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    Proper diet and regular exercise seem to be the only methods for losing weight.However,the importance of water should be added in the process.While medical science has proven the positive effects of water,most people still do not drink enough each day.

    The reason why water is so important for weight loss has something to do with metabolism（新陈代谢）of fat. The liver（肝脏）is in charge of this process when it comes to turning stored fat in-to energy.However,the liver is also responsible for helping the kidneys（肾脏）that need enough water in order to function properly.The liver has to perform all the functions of the kidneys on its own when they are short of water.This means the liver doesn't have enough energy to metabolize fat.So,drinking water allows the kidneys to focus on their job and the liver to focus on its job.

    Also,studies have shown that water can make us feel full when drunk before meals.Without even making an effort,most people who drink a glass of water before a meal will eat 33% less.This is due in part to the fact that they simply get fuller quicker because the water is taking up space.The other reason is that the food will expand as soon as it hits the water-filled stomach.

    Water is important for every aspect of the health of the human body.By drinking more water and improving the health of the body,weight loss goals can be achieved with greater ease.

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    I recently posted a picture on Facebook from the movie Mad Max, a film where two groups race through the desert in steam punk vehicles, and wrote, “Actual picture of my way to work today.” It was meant to be a joke because of the sandstorms in Beijing, but one of my friends from back home thought it was real.

    I couldn't imagine how they could think that is actually what China is like. China has so many more conveniences and advantages than the West, and many of my friends agree. “I don't know how I will be able to deal when I go back home,” said a friend who is about to end her gap year in Beijing. “I've become so spoiled in China.

    China seems to be leading the way in innovation and convenience for daily life. Back home I could never shop, pull out my phone and scan a QR code to pay.

    There have been rumors of starting bike sharing in my hometown for years with little success while bike sharing suddenly appeared in Beijing overnight. I just step outside and scan a code, and I am on my way.

    Going out to eat with a group of friends back home was troublesome for both the group and the servers. Splitting checks and swiping (刷) 10 different cards or making change for each person in the group can be a pain. But with China's WeChat, you can quickly send your friends your part of the bill.

The list goes on...

    When I first arrived in Beijing, I was dead set on leaving in a month. That month has come and gone. Now, when someone asks me when I'm coming back, I think to myself, “Who knows?”

    While my friends think I'm riding through the desert on a motorbike, I am actually taking a “Didi” for what is the equivalent of $5 in the US.

    With all the conveniences and technology here, I may never want too go back.

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    Everyone should be so lucky as to have a friend like Francia Raisa. On Thursday, singer and actress Selena Gomez, 25, used Instagram to explain why she was “laying low” this summer. She posted a photo of herself in a hospital bed with her friend Francia Raisa holding hands. She said she recently received a kidney transplant from her best friend because of complications（并发症）from lupus（狼疮）, an autoimmune disease, which means it is the result of the immune system attacking normal tissue, including the kidneys, brain, heart and lungs.

    People with lupus may first experience tiredness, joint pain or a little bit of rash（皮疹）on their bodies and can go for a long time before their doctors realize it is more serious. Many people see two or four doctors before the real problem is picked up. According to Dr. Kyriakos Kirou, roughly a third to one-half of people with lupus develop kidney disease, and up to one in five of them will eventually need a transplant, sometimes because they weren't treated with effective drugs to prevent the immune system from attacking the kidneys. Though Gomez said that she was “very well now,” she warned about the dangers of not taking medical diagnoses seriously, like she initially did.

    Her Instagram post also called attention to two major health topics: the need for living organ donators and the fact that Gomez represents three groups more likely to be diagnosed with lupus and lupus-related kidney disease. Nine out of 10 people diagnosed with lupus are women, and most develop the disease between the ages of 15 to 44. And lupus is two to three times more common among women of color, including Hispanic women, according to the Lupus Foundation.

    Raisa is Latina, and Gomez's father is of Mexican origin. While it's not essential that the organ donator and receiver be of the sane ethnicity, people who share a similar background sometimes are better matched, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing.

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    Why do some people live to be older than others? You know the standard explanations: keeping a moderate diet, engaging in regular exercise, etc. But what effect does your personality have on your longevity(长寿)? Do some kinds of personalities lead to longer lives? A new study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society looked at this question by examining the personality characteristics of 246 children of people who had lived to be at least 100.

    The study shows that those living the longest are more outgoing, more active and less neurotic (神经质的) than other people. Long-living women are also more likely to be sympathetic and cooperative than women with a normal life span. These findings are in agreement with what you would expect from the evolutionary theory: those who like to make friends and help others can gather enough resources to make it through tough times.

    Interestingly, however, other characteristics that you might consider advantageous had no impact on whether study participants were likely to live longer. Those who were more self-disciplined, for instance, were no more likely to live to be very old. Also, being open to new ideas had no relationship to long life, which might explain all those bad-tempered old people who are fixed in their ways.

    Whether you can successfully change your personality as an adult is the subject of a longstanding psychological debate. But the new paper suggests that if you want long life, you should strive to be as outgoing as possible.

