【推荐1】To better understand how animals like spiders communicate with pattern and color, Jenny Yi-Ti Sung, a biology doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati, is turning to ancient dramatic art. Sung is studying how Beijing operas convey details about characters to their audiences through the performers’ colorful masks (脸谱).

Like jumping spiders, Beijing opera masks have unique patterns and colors that convey information to their intended audience. For spiders, the unique characteristics broadcast species, sex or even romantic intentions to possible mates. Similarly, in Beijing opera, the masks give the audience clues about a character’s motives, character or virtue.

“I’m interested in understanding how male spiders might use their patterns and colors to tell a female spider they’re the same species and are a good mate,” Sung said. “I saw a parallel in Beijing opera masks. How do these visual patterns evolve to tell a specific identity?”

Sung is investigating whether Beijing opera masks within a particular opera are more similar or different compared with masks in unrelated operas. Her computerized analysis involves scanning and resizing 76 masks for uniformity, employing the Eigenfaces (特征脸) method to identify common or unique facial features. This investigation aims to reveal the importance of differentiation among characters within the same story in the Beijing opera.

Nathan Morehouse, Sung’s advisor, thought highly of Sung’s creative approach, describing it as a delightful marriage of cultural and scientific interests in evolutionary biology. “I think it enriches science and opens up new ways of thinking’ about things,” he said.

Facial patterns, as observed in jumping spiders and various animal species, hold biological significance in conveying information about species, sex and mate suitability. Besides spiders, facial pattern recognition is found in many other animals. “When they live in mixed-species communities, their facial patterns evolve to be distinct so they can distinguish members of the same species at a distance,” Morehouse said.

Sung hopes that her study will shed light on evolutionary divergence (差异), exploring the point at which members of the same species take different genetic paths. “Of course, there’s no punishment to the audience if they don’t recognize the Beijing opera faces properly. But in the wild, you’d get eaten,” she said.

【推荐2】Skin: The Body’s Canvas

If you could take off your skin and lay it flat, it would cover an area of about 1.9 square meters. Skin is, by far, the body’s largest organ. Covering almost the entire body, skin protects us from a variety of external forces. For example, it protects us from extremes of temperature, damaging sunlight, harmful chemicals, and dangerous infections. Skin is also packed with nerves, which keeps the brain in touch with the outside world. The health of our skin and its ability to perform its protective functions are crucial to our well-being. However, the appearance of our skin is equally - if not more - important to many people on this planet.

Take skin color, for example. Your genes determine your skin’s color, but for centuries, humans have tried to lighten or darken their skin in an attempt to be more attractive. In the 1800s, white skin was desirable for many Europeans. Skin this color meant that its owner was a member of the upper class and did not have to work in the sun. Among darker-skinned people in some parts of the world, products used to lighten skin are still popular today. During the 20th century, attitudes toward light skin shifted in the opposite direction in other cultures, as cities grew and work moved indoors. Tanned skin began to indicate leisure time and health. In many places today, tanning on the beach or in a salon remains popular, even though people are more aware of the dangers of UV rays.

Identity and Status

Just as people have altered their skin’s color to denote wealth and beauty, so too have cultures around the globe marked their skin to indicate cultural identity or community status. Tattooing, for example, has been carried out for thousands of years. Leaders in places including ancient Egypt, Britain, and Peru wore tattoos to mark their status, or their bravery. Today, among the Maori people of New Zealand as well as in cultures in Samoa, Tahiti, and Borneo, full-facial tattoos are still used to identify the wearer as a member of a certain family. These tattoos can also symbolize the person’s achievements in life.

In Japan, tattooing has been practiced for thousands of years, but was outlawed in the 19th century. Although there are no laws against it today, tattoos are still strongly associated with criminals -particularly the yakuza, or the Japanese mafia, who are known for their full-body tattoos. The complex design of a yakuza member’s tattoo usually includes symbols of character traits that the wearer wants to have. The process of getting a full-body tattoo is both slow and painful and can take two years or more to complete.

In some cultures, scarring - a marking caused by cutting or burning the skin - is practiced, usually among people who have darker skin on which a tattoo would be difficult to see. For many men in West Africa, for instance, scarring is a rite of passage - an act that symbolizes that a male has matured from a child into an adult. In Australia, among some native peoples, cuts are made on the skin of both men and women when they reach age 16 or 17. Without these, they were traditionally not permitted to trade, sing ceremonial songs, or participate in other activities.

Not all skin markings are permanent, though. In countries such as Morocco and India, women decorate their skin with colorful henna designs for celebrations such as weddings and important religious holidays. The henna coloring, which comes from a plant, fades and disappears over time.

In recent years in many industrialized nations, tattooing, henna(散沫花染料) body art, and, to a lesser degree, scarring have been gaining in popularity. What makes these practices appealing to those living in modern cities? According to photographer Chris Rainier, whose book Ancient Marks examines body markings around the globe, people are looking for a connection with the traditional world. “There is a whole sector of modern society - people in search of identity, people in search of meaning,” says Rainier. “Hence, there has been a huge explosion of tattooing and body marking.” Rainier reasons that it’s “mankind wanting identity, wanting a sense of place and a sense of culture within their community.”

【推荐1】Young Chinese couples are increasingly abandoning large formal wedding ceremonies for smaller, intimate ones at unconventional locations and coffee shops, wedding planners said.

