1 . Recently, environmentalists have encouraged us to buy local food. This reduces “food miles”, that is, the distance food travels to get from the producer to the seller. They reason that the higher the food miles, the more carbon emissions (碳排放). Buying local food, therefore, has a lower carbon footprint and is more environmentally friendly.

However, the real story is not as simple as that. If our aim is to reduce carbon emissions, we must look at the whole farming process, not just transportation. According to a 2008 study, only 11% of carbon emissions in the food production process result from transportation, and only 4% came from the final delivery of the product from the producer to the seller.

In fact, imported food often has a lower carbon footprint than locally grown food. Take apples, for example. In autumn, when apples are harvested, the best option for British people is to buy British apples. However, the apples we buy in winter or spring have been kept refrigerated for months, and this uses up a lot of energy. In spring, therefore, it is more energy-saving to import them from New Zealand, where they are in season. Heating also uses a lot of energy, which is why growing tomatoes in heated greenhouses in the UK is less environmentally friendly than importing them from Spain, where the tomatoes grow well in the local climate.

We must also take into account the type of transport. Transporting food by air creates about 50 times more emissions than shipping it. However, only a small number of goods are flown to foreign countries, and these are usually high value, perishable (易腐烂的) goods which we cannot produce locally, such as seafood and out-of-season berries. Even then, these foods may not have a higher carbon footprint than locally grown food. For example, beans flown in from Kenya are grown in sunny fields using human labour and natural fertilisers (肥料), unlikein Britain, where we use oil-based fertilisers and machinery. Therefore, the total carbon footprint is still lower.

It’s also worth remembering that a product’s journey does not end at the supermarket. The distance customers travel to buy their food, and the kind of transport they use will also add to its carbon footprint. So driving a long way to shop for food will wipe out any environmental benefits of buying locally grown produce.

Recently, some supermarkets have been trying to raise awareness of food miles by labelling (标记) foods with stickers that show it has been imported by air. But the message this gives is too simple. Lots of different factors contribute to a food’s carbon footprint besides the distance it has travelled.

2 . Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO)

We’ve all felt it; that uncomfortable feeling when you look through your social media feed and see photos of friends having a better time than you, or that feeling when you read about a friend’s amazing job that you chose the wrong life path. This feeling is called FOMO, or fear of missing out.

Although people have felt FOMO for hundreds of years, the growth of social media seems to have made the phenomenon (现象) worse. For many, it has now become habit to compare your life with others’ lives — or rather the highlights of their lives; something that previous generations could not do so readily. This skews your sense of normal and brings about feelings like hate, envy and dissatisfaction. What’s more, marketers have made use of FOMO phenomenon as a means to drive sales. Sales that last a limited time and pop-ups that show other people buying all take advantage of our FOMO.

Since the FOMO phenomenon was recognised, it has been increasingly studied by scientists eager to discover its trends and influences. Scientists at Carleton and McGill University discovered that negative FOMO feelings were experienced more often towards the end of the day and at the end of the week and that FOMO was experienced more by people carrying out obligatory (强制性的) work, like jobs and study.

This is not to say that people only experience FOMO when they join in an mundane (单调的) activity. In a follow-up study, researchers found that participants who specifically selected one activity over another experienced FOMO when reminded about the other activity, even if their chosen activity was sociable and enjoyable, and if the other was unsociable. Moreover, they experienced FOMO whether they were reminded about the other activity through social media or in conversation.

Interestingly, although FOMO is widely connected with teenagers and young adults and those who use social media, research has found that people of all ages experience it. Researchers at Washington State University found that it is more closely linked to factors like loneliness and low self-respect. However, for those people, social media can make the problem worse.

Some researchers recognise an upside to FOMO, saying that it can drive you to take action, connect with others and get out of your comfort zone. More often than not, though, FOMO leads to increasing loneliness and even FOJI, fear of joining in, in the belief that your own insights or contributions will not be valued.

A rising counter-culture to FOMO, though, is JOMO — the joy of missing out. This includes the pleasure and satisfaction of a night in, doing what you enjoy best, turning off your phone notifications and living in the moment, focusing not on what you lack but on what you have.

Zhang Qi,     1     has a doctorate in AI technology from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, was recently in the news because of his salary. Zhang was enrolled under Huawei’s “     2     (gift) youngster” plan, which aims at attracting talents from     3     the globe. So far, only four candidates have passed the seven rounds of interview successfully and got high salaries.

