【推荐1】Smokers may ignore the health warnings by telling themselves their habit makes them look cool. After all, sex symbols James Dean and Humphrey Bogart were rarely seen without a cigarette. However, the latest evidence shows that smoking actually makes you less attractive to the opposite sex. Wrinkles from smoking a cigarette may be to blame for people judging non-smokers to be better-looking.

This was the result of a study asking more than 500 people to pick the most attractive of twins where one smoked and the other did not. Men found female non-smokers the most attractive in two-thirds of cases, while women chose non-smoking men as the most attractive 68 percent of the time.

Professor Ian Penton-Voak, a co-author of the study from Bristol University, said, “People assume that smoking causes damage to the skin and appearance, but this is a really neat way of looking at it because these twins are genetically identical, so we can control for genetic factors involved in ageing. Appearance seems to be important to people, especially young people, so we could use these sorts of findings as a basis for future interventions to stop people smoking.”

Smoking can speed up the normal ageing, even after only a decade. Nicotine causes narrowing of the blood vessels in the outermost layers of the skin, while the chemicals in tobacco smoke damage collagen and elastin, fibres which give the skin its elasticity(弹性).

The wrinkles this causes are added to by facial expressions made when smoking—such as pursing the lips when inhaling(吸气)or squinting to keep smoke out of your eyes.

【推荐2】Many healthcare workers know that washing hands is important to prevent the spread of infectious disease.     1     During a study conducted by Nicas and Best at Berkley University, they counted the number of times people touched their face with their hands.     2    Whether we are aware of our actions or not, most of us can agree that we touch our face with our hands frequently enough.

Imagine that you are able to record a full day of your actions. Better yet, reflect on what you did when you woke up yesterday morning. Let me give you an idea of my previous morning. I was woken by the alarm clock at 6 am.     3    Then I checked my phone for messages, turned on the TV for my morning news, started making my coffee and finally hit the shower. It wasn’t even 5 minutes from the time I awoke and I already touched different objects. The point of this is to be aware that even in our homes we are exposed to germs in places we don’t realize.

Luckily, the human body has amazing defense against harmful germs.     4    Our white blood cells are like soldiers coming to the rescue. Unfortunately, there are a lot of areas on our face that do not have the protection of skin such as the eyes and mouth. There’s a reason to every wise proverb and our parents annoying us to wash our hands before dinner is not for nothing.

    5    If you have children, it is even more important to set the example because children are known to learn from adults. Let’s start a good habit of washing hands. As for your friends, don’t be shy about checking to make sure their hands are clean. Asking someone if they have washed their hands is caring. Checking to see if someone has washed their hands will benefit not only that person, but you and your family.

【推荐1】Is there any evidence that the standard of English as a foreign language has improved in the years since the Second World War? Naturally, as it is the world language, more and mere people are taught it and use it. But do they speak it or write it or understand it better than their patents’ or grandparents’ generations?

Have standards declined? There is no objective way of answering this question. Tests of the traditional sort — compositions, precis writing, and so on — have always been subjective, so they cannot be used to judge whether people have got better or not over the years. But so-called objective tests are useless as a measure of progress too. They have not been used consistently (一贯的) in the same “concentration” over the period they have been in use, so there is no way of comparing exams “now” and “then”. Moreover, usually in the form of multiple choice questions, they do not, by and large, test the things that really count in mastering a language.   Even comprehension is a partly “creative” activity in real life, as we have to think of possible meanings for ourselves rather than have them suggested for us from outside. And people can be trained in the techniques of multiple choice, while others fail the tests because they have been led astray (离开正道) precisely by their “suggestive” nature, so they are not really objective at all. We are left with only personal impression to go on.

My own is that, if anything, standards have declined somewhat in the last thirty or forty years, despite all the new theories, tools and techniques that have been developed. I am not alone in this judgment. In Sweden, for instance, Professors Johannes Hedberg and Gustav Korlen, two of the most experienced workers in the field; have on several occasions drawn attention to the lack of progress in the teaching of foreign languages since the late fifties. Yet Sweden is a sophisticated (先进的) society with extremely high educational and academic standards, and very concerned not to be cut off from the rest of the world. If such a country cannot achieve advances in the study of foreign languages, it is unlikely that many, if any, others have done so.

Japan is another community where remarkably little progress has been made in the learning of English. It is probably as important for Japan as for Sweden to master that language, and there is much academic effort put into linguistic (语言学的) research of various kinds. Yet the average standard of language learning is abysmally low, particularly for such a highly literate and educated society. This is no doubt in part the result of a vicious circle (恶性循环): many of the professors of English at Japanese universities are themselves incapable of speaking or writing or even understanding the language well.

【推荐2】Does handwriting matter? Not very much, according to many educators. However, scientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting is not important. New evidence suggests that the link between handwriting and educational development is deep.

Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they are also better able to create ideas and remember information. In other words, it’s not only what we write that matters-but how.

A study led by Karin James, a psychologist at Indiana University, gave support to that view. A group of children, who had not learned to read and write, were offered a letter or a shape on a card and asked to copy it in one of the three ways: draw the image on a page but with a dotted line(虚线), draw it on a piece of blank white paper, or type it on a computer. They were then placed in a brain scanner and shown the image again.

It was found that when children had drawn a letter freehand without a dotted line or a computer, the activity in three areas of the brain was increased. These three areas work actively in adults when they read and write. By contrast, children who chose the other two ways showed no such effect. Dr. James believes that the differences are caused by the process of free handwriting. Not only must we first plan and take action in a way but we are also likely to produce a result that is variable. Those are not necessary when we have a line.

It’s time for educators to change their mind and pay more attention to children’s handwriting.