1 . Nowadays, body language has played a more and more important part in daily communication among people. To avoid confusion and embarrassment in cross-cultural communication, it’s necessary to have fluency in some common body language worldwide.

In Australia, it is very rude to wink (眨眼) at women.

In Brazil, pulling down the lower lid (眼睑) of the right eye means that the listener doesn’t believe what you’re saying. In India, holding your ear means either “honesty” or “I’m sorry”.

In Indonesia, hands on hips while talking means that you’re angry and it is also impolite.

In Japan, It’s unacceptable for two adults of the same sex to hold hands while walking together A smile can mean happiness, anger, or sadness. When someone praises you, respond by waving your hand back and forth in front of your face. Because it is considered impolite to show their teeth. women usually cover their mouths when they laugh. To make a promise, two people generally book their little fingers together.

In South Korea, when talking to someone, keep your hands in full view. It is rude to keep your hands behind your back or in your pockets.

In Spain, snapping the thumb and first finger together a few times is a form of applause. If you think the person you are talking about is mean, ta p your left elbow with your right hand. If you’ve heard the story that someone is telling before, put your right hand behind your head and pull your left ear.

In Sri Lanka, moving your head from side to side means “yes” and nodding your head up and down means “no”!

In Thailand, people point to an object with their chins, not their hands.

Have you learned the meanings of the above body languages in different countries? Keep these in mind and you’ll realize that they’re very helpful one day.

5 . What My Year Abroad Taught Me About Cultural Differences

Imagine going to study abroad. You walk into the local shop and bam!, Golliwogs (黑面木偶) everywhere. I’m talking salespeople dressed as Golliwogs. Surprised, you go to the junk food section as that’s the only thing that will give your body the sugar rush it needs to shock your body out of the state of bewilderment (困惑). And there they were: Golliwog cookies.

I’m using the word “Golliwogs” because to a British person abroad that’s what they are. But in the Netherlands and Belgium the image is known as Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). There has been much discussion about whether or not it’s racist.     1     Zwarte Piet is understood by most in the Netherlands to be Santa’s helper whose black face was due to his delivering presents through the chimney.

Working as a trainee with the European Commission, I met people from all over the world, not just Europe. Working alongside my German, Spanish and Italian colleagues, I learned some valuable lessons.     2     You shouldn’t wait to say “excuse me,” or wait for a gap in the conversation to give your opinion, because you’ll walk out at the end of the meeting wondering how three hours have passed without you managing to say anything. I learned how to stop my colleagues and interject (插话) my thoughts.

Another lesson was the value of the coffee break. Coffee breaks in Brussels were not just time to get coffee. It was a chance to develop new ideas with colleagues in a more informal setting. At first I declined the invitation to attend, but after a while I began to notice that almost everyone went on these trips to the coffee machine and decided to join them.     3    

Graduates and students who have worked abroad gain an understanding of what it means to be truly European and how this can benefit you at work. Not only do you bring home experiences, skills and practices from other countries, but you also seek to take your work further afield (向远方).

    4     Remember the Golliwog cookies? All I really wanted were some Mr. Kipling’s cakes but they’re nearly impossible to find abroad. When I finished my trainee ship with the Commission, I came home and started a business called Packed Munches, a service sending boxes of British snacks to Britons all over the world. And to think, it all started with Zwarte Pict.

6 . In the genetic age, ecologists’ jobs are made much easier by two things. One is that every organism carries its own chemical identity card, in the form of its genome (基因组). The second is that they drop these ID cards everywhere they go. Urine, bits of fur stuck to a hedge, even shed skin cells: all deposit DNA into the environment. Cheap gene sequencing allows scientists to harvest this “environmental DNA” (eDNA) from soil, sand, water and the like, and use it to keep track of which species are living where.

“Every organism,” of course, includes humans. In a paper published on May 15^th in Nature Ecology & Evolution, a group of researchers from America and Europe report that such eDNA surveys pick up large quantities of human DNA as well as the animal sort. That DNA can be read—and potentially matched with individuals—by anyone with the right equipment.   

The researchers did not set out to study “inadvertent human genetic bycatch”, as they call the phenomenon. The work began at the Witney Sea Turtle Hospital in Florida, during an investigation into a viral turtle disease. The researchers sampled water from the turtle’s tanks, as well as from ocean water and beaches upon which the creatures nested, looking for viral DNA.   

They expected to sweep up DNA from other species during their trawl (拖网). What was surprising, according to Jessica Farrell, a biologist at the Witney Hospital and one of the paper’s authors, was just how much human DNA they found. Even though many of their sampling sites were not near towns and cities, they found human genetic material in every sample they examined.   

