1 . All forms of tobacco — cigarettes, pipes, cigars, and smokeless tobacco — are dangerous. It doesn’t help to substitute products that seem like they’re better for you than regular cigarettes, such as filtered or low-tar cigarettes.

The only thing that really helps a person avoid the problems associated with smoking is staying smoke free. This isn’t always easy, especially if everyone around you is smoking and offering you cigarettes. It may help to have your reasons for not smoking ready for times you may feel the pressure, such as “I just don’t like it” or “I want to stay in shape for soccer (or football, basketball or other sport)”．

The good news for people who don’t smoke or who want to quit is that studies show that the number of teens who smoke has dropped evidently. Today, about 23% of high school students smoke.

If you do smoke and want to quit, you have lots of information and support available. Different approaches to quitting work for different people. For some, quitting cold turkey is best. Others find that a slower approach is the way to go. Some people find that it helps to go to a support group especially for teens. These are sometimes sponsored by local hospitals or organizations like the American Cancer Society. The Internet offers a number of good resources to help people quit smoking.

When quitting, it can be helpful to realize that the first few days are the hardest. So don’t give up. Some people find they have a few setbacks before they manage to quit for good.

Staying smoke free will give you a whole lot more of everything — more energy, better performance, better looks, more money in your pocket, and, in the long run, more life to live!

3 . Right at this moment, cockroaches (蟑螂) are doing more to save the environment than you are. A big overstatement? Not if you’ve ever thrown away leftovers from your plate or bought more food than you could manage to cook in a week. You’re part of the food waste problem. But just like cockroaches, you can also be part of the solution.

For example, some farmers in Asia and Africa collect tomatoes in big bags, which means that many of them get crushed out of shape and spoiled before they can be sold or eaten. Switching the bags for large wooden containers already lowers the amount of food lost. Similar successes can and have been achieved in various regions with weather-protected storage facilities.

Let’s focus on China for a second. It’s one of the few countries with an innovative approach to minimizing the environmental impact of food waste. How does it do it? Cockroaches. Millions of the tiny creatures are kept in farms in the suburban districts of big cities. Every morning, food waste is delivered by the tonnes and fed to the cockroaches. Just like tiny pigs, they’re not picky and devour everything quickly. After they die, they’re processed into protein-rich feed for animals such as cows or sheep, or used for cosmetic products and Chinese medicine. It’s an efficient and environmentally-friendly alternative to dumping leftover food in a landfill. Cockroaches aren’t going to solve the problem with food waste, but they can serve as an inspiration for finding other similar solutions on a wider scale.

To avoid food waste completely, improvements are needed at every step of the food supply chain, from production to retail. These take time and are often out of your hands as a consumer. But a meaningful reduction of food waste is definitely in your hands. You can not only buy less and shop more often, but also cut down on animal products.

4 . Saodat Sadikova is an English teacher in Jizzakh, Uzbekistan. As a young girl, she dreamed of becoming a flight attendant (空乘人员) and traveling the world, so she learned at least three languages. Although she was not able to become a flight attendant, Sadikova could speak Uzbek, Russian, English and Turkish. Sadikova has never traveled abroad but reports feeling connected to people around the world.

American Trina Bright worked in education for nearly 25 years and she traveled to many countries, including China and South Africa. Bright used stories from her travels to help her students in the U. S. understand their place in the world and see value in their own cultures. But Bright, unlike Sadikova, does not report feeling connected to people around the world.

Bright is not alone. Pew Research Center recently asked people in 24 countries a series of questions about how connected they feel to the world to see how travel experience relates to feelings of connectedness.

The study found that respondents (调查对象) who had traveled to at least one other country feel more connected to people around the world. 99 percent of respondents in the Netherlands reported having visited at least one other country and 77 percent of respondents from the Netherlands said they feel at least somewhat close to people all over the world. But international travel does not always mean a person feels a closeness to people around the world. 99 percent of Swedish respondents said they had visited at least one other country. Yet a much smaller number of Swedish respondents—47 percent—report feeling close to people all over the world.

Sadikova said she felt connected to the world because of media, which makes it quite easy to get to know events and news.

8 . Marriages in Egypt are somewhat different from those in the West. They will discourage dating if single men and women aren’t related. Among the middle and upper classes, the man and woman know each other from schools or universities, where young people gather in groups like in the West.     1     Sometimes families negotiate a marriage for an unmarried son or daughter.

However, the steps toward marriage are the same as those in the West.     2     The discussion usually covers such topics as the dowry (嫁妆) and wedding expense, etc. The two families then arrange a meeting between the potential bride and groom.     3    

The wedding usually takes place quickly, unless the groom-to-be is going abroad to work or study, in which case the marriage may be postponed. The marriage may be very simple, consisting only of the mosque priest (清真寺牧师) to declare the marriage contract between the groom and the bride’s father, who speaks on behalf of his daughter.

    4     According to Egyptian law, both men and women have the right to ask for a divorce. Upon divorce the father is granted custody (监护人) of any children. Any dowry paid by the groom to the bride’s family must be returned.

Egypt is trying to bridge the difference between traditional interpretations (方式) and modern models. At one time, Egypt gave women the right to ask for a divorce only in certain circumstances, such as her husband’s being mentally ill.     5     Now in Egypt and other countries, traditional interpretations are being challenged.

10 . Most young people these days expect a reasonably diverse workplace - but those who take up the seafaring (航海的) career are still unlikely to find many female colleagues. It’s hard to find a line of work with a smaller percentage of women in it than seafaring- in the UK. Professional beer inspectors are one of the few workforces with a smaller percentage of females.

Nautilus professional and technical officer David Appleton said that British shipping clearly has a problem, with just 1% of engineer officers being women, and the intake of female employees failing to move beyond 5% in each of the last three years.

He said the industry needs to do more to get rid of misconceptions that can discourage women from going to sea or make companies unwilling to take them on.

“There are plenty of other jobs out there that have strict fitness requirements where women have to meet exactly the same standards as men - - and the majority of these have far more females than the merchant navy (商船队),”he pointed out. Some 7% of the London firefighters are women, he noted.

Many opinions on women’s instability in careers surely do not stand up, Mr Appleton added. Research into “career mapping” shows that about one- quarter of new women seafarers determine to remain at sea until retirement and more than one-third plan to come ashore within 15 years of starting out.

Mr Appleton said the industry needs to adopt measures if it is serious about recruiting (招夢) more women. “It means identifying and promoting role models and getting the good news stories out there.”

Captain Susan Thomson, who now serves ashore with BP Shipping, said, “I think we sometimes concentrate on the negative and only hear about women in shipping when it is bad. It would be naive (天真的) to think bad stories don’t exist, and the industry needs to be more inclusive.”