a fool’s errand.’’ It’s almost always a combination, he adds.

【推荐2】California has lost half its big trees since the 1930s, according to a study to be published Tuesday and climate change seems to be a major factor.

The number of trees larger than two feet across has dropped by 50 percent on more than 46, 000 square miles of California forests, the new study finds. No area was spared or unaffected, from the foggy northern coast to the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the San Gabriels above Los Angeles. In the Sierra high country, the number of big trees has fallen by more than 55 percent; in parts of southern California the decline was nearly 75 percent.

Many factors contributed to the decline, said Patrick McIntyre, an ecologist who was the lead author of the study. Woodcutters targeted big trees. Housing development pushed into the woods. The wildfire control measures have left California forests crowded with small trees that compete with big trees for resources(资源).

But in comparing a study of California forests done in the 1920s and 1930s with another one between 2001 and 2010, McIntyre and his colleagues documented a widespread death of big trees that was evident even in wildlands protected from woodcutting or development.

The loss of big trees was greatest in areas where trees had suffered the greatest water shortage. The researchers figured out water stress with a computer model that calculated how much water trees were getting in comparison with how much they needed, taking into account such things as rainfall, air temperature, dampness of soil, and the timing of snowmelt.

Since the 1930s, McIntyre said, the biggest factors driving up water stress in the state have been rising temperatures, which cause trees to lose more water to the air, and earlier snowmelt, which reduces the water supply available to trees during the dry season.

【推荐1】Tai chi is a wellness practice that combines slow, gentle movements and postures with mindfulness.     1    . As a traditional, slow-moving form of Chinese martial art, tai chi is known to increase flexibility and improve balance. Now, new research suggests it’s better than more vigorous aerobic exercises for lowering blood pressure in people with prehypertension (高血压前期) .

In the study, researchers in China randomly assigned 342 adults with prehypertension to one of two interventions. Roughly half the people participated in aerobic exercise, including jogging, climbing stairs and cycling.     2     Both groups got hourlong sessions four times a week.

After 12 months, those in the tai chi group saw bigger drops in their blood pressure than those in the aerobic exercise group. What’s more, nearly 22% of the people who practiced tai chi saw their blood pressure fall to within normal range.     3     And fewer patients in the tai chi group went on to develop high blood pressure.

    4     The practice tends to elicit (引起) more of a response from the parasympathetic nervous system (副交感神经系统) that relaxes your body after periods of stress or danger, says Rut h Taylor-Piliae, a professor at the University of Arizona’s College of Nursing.

Tai chi is appealing as a form of exercise because it is low impact and requires little space or equipment. “I think the beauty of tai chi is that you don’t have to have a special gym membership or special clohing, “ Taylor-Piliae says. “Once you learn tai chi, you can do it anytime, anyplace, anywhere.     5    ”

【推荐3】Green exercise is a term used to describe any type of physical exercise that takes place in a natural environment rather than in a health club or gym.     1    . Instead, it relies on the use of natural means of taking part in activities that improve strength and endurance with as little reliance on equipment as possible.

    2    . For example, some consider a truly natural exercise experience requires that the individual wear clothing only made from natural fibers. Others consider barefoot running or walking with a big arena to be more desirable than running or walking with shoes.

A slightly different approach to green exercise puts more stress on the fresh air, sunshine and involvement with the natural world, rather than the equipment or clothing used during the exercise.     3    . Similarly, climbing a mountain using standard equipment and protective clothing would also be considered a green exercise.

Many consider green exercise helps to reconnect human beings with the natural world. The interaction with nature helps to lower people's blood pressure, refresh their mind, and actually improve their self-esteem.     4    .

Not everyone believes that the green exercise is more beneficial than working out in a health club or gym.     5    . Meanwhile, the use of fitness devices may result in more challenging workouts which help strengthen the heart and lungs in ways that more simplistic exercise in a natural setting would be difficult to manage.