【推荐1】Studies have shown optimistic thinking leads to a positive attitude and that people with positive attitudes live healthier, happier and longer lives. Here are some benefits of staying positive in life.

Better feeling. When you’re positive, you will feel happy and satisfied with what you are doing. Moreover, you’ll feel better about life.     1    

More energy. When you have less stress and worry in life, you will have extra energy to do what you love, and you will be active. Being stressful and not being able to see the bright side of life steal your energy.     2     Energize yourself by simply changing the way you think.

Great first impression. If you positively think about your priority (优先权), you will always make a great first impression. A good first impression depends largely on good personalities.     3     Besides, a good first impression can have a big impact on the development of your future relationships—both personal and professional.

Better health.     4     Even scientific studies have shown that people with positive attitudes are less likely to suffer from depression and that they get ill more rarely than the negative thinkers. Positive thinkers are often less stressed, have lower blood pressure and are often more active.

    5     Fear results from negative thoughts. Being a positive thinker removes fear. Courage comes from the fact that you can deal with whatever happens in your life if you stay positive.

【推荐2】Have you ever felt nervous or afraid to take time off from work to look after your mental health?

Marisa Kabas, a writer and political strategist, recently posed a similar question on Twitter (推特网), inspired by Simone Biles, who stopped taking part in Olympic events this week to protect her mental health.

“It was so shocking to so many people,” Ms. Kabas said on Wednesday in an interview. “Because the whole mentality (心态， 思维方式) is to be strong, and push through the pain.”

If you’re unlikely to use sick days for mental health reasons or are scared of being punished for doing so, I experts say it’s time to start thinking about how to protect your mental well-being. You should take a “sad day”.

There’s no official definition for a “sad day,” also known as a mental health day. Typically, it is paid time off drawn from sick days(or personal days) to help employees who aren’t feeling like their usual selves, offering an opportunity to refresh their minds, do something meaningful; or simply take a break from daily stressors. The “sad day” is only a temporary (暂时的) fix, and not meant to address deeper problems, but sometimes a little time away can make a big difference.

In most situations, just say that you need to take a sick day, and leave it at that, the experts advised. “I think the safe advice is not to be honest and frank,” said Andrew Kuller, a clinical psychologist. Not everybody values mental health, he added, and “unless you’re close with your boss, it is a risk. But say you work at the type of organization where you can tell the truth without fear of being punished. In that case, you still don’t need to reveal why you want to take a sick day.”

Whatever you do, don t spend the mental health day feeling guilty. So instead of thinking, “I should be at work right now, try to reframe your thinking in a more positive way. For example, try saying: “It would be great; if I could be at work right now. But today is a day that I need to take care of myself, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

【推荐2】Jonathan the tortoise, the world’s oldest land animal, turned 190 over the weekend on the island of St. Helena, where he enjoyed a “cake” of seasonal fruits, leafy greens and vegetables, including carrots carved into the number “190”.

Jonathan was brought to St.Helena from the Seychelles in 1882 as a gift. According to Guinness World Records, Jonathan surpassed the previous record holder, Tu’i Malila, who lived in the 1770s until 1965and could be even older. He arrived in St.Helena as a fully mature tortoise, meaning he was at least 50 in 1882.

“The vet is still feeding him by hand once a week to boost his calories, vitamins, minerals and trace elements, as he is blind and has no sense of smell. His hearing though is excellent and he loves the company of humans, and responds well to his vet Joe Hollins’ voice as he associates him with a feast, Guinness World Records said.

“The tortoise enjoys the sun but on very hot days takes to the shade. On mild days, he will sunbathe his long neck and legs stretched fully out of his shell to absorb heat and transfer it to his core,” according to Hollins. When it’s cold, Jonathan has been known to “dig himself into leaf mold or grass cuttings and remain there all day.”

In most cases, the lifespan of a tortoise or turtle depends on the species and level of care they receive. They generally live much longer in captivity than in the wild, because in the wild, they must find their own food in addition to evading predators while not getting medical treatment. Larger turtle and tortoise species also tend to live longer than their smaller counterparts. For more information about animal record holders, click here.

【推荐3】A genetic change known as the Himalayan gene has made this breed’s fur extra sensitive to temperature — but also leaves them easy to get certain diseases.

With 73 cat breeds recognized by the International Cat Association, it can be difficult to discern a Ragdoll from a Ragamuffin. Most of us, though, can pick out a Siamese cat. Known for their dark eye masks, nose, and tail — called “points” that stand out against their cream-colored bodies and sparkling blue eyes, the Siamese is one of the world’s easily recognized breeds.

Those trademark points stem from a genetic change known as the Himalayan gene, which was discovered in the breed in 2005. This hidden gene; passed down from both parents, also gives the felines (猫科动物) temperature-sensitive fur that can change color.