Interested, they expanded their search. In both Florida and in Ireland they found human DNA in rivers, with concentrations especially high as they flowed through towns. They found it in beach sand, and even in air from rooms in which humans had been working. Human DNA is not quite everywhere: it was not detectable in deep ocean water, or on remote beaches closed to the public. But anywhere that humans are, their DNA appears to be as well.

In one sense, that is unsurprising. But advances in gene-sequencing meant there was enough information in the samples to deduce plenty of things about the humans in question. The researchers could pick out males thanks to DNA from the Y chromo some. They could infer an individual’s ancestry, and even spot mutations (突变) that affect a person’s disease risk. David Duffy, another of the paper’s authors, said the amount and quality of the DNA they recovered “far exceeded” the minimum necessary to be included in America’s database of missing people. Dr Duffy and his colleagues did not try to identify individuals in their study, for moral reasons. But they had no doubt it could be done.

7 . On our 20^th anniversary, Susan and I headed off for a few days to a lovely valley about an hour away. We didn’t know much about the town, but that was fine. Our goal was really just to renew our faith in each other.

We began by stocking up at the quirky Village Market in Glen Ellen, California. Within minutes, friendly locals spotted us and started chatting in the aisles with charming tips. You gotta hike to Jack London’s house. Oh, dinner at the Fig Café. Hours later, having followed their yellow brick road all day, we walked, delirious, back from dinner to our creekside inn. “I think I could live here,” Susan said.

It turns out that Glen Ellen’s contagious spirit was not our passing illusion. In October 2017, the Nuns Fire bore down on this town near Santa Rosa. An astounding 183 of Glen Ellen’s 750 or so homes burned down. Among them was Jill Dawson’s place, just across the creek from the inn to which we had returned the next anniversary, and four more in turn. I called Jill after reading her family’s story. She sounded just like the spirited, generous type Susan and I have loved meeting in Glen Ellen.

After the fire, she told me, her family’s prospects for staying in the town looked bleak. But residents mobilized on Facebook and in the Village Market to brainstorm how to house one another.

Hearing of their plight, some neighbors who barely knew the Dawsons placed two new trailers next to their house, which hadn’t burned, for Jill’s family.

“Their name is the Fosters, and I tell them, ‘You just can’t help it,’” Jill says, laughing at her own pun. Jill and her husband, Art, have lived in one of the trailers for a year while sorting through how to rebuild. They are only two of the many residents who were able to remain close thanks to their neighbors’ selflessness. “I’m grateful for little Glen Ellen,” Jill says. “The amount of passionate people and grassroots efforts working to keep this place supportive is amazing. The kindness thing, it’s still huge here.”

In kicking off our annual Nicest Place in America search, let Glen Ellen be just one example. So many cities, workplaces, churches, schools, and other locations thrive because, well, “the kindness thing, it’s still huge.” Please take the time to go to RD.COM/NICEST to tell us about one you love. Thank you!

8 . Children who spent more than two hours per day in front of a television or computer screen were more likely to report behavioral and social problems than kids who watched less, according to a University of Bristol study that will be published in Pediatrics.

Researchers recorded the playing, screen viewing and activity habits of 1,000 children aged 10 to 11. They also had the kids fill out questionnaires designed to estimate the kids’ emotional well-being and behavior.

The questionnaires contained 20 questions covering five sections—emotional difficulties, conduct problems, hyperactivity (活动过度), inattention, friendship and peer groups and problems relating to friends and peer groups.

The study found that those children who spent more than two hours per day watching TV or using a computer were at an increased risk of psychological difficulties. This risk increased if they also failed to meet the guidelines on physical activity.

While the risks for kids who spent a lot of time in front of a screen appeared to be increased by lack of physical activity, the opposite was not true: Increase in physical activity did not seem to decrease kids’ high scores in psychological difficulties if they spent a lot of time sedentary (久坐 的) in front of a screen. By contrast, sedentary time spent reading a book or working on a project corresponded to the highest scores of psychological well-being.

“While low levels of screen viewing may not be problematic, we cannot rely on physical activity to compensate for long hours of screen viewing,” lead author Dr. Angie Page said in a statement. “Watching TV or playing computer games for more than two hours a day is related to greater psychological difficulties regardless of how active children are.”

Although Page’s study doesn’t clarify the links between inactivity, screen time and psychological well-being, it’s true that kids in the United States are getting less exercise and more screen time than they should. In 2009, Page’s team found a connection between a child’s physical activity and independent mobility, the amount of space in which a child can play without the supervision of an adult. They concluded that, as play spaces have decreased in recent decades, childhood inactivity-and perhaps screen time—has increased.