1 . In our youth-obsessed culture, one would assume that your self-esteem peaks in your 20s—but that’s not the case. Researchers from the University of Bern set out to determine when the average person’s self-esteem is the highest, and the good news is that your peak comes decades later.

Researchers found that self-esteem increases throughout one’s lifetime, with a slight plateau during those awkward teen years. Our self-esteem levels then start rising again and don’t peak until well into midlife. The highest point for self-esteem level happen at age 60 when they can retire and stay there until a slight decline in one’s 70s and 80s.

This news that our self-esteem will continue to rise or stay steady during the majority of our lives is exciting. We often hear of increased stress in the decades of midlife, but there are upsides too. “Midlife is, for many adults, a time of high stability in relationships and work. Moreover, most people further invest in their roles, which might promote their self-esteem,” researcher Dr. Orth told the journalist. “For example, people take on managerial roles at work, maintain a satisfying relationship with their spouse or partner, and help their children become responsible and independent.”

As we age and our roles tend to change, it’s natural for self-esteem to take a small hit. “Old age frequently involves loss of social roles as a result of retirement, the empty nest, and, possibly, widowhood. In addition, aging often leads to negative changes in other possible sources of self-esteem, such as socioeconomic status and health.” Dr. Orth said. However, it’s important to remember that it’s only a slight decrease. Dr. Orth believes that most people maintain a high self-esteem level even into their 90s and beyond.

2 . What were you doing when you were nine years old? Making crafts from a Klutz book? Kicking around a soccer ball? Designing a business plan to deal with plastic pollution and relieve childhood poverty? Zymal Umar showed us the latter. The Pakistan’s youngest businesswoman has started a project entitled Zee Bags, which aims to reduce plastic pollution by providing an environmentally-friendly alternative to plastic grocery bags.

When Zymal was on a shopping trip with her parents three years ago, she was shocked by the number of plastic bags on the streets. Depressed by the plastic pollution, she was reminded of the severe consequences our habits have on the environment. Then, she noticed a shopkeeper handing out newspaper bags. And at that moment, Zymal knew she had to act. Since then she has created beautiful, unique reusable newspaper bags for hundreds of customers.

It’s amazing to see this youngster using her brains and business skills for good. And she should certainly feel proud of the work she is doing. After all, plastic grocery bags are killing thousands of marine animals every year through their contribution to plastic waste. According to The Earth Institute, over one trillion plastic bags are used worldwide annually—that’s about two million bags used per minute around the world.

And those bags certainly don’t disappear into thin air. Instead, they end up in our oceans, putting approximately 700 marine species in danger of extinction due to the threat from pollution. And plastic bags are just one of the many forms of plastic trash that ends up in the oceans—in fact, an astonishing 8. 8 million tons of this material make their way from land to the oceans every single year.

But with Zee Bags, we’re all empowered to make more thoughtful choices about our trash production. And Zymal’s amazingness doesn’t stop there—the profits from her sales go towards helping poor children.

4 . When you think of a typical American, who do you picture? A pretty blond white American like Taylor Swift? Or a handsome black American like basketball star Kobe Bryant? In fact, there was a time when the average American looked like neither of these people.

Back in the year 1500, the average American was a brown-skinned hunter-gatherer who probably rode a horse and wore clothing made from animal skins. Today, the ancestors of these people—who usually identify themselves based on their individual tribes such as Iriquois. Apache and Navajo—are broadly referred to as “Native Americans”, “American Indians” or simply “Indians”.

There’s a chance that you’ve never even heard of American Indians. That’s because there aren’t very many left. When the European settlement of North America began, there was intense (激烈的) conflict between settlers from overseas and these native people. After the British government and military were expelled in the Revolutionary War, conflicts with natives continued as the states were created that would later make up the US.                           In these conflicts, millions of natives were killed.

In 1830, former US president Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. This act required all Indians to migrate to west of the Mississippi River to allow for the expansion of the US. American Indians were treated as a military “enemy” until 1924, when the few Indians still alive at that point we granted US citizenship. That was the first time that the US government formally recognized the rights of Indians.

While the story of the American Indians has been a sad one, their legacy is still felt every day in the US. Many US geographical names come from Indian languages, such as Ohio, Topeka, Kansas and the Potomac River. At the same time, there are many successful academics and other important US leaders who are descended from Indians. And nowadays, more and more history classes in US public schools are educating students about how Indian suffered during the settlement of the US.

Although what happened can not be undone, we can learn at least one thing from the sad history of the Indians: If we want a better future, we must look carefully and honestly at the past.

Yours,

Li Hua

You may think you cannot live through summer without air conditioners. But in ancient China, hand fans were almost the only help for people       1     (drive) the heat away.

Chinese people started to use hand fans over 2,000 years ago. The fans came       2     different shapes, such as round and square and they were made from various materials. Palm leaf fans were cheap and easy to make. Feather fans showed the owner’s high status. Sandalwood fans     3     (send) out a fragrant smell.