Home alone: Are you ready?

Do you know that in the US almost half of all kids aged 6 to 13 are home alone for part of the day? The boys in the Home Alone movies certainly have fun, but the whole experience can be freaky sometimes. These days, even a lot of adults are scared to be alone in the house! It’s totally understandable if you or someone you know are nervous about being home alone.

Take Jessi and her brother Joey as an example. For over five years now, they’ve been taking care of themselves until their mum comes home from work. Jessi says that the worst thing about it is when she or her brother is locked out. Then they have to wait on the porch until the other gets home! Sometimes, both of them get locked out! Fortunately, they each have a cellphone so they can call their mum when that happens.

Your parents think you’re ready, but do you?

At first it sounds cool to be home alone, right? Think of the freedom you’d have around the house! There’s nobody to stop you from playing video games or watching your favourite TV show!

Joey admits that he likes being able to watch TV shows or listen to music he likes. “ It’s more freedom, ” he says, “ but it’s also more responsibility. ”

So there you are listening to that CD your parents hate. Then what’s that? You hear a noise outside. It sounds like it could be a person on the front doorstep, and there’s been a string of robberies in the area lately. Suddenly, your unsupervised (没人监管的) freedom doesn’t feel so safe anymore.

It’s a normal feeling and it doesn’t mean you’re a “baby”. There’s always stuff going on in the world to shake our feelings of security. You might feel totally fine about being alone when you’re 10. Then, two years later, something happens that makes you feel different about it. Every person and every home environment is unique.

If you have worries about being home alone, it’s really important to speak out about them, even though it may cost money to get a sitter or your parent has to rearrange his or her schedule.

9 . Humans are fascinated by the source of their failings and virtues. This preoccupation inevitably leads to an old debate: whether nature or nurture (养育) shapes us more. A revolution in genetics has poised this as a modern political question about the character of our society: if personalities are hard-wired into our genes, what can governments do to help us? It feels morally questionable, yet claims of genetic selection by intelligence are making headlines.

This is down to “hereditarian (遗传论的)” science and a recent paper claimed “differences in exam performance between pupils attending extraordinary and ordinary schools mirror the genetic differences between them”. With such an assertion, the work was predictably greeted by a lot of absurd claims about “genetics determining academic success”. What the research revealed was the rather less surprising result: the educational benefits of extraordinary schools largely disappear once pupils’ inborn ability and socio-economic background were taken into account. That is to say, there’s nothing to support strongly either a hereditary or environmental argument.

Yet the paper does say children are “unintentionally genetically selected” by the school system. Central to hereditarian science is a tall claim: that identifiable variations in genetic sequences can predict an individual’s ability to learn, reason and solve problems. This is problematic on many levels. A teacher could not seriously tell a parent their child has a low genetic tendency to study when external factors clearly exist. Unlike-minded academics say the inheritability of human traits is scientifically unsound. At best there is a weak statistical association and not a causal link between DNA and intelligence. Yet sophisticated statistics are used to create a frightening atmosphere of scientific certainty.

While there’s an undoubted genetic basis to individual difference, it is wrong to think that socially defined groups can be genetically accounted for. The fixation on genes as destiny is surely false too. Medical predictability can rarely be based on DNA alone; the environment matters too. Something as complex as intellect is likely to be affected by many factors beyond genes. If hereditarians want to advance their cause it will require more balanced interpretation and not just acts of advocacy. Genetic selection is a way of exerting influence over others, “the ultimate collective control of human destinies,” as writer H. G. Wells put it. Knowledge becomes power and power requires a sense of responsibility. In understanding cognitive (认知的) ability, we must not elevate discrimination to a science: allowing people to climb the ladder of life only as far as their cells might suggest. This will need a more skeptical eye on the science. As technology progresses, we all have a duty to make sure that we shape a future that we would want to find ourselves in.

The stability of the developing livestreaming sector has made it an ideal source of jobs for those born after 1995 who have a passion for novel and newly emerging industries, experts said. A recent report by Zhaopin, an online recruitment platform, and e-commerce giant Alibaba     1     (reveal) steady growth in the livestreaming sector in the third quarter of the year,     2     job postings rising up nearly 12 percent year-on-year. The increase was around 5 percentage points     3     (high) on average than for other industries.