【推荐1】Every day we communicate with others—often with symbols or gestures(手势). Here are some of the most common gestures.

Shaking Hands

Shaking hands has been done since at least the second century BC. It’s a symbol of trust. Nowadays we usually shake the right hands. But in the old time, people also shook left hands. The world record for handshakes is held by a man from New Jersey, who shook 11,000 hands in a single day.

Thumbs(大拇指) Up

The thumbs up sign is thought to come from contests in Rome. There people decided whether the fighter would live or die by thumbs up or thumbs down. In fact it came from an old English saying “Here’s my thumb on it” which was used to seal a bargain (达成交易). Businessmen held their thumbs up and extended them, until the two touched each other.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Rochambeau, or rock, paper, scissors is played all over the world to solve some difficult disagreements. A judge in Florida ordered people in a case to use this game to solve it. In Indonesia, it is earwig(蜈蚣), human, and elephant. The earwig drives the elephant mad. The human killed the earwig, and the elephant killed the human. If you know why it is called Rochambeau, please let me know. It’s still a mystery.

OK

The real history of this sign is lost. Some people think it refers to American president Martin Van Buren. He was often called as “Old Kinderhook”. Others say it is the bad handwriting which made OR—standing for “order received” into OK.

【推荐2】Our body language tells the world a lot about us. But can it change the way we see ourselves? The answer is YES.

There were two scientists called Amy Cuddy and Danna Carney. They knew much about body language and did famous researches(研究). According to the result of their researches, body language can change the chemistry of your brains. Some high-power body language can make you become confident. For example, you will feel confident when you hold your heads high or walk with your shoulders back. You will also feel confident when you put your arms out wide as if you win a race. However, some low-power body language can’t make you become confident. There are some examples, such as sitting with your arms close to the body, sitting with your legs together or walking with your heads down.

Why do all these happen? Some scientists think it’s because body language changes the amount of something special in our brains. It’s called hormone (荷尔蒙). One kind of hormone can increase (增加) your confidence. Another kind can increase your stress. But too much stress hormone is bad for learning. It increases the risk of health problems, too. The result of the research is helpful for your study. If you use more high-power body language in your study, you will be brave and confident. So, always believe you can study well, and then you will make great progress in your life.

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【推荐3】Humans are just like any other kind of animal. Animals show their feelings with their faces and bodies. If they show their teeth and raise their backs, they’re angry. Humans do many of these things too. You can usually tell whether someone is happy, angry, nervous or proud just by looking at them. We do not always need words.

We only have to look at our pets to see how close animal and human body languages are. When a cat is feeling confident, it will stand very tall and put its nose into the air. Humans do the same thing when they’re feeling proud.

Monkeys are very similar to humans. For example, children often put their hands together when they want something. Monkeys use the same gesture to ask for food from other members of their group. As a greeting, monkeys touch their friend’s hand. It's similar to the way we shake hands.

So you see, we can learn a lot about ourselves by studying animal gestures.

【推荐1】①When we see well, we do not think about our eyes very often. It is only when we cannot see perfectly that we realize how important our eyes are.

②People who are near-sighted can only see things that are very close to their eyes. Everything else seems blurry (=unclear). Many people who do a lot of work, such as writing, reading and sewing become near-sighted.

③People who are far-sighted(远视) suffer from just the opposite problem. They can see things that are far away, but they have difficulty in reading a book unless they hold it at arm’s length. If they want to do much reading, they must get glasses, too.

④Other people do not see clearly because their eyes are not exactly the right shape. They have what is called astigmatism(散光). This, too, can be corrected by glasses. Some people’s eyes become cloudy because of cataracts(白内障). Long ago these people often became blind. Now, however, it is possible to operate on the cataracts and remove them.

⑤Having two good eyes is important for judging(判断) distances(距离). Each eye sees things from a slightly different angle. To prove this to yourself, look at an object out of one eye; then look at the same object out of your other eye. You will find the object’s relation to the background and other things around it has changed. The difference between these two different eye views helps us to judge how far away an object is. People who have only one eye cannot judge distance as people with two eyes.

