【推荐1】Most of us have been there: Families can be very difficult, and family problems are very painful.     1     Life is too short to waste time bogged down with negativity towards the people you love. How you approach the family member and what you say can make a big difference.

Identify the real problem.     2     Perhaps you are struggling with health problems or personal problems that you have been hiding from your family. Or maybe you are all grieving over a loved one who has passed away. Consider the real issue at hand, as this will allow you to then better address it.

Wait until you’re not angry to discuss this problem. Family problems can be very painful, especially around family-centered times, like holidays.     3     Waiting allows you to approach the issue logically, rather than emotionally.

    4     Keep your language positive when you talk to your family. Avoid using language that puts blame on any of your family members or that feels negative. Negativity is a vicious cycle.

Accept everyone’s faults, including your own. They say that blood is thicker than water, and that you can choose your friends, but not your family.     5    

【推荐1】This winter, the state of California in the US received unusually large amounts of rain and snow. Now, people worry that some areas will flood as the snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains melts (融化).

Ron Caetano lives about half-way between the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. He is preparing to leave in case his community, called the Island District, floods.

More than 100 years ago, the Island District area was under Tulare Lake, a large lake. At one time, Tulare Lake was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. But reservoirs (水库) and watering systems for agriculture caused it to disappear. However, in very rainy years, farmland can still get covered with water.

Experts say reservoirs near the area will likely receive three times more water than they can hold this year. That means officials must increase the amount of water they release (释放) from the reservoirs. But if too much water is released, the area might flood.

The Island District has organized a community network to help prepare for floods. People are placing sandbags close to elderly neighbors’ houses to stop possible flooding. And they are looking at reports from water officials, county officials, and from each other.

California has had very dry weather in recent years. Therefore, both cities and farm communities acclaimed this year’s winter rains. If the weather gets warmer slowly, the snow will not melt quickly and there may be little or no flooding. But if the weather gets hot quickly, that will bring trouble from too much melting snow.

Officials announced plans to close parts of Yosemite National Park because of possible danger of flooding. The park is about 270 kilometers east of San Francisco in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Nicholas Pinter is with the University of California, Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. He said the lake’s size has always changed because of California’s weather. He described the surrounding area this way. “It has been an engineering problem all along,” he said. “This is a bathtub (浴缸) with no way out.”

【推荐3】Promising 42,000 new homes across five residential districts, the eco-town of Tengah will be the 24th new settlement built by Singapore’s government since World War II. It is, however, the first with centralized cooling, automated trash collection and a car-free town center, which conservationists hope offers a road map for slashing carbon emissions in the Southeast Asian city-state.

Although comparatively small, with a population of under 6 million people, Singapore’s per capita emissions are higher than those of the UK, China and neighboring Malaysia, according to the country’s National Climate Change Secretariat. That’s due, in part, to air conditioning, which accounts for more than a third of typical household energy consumption. The Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS) has predicted that, by the end of this century, average daily temperatures in the city-state may be at least 34.1 degrees Celsius “almost every day”   during the eight warmest months of the year.

As such, keeping cool will, increasingly, be a necessity for residents. Rather than demonizing air conditioning, Tengah’s planners have instead sought to reimagine it. Cold water, chilled using solar power, will be piped through the district’s homes, meaning residents don’t need to install inefficient outdoor AC condensers. According to the town’s energy provider, SP Group, this will generate carbon dioxide savings equivalent to taking 4,500 cars off the roads each year.

Planners used computer modeling to simulate wind flow and heat gain across the town, helping to reduce the so-called urban heat island effect. Elsewhere, “smart” lights will switch off when public spaces are unoccupied, and trash will be stored centrally, with monitors detecting when garbage needs collecting. All residents will have access to the app allowing them to monitor their energy and water usage. Digital displays in each block will meanwhile inform occupants of their collective environmental impact, which could even encourage competition between residential blocks.

Regardless of whether the use of smart technology can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions or not, engaging residents with their own consumption could encourage behavioral change, according to Perrine Hamel, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University’s Asian School of the Environment. “Changing behavior is going to be an integral part of achieving climate targets and, of course, urban design is the first way to affect and change behavior,” she said.

【推荐3】Beatrix Potter's stories of animals have captured the imagination of children since 1902, when her first story, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was published. It records the adventure of a rabbit who angers a bad-tempered farmer and finds himself participant in an epic escape. Peter, brother to Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-Tail, did what children do best — not listen! Not even the fact that only a couple years ago his dad was caught by the evil former and made into a pie by the farmer's wife. But boys will be boys, right?— Even ones who have sisters with cute names.

Her apparently funny fiction attempts to make pleasant the consequential (随之而来的) horrors arising from poor decision making. At its most literal, her stories suggest that naughty children are likely to die or encounter loss of limbs. Jemima Puddle-duck is persuaded into attending a dinner party with a polite 'gentleman', who so happens to be a fox. The story is a total 'stranger danger' alert for little listeners, similar lo Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood — the moral at the end of which reads:

“Children, especially attractive young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. But there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite and sweet. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.”

Yet the strange thing is kids don't seem particularly upset by all the cruelty and violence that goes down in Potter's tales. And isn't this the very thing that makes her stories so accomplished so loved? Potter's creatures teach and entertain young readers, who as adults, will revisit the stories with their own children, appreciating the unexpected dark humor and marveling at the hidden horror and wondering why their little ones aren't having nightmares when they should be!