【推荐1】Tricks to become a patient person

Here’s a riddle: What do traffic jams, long lines and waiting for a vacation to start all have in common?    1    . They’re all situations where we could use a little extra patience.

In the digital age, we’re used to having what we need immediately and right at our fingertips. However, research suggests that if we practiced patience, we’d be a whole lot better off. Here are several tricks.

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Thankfulness has a lot of benefits.     3    . It can also help us practice more patience. “Showing thankfulness can foster self-control,” said Ye Li, researcher at the University of California.

Make yourself wait

Instant gratification (满足) may seem like the most “feel-good” option at the time, but psychology research suggests waiting for things actually makes us happier in the long run. And the only way for us to get into the habit of waiting is to practice. Start with small tasks.     4     or wait 10 extra minutes before going for that cake. You’ll soon find that the more patience you practice, the more you start to apply it to other, more annoying situations.

Accept the uncomfortable

    5    . When we experience something outside of our comfort zone, we get impatient about the circumstances. You should learn to say to yourself, “This is merely uncomfortable, not intolerable (无法忍受的).” You’ll then gradually become more patient.

【推荐3】Friendships can be sources of joy and sources of sorrow. There isn’t exactly a rule book on what to do when things get tense or bad.    1    .

Broken promises

Jan Yager, a specialist in this field often hears from people who’ve been hurt by a friend’s broken promise. Dr. Yager likes to point out we don’t have formal contracts with friends where we’ve agreed to never disappoint each other. Therefore if you bring a fantasy about what the ideal friend will do in any situation to a relationship,     2    .

When things feel unbalanced

Maybe you feel like you’re always sharing about your life, but your friend doesn’t open up about hers. It’s common for relationships to experience periods where things are unbalanced. Maybe one friend is going through a breakup and needs extra support. It’s also possible another friend simply has more to discuss at any given time.     3    .

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It doesn’t feel great when you check Facebook Monday morning to find out that your friends went on a weekend getaway without you. Scott Christnelly, another specialist, says, “I encourage clients to express their feelings about it but also not to jump to conclusions.” Then find someone else to talk to — maybe, a family member, or a close friend (not the one who went on the trip) — to explain how you feel. If you do make conversations,     5    .

【推荐1】It was my first day of sixth grade. I looked at my schedule and saw that I had Mrs.Foxwell and this made me happy. Over the next three years, Mrs.Foxwell taught me many important things that I will never forget.

Of all of the teachers and coaches I have had in my life, Mrs.Foxwell has been my favorite leader. In her class, she taught me how to be a successful leader. She also taught me that good leaders earn everyone’s respect.

Mrs.Foxwell is one of the most respected and respectful people I know. She is always kind to everyone and she treats others the way that she wants to be treated. She taught me respect in many different ways, but mainly how to be respectful in the business world. She told me that I needed to have a firm handshake and that I should always look people in the eye when I talk to them. Mrs.Foxwell also taught me that you could earn someone’s respect by working hard to achieve your goals.

In addition to working at Brandywine Springs, Mrs.Foxwell once worked at a bank as a manager but she gave that up to teach kids how to be successful. Mrs.Foxwell told our class how she would cry because of the amount of work she had to do in very little time. She taught our class that working all night at something you don’t love is very stressful, so you should try and do something you love. In the end, she taught me that you have to keep your head high and pull through. I don’t think I have ever worked as hard in any class as I did in her class. We created our own 28-page business plan to share with her, our parents, other teachers and our classmates. Although creating a business from nothing was a lot of hard work, I really enjoyed it and learned several lessons that will help me throughout life.

I have had a lot of role models in my life, but one of the biggest is Eva Foxwell. She taught me leadership qualities, how to be respectful and why you should work hard. She changed my life for the better and I desire to be like her.

【推荐2】When I became president of Sustainable (可持续的) Spartans in May 2020, I had no idea how to successfully run a club on the Internet. My team and I were challenged with how to attract members and continue sustainable projects on campus (校园) while most students lived at home.

Despite the circumstances, my incredible team and I pushed forward. We organized events members could participate in regardless of location. Instead of focusing on building a more sustainable campus, we thought it was more important to get more and more students to accept sustainability.

In September, our Vermicomposting project began with the support from an online workshop. Vermicomposting is the process by which worms turn food waste and other materials into fertilizer. The workshop tied together club members and workshop students, educating and inspiring some to start their own worm bins at home.

In October, we held our first SpartansPickUp Day, co-hosted with Spartans Sierra Club. Fourteen teams of students safely picked up trash and posted pictures online. The cooperation brought some environmental student organizations together and attracted more student participation.

Our most notable accomplishment was working with the Office of Sustainability to build a pollinator (授粉者) garden on campus. The garden would improve the campus' climate by attracting pollinators, increasing biodiversity and reducing soil loss. We posted some videos of the garden, and students were expecting to return to campus to visit it.

Student organizations provide an important aspect of college life and I'm proud to say we've carried that into the digital space. Personally, I've discovered my club is an incredible outlet for me to dive into my sustainability passion and take a step back from the great stress of job search and online learning. I encourage all students to join a student organization to find how you can translate your passion into meaningful projects.

【推荐3】Haley Curfman, a teacher at Blackwell Public School, bought a white dress from Amazon last year for her students to decorate. She set up an activity station at a table with the dress and some colored markers so that her students could draw on it, after she first saw the idea on Pinterest.

After the kids had finished the design, she then surprised them all by wearing the dress to class, sharing pictures of herself in it on Facebook in a post that has since been shared over 200,000 times.

