【推荐1】One of the things you could do as a senior is to start gardening. Here are a few reasons you should start gardening:

You’ll eat better.

Unfortunately, most of the food we buy around is full of chemicals.     1     It allows you to harvest and eat food that is healthy. It also allows you to eat fresh food which means you get more nutrients.

    2    

It’s easy to get used to spending time indoors when you have more time in your hands but nothing much to do with it outside. However, gardening means you ‘ll be able to step outside of the house more often. You will also get to breathe in some fresh air that will keep you healthier.

It helps you grow unique plants.

You might have traveled around the world and seen some interesting plants or flowers that are never grown at your place.     3     You get to watch them grow but most of all, you get the satisfaction of being able to have a plant that you really found special in your garden.

You can grow some natural medicine.

    4     You can get them in different supermarkets in form of creams, tablets or even oils. However, nothing beats using them in their natural form. Gardening allows you to grow these medicinal plants and when you need to use them, all you need to do is pick a few.

It will help you socialize.

When you start gardening, you’ll certainly become more interested in ways to make your garden look better and in making your plants grow healthier and stronger. A good way to find out about these is to interact with people who share in your love for gardening.     5    

【推荐2】Biology may not be everything, but genes apparently have a far greater influence on human behavior than is commonly thought. Similarities ranging from hobbies to bodily gesture are being found in pairs separated at birth. Many of these behaviors are “things you would never think of looking at if you were going to study the genetics of behavior,” says psychologist Thomas J.   Bouchard, Jr. , director of the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research at the University of Minnesota.

Bouchard reports that so far, exhaustive psychological tests and questionnaires have been completed with approximately 50 pairs of identical twins reared apart, 25 pairs of fraternal twins reared apart and comparison groups of twins reared together. “We were amazed at the similarity in posture and expressive style,” says Bouchard. “It’s probably the feature of the study that’s grabbed us the most.” Twins tend to have similar mannerisms, gestures, speed and tempo in talking, habits and jokes. Many of the twins dressed in similar fashion--one male pair who had never previously met arrived in England sporting identical beards, haircuts, glasses and shirts.

The most striking example of common psychopathology (精神病理学) however, came from a pair of twins raised apart. One had been reared by his own (poor) family the other had been adopted into a “good solid upper-middle-class family.” Both are now considered to be antisocial personalities, suffering from lack of impulse control, and both have criminal histories. Although the twins share, on average, 50 percent of their genes, Bouchard suggests that the overlap is probably considerably more with this pair.

Personality similarities between the identical twins raised apart are almost the same as they are with identical twins raised together, according to the results of a test developed by University of Minnesota psychologist Auke Tellegen. His personality questionnaire contains scales such as “social closeness,” “harm avoidance” and “well-being.” The researchers were especially surprised to find that “traditionalism” --a trait implying conservatism and respect for authority--can be inherited. In fact, says Bouchard, his and other studies have found about 11 personality traits that appear to have significant genetic input.

Overall, the emerging findings of the Minnesota study constitute a powerful disproof of those who maintain that environmental influences are the primary shaping forces of personality. The textbooks are going to have to be rewritten, Bouchard predicts.

The Weight of White Lies

A man taking his mother to a surprise party tells her they’re going to the mall. A woman fibs that the store was out of her overweight boyfriend’s favorite junk food. A tutor assures his student that her spotty resumé looks fine.

Even benevolent forms of deception come in shades of acceptability, and people who learn that they have been misled don’t always see it the way deceivers do. A lie that’s meant to inflate   someone’s confidence or discourage a bad habit, for example, often involves making a judgment about what’s best for that person. That presumption can backfire.

In recent experiments, participants playing an economic game on a computer received a tip that led them to one of two possible payoffs. Some learned that the sender of the tip had lied to them to secure them a particular option. If the best option had been debatable rather than obvious—such as receiving $10 right away rather than $30 after three months—participants judged that person as less moral for lying and were less satisfied with the outcome, on average, even if it was the one they had previously said they preferred. “People seem to feel they have a right to the truth, and that by taking that away, you diminish their ability to act freely,” says study co-author Matthew Lupoli, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, San Diego.

Making up falsehoods isn’t the only way to kindly deceive, though: You might also simply leave out unpleasant facts. Recent studies by University of Chicago researcher Emma Levine and colleagues examined both types of lie in hypothetical patient-doctor talks and other contexts.

People in the role of deceiver tended to view the omission of potentially harmful details (such as a poor prognosis) as comparable to or more acceptable than offering a comforting fiction (that a patient’s outlook was favorable). But those in the role of the deceived often considered false-but-supportive statements more tolerable than lies of omission. For deceivers, actively committing a lie feels more intentional and might provoke more guilt than omission, Levine says. But the targets of deception “aren’t likely to be sensitive to these differences because they just experience the consequences.”

In general, honesty is probably still the best policy. A lie that provides some emotional benefits and has little downside could be the closest second.