1 . The Science of Comfort Food

Certain foods always give us much pleasure.     1     However, much of the happiness we get from our favorite foods comes from the memories they bring to us and the people we’re with while we enjoy them.

    2     That’s why our brains reward us for eating anything at all by releasing a chemical that enhances mood. But as anyone who’s ever eaten apple pie knows, sweets can make us feel especially nice. One study found that people who are especially sensitive to sweetness have stronger brain-reward responses to sugary foods than less sweet-sensitive people do.

Some foods are especially emotionally satisfying for reasons that have little to do with their taste or nutritional content, though.     3     And many favorite American comfort foods—chili, say—are not particularly sweet or high in carbohydrates (碳水化合物). Often we love food because we have fond memories associated with it. One dish I cannot live without at a New Year party is my mom’s Snowy Mashed Potatoes, which remind me of holiday joy and past reunions with extended family.

    4     Sometimes you might feel sad when you eat foods that remind you of loved ones you miss. We may also avoid foods that we associate with bad experiences. I haven’t eaten cottage cheese since I was 8 years old, because it was the last thing I ate before rolling off the bed with a terrible stomachache.

In addition to past memories, the context in which we eat foods matters, too.     5     And our gustatory (味觉的) experiences can be heightened by “a sense of community, a sense of warmth and enjoying it together”. I appreciate my mum’s potatoes even more today when I eat them with my husband and two children.

2 . Connected to each other like never before, young people today are becoming agents of change, increasingly contributing to innovative solutions that improve people’s lives and the planet’s health.

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research is therefore delighted to launch the Young Leaders Online Training Programme, a four-week e-Learning course, to provide participants with the knowledge and skills to fully unfold their potential as global leaders.

Module 1: The United Nations (3-9 June 2024)

Module 2: Conference Diplomacy (外交) (10-16 June 2024)

Module 3: Sustainable Development Goals   (17-23 June 2024)

Module 4: International Communication   (24-30 June 2024)

Each module will comprise about 30 pages of literature, external links, videos, and other relevant material, corresponding to a total workload of 40-45 hours during the four weeks.

◇Live Components

Each e-Learning module will go with a series of live meetings with UN experts. These will have varying lengths and formats, including e-workshops, mock (模拟的) interviews, etc.

◆COMPLETION REQUIREMENTS

Participants are qualified for a course certificate upon successful completion of the components below:

◇Reading the four modules’ content. You may wish to study the material through the interactive programme Articulate Storyline or simply download the PDF version of the content. They are identical in content and are meant to give participants flexibility in the way to study.

◇Participation in the discussion board forums (论坛). You are supposed to answer questions on every module in short texts. Your posts will be evaluated according to both quantity and quality.

◇Passing the multiple-choice assessments. Each module features an assessment quiz at its end. It contains 10 questions, and passing the module requires at least 8 out of 10 questions correctly answered.

There’s a difference between being nice and being kind. Being nice involves being polite and pleasing to others. If you’re people pleasing, you’re placing an expectation on the person you’re being nice to that they respond to you in a certain way. Being kind is less self-serving. On the one hand, kindness involves being generous without expecting anything in return. The other half is the purpose behind the action. A kind person is acting out of sympathy and genuine concern for another.

The difference is intentionality, said Dr. Catherine Franssen, an associate professor of psychology at Longwood University in Virginia, noting that a kind person tries to really understand what someone else is going through.

Practicing kindness rather than niceness allows people to develop deeper genuine connections with others, said Franssen. The more you do it, the easier it will get to relate to others and build more meaningful relationships in all aspects of life.

The warm feeling you get from performing an act of kindness is your brain releasing a ton of feel-good chemicals. Franssen said being kind boosts production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter (神经传递素) involved in mood, including happiness. Kindness also releases dopamine, a brain chemical in charge of reward and pleasure. It’s the reason why doing one act of kindness feels so good that you want to do another.

Being kind gives the same health benefits, regardless of how big or small the gesture. Acts of kindness might feel strange and out-of-character at first. However, this feeling goes away the more you keep practicing. Soon enough, it becomes so familiar you’ll notice the benefits on yourself and others.

5 . The CAUSE Leadership Academy (CLA) for students is a paid nine-week internship (实习) program that connects college undergraduates to communities through local political experiences and prepares them to lead and advocate for the civic engagement.

General Information:

·Program Duration: June 24th, 2024 — August 23rd, 2024

·Location and Time Commitment: CLA will be an in-person, full-time program (5 days per week, about 40 hours per week).

·Payment: Each intern will receive $4,000 upon satisfactory completion of the program.

Program Goals:

·To gain new skills and knowledge

·To deepen understanding of issues that impact the local community

·To explore civic leadership career paths

·To develop professional experience and skills to be effective in political advocacy and campaign support

Program Components:

·Interns will work together to develop a project.

·Interns will be placed in a public, private, or non-profit host office.

·Interns will learn about and support civic engagement efforts with their Host Office.