For teachers looking to do something similar for their own students, Haley said that she bought the dress off Amazon for less than $ 20 about six months ago and pre-washed the dress before she started the project. She used markers from Walmart. But she said these things can be bought in other places. She said, “It takes anywhere from two weeks to a month to complete the project as we just work on it here and there when time allows. You’d better give the students enough time so they don’t have to hurry.”

“Teachers have been sharing their dresses, T-shirts, etc. with me that they’ve been creating since the 1950s with the same idea. It is amazing, and I love the fact that you are sharing them with me! Thank you all so much for your kindness and support,” she wrote on Facebook.

Asked why she came up with the idea, Haley told Scary Mommy. “We don’t have art in our school, so, I always try to do little creative projects when possible.”

【推荐1】Vaccination（接种疫苗）is among the most effective ways to help us prevent diseases. For viruses that don't change too much-the measles virus（麻疹病毒）, for example—getting vaccinated is a once-and-for-all method to prevent you from becoming infected with the virus. If you had two measles vaccines when you were a child, you will be protected for life.

However, it's a different story when it comes to influenza（流行性感冒）, commonly known as "the flu", which generally peaks between December and February. Flu vaccines cannot protect us in the long term.

There is no long-term immunity（免疫）, according to Theodore Strange, associate medical director at Staten Island University Hospital in New York. "The virus essentially 'changes its coat'—HIN1, H2N3, and so on," he told the website Healthline.

Apart from a person's immune protection from flu vaccination declining over time, flu viruses are also constantly changing. So the vaccines are likely to be updated from one season to the next to protect against the viruses that research suggests may be the most common during the upcoming flu season.

Thus, to develop effective flu vaccines, over 100 national influenza centers around the world conduct year-round surveillance（监测）for influenza. Researchers will test thousands of influenza virus samples from patients, according to the official website of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention（CDC）. The World Health Organization also suggests there are three or four influenza viruses that are most likely to spread among people during the upcoming flu season.

But even when a vaccine is developed, getting it can prove to be difficult, as it is in high demand and short supply. The timing of influenza vaccine production and distribution is unpredictable, thus the availability of the flu vaccine supply does not always coincide with（与……一致）peak demand.

So scientists prioritize（划分优先顺序）access to the vaccination. The CDC recommends key populations, such as medical staff, teachers, students, children and those aged 60 and above, receive flu vaccines.

This year the situation seems more complicated, as the upcoming flu season coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic. This could overwhelm hospitals, straining（过度使用）resources and healthcare workers' time.

【推荐2】We often hear honesty is the best policy, and no one likes to be called a liar. But is dishonesty always wrong? Not necessarily.

According to psychologists, there are two types of lies: lies that help your relationships and the people around you are called pro-social lies;and lies that hurt them are called antisocial lies.

How often have you clicked “Like” on Wechat Moment, not because you actually like what your friends posted, but because you want to show your support? This white lie is an example of a pro-social lie. But who people tell lies on social networks to make their own lives seem more exciting, or to make others jealous, this is antisocial lying.

Workplace lies range from harmless lies to destructive untruthful statements. An example of a pro-social workplace lie is complimenting someone on their presentation — even though it was only average — because you know they were nervous beforehand. In this case your intention is simply to protect your colleague’s feelings. However, people sometimes tell bigger lies at work for the purpose of avoiding blame or to stay on the boss’s good side. These are antisocial lies. They are antisocial because your boss is likely to discover the truth and as a result, will probably stop trusting you.

Lying is also a significant part of the natural world. So it’s little wonder we resort to it almost reflexively. Human babies sometimes pretend to cry, check to see if anyone is listening. and then start crying again. By the age of five, children learn to say things that are completely untrue, and most nine-year-olds have mastered keeping secrets to protect themselves.

Lying can be incredibly harmful to our relationships and to the people around us. But that’s only true for antisocial lies. Pro-social lies. have the opposite effect — they can actually help us.

【推荐3】Flash droughts are relatively new for natural disasters, and come on fast, with conditions going from normal to severely dry in less than one month. This means people have no time to prepare for the consequences, which can include dried crops, streams or wells.

A well-documented flash drought swept across the central U.S. in 2012. Normal winter and spring rainfall made people assume it would be a normal summer. But it suddenly stopped raining in May, leading to the driest summer in the Great Plains since 1895. The drought destroyed crops in six states, resulting in $35.7 billion of agricultural loss.

The 2012 disaster inspired researchers to concentrate on flash droughts. In a study published in 2021, Cook and his colleagues, using tree ring data paired with soil moisture data, reconstructed the frequency and scale of flash droughts in the Central Plains over the past 500 years. The model showed that over one-third of all flash droughts since A.D.1500 occurred in the 20th century.

However, while science is giving some insights into where and how these rapid dry outs happen, we still don’t know how to predict them.

“We know the physical ingredients that cause flash droughts, but we don’t really understand what triggers them in the soil column,” says Justin Man kin, a geography professor.

Part of the reason flash droughts are difficult to forecast is because there’s a lack of on the ground monitoring, including real-time measurements of soil moisture. Tools like the U.S. Drought Monitor rely on satellite imagery of vegetation as well as other geophysical data. But they only provide a guess of soil moisture, rather than showing what’s happening beneath the surface.

“Plants are doing the water exchange between the land and the atmosphere,” explains Man kin. “That exchange is happening in what we call the root zone about a meter underground, which is difficult to monitor from a satellite.”