    4     (late), hand fans became more than something     5     could cool you down. They developed into art works, in which tuanshan and zheshan were the most common.

Shaped like     6     full moon, tuanshan was usually made of silk. They had beautiful embroidery(刺绣) featuring birds and flowers on them. Females, especially     7    (woman) in the royal palace,liked to use them. Poets in ancient China often compared a woman’s abandoned fate to tuanshan. A poet wrote during the Qing Dynasty, “If only life were as     8     (beauty) as when we first met, why should the autumn wind bother to pity deserted painted fans?”

Meanwhile, men, especially the literati (文人), used zheshan. The literati liked them because they could paint and write poems on them.     9     was a way for them to show off their talent in literature, painting and calligraphy. Almost anything could     10       (paint) on zheshan, but the most popular ones usually featured landscapes.

8 . Should you listen to music when you work? Some will say they love it, claiming that it improves their performance; others will say they cannot work effectively with music playing in the background.     1     It just depends on what sort of work you’re doing.

In a recent study, we brought participants into our lab with a variety of tasks. They included an easy task — searching through word lists and crossing out words containing the letter “a” and a more difficult task — memorizing word pairs and recalling the partner to each word. Some participants completed all of the tasks in silence, whereas others completed the tasks with instrumental music that was either loud or soft, and either simple or complex, the latter meaning music with more instrumental tracks.     2    

We found that participants who listened to simple music or no music performed about the same on the easy task.     3     Contrarily, participants performed worse on the more difficult task when they listened to any music, regardless of complexity or volume, compared to those who didn’t listen to any music.

    4     Not surprisingly, we typically need to use fewer of our mental resources when we perform easy tasks, whereas demanding tasks require more brainpower. However, because we might be less engaged during easier tasks, there’s a greater risk of drifting off to sleep. Music might give us the extra boost we need to get refreshed.     5     Listening to music can become overkill (过犹不及). So we have to strike a balance between the type of music and the type of task.

Have you seen people who take pictures of food for more than 10 minutes before eating? How about those who beautify their selfie (自拍) so much that they can’t be____? There must be one or more who ____ in your social media. No matter _____they choose to share, they share the best but the most unreal.

Take my friend Chen for example. Every time we went to a restaurant, she would not take a _____ until all the dishes we ____were on the table. Then, she would spend five minutes on______the dishes in a seemingly random but in fact ____ order. Then the most important part: taking pictures. After that, she would choose one of the ____ and click in the filter(滤镜) app. The food eventually looked 10 times more delicious than it really was, but we had no ____ to really enjoy it — it all went cold. Actually Chen's real life is much less elegant. For example, she hates to wash the dishes, so she leaves them in the sink for____.

Many people care too much about others’ opinions and try too hard to ___ others. They find it hard to be ____ and to accept themselves, and thus they are afraid to show their ____ life on social media. What they are trying to prove is____what they lack in reality. But this will not bring any_____ to reality, as they still____ the same old pattern of life.

If they really want an elegant life, they should put more____ into achieving it_____fabricating(伪造) it. Being more confident, _____themselves and trying their best to be better is much more meaningful than_____ their life on social media.

10 . The rapid growth in skyscrapers worldwide has led to a high demand for window washers since most of these buildings feature large glass panes (窗格) to highlight their breathtaking views.

Though the job offers a handsome salary, dangling alongside multi-story structures is dangerous, and accidents are not uncommon. However, if Israel-based company Skyline Technologieshas its way, the dangerous chore may soon be taken care of by Ozmo, an intelligent window cleaning robot.

"As a society, we've become too comfortable watching people hanging off the sides of 30-story buildings," says Yaron Schwarez, co-founder and CEO of Skyline Robotics. "No salary could justify allowing people to put their lives in the hands of a system of ropes."

Much like humans, Ozmo is placed on platforms suspended from the buildings and uses its arms and brushes to clean the dirt on the glass panes. A 3D map of the building's surface programmed into its system allows the robot to skillfully handle obstacles as it moves up and down the structure. Computer vision and touch sensors enable it to move out of the way in case of unexpected events, such as the sudden opening of a window.

Unlike current window washers, the robot cleaner does not require soap to clean the glass. Instead, it uses distilled water (蒸馏水) and a process called dirt absorption to do the job. Schwarez explains, "We use pure water to absorb and remove the salts, the minerals, the oils, and the dirt from the building. We are environmentally-friendly."

Ozmo is also expected to be much more efficient than humans. While it currently takes three cleaners 480 hours each to clean the windows of a 40-story glass building, the robot will single-handedly complete the task in just 80 hours. However, unlike other robots, Ozmo will not replace human workers. It will only make their jobs safer by lifting them to the role of supervisors, who will be remotely controlling the operation from below.

Whether Ozmo, which is still undergoing testing, does as good a job as human remains to be seen.