What We Should Know about Honey
The process that produces honey may have helped form humans too. Scientists believe that wild hives full of honey provided the calories that early humans such as Homo erectus (直立人), walking in Africa , needed to develop their brains into those of modern humans. That puts honey in a class with fire, tool use, and hunting as a key ingredient in the evolution of human beings.
With time, those evolved brains learned to domesticate bees to produce honey in a farmed setting. Today’s beekeepers support large-scale industrial farms, which would be unable to grow their crops without hiring traveling groups of bees to come pollinate (授粉) their vast, single-species fields. The bees will endlessly fill the towers of combs put onto their hives by the beekeeper, who then collects the extra honey for human consumption while still leaving the bees all they need to eat.
Today, the average American consumes nearly a pound and a half of honey every year, in tea, on toast, and beyond. Honey is a timeless treasure. Literally—it never goes bad. Samples nearly 3,000 years old found in the Egyptian pyramids are as eatable as the day they were entombed. Its anti-microbial nature also makes honey an excellent cure for wounds, keeping infection out while holding in the moisture that skin needs to heal.
However, bees’ good health is not guaranteed. U.S. beekeepers lose about 40 percent of their hives annually to colony collapse disorder. The problem lies in the growth of industrial agriculture and pesticide use, as well as changes in weather patterns, all of which reduce the number of flowers bees have to visit. If bees continue to die, apples and peaches (along with any crop that relies on their pollination) will become scarcer and pricier. As will honey.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________A Wise Way to Make Families Rules
All groups, of whatever size or nature, need standard operating procedures. Without them, groups may very well fall into confusion, chaos and conflict. The functions that rules can serve are indispensable. When it comes to parenting, making rules can make a big difference in our family as well. Actually, the issue is not whether our families need rules. We do need them. The real issue is how to motivate all family members to comply with (遵守) them.
At some time in our lives we all have felt unmotivated to comply with some rule or policy that we had no voice in making. Denied the opportunity to participate in establishing a rule, most people feel imposed upon and resentful of the new rule. But when people actively participate in setting a rule or making a decision that will affect them, they are more highly motivated to comply with it. We call this the Principle of Participation, and it has proven its effectiveness in families as well.
When children are given the opportunity to participate in setting rules or making decisions that will affect them, several good things happen. Children feel better about themselves — having more self-esteem (自尊心) and self-confidence. Such a good effect is due to their feeling that they have gained more “fate control” over their own lives. They also feel they are equal members of the family with an equal voice in making decisions and establishing rules — they’re part of a team, not second-class citizens. This means that families that function collaboratively and democratically will have closer and warmer relationships than those in which the adults act as bosses or authorities expecting the children to obey the rules made for them.
Another important reason for encouraging the full participation of family members in decision making is that it often produces higher-quality solutions to problems. Two heads (or three, or four) are better than one. Shared decisions will be based not only on the knowledge and experience of the adults but also on those of the children. The admonition (告诫) that father knows best should be challenged now.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Light the Cities of the Future
A previously unlit cycle path in the Netherlands has recently drawn our attention. It has been resurfaced with a material that consists of thousands of shining stones in order to create a well-lit route. The Van Gogh Path, so called after the artist who lived in the town of Nuenen in 1883, combines the traditional with the contemporary in a gesture that acknowledge ledges Van Gingh’ masterpiece The Starry Night, but also shows the way ahead for city lighting. The Van Gogh Path is not a single case; it is not difficult to foresee a time when natural materials could help light the cities of the future.
Why should we care about city lighting? What’s wrong with current electrical city lighting anyway? Well, the problem that it causes is two-fold. First, of course, electrical lighting in most cities comes from non-renewable resources. According to the International Energy Agency, almost 20% of global electricity is consumed for lighting, which is responsible for high levels of carbon emissions. But there’s also the belief that electrical light itself is a form of pollution by destroying our view of the night sky.
From the above reasons, then, it seems wise to investigate other approaches. The city of Glasgow is attempting to use intelligent street lighting to monitor how citizens interact with the urban landscape and minimize electrical consumption and thus emissions. This “Smart City approach” is seen by many as the way of the future, but some designers aren’t convinced. They are pioneering the altogether more original approach of using materials from the natural world in order to replace electrical light entirely. They believe that this new “technology” can one day completely replace microchips and digital systems as we find better ways of making use of the light-producing mechanisms (制) that already exist in the natural world.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The Blue Light From Digital Device
More devices like the iPhone, iPad and Kindle produce a blue light that causes our sleep to be restless and disturbed, according to a new study.
The study was led by Dr Paul Gringras, a sleep disorder specialist at a children's hospital in London. Together with her colleagues, Gringras found that manufacturers have started making bigger, brighter, bluer screens in an effort to increase the efficiency of our screens during daytime.But, as an unwanted byproduct, this light is affecting our sleep and productivity.