·Interns will develop leadership skills and expand understanding of civic engagement.

Requirements for the applicants:

·Have a minimum GPA (Grade Point Average) of 3.0

·Be a current student with at least one year of college completed or a recent college graduate

·Be able to actively participate in all major events

For full consideration, applicants must ensure both Application and Letter of Recommendation are received by Sunday, January 28th, 2024 at 11:59 pm.

8 . A quick increase of dopamine (多巴胺) shifts mice into a dreamy stage of sleep. In the mice’s brains, the chemical messenger triggers rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM, researchers report in the March 4 Science.

These new results are some of the first to show a trigger for the shifts. Understanding these transitions in more detail could ultimately point to ways to treat sleep disorders in people.

Certain nerve cells in the ventral tegmental area of the mouse brain can pump out dopamine, a molecule that has been linked to pleasure, movement and learning, which is then delivered dopamine to the amygdalae, two almond-shaped structures deep in the brain that are closely tied to emotions.

Using a molecular sensor that can tell exactly when and where dopamine is released, the researchers saw that dopamine levels rose in the amygdalae just before mice shifted from non-REM sleep to REM sleep.

Next, the researchers forced the mice into the REM phase by controlling those dopamine-producing nerve cells using lasers and genetic techniques. Compelled with light, the nerve cells released dopamine in the amygdalae while mice were in non-REM sleep. The mice then shifted into REM sleep sooner than they typically did, after an average of about two minutes compared with about eight minutes for mice that weren’t prompted to release dopamine. Stimulating these cells every half hour increased the mice’s total amount of REM sleep.

Additional experiments suggest that these dopamine-making nerve cells may also be involved in aspects of narcolepsy (嗜睡症). A sudden loss of muscle tone, called cataplexy, shares features with REM sleep and can accompany narcolepsy. Stimulating these dopamine-making nerve cells while mice were awake caused the mice to stop moving and fall directly into REM sleep.

The results help clarify a trigger for REM in mice; whether a similar thing happens in people isn’t known. Earlier studies have found that nerve cells in people’s amygdalae are active during REM sleep.

Many questions remain. Drugs that change dopamine levels in people don’t seem to have big effects on REM sleep and cataplexy. But these drugs affect the whole brain, and it’s possible that they are just not selective enough.

9 . Paul Durietz is a 76-year-old social studies teacher from Illinois. On September 1, he set a Guinness World Record for the world’s longest teaching career. He has been teaching for 53 years-since he was 23 years old.

Mr. Durietz became interested in history after hearing stories from his father. He made up his mind about becoming a social studies teacher when he was just 11 years old, mainly because of his love of history.

Mr. Durietz got his first teaching job at Woodland Middle School in Gurnee, Illinois in 1970. Ever since then, he’s been teaching social studies at the same school. For him, teaching is never boring because every day is different. He loves sharing his knowledge of history with students.

Things have changed a lot since he began all those years ago. When he started, he wrote on a blackboard with chalk, and the students used paper textbooks. These days, he and the students use computers and digital whiteboards.

Though technology has changed a lot, in Mr. Durietz’s eyes, the students are still pretty much the same-except that now they have cell phones.

And with or without technology, Mr. Durietz has used creative activities to help his students learn. For example, he has organized virtual field trips, geography contests, and special days about the US Civil War. To help his students learn about politics, he has even organized mock (模拟的) elections at school, which his students enjoyed most.

For much of his 53 years as a teacher, Mr. Durietz has been in charge of the social studies program at Woodland. In that time, he has helped to guide over 20 other social studies teachers at the school. To his extreme pride, he has even had students come back and tell him that they became history teachers because of him.

Mr. Durietz wasn’t really trying to set a record. He was just doing what he loved. He has no plans to retire any time soon. He hopes to break his own record. He also hopes to set another record as the teacher who’s worked the longest at the same school.

“Keep working on what you love to do in life,” he always says.

10 . The Summer Science Program is an independent nonprofit, the only summer program operated, governed, and largely funded by its former participants and teachers, which is proof of its impact on young people for more than six decades. Many participants call it “the educational experience of a lifetime.”

SSP offers teens an exciting and inspiring immersion into hands-on experimental science. Working in teams of three, 36 participants and 7 teachers form a supportive “living and learning community” over 39 days. Each team completes a real research project, taking and analyzing original data. Afterward, they join a worldwide network of 2,500+ alumni of all ages.

In 2024 we will operate six programs:

•three in Astrophysics: research in near-earth asteroid orbit determination at New Mexico State Univ., Univ. of Colorado Boulder, and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

•two in Biochemistry: research in fungal crop pathogens at Purdue Univ. and Indiana Univ.

•one in Genomics: research in evolution of antibiotic resistance, at Indiana Univ.

SSP is open to current high school juniors (and a few truly exceptional sophomores) who have completed the pre-requisites by summer, and will be at least 15 years old, but not yet 19, during the program.