【推荐1】Between adolescence and adulthood, you go through a host of changes-jobs, unpleasant haircuts and relationships that come and go. But what about who you really are? As you grow older,does your personality change?

Personality is the pattern of thoughts, feelings and behavior unique to a person. People tend to think of personality as fixed. But according to psychologists, that's not how it works. “Personality is a developmental phenomenon. It's not just something that you're stuck with and can't get over,” said Brent Roberts, a psychologist at the University of lllinois at Urbana-Champaign.

That's not to say that you're a different person each day you wake up. In the short term, change can be nearly imperceptible, Roberts told Live Science. Regular surveys on the personalities of participants over many years suggest that our personality is actually stable on shorter time scales.

We come into the world with unique temperaments （性情），and research suggests that our temperaments as children-for example, whether we're easy-going or unwilling to approach strangers-correspond to adult personalities.

Throughout the years, our personality is still changing, but slowly, Roberts said. “It's subtle. You don't notice it on that five-to-ten-year time scale, but in the long term, it becomes apparent, ” he added. Psychologists also pointed out that personality tends to get “better” over time. They call it “the maturity （成熟） principle. ” People become more outgoing, emotionally stable and agreeable as they grow older. Over the long run, these changes are often apparent.

Some individuals might change less than others, but in general, the maturity principle applies to everyone. That makes personality change even harder to recognize in ourselves-how your personality compares with that of your peers doesn't change as much as our overall change in personality, because everyone else is changing right along with you. “There's good evidence that the average self-control of a 30- year-old is higher than a 20-year-old, "Donnellan said. ”   At the same time, people who are relatively self- controlled at 18 also tend to be relatively self-controlled at age 30. "

【推荐2】The benefits of reading at home are many and lifelong. Falling levels of enjoyment are cause for worry.

If there was one good thing to come out of lockdowns, it was improved book sales and rates of reading, especially among children. A survey of 70.000 children and young people by the National Literacy Trust, however, has found this gain is now gone: figures are now equal just before the pandemic, when the trust recorded the lowest levels of reading enjoyment(just under 50%) since it first asked the question 17 years ago. A concurrent(同时进行的)study of 8.000 five to eight-year-olds found that nearly one in five did not have a book at home.

These questions are not about basic literacy but about the habit of reading: the children surveyed spoke of books giving them subjects to talk about; of entertainment and information; of reading helping them to understand people unlike themselves; of finding in books a place of escape and a mitigation( 缓 解 )of loneliness; of aid in coping with difficulty. “It helps me in learning about what I am feeling. That is because I have a hard time expressing my emotions and would rather not bother anyone.” as one child put it.

Children who read at home are six times more likely to be able to read above expected levels, while one study of 160,000 adults from 31 countries found children whose homes held at least 80 books, but whose schooling ended at 13 or 14, were “as literate, numerate and technologically wise in adulthood as university graduates who grew up with only a few books”. Another found these children also went on to earn more.

It is not that most parents and carers don’t understand this. A reason often cited for the lack of books at home is the cost of living. Almost a fifth of Britain’s public libraries have closed in 10 years while one in eight primary schools in England, rising to one in four in disadvantaged communities, do not have a library or designated reading space. Furthermore, the Department for Education, with its insistence on systematic synthetic phonics(自然拼读法)would do well to heed( 留 心 )the number of children who told the National Literacy Trust that teaching in primary schools had put them off reading. Compared with other problems this country faces, providing varied reading material is relatively straightforward to fix. We owe it to children to do so.

【推荐3】American Anai Espinoza is in the eighth grade. This summer, she took part in a summer dance program called AileyCamp. Each morning, she and other campers would say several phrases together. Her favorite is this: "I am in control." Espinoza said, "It makes me believe I have the power to choose the right thing."

AileyCamp was created in 1989 in Kansas City, Missouri by world-famous dancer and director Alvin Ailey. About 1,000 students in 10 U. S. states take part in AileyCamp every year. It is a free, six-week program, especially aimed at young people in financial need or who have school, social or family difficulties.

In addition to dance, the camp introduces students to visual arts, creative writing and other communication skills. It also teaches them how to eat well, solve conflicts and become leaders, notes the camp's website. Dianne Caroll Sales directs the AileyCamp in Atlanta, Georgia. When the camp is over, the city's professional ballet company offers 10 students a full-tuition scholarship for a year of training. The scholarship can be renewed.

Kameron Davis received one of those scholarships when he was a young man. He trained with the Atlanta Ballet for three years. Then he became a dance teacher. Davis said he does not think his mother could have paid for dance classes without the scholarship. Davis said children at school made fun of him when he began dancing. AileyCamp, he said, offered him a safe place and increased his confidence. Today, he enjoys giving back to the program by helping new campers build their confidence, too. "It's an open door to finding new things, doing new things," Davis said. "When I got to AileyCamp, it just reassured me that, 'Hey, it's okay. Everybody is different. You shouldn't be judged by what you do just because not a lot of people do it.'"

Trees around us are extremely important and have always been necessary for improving the human conditions. Our existing forests and trees we plant work to make a better world.    1    . Here is a short list of main reasons trees are necessary for improving our living conditions.

Trees produce oxygen    2    . A leafy tree produces as much oxygen in a season as 10 people inhale in a year. What many people don't realize is that the forest also acts as a giant filter (过滤器) that cleans the air we breathe. Trees help clean the air by preventing airborne particles, reducing heat, and absorbing such pollutants. Trees clean the soil. The term phytoremediation is a fancy word for the absorption of dangerous chemicals and other pollutants that have entered the soil.

    3    . Trees filter sewage and farm chemicals, reduce the effects of animal wastes, clean roadside spills and so on. Trees are carbon sinks. To produce its food, a tree absorbs and locks away carbon dioxide in the wood, roots and leaves.

Carbon dioxide is a global warming suspect.    4    . This locking­up process “stores” carbon as wood and not as a “greenhouse” gas.

    5    Trees block urban noise almost as effectively as stone walls. Trees, planted at strategic points in a neighborhood or around your house, can reduce major noises from freeways and airports.