【推荐2】As most people know, in the last few years, sandstorms have swept across many cities and areas of North China, polluting the air and disturbing daily lives of human beings. People look dirty and suffer many kinds of illnesses, such as breath difficulty. The sandstorm is such a serious problem that it has not only weakened the industrial and agricultural development of our country but also caused a lot of trouble to the living conditions of the Chinese people.

Therefore, effective measures should be taken as soon as possible to stop its happening. So how should we deal with the frightening sandstorms?

Some experts offer practical advice as follows: For one thing, more money ought to be put into tree planting and forest protection in order to keep more water on the Earth. For another, government of all countries should make laws on environment protection. For example, banning the use of throw-away chopsticks and punishing illegal tree cutting. Scientists should also study and find ways to lower the grade of its destruction and to improve the environment. As for some schools, education about sandstorms should be spread properly and timely to make more and more people attach great importance to this problem.

How people look forward to sunny days with soft wind touching their faces now and forever! The golden days can come back so long as we try our best to protect the natural environment from today on. And the fact is that what I expect is not just a dream. There are some sweet fruits from the early efforts.

【推荐1】One of the problems with passwords (密码) is that users forget them. In an effort to remember them, people use simple things like their dog’s names and their birth dates — anything that will give them a clue to remember what their passwords are. But for a hacker(黑客), this is the same as locking your door and leaving the key under the doormat(门口地垫).

To create a safe password that is easy to remember, follow these simple steps:

You should never use personal information as part of your password. It is very easy for someone to guess things like your last name and your pet’s name.

With the help of today’s computing power, it doesn’t take long to try every word in the dictionary and find your password, so you’d better not use real words for your password.

You can make a password much safer by mixing different types of characters. Use some capital letters along with small letters, numbers and even special characters such as & and %.

In order not to create a password using different character types that is hard to remember or using a word from the dictionary, you can use a “passphrase(代码)”. Think of a sentence from a song or a poem that you like and create a password using the first letters from each word. For example, instead of just setting a password like “yr$1Hes”, you can take a sentence such as “I like to read the about.com Internet network security website” and make it a password like “il2rta!nsw” by using the number “2” for the word “to” and using “!” in place of “Internet”. You can use may characters types and create a safe password that is hard to guess, but much easier for you to remember.

【推荐2】Have you ever run into a careless cell phone user on the street? Perhaps they were busy talking, texting or checking updates on WeChat without looking at what was going on around them. As the number of this new “species” of human has kept rising, they have been given a new name — phubbers（低头族）.

Recently, a cartoon created by students from China Central Academy of Fine Arts put this group of people under the spotlight. In the short film, phubbers with various social identities bury themselves in their phones. A doctor plays with his cell phone while letting his patient die, a pretty woman takes selfie（自拍照）in front of a car accident site, and a father loses his child without knowing about it while using his mobile phone. A chain of similar events eventually leads to the destruction of the world.

Although the ending sounds overstated, the damage phubbing can bring is real. Your health is the first to bear the effect and result of it. “Constantly bending your head to check your cell phone could damage your neck,” Guangming Daily quoted doctors as saying. “the neck is like a rope that breaks after long-term stretching.” Also, staring at cell phones for long periods of time will damage your eyesight gradually, according to the report.

But that’s not all. Being a phubber could also damage your social skills and drive you away from your friends and family. At reunions with family or friends, many people tend to stick to their cell phones while others are chatting happily with each other and this creates a strange atmosphere, Qilu Evening News reported.

It can also cost you your life. There have been lots of reports on phubbers who fell to their death, suffered accidents, and were robbed of their cell phones in broad daylight.

【推荐3】The idea behind Facebook is to make us feel connected all the time．But in my research, I’ve found that the truth is quite different．

Technology, it turns out, has made being alone seem like a problem that needs solving．When young people are alone, even for a minute or two, they feel the need to connect, to get on Facebook or some other social networks and chat．But in connecting, they often end up feeling more isolated．Why？Because by being in constant(不断的)connection, they lose the ability to feel satisfied with their own company(独处)．

Facebook can help us keep in touch with our friends, but we too often use it instead of spending face­to­face time with them．And since we feel the need to keep up with them online, we don’t have moments of loneliness where we can collect our thoughts and learn how to be comfortable being alone．

—Sherry Turkle, Professor

Facebook connects more of us to more of our friends and family in more places than we have ever been connected before．Yes, Facebook is a huge time sink—maybe the biggest ever．Many people post useless stuff．And seeing too much of your friends’ lives can make you jealous(嫉妒的), but it won’t make you lonely．

Jane, a former student of mine, who is back in New York after living abroad for ten years, told me that Facebook helps her a lot．The first time she moved back to New York from abroad, she felt disconnected from her family and friends．Now，because of lots of photos and information updates(更新), she knows what is happening with her friends all the time．

In fact, if you are lonely in real life, you will be lonely online as well．

—Sree Sreenivasan, Chief Digital Officer

【推荐2】On US TV shows, you may sometimes see rubber balls on people’s desks. These balls are known as “stress relief balls”. People can squeeze them when they feel stressed out. It’s believed that by concentrating on the act of squeezing, they can let go of the negative energy in their bodies.

“We don’t all get the big, sunny corner office, the super ergonomic (人体工程学的) chair, or four weeks of vacation at work. A focused activity helps take your mind off the problems of your day,” wrote Joseph Shrand, a professor at Harvard University, in his book Manage Your Stress.

Indeed, stress is a big problem for many people. Fortunately, we have many ways to deal with it. In fact, the rubber stress relief balls that are so popular today in the US are believed to date back to ancient China. Back in the Han Dynasty (BC 202-AD 220), soldiers used walnuts (核桃)to get rid of stress. By squeezing them during moments of anxiety, soldiers were able to calm themselves down before going into battle. And in the Ming Dynasty (AD 1368-1644), people started rotating (转动) the walnuts in their hands. Ordinary citizens — not just soldiers — developed the habit of rolling two walnuts, or balls made from iron or stone, around in their hands. This helped them relax as well.

And today, we have many gadgets (器具) and toys that are designed to reduce stress in addition to stress relief balls. One example is the popular fidget spinner (指尖陀螺), which keeps your hand busy with an easy task — spinning the gadget around. There’s also the fidget cube, which features different “gimmicks” (机关) on each side of the cube. You can click, spin, pull, push and rotate different parts of the cube.

These gadgets may look like simple toys, but perhaps we should take them more seriously than they are given credit for. “After all, the history of stress balls is a history of modern-day coping (应对),” reporter Nadia Berenstein wrote for Woolly magazine.