When Sun Hongxu started a wedding service business in Beijing in 2012, she found most weddings were celebrated in a “typically Chinese way” at venues such as hotels and restaurants, with a large number of guests, often 200 or more. There were friends and relatives of the young couple, or their parents, sitting at 20 or more tables, waiting the bride, groom and their parents enter the venue. Then the couple exchanged vows and rings.

The newly weddings would give out presents and even cash to show their appreciation for the attendance of their guests. Despite some couples not wanting such traditional nuptials, they felt obliged to meet the wishes of their parents who thought this was what a wedding should be like.

However, a reporter released in July by wedding service website Hunliji and science and technology media platform 36Kr shows that the generation born after 1990 is against formal weddings with too many complex procedures. Instead, they are paying more attention to having a happy and joyful small wedding that reflects the personalities of the bride and groom. They may only choose to have a meal with their family members, or have a trip with his or her lover in a romantic site. In their eyes, it is more meaningful , economical and unforgettable.

According to a survey, the average cost of a wedding in 2020 was 231,000 yuan, 3.7 times higher than five years ago, the reporter said.

However, it added that the majority of young couples take cost into consideration and spend reasonably on their weddings. XuLin, a wedding planner in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, said compared with those born in the 1980s, who took into consideration their parents’ wishes for grand traditional indoor weddings, couples today prioritize their own wedding preferences.

【推荐3】The variety of choices today, especially in entertainment and products, is almost beyond comprehension.

Going shopping? There's exponentially more to choose from at your local supermarket in almost every category. It's not just groceries, of course. Need a power saw? How about paint for your wall? So many options you could reasonably throw up your hands in despair.

Yet, I'm willing to bet if someone asked you whether you'd prefer more choices in life or fewer, you'd pick more. “Since, why not? More is better, right?”

However, here's what you lose when you have unlimited choices. First, peace of mind. It's stressful to have to go through an enormous menus of options, since it takes effort to sift through the pros and cons of each, and what if you choose wrong? In an often cited study done at Wharton, customers in a gourmet grocery story were watched as they passed a display of cither 6 or 24 types of jam. While more customers were drawn to the larger display, only 3 percent of shoppers who passed by bought jam at that table.

But beyond our confusion when we're faced with enormous choices, we have also lost a sense of community. Those three national TV networks back in the day aired shows that nearly everyone watched and that you could talk about with the confidence that they were well known by all. Today, you can't assume that any of your friends or coworkers are on the same page.

It's nice, of course, that there are so many choices. But the downside is that at a time when our society is crying for unity, some interest groups often cut off their fans from the rest of our society.

Obviously, we cannot change the present situation. Even as we feel overwhelmed by choice, we certainly wouldn't want someone else to decide which choices we should give up for the sake of peace of mind. But I do sometimes miss the days when decision-making wasn't always a detailed search among endless possibilities for that one, shining, perfect choice that we will never find.

【推荐1】Chinese and Western eating habits are different. In China, the dishes are placed on the table and everybody shares. It is always polite to let guests or elderly people at the table taste every dish first. But in the West, everyone has his or her own plate of food.

Although there are no strict rules on how to set chopsticks and spoons, there are some things you should never do during a Chinese banquet.

Firstly and most importantly, don’t put your chopsticks upright in the rice bowl. Instead, lay them on your dish. The reason for this is that when people die, family members give them a bowl full of rice with a pair of chopsticks sticking out upright in it. So if you stick your chopsticks into rice bowl, it appears that you want someone at the table to die.

Make sure the spout of the teapot is not facing anyone, as this is impolite. The spout should always be directed to where nobody is sitting, usually just outward from the table.

Don’t tap on your bowl with your chopsticks. Beggars tap on their bowls, so this is not polite. Also, when the food is coming too slow in a restaurant, you should not tap on your bowl. If you are in someone’s home, it is like insulting the cook.

【推荐3】Childhood days on the beach or messing around in rivers can have significant lasting benefits for our wellbeing (幸福) in adulthood， according to a study. It found that exposure to blue spaces-such as coasts, rivers and lakes-as a child made revisiting blue spaces in adulthood more likely, as these adults showed greater familiarity with and placed greater value on natural settings.

More than 15,000 participants in 18 different countries were surveyed for the study, published in the Journal of Envirommental Psychology. “Water settings can be dangerous for children, and parents are right to be watchful,” said Dr Leanne Martin, co-author of the study. “The research, though, suggests that encouraging children to feel comfortable in these settings and developing skills such as swimming at an early age can have previously unrecognized life-long benefits."

There has been a growing body of research over the last ten years about the specific beneficial effects of blue spaces on mental health. A review published in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health suggested visits to blue spaces could increase people’s physical activity levels and lower stress, while improving their mood and psychological wellbeing. Another review published by the Environment Agency, found that blue spaces were linked to the improvement of mood and feelings of restoration to a greater degree than green spaces.

The study’s lead author Valeria Vitale said, “We recognise that both green and blue spaces have a positive impact on people’s mental and physical health. Also, previous studies examining childhood nature exposure and adulthood outcomes have largely focused on green spaces, or natural spaces in general. However, as we highlighted in our paper, blue spaces have unique sensory qualities (感官特质)(light reflection，wave motion，sounds，etc)and encourage a distinct range of leisure activities (swimming, fishing, water sports).”

Another co-author Dr Mathew White added: “If our findings are supported by long-term research that tracks people’s exposure over the entire life course, it would suggest that further work, strategies and plans encouraging more blue space experiences during childhood may be a viable way to support the mental health of future generations.”