In the mother’s body, Siamese kittens develop at temperatures of about 101 Fahrenheit, a cat’s normal temperature. Once born, all-white kittens eventually begin to cool at their extremities (端点), such as their tail, legs, ears , and face. These lower temperatures cause the Himalayan gene to activate the body’s melanin (黑色素), also found in people. That’s why a Siamese cat’s warmer bodies stay light, but their cooler parts become darker as they mature.

“You can see them change,” says Betsy Arnold, a vet who runs a cats-only practice in Rochester, New York, and started breeding Siamese when she was in her teens.

At about two weeks old, Arnold says, dark color begins to spread to their limbs. By about a month old, their final color emerges, which may be one of several varieties, among them blue point, lilac point, chocolate point, and seal point, which has a light, cream-colored coat with dark brown color on its paws, tail, nose, and ears.

【推荐1】Looking at his pile of unpaid bills always makes Giuseppe Del Giudice feel uneasy. More often than not, Del Giudice leaves almost everything until the last moment. He is not alone. “It’s part of the human condition,” said procrastination (拖延症) researcher Tim Pychyl, a psychology professor at Carleton University. “We want to feel good now. The way to do that is to avoid the task.”

One big factor for avoidance is fear of failure, of not living up to expectations. Kelli Saginak, a 57-year-old functional health coach from Wisconsin, procrastinated about looking for a new job for years. “If I don’t take the risk, decide, or commit, I don’t have to face the judgment.” said Saginak. That inability to take action only confirmed her that she would never do any better. Procrastinators believe that they are more effective under pressure. But researchers have different opinions. “I once did an experiment, putting procrastinators under restrictions of time,” said Tim Pychyl. “They made more errors. They took longer than nonprocrastinators, but they thought they did better.”

Whatever the motivation, procrastination is usually not going to be good for you. Delaying a diet or exercise program may increase your risk of heart disease. Procrastinators experience higher levels of stress, both from leaving things to the last minute and from their own regrets about their procrastination. There’s one bit of good news: People tend to procrastinate less as they age. “As you grow older, the idea of living forever does fade away,” Tim Pychyl said. “It becomes clearer: How many summers do we have left? Ten? Fifteen? They’re really limited. What are you going to do with each of those summers?”

【推荐3】We’ve all done it. For many of us, it’s something that happens so naturally every day. After working on an important project or a task for a little while, you decide to take a break-only to pick up your smartphone and start looking through social media, reading emails, checking out the news and maybe getting in a quick round of “Candy Crush Saga”. A break is supposed to be a time to relax so that you can go back to your work feeling fresh. However, a new study finds that cellphone use during a mental break doesn’t really allow the brain to relax and can actually result in a poorer performance.

For the study, a group of 422 undergraduate students at Rutgers were assigned a set of 20 word puzzles to complete. Halfway through the task, the students were separated into three groups: one group took a break and were told to use their cellphones to go shopping online, another group took a break and were instructed to shop either via their computers or using a paper circular (印刷品广告), and the third group didn’t take a break at all.

Interestingly, the group that took a break with their cellphones displayed the highest levels of mental fatigue (疲劳), and had the hardest time solving the word puzzles following their breaks. In all, the cellphone group took 19% longer to finish the puzzle task, and solved 22% fewer problems than participants in the other two groups combined.

“The act of reaching for your phone between tasks, or the mid-task, is becoming more common. We assume it’s no different from any other break-but the phone may carry increasing levels of distraction (使人分心的事) that make it difficult to return focused attention to work tasks,” explains Terri Kurtzberg.

【推荐1】False and misleading information supercharged with cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) that threatens to erode democracy and polarize (极化) society is the top immediate risk to the global economy, the World Economic Forum said in a report Wednesday.

The Global Risks Report was released ahead of the annual elite gathering of CEOs and world leaders in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos and is based on a survey of nearly 1,500 experts, industry leaders and policymakers.

The report listed misinformation and disinformation as the most severe risk over the next two years, highlighting how rapid advances in technology also are creating new problems or making existing ones worse. AI-powered misinformation and disinformation is developing as a risk just as billions of people in many countries, including large economies like the U.S., Britain, Indonesia, India, Mexico and Pakistan, are set to head to the opinion polls this year and next, the report said.

“You can use AI to do deepfakes and to really impact large groups, which really drives misinformation,” said Carolina Klint, a risk management leader at Marsh, whose parent company Marsh McLennan co-authored the report with Zurich Insurance Group. “Societies could become further polarized” as people find it harder to verify facts, she said. Fake information also could be used to fuel questions about the legitimacy of elected governments, “which means that democratic processes could be eroded, and it would also drive societal polarization even further,” Klint said.

The rise of AI brings a host of other risks, she said. It can empower “malicious actors” by making it easier to carry out cyberattacks, such as by automating phishing attempts or creating advanced bad software. With AI, “you don’t need to be the sharpest tool in the shed to be a malicious actor,” Klint said. It can even poison data that is scraped off the internet to train other AI systems, which is “incredibly difficult to reverse” and could result in further embedding biases into AI models, she said.