【推荐1】Passive readers read words, but active readers read ideas. A passive reader’s goal is to get finished.    1    Here are some tips to help you become more active readers.

● Start by identifying your purpose.

Before you start, think about why you're reading in the first place.    2    Keeping up on industry news? Learning about a software update? Recognizing your intention helps you to stay on track.

●    3    

While you read, think about the material and ask yourself questions. For example, how does this relate to the author’s standpoint? Is the author’s reasoning effective?

Note down your thoughts about each chapter you’ve finished. Imagine a stranger who’s never read the book will be borrowing your notes. How would you communicate the most important points?

● Make mental links.

    4    You need time to make mental links to consider how each concept or idea relates to your current mental library. These links make it easier to recall what you’ve read.

For example, if you’re reading a book about creative problem-solving, you’d better compare the methods with ideas gained from another author. This process of linking and analyzing helps to understand the new information.

● Reflect and make a summary.

Once you finish a book, give yourself time to reflect. You can even write a three-sentence summary of what you’ve learned and come back to it later.    5    

Robert Greene, author of The 3 Secrets That Help Me Write and Think, said, “After I’ve done reading I will often put it aside for up to a week and think deeply about the lessons and key stories that could be used for my book project. I then go back and put these important sections on notecards.”

【推荐1】Research suggests that parental favouritism is surprisingly common, and can actually be very harmful.     1    . Widespread as it is, it can damage children’s well-being across the lifespan, from their childhood to middle age and beyond. It is considered such an important factor in a range of emotional problems that psychologists have a name for it—“parental differential treatment”.

However, siblings (兄弟姐妹) in the same family may disagree over whether their family is even affected by it.     2    . Laurie Kramer, a professor of applied psychology says, “It is an experience that a parent prefers another child to them.” She adds, “    3    . It possibly means less control, so that they may enjoy fewer restrictions and be subject to less discipline or even punishment.”

    4    . Such perceived parental favouritism has been associated with low self-esteem in children, as well as childhood anxiety, depression, and behavioural problems. There may also be a knock-on effect on emotional well-being that causes more indirect problems.

In a small Canadian study of eight homeless teenagers, seven said they felt that their parents had favoured a sibling over them while they had always been the “problem children”.     5    . While the study may be too small to draw wider conclusions, it highlights just how far a child’s experience of favouritism can potentially go.

【推荐3】After just one sniff of a catnip plant, many cats start acting in truly strange ways. Entertainment value aside, this herb has proven benefits for cats—but that still leaves us wondering what exactly the effect is on our furry friends.

Cats like catnip for two reasons: smelling it stimulates their senses, and eating it calms them down. Many cats react to catnip by rolling around, rubbing against everything, and eventually becoming unconscious. This is due to an active substance in a kind of volatile(易挥发的)oil found in the leaves of the catnip herb. It attaches to receptors(受体)inside the cat’s nose and drives its sensory neurons(感觉神经元)crazy, according to Daniel Rotman, CEO of Pretty Litter.

When a cat eats the herb, however, it has a calming effect.” If the catnip is swallowed, it causes tiredness and works as a drug that makes cats calm or sleepy. For cats that sniff catnip and rub against the plants, they’ll get more of the stimulating effects,” Rotman said. “Both smelling and swallowing catnip is safe for your cat.”

Catnip’s effects on your cat will only last a short time—about 5 to 30 minutes, says Rotman. This is all dependent on your individual kitty, because studies show that only two-thirds of adult cats are affected by the herb. “About 50 percent of cats seem to be affected by catnip, and the behavior that results from eating or smelling it varies widely between individuals,” Rotman says.

If you have a house cat, you probably worry about its not getting enough stimulation. After all, you can’t be around to play with them every moment they’re awake. Studies show that cats, like the other animals, need mental and physical exercise to be happy, and an interesting experience like sniffing or eating catnip could be part of that enrichment. Kitties that don’t receive enough stimulation could develop aggressive, depressed, or anxious behavior. Just make sure you don’t give your cat too much catnip, as it can lead to dizziness or other symptoms.

【推荐1】Individuals tend to befriend others similar to them for a range of physical factors (e. g. age, gender).To test whether friendship is connected with increased similarity of real-time mental responding, researchers used fMRI (功能性磁共振成像) to scan subjects’ brains during free viewing of naturalistic movies.

Forty-two students participated in the study by Professor Carolyn Parkinson of the University of California, Los Angeles. During the fMRI study, each subject watched the same collection of video parts. The videos covered a variety of topics and genres (e.g. comedies, documentaries, and debates).

The current results suggest that nerve responses when viewing audiovisual (视听的) movies are exceptionally similar among friends, and they are quite alike to one another in terms of how they perceive, interpret, and react to the world around them. These data also demonstrate that it is possible to predict whether two individuals are friends based only on the similarity of temporary patterns in their nerve responses during free viewing of complex, real-world scenes.

A follow-up study analyzing the social relationships of 1,186 children in 49 classrooms showed that similarity of the social brain varied by friendship distance: shared friends showed greater similarity in social brain networks compared with friends-of-friends and even more remotely connected peers.

“Although the results of the current study suggest that friends have incredibly similar nerve responses to naturalistic stimulation, due to this study’s cross-sectional nature, we cannot figure out, based on these results alone, whether nerve response similarity is a cause or consequence of friendship,” Dr Anna Machin, an evolutionary anthropologist(人类学家)said. She described how two tightly bonded people mirror each other’s behavior. Best friends may have similar heart beats, body temperature and hormonal responses.“ It’s as if every part of your body is engaged in having a relationship with that person,” said Machin. “That for me sums up how important best friends are. We wouldn’t have developed this way if those relationships weren’t critical for survival.”

【推荐2】The United States is a large country, and there are areas where people use different words for the same thing or say the same words differently.

Although school systems across the country teach standard American English, many Americans grow up speaking non-standard American English. These varieties(变体)are also called dialects (方言). People may not even realize they are speaking a non-standard form of the language.

Let us look at some vocabulary differences from different areas of the United States.

One of the main varieties of American English is vocabulary. Different words can be used for the same idea or thing, depending on the area of the U.S., such as the Northeast, the South, and the Midwest or the West.

Take for example a kind of cloth shoe that is worn for informal times or for sports. What would you call this? Many Americans in the South, the Midwest, and the West Coast call sports shoes “tennis shoes”. It does not matter if they play the sport of tennis.The shoes just might be their everyday shoes. They call them “tennis shoes” anyway. In the Northeast, they use the word “sneakers”.

Some sugary drinks have different names depending on where you are from. In the Midwest, the western part of the state of Pennsylvania, and parts of the Appalachian Mountains, especially in the state of West Virginia, people call them “pop”. In parts of the Northeast and the West Coast, they are called “soda”. And people in some southern states use one name for all those kinds of sugary drinks. They call them “Coke”, which is short for Coca Cola.

For our final vocabulary word,we have the insect(昆虫)that flies at night in the summertime and lights up. In parts of the Northeast and West coast, the word “firefly” is commonly used. In parts of Appalachia, the Midwest, and the South, “lightning bug” is probably most common. Sometimes people in the U.S. use both words.