The study said that this type of light is likely to cause the most disturbance to sleep, as it most effectively overpowers melatonin (褪黑素). a hormone①that reminds us to sleep every night. Besides, using our devices before bedtime could even affect our performance during the day, because exposure to this blue light changes our body's natural rhythms.
“The development of light-producing devices means that for many people, a 'book at bedtime'is now often an‘e-book’,” Gringras pointed out.“Reading a traditional paper book by the light of your bedside lamp doesn't affect your sleep, because bulbs produce a yellow-red light. In comparison, the same book read in electronic arrangement will provide a very different light signal with biological effects.”
The researchers called on all device manufacturers to adjust screen lighting for the sake of the users’sleep quality and overall health.“All hardware devices should have an automatic “bedtime mode”that shifts blue and green light production to yellow and red as well as reduces backlight/light intensity,” Gringras said.
“And, we hope that as technology improves, more and more people will realize that‘brighter’will not always be equal to‘better’,”the researchers concluded.
① hormone: a chemical in your body that stimulates certain organs of your body
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Tips to help you overcome people-pleasing
Considering other people’s feelings and treating them with kindness is something west rive to do. But sacrificing our wellbeing to make others happy is not. When this happens, people-pleasing has crossed the line from kind and generous to self-abandonment—not being the authentic (真实的) self because we’re afraid others will disapprove, criticize, or reject us. Here are tips for you to overcome such behaviors.
● Taking care of yourself isn’t selfish.Self-care is a necessity, not a luxury. It’s not something you do if you have time or if you deserve it. Taking care of your emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical needs keeps you healthy. Without it, you’ll get sick, stressed, and irritable. Try putting self-care activities (exercise, socializing, hobbies, etc.) on your calendar to ensure that self-care is a priority.
● Not everyone’s opinion matters.One big mistake people-pleasers make is acting as if everyone’s opinion matters equally. You don’t differentiate whose opinion matters more. Generally, the closer the relationship, the more you’ll value their opinion and want to please them. Thus, it’s natural to want to do things to make your loved ones happy. However, you don’t need to please acquaintances in the same way.
● Healthy conflict can improve relationships.Most people worry that painful conflicts will destroy relationships. It’s understandable and common to want to avoid them. But it’s not helpful or possible. When you avoid conflict, you suppress your feelings and needs. And this causes you to disconnect from yourself and from others. But health y conflict is the one in which both parties can respectfully express themselves. It results in greater understanding and ultimately strengthens the relationship. This is quite different from the unhealthy conflicts.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Fallas Festival is one of the most unique festivals celebrated in Spain. Happening from March 14 to 19 in Valencia, the city is filled with tall colorful statues called ninots, people dancing on the streets to the beat of the drum, traditional foods and a lot of fun! It is a celebration of the end of winter and the start of spring. These impressive ninots are made over many months and will be set on fire in a annual ceremony called La Cremá at the end of the four days. It’s a beautiful way to greet the new season with some heat!
It is very important to know how burning beautiful statues started. Though the origins of the Las Fallas de Valencia are uncertain, the most well-known opinion dates back to centuries ago. In celebration of the coming of spring, carpenters (木匠) would burn traditional lamps used to light up workshops in the darkness of winter that were no longer needed. These lamps were called “parots”. The creative Valencian craftsmen would also dress up their parots as customers that have given them trouble in the past, and later on, it became a tradition to find the most inventive parot. As the years went by, people became more creative and the annual tradition lives on to this day.
Nowadays, Valencia celebrates this festival mainly in 4 days. The streets are filled with extremely great energy — with larger-than-life figures parading the city and people dancing on the streets to the sound of music. During these days there are special events called The Mascleta, Nit de Foc, La Planta, and La Cema. To enjoy the full experience of Las Fallas, we strongly recommend attending all of these events.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The Science of Chocolate
Chocolate is a complex chemical delight containing over 500 individual flavour components together with stimulants and a host of substances beneficial to health. With that many ingredients, it’s no surprise that crafting chocolate is a science in itself, requiring careful temperature control. For starters, cocoa butter has six different forms of crystals, all of which have different melting points. And the fat crystals in the final product have to be exactly the right type, size and shape for the flavour to be correct. This is achieved through tempering, a crucial stage of chocolate production that involves cooling so that crystals form before raising the temperature slightly to melt unstable crystals.
While we tend to think of chocolate as junk food, some of its components may actually be good for us, Cocoa beans are rich organic chemicals called flavonoids (类黄酮). One particular flavonoid called epicatechin (表儿茶酸) increases blood flow in the brain and prevents the grouping together of the proteins that characterise conditions such as Alzheimer’s. Research published in March 2014 also found that dark chocolate is used by bacteria in the stomach to produce anti- inflammatory (消炎的) compounds that are good for your heart. But so far, most studies suggesting health benefits for chocolate have been carried out on mice, so further research would be required to see whether there are the same benefits in humans.