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【推荐2】Lots of people love cute and friendly dolphins (海豚). They love dolphin shows in the zoo. About 40 kinds of dolphins live in the world. Many of them live in the sea. But pink dolphins live in Amazon River (亚马逊河).   Here is something about pink dolphins.

Pink dolphins are big animals. An old pink dolphin can be 2 m~2. 3 m long and 100~ 150kilos. How heavy they are! Many dolphins are black and white or gray and white. But pink dolphins are different. Their colors change with age. Young pink dolphins are gray. But old pink dolphins can show the color of pink. Pink dolphins have about 52 pairs of teeth. The teeth help them get food easily. They eat about 50 kinds of fishes and crabs (螃蟹).

Like other dolphins, pink dolphins are social animals. They live in groups but their group is small. A group has two or four pink dolphins. The pink dolphins in the same group go into the water, play in the water and look for food together.

【推荐3】If you want to see a thing well，touching can help you to “see” it better.

Your eyes can tell you that a glass ball is round. But by holding it in your hands，you can feel how smooth and cool the ball is. You can feel how heavy the glass ball is. When you learn all these about the ball，you really see it well.

With your skin，you can feel better. For example，your fingers can tell the difference between two different coins in your pocket. You can feel a little drop of water on the back of your hand，too. You can even feel sounds against your skin. Have you ever wanted to know why some people like very loud music? They must like to feel the sounds of music. All children soon learn what “Don’t touch!” means. They hear it often. Yet most of us keep on touching things as we grow up. In shops，we touch things that we might buy. To see something well，we have to touch it. The bottoms of our feet can feel things，too. You know this when you walk on warm sand，cool grass or a hard floor. All feel different under your feet.

Most museums are just for looking. But today some museums have some things to touch. Their signs say，“ Do touch!” There you can feel everything on show.

There are ways of learning to see well by feeling. One way is to close your eyes and try to feel everything that is touching your skin. Feel the shoes on your feet，the clothes on your body，the air on your skin.

If you want to see better，reach out and touch it. Then you will really see!

【推荐2】Can plants eat people? Probably not, but there are many plants that eat meat. Some of them are big and they can eat small animals. One famous meat-eating plant is the Venus flytrap(捕蝇草).

The Venus flytrap is a very strange plant. It grows in dry parts of the United States. Its leaves are like the pages of a book, they can open and close very quickly. Inside the leaves, there are three small hairs. If a fly(苍蝇)touches one of the hairs, the leaves will close quickly. The fly cannot get out. In about half an hour, the leaves press the fly until it is dead. Then the plant covers the fly. Slowly the plant eats the fly.

Why do plants do it?

Most plants get what they need from the sun, the air and the ground. In some places, the ground is very poor. It doesn’t have all these important things, but animal meat has a lot of these important things. So some plants eat meat to get what they need. Let’s hope that some of the bigger plants don’t get the same idea!

There is an English saying “You are what you eat”, and it means (意思是) what you put in your mouth will become part of you. It tells people having a good eating style is important. For example (例如), too much sweet food makes a person fat. So parents always ask kids to keep away from sweet food. But a team of American scientists (科学家) find something new about eating sweet food.

“When we say some people ‘sweet’, we mean they are kind and friendly to us. This word may help us learn more about people’s feelings,” said Brian Meier, a scientist from the team.

In one of their experiments (实验), scientists asked some young people questions about their character (性格), like “Are you kind or not?” Then young people made a list of their favorite food. From their answers, the scientists found that the students who liked sweet food were nicer.

In their another experiment, the scientists found something interesting: people who liked sweet food such as (例如) cakes and chocolate always helped other people, and those who liked non-sweet food didn’t. That means people with a sweet tooth were more willing to help clean up their city, visit sick children in hospital and so on.

The result (结果) of the experiments is that people’s helpfulness or being nice has something to do with their taste for sweet food.