【推荐1】Did you have any interesting dreams last night?

Our dreams come from a part of the brain that has our thoughts and memories (想法和记忆). A person can have up to six dreams a night, and each dream usually lasts from 10 to 40 minutes. Everyone dreams, but not everyone remembers their dreams. Most people dream in colour, usually with sound. And we usually dream about ourselves and the people we know.

Why Do We Dream?

A scientist says, “dreams can tell us a lot about ourselves, and can help us solve problems”. Another scientist thinks dreams come from our memories. He believes we dream to remember, because memories are useful to the brain and they can help us learn from the past.

Here are a few kinds of dreams and what people think they mean.

Dream 1: You Meet Someone When in Your Pajamas (睡衣)

Sometimes people dream that they meet someone they know when wearing their pajamas (or nothing at all!). This dream may be the result of an embarrassing (尴尬的) thing in your life. Some people think we dream about embarrassing things if our brains are trying to do with an event (事件) in our lives.

Dream 2: You’re Flying

If you dream about flying, you are probably quite happy. This is a good time in your life. You may feel that other people see you as a leader.

Dream 3: You Didn’t Study for a Test

This probably means you are worried about an important event coming in your life. If you’re not ready for the event, your dream may be telling you, “it’s time to get to work!”

【推荐2】When we get cold, our teeth chatter (打颤) and other parts of our body shake, no matter how hard we try to stay still (静止不动).

Shivering (颤抖) is one of several ways the body tries to keep warm when it’s cold out. In other words, your insides need to stay about the same temperature, no matter how hot or cold it is outside, and shivering helps make that happen.

When your warm body is exposed (暴露) to cold air, the heat from your body flows into the air. This is because heat always flows from a hot object to a cold one. It’s like when you put a pot of water on the stove (炉子), and the hot fire warms the cold water. So in the cold air, you are the fire, and the heat from your body is warming up the air around you. If the air is cold enough to steal your body heat, you feel cold. To make up for all the heat you’re losing to the cold air, your body shivers to try to produce even more heat.

If you can’t keep your body warm enough by wearing warm clothes — say, if you go outside in a T-shirt on a snowy day — your body will try to make as much heat as it can on its own. When you shiver, your muscles (肌肉) tighten(收缩) and relax over and over again in a short amount of time. The energy that it takes to make your muscles do that gives off heat, keeping your body a little warmer.

The Danger of Sit-ups

Do you like doing sit-ups (仰卧起坐)? If you answer “No”, then here is some good news for you.     1    

Stuart McGill has been studying sit-ups for years at his college. He said that this exercise could cause harm (伤害) to people.

Here is how he did it.     2     The test goes on for many hours without a break. When McGill checked the spines afterward, he found serious harm. If the same thing happened to us, that would mean terrible backache.

    3     However, McGill finds that doing regular (定期的) sit-ups can have the same result. Some people are more likely (可能) to have back problems.     4     It’s hard to know which group we fall into.

    5     Put your hands under your lower back. Bend one knee up and keep the other straight. Then, move up the head and shoulders (肩膀)off the ground by a little bit. In this way, doing sit-ups will cause much less harm to us.

It makes our fingers look ugly. It’s dirty. It could hurt a lot. But many people just can’t stop doing it: biting their nails.

Up to 45 percent of teenagers in the UK bite their nails, the BBC reported. Some people bite a nail not because it’s too long, but because they are driving, feeling stressed out, or just have nothing else to do.

In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association identified nail biting as a symptom(症状) of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). People with this disorder may wash their hands too many times or have to line up their shoes in a certain way.

Although nail biting has some things in common with other symptoms of OCD, it is different from other OCD behaviors in at least one way.

“In OCD, the behavior is really unwanted,” said psychiatrist Carol Mathews. People with OCD don’t want to wash their hands over and over again. There is no fun in it. They just fear that if they aren’t busy doing something, something bad might happen to them.

But nail biters enjoy this activity. “It’s rewarding. When you get the right nail, it feels good,” said Mathews. Therefore some people argue that most nail biters do not have any kind of serious mental illness.

However, it’s still a bad habit. So what can we do to stop it? Since most people bite nails as a way of relieving (缓解) stress, finding another way to relieve that stress could be useful, suggested Rochelle Torgerson, a doctor at the Mayo Clinic in the US. For example, some people might play with a pen instead.

Nail biters feel the urge (刺激，冲动) to bite if they find a small imperfect part of the nail, said Mathews. So always keep your nails in good shape.

【推荐2】In China, there are many different kinds of food. Some of them are very popular. Dumplings are the real Chinese food. Now let’s talk about them, OK?

Everyone in China likes dumplings very much, and there are many different kinds of dumplings. Some have meat and vegetables in them, others have sugar (糖), eggs and so on. I like dumplings with vegetables and pork best.

Usually people make dumplings at home. If you have no time to make them, you can buy them in any supermarkets. Then you take them home and eat them with vinegar (醋).

The Spring Festival is very important in China. When it comes, we make dumplings, usually we put a coin (硬币) into a dumpling. If one eats the dumpling with the coin in it, he will be lucky in the year.

Now tell me, do you like dumplings?

Welcome to China, we’ll ask you to eat the real Chinese food: dumplings.

【推荐3】Tobey likes zoos. He enjoys spending his weekends in zoos. He can learn a lot about animals.     1     He can see cows or horses around his house, but he can’t see elephants or lions.

However, he went to a different place last Sunday. There is an animal shelter (动物收容处) near his house.     2     There are usually dogs and cats in common shelters, but this shelter has lions and tigers.

As he arrived, he found the shelter was small but clean. The volunteers there were very helpful.     3     In zoos, he couldn’t get near animals at all. In this shelter, he was almost close enough to reach out and touch the animals, although there were two fences (围栏) between him and the animals. There weren’t as many people as zoos, either.

    4     Each animal had a story posted (张贴) on the fence. It showed how people saved the animal. Because of many people’s care and help, now Tobey could meet the animals. When it was time to go, Tobey gave away some money. It made him feel good to help out any way he could.

The animal shelter is a great place, and Tobey can’t wait to return.