At the University of Bath, scientists have been studying mouse brain cells grown in the lab. “Our research has shown that epicatechin and related flavonoids have promising protective actions in brain cells, explains Dr Robert Williams, a neuroscientist at the university. “But whether we could achieve the levels required to reproduce these effects in humans by eating chocolate is uncertain.” The jury is still out on whether we can consider chocolate a health food. But since the positive ingredients are all found in cocoa itself, there’s one rule of thumb — the darker, the better.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Teens and Screens
Forced by parent protesters citing to research into the links between adolescent social-media habits and risk factors for suicide, such as depression, two large investors in Apple have agreed that the technology company must help parents limit their children’s smart phone use. On social media, parents are constantly complaining about phones’ addictive properties. On the school run, parents compare strategies for limiting screen time.
Before going for the off switch, parents should ask a question. Does cutting down on their kids’ use of iPhones, Instagram and so on do much good in solving adolescents’ problems? On the available evidence, the answer may be no. Some studies of Britain and America, which conduct large surveys of young people, have found correlations (相关性) between heavy technology use and unhappiness. Correlation is not causation, however, it could be that unhappy people seek refuge online. And the correlations are very weak. Only about 1% of the variability in young people’s mental well being can be explained by social-media or smartphone use. One British study suggests that eating breakfast regularly is more than three times as important.
Parents who worry about their teenage kids can do something, however. Drive them out of the house. There is plenty of evidence for the cheering effects of hanging out with friends. Yet youngsters are doing less of this. Social pressure is one reason. According to broader attitudes in Britain, “teenagers hanging out on the streets” is a standard measure of anti-social behaviour. The authoritative Crime Survey of England asks people whether adolescent hanging-out should be regarded as a social problem. Most respondents said yes. That the rate of adolescent hanging-out has dropped from 33% to 16% in ten years may please criminologists, but it is unlikely to signal happier teenagers.
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Are we greening our cities, or just greenwashing them?
Architecture and urban design is chasing a green fever dream. Everywhere you look, there are plans for “sustainable” buildings, futuristic eco-cities and aquaponic farms on the roof, each promising to add a green touch to the modern city.
All of these are surely good ideas at some level. They are trying to repair some of the damage our lifestyle has done to the planet. But, despite the rhetoric of reuniting the city with nature, today’s green urban dream is too often about bringing a technologically controlled version of nature into the city and declaring the problem solved, rather than looking at the deeper causes of our environmental and urban problems.
One of the most striking examples is Apple’s “spaceship” campus now under construction in Silicon Valley. Though it seems to be sustainable and energy efficient—80 percent of its 175-acre site is preserved for landscaping, it is by any measure a huge, expensive and massively resource-intensive project. As a suburban white-collar workplace, it must include vast garages for 13,000 Apple employees. Thus, it will leave no smaller environmental footprint than a traditional office park.
Designing a perfect green building or eco-city isn’t enough to save the world. Although our buildings, like our cars, have been inefficient environmentally, architecture isn’t directly responsible for humanity’s disastrous environmental impacts. An economic system based on the destruction of nature is the real problem. No green building can help us repair the ecological damage we have caused, nor can any number of aquaponic farms bring us back to the real nature.
Instead of adding “nature” to the urban lifestyle, architects may work to design better relationships between our cities and nature, and to promote just relationships between the people in them.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Like many students, Ryan believes that the time and money spent on his education will pay off: he will eventually be able to get a good job and do well in the field he has chosen. And yet, in spite of all of the years spent in school preparing to enter the workplace, many recent graduates say that they struggle with the shift from classroom to career world and have difficulty adjusting to life on the job.
Writer and editor Joseph Lewis believes that most of our school experiences are fairly predictable, while life in the working world is far more uncertain. In school, for example, the pattern stays more or less the same from year to year. In the workplace, however, constant change is the norm, and one has to adapt quickly.
Another problem is that in school, many students spend a lot of time memorizing facts and repeating what they “learned” on tests. But in the workplace employees “are often expected to think critically and make decisions about their work, not just follow a supervisor’s instructions.” Less time needs to be spent in school on testing, says one recent report, and more on helping students to analyze and interpret information, solve problems, and communicate their ideas effectively—skills that will prepare them to succeed in today’s workplace.
Finally, in the workplace, employees must regularly interact with others and are often dependent on their co-workers for their success. In other words, if an employee has to work with others to complete a given project, that employee’s success not only depends on his hard work and expertise, but also on how well his colleagues perform. Knowing how to participate in teamwork--and deal with problems when they arise is extremely important, and yet, it is also something many students didn’t get quite exposed to in a school setting.
How can we better prepare young adults for the work place? Recent graduates, looking back on their educational experience, have some advice. Despite classroom instruction, many think that all students should be required to do an internship (实习) while they are in school. Volunteering part time at a company, hospital, or government organization, for example, can help one gain experience and learn skills needed to succeed in the real world. Doing these will help prepare students for the realities of the workplace and make the transition from school to career world less stressful.
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