It’s hard to make friends if you stay home alone all the time. You need to get out of the house and do things that will help you meet other people. Join in a club or play a sport. You will find that it’s easier to make friends when you have similar interests.

Learn from people at school who seem to make friends easily. Notice what they say and how they act. Don’t copy everything they do, but try some of their techniques. It will help you develop your own social style.

Don’t be afraid to show people what you’re really good at. Talk about the things you like and do best. People will want to learn about your interests most.

Think of some topics that would make good conversation. Find out the latest news, or listen to the most popular types of music. The more you have to say, the more people will want to talk with you.

Be a good listener. Let people talk about themselves. Don’t try to control the conversation with “me, me, me”. Ask lots of questions, and show an interest in their answers. This will make people feel special, and they will want to be your friends.

Look people in the eye when you talk to them. If you don’t make eye contact, people may think you’re not interested in them. As a result, they may stop being interested in you.

After you make new friends, keep them being a good friend. It’s likely that your friends will treat you in the same way.

【推荐2】If you’re in search of some healing (自愈) yourself, you’re in the right place. Today, I’m sharing some ways that solo travel can help you overcome the pain you carry inside and move forward with a lighter heart.

It develops self-awareness.

Solo travel can be a powerful journey of self-discovery because you’re doing all sorts of things out of your comfort zone.     1     You’ll see just how much you’re capable of and chances are, it’s more than you ever thought it was. That’s, where solo travel can help.

It promotes independence and decision-making.

Obviously, when you’re traveling alone, you’ve got no one to depend on. Should you visit this botanical: garden or go on a food trip? Should you stay in your hotel or dine out with the stranger you met in the museum?     2     As you do more of it, your instincts become sharper and you begin to make decisions with more certainty.

    3    

We often get stuck in harmful patterns of thinking. Sometimes all we need is to be in a new place, see new things, and meet new people. Exploring the world alone can challenge your old ways of thinking and inspire you. You can see how different people live and solve problems.     4    

It encourages connection with others.

And I don’t even mean just people.     5     When we’re hurt, our natural reaction is to move away and disconnect. But it can deepen our pain even more. Solo travel counteracts(抵消)this by pushing us towards new connections. When you’re wandering around in a completely foreign place, there’s bound to be something you’ll connect with.

【推荐3】There’s nothing like a good conversation!     1     While there is no one skill that will make you a better conversationalist, there are several skills and qualities you can develop.

What makes someone a good conversationalist?     2     Perhaps you have a friend or coworker who can tell stories really well or start a good conversation with almost anyone. According to language and communication coach Lucy Samuels of Lucy Samuels Co., those good conversationalists likely share these qualities:

Curiosity

    3     “Someone who is naturally curious will never run out of topics to discuss or learn about.”

Positivity

Holding a conversation with someone who has a negative perspective(消极视角) can be a real downer.     4     In fact, Samuels has found that a positive appearance “ sparks(触发) positive conversations,” so by improving your outlook, you can also improve your conversation skills.

Confidence

Samuels finds confidence to be another key quality that good conversationalists share.“     5     It’s true that you can’t exactly control impolite talkers, but you can certainly take a confident stance(立场) that deters(威慑) impolite talkers.”

In a word, leaning how to carry a quality conversation can empower you to have stronger job interviews and avoid small talk to make more meaningful connections with people.

【推荐1】In 1837, Darwin sketched a “tree of life” in his notebook, 12 years before the publication of his Origin of Species. Since then, the tree has been routinely used by biologists to explain how new species emerge from a common ancestor. But some scientists believe that new species can also arise from two parental species combining their genomes (基因组).

Now there is proof.

Today, scientists report in the journal Nature that the Amazonian butterfly species Heliconius elevatus arose from the combining of two others. By comparing the genetic blueprints of other butterfly species, researchers led by Harvard University research associate Neil Rosser, demonstrated that the H. elevatus genome is a mixture of 1 percent of the species H. melpomene and 99 percent of H. pardalinus.

Two decades ago, Mallet realized that all the close relatives of H. elevatus wore a pattern called “tiger mimicry ring.” H. elevatus, on the other hand, wore a “nailhead ray” outfit that was only shared by H. melpomene, a distant relative. It was as if H. elevatus showed up at the family reunion with an outfit borrowed from a stranger. This was a smoking gun that H. elevatus was a hybrid (杂交的) species, but Mallet had to wait for two decades for genomic data to confirm his suspicion.

While Mallet and colleagues gathered genomic sequences of Heliconius butterflies, Rosser set up butterfly cages to observe H. elevatus behavior. The combined effort of Mallet’s genomic sequencing and Rosser’s behavioral studies led to the discovery of key regions in the H. elevatus genome associated with color pattern, host plant preference, and mating preference. To Rosser and Mallet’s surprise, all of these crucial genes came from H. melpomene.

Although only 1 percent of the H. elevatus genome comes from H. melpomene, these are spread across the H. elevatus genome in 44 independent “genetic islands,” and control characteristics crucial to species identity.

Both Mallet and Rosser think there are many more hybrid butterfly species out there. To find these hybrid species, people need to start gathering genomic data for all butterflies.

【推荐2】Each year, the discovery of new shark species underlines how little we know about ocean biodiversity. In a recent report conducted by Sibert and Rubin, they reported an unexpected finding: a large-scale extinction of sharks in the pelagic ocean, the largest ecosystem on Earth, about 19 million years ago. Their discovery suggests that some extinctions in the open sea of the past may have been mysterious.

The study of Sibert and Rubin takes advantage of a system by using tiny, hard bits of shark skin and bony fish teeth that naturally fall from their bodies to the seafloor. These extremely small fossils provide a rich record of ancient oceanic sharks and their abundance for thousands of years. By studying fossils from many regions, the diversity patterns can give major insights into evolution (进化) of the open sea that would be otherwise unknown.

Sibert and Rubin quantified(量化)a past extinction of sharks, reporting a 90% decline in number and >70% drop in diversity. They found that nearer-shore sharks appear to survive, but migratory ones go extinct. The finding of this study is that sharks had undergone a widespread extinction that reorganized their communities from 16 million to 20 million years ago.

Sibert and Rubin narrowed the disappearance of sharks to a window of time under 100,000 years around 19 million years ago, but the causes of this event remain unclear. Because this time period does not stand out as a period of major climatic change, the authors do not attribute(归因于) environmental factors as an extinction driver. As for other causes, the loss of shark diversity is directly linked to overfishing.

The loss of sharks from the oceans has profound, complex, and unavoidable ecological consequences because their presence reflects the stability of marine ecosystems. Yet, one-quarter of the global diversity of sharks is currently threatened with extinction. Despite recent improvements in conservation actions, shark communities never recovered from a mysterious extinction event 19 million years ago; the ecological fate of what remains is now in our hands.

【推荐2】Around 2 million deaths each year are linked to physical inactivity. And a sedentary (久坐的) lifestyle is one of the leading causes of death in the world.

A new study published in the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine suggests that regular short exercise “snacks” throughout the working day might be enough to mitigate the effects of a sedentary lifestyle.

For the study. 11 participants (参与者) sat for 8-hour sessions. During the sessions, they followed one of four exercise “snacks” — 1 minute of walking after every 30 minutes of sitting, 1 minute after 60 minutes, 5minutes every 30 minutes, and 5minutes every 60 minutes — or a “snack” with no walking.

The researchers found that participants’ blood sugar and blood pressure levels were reduced after 5minutes of walking for every 30 minutes of sitting.

Lead study author Dr Keith Diaz, associate professor of behavioral medicine, said the most exciting part of the new research is that they’ve answered how to prevent the harmful health effects of sedentary sitting.

The researchers also found that all exercise “snacks” resulted in a reduction in participants’ tiredness, and an improvement in mood when compared to no walking at all.

“Beyond improving your physical health,” Dr Diaz said, “having regular walks to break up your sitting will put you in a better mood and help you feel more energetic.”

Dr Diaz added that the next steps for the research include finding more ways to reduce the harmful effects of sitting.

“We hope to find the least amount of movement you have to do to prevent the health harm of sitting.” Dr Diaz said. “The reality is that many adults will find it hard to walk every half hour. So finding a more practical recommendation is still needed.”

【推荐3】When learning a foreign language, most people use traditional methods: reading, writing, listening and repeating. But people can also remember the vocabulary better by making gestures while studying. Linking a word to brain areas that are responsible for movement can strengthen the memory of its meaning. "Our results provide evidence for why learning techniques”, Mathias said.

As Mathias and his colleagues described, they had 22 adults learn a total of 90 invented artificial words over four days. While these adults first heard the new vocabulary, they were shown a video of a person making a gesture that matched the meaning of the word. When the word was repeated, they performed the gesture themselves. Five months later, they were asked to translate the vocabulary they had learned in a multiple-choice test. The researchers found that the motor cortex contributed to the translation of the vocabulary learned with gestures. This applied to concrete words, such as "camera," as well as abstract ones, such as "thought."

“There have been quite a lot of studies showing that gestures play a role in learning. I think this study takes a step further as it is trying to understand why," says Susan Goldin-Meadow, a psychologist at the University of Chicago who studies the effects of gestures on learning. Research like this, as well as brain imaging, suggests the activation of the brain's motor areas could contribute.

Children — unlike adults — seem to benefit from pictures as much as gestures in the long run. In an experiment published in 2020, the Leipzig research group had young adults and eight-year-old children listen to new vocabulary for five days, sometimes paired with matching pictures or videos of gestures. After two months, the two methods were still tied. But after six months, the adults benefited more from the gestures than the pictures, while the children were helped equally by both.