    Unfortunately, another recent study shows that your mother's personality may also help determine your longevity. That study looked at nearly 28,000 Norwegian mothers and found that those moms who were more anxious, depressed and angry were more likely to feed their kids unhealthy diets. Patterns of childhood eating can be hard to break when we're adults, which may mean that kids of depressed moms end up dying younger.

    Personality isn't destiny, and everyone knows that individuals can learn to change. But both studies show that long life isn't just a matter of your physical health but of your mental health.

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    Staying up late is a potential battle between parents and kids. But the solution could be as simple as changing your meal time.

    Researchers at the University of Surrey, UK, found that delaying (延迟) meals could help change one of the internal (内部的) body clocks. Besides a “master” clock in the brain, there are clocks in other parts of the body. They are usually synchronized (同步的) according to factors including light.

    During the study, researchers tested 10 participants to study the effect of changing meal times on their body clocks. The participants were given three meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner. In the first stage, participants received breakfast 30 minutes after waking. Lunch and dinner followed, after 5-hour intervals (间隔). In the second stage, each meal was delayed by 5 hours. Right after each stage, blood and fat samples (样本) were collected.

    Results showed that later meal times greatly influenced blood sugar levels. A 5-hour delay in meal times caused a 5-hour delay in the internal blood sugar rhythms (规律性变化).

    The discovery showed that meal times are in line with (与……一致) the body clock that controls blood sugar levels.

    This is a small study but the researchers believed the findings could help jet lag (飞行时差反应) sufferers and night-shift (夜班的) workers.

    In a study by the University of Surrey in 2013, researchers explored what happened when a person's body was changed from a normal pattern to that of a night-shift worker's.

    After people work through the night, over 97 percent of the body's rhythmic genes are disrupted (扰乱).

    These findings explain why we feel so bad following a long flight, or after working at night, according to Simon Archer, one of the study's researchers.

    “It's like living in a house. There's a clock in every room in the house and in all of those rooms those clocks are now disrupted, which of course leads to chaos (混乱) in the household,” fellow researcher Derk-Jan Dijk told the BBC.

    Changing meal times didn't affect the “master” body clock – the one controlling when we get sleepy – but it can reset the body clock that controls blood sugar levels.

    This wouldn't necessarily cure jet lag completely, but it might reduce the negative effects.

    A study published earlier this year suggested that just a weekend camping trip could be enough to reset our body clocks. And now this latest research shows regular food schedules could play a key part too.

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    Diet Coke, diet Pepsi, diet pills, no-fat diet, vegetable diet… We are surrounded by the word "diet" everywhere we look and listen. We have so easily been attracted by the promise and potential of diet products that we have stopped thinking about what diet products are doing to us. We are paying for products that harm us psychologically and physically.

    Diet products significantly weaken us psychologically. On one level, we are not allowing our brain to admit that our weight problems lie not in actually losing the weight, but in controlling the consumption of fatty, high-calorie, unhealthy foods. Diet products allow us to jump over the thinking stage and go straight for the scale(秤)instead. All we have to do is to swallow or recognize the word "diet" in food labels.

    On another level, diet products have greater psychological effects. Every time we have a zero-calorie drink, we are telling ourselves without our awareness that we don't have to work to get results. Diet products make people believe that gain comes without pain, and that life can be without resistance and struggle.

    The danger of diet products lies not only in the psychological effects they have on us, but also in the physical harm that they cause. Diet foods can indirectly harm our bodies because consuming them instead of healthy foods means we are preventing our bodies from having basic nutrients. Diet foods and diet pills contain zero calorie only because the diet industry has created chemicals to produce these wonder products. Diet products may not be nutritional, and the chemicals that go into diet products are potentially dangerous.

    Now that we are aware of the effects that diet products have on us, it is time to seriously think about buying them. Losing weight lies in the power of minds, not in the power of chemicals. Once we realize this, we will be much better able to resist diet products, and therefore prevent the psychological harm that comes from using them.

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    Trees are useful to man in three very important ways: they provide him wood and other products; they give him shade; and they help to prevent drought (干旱) and floods.

    Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, man has not realized that the third of these services is the most important. In his eagerness to draw quick profit from the trees, he has cut them down in large numbers.

    Two thousand years ago, a rich and powerful country cut down its trees to build warships, with which to gain itself an empire. It gained the empire but, without its trees, its soil became bare and poor. When the empire fell to pieces, the country found itself faced by floods and starvation.

    Even where a government realizes the importance of a plentiful supply of trees, it is difficult sometimes to make the people realize this. They cut down the trees but are too careless to plant and look after new trees. So unless the government has a good system of control, or can educate the people, the forests slowly disappear.

    This does not only mean that there will be fewer trees. The results are even more serious: for where there are trees, their roots break the soil up, allowing the rain to sink in, and also bind the soil. This prevents the soil from being washed away. But where there are no trees, the rainfalls on hard ground and flows away on the surface, and this causes floods and the rain carries away the rich top soil in which crops grow. When all the top soil is gone, nothing remains but worthless desert.

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    Keeping a busy social life among lots of friends may keep people thinner than spending hours doing some exercises, according to scientists. They say that socializing and meeting with friends help increase levels of brown fat in the body which burns calories to produce heat.

    Living in an exciting social environment was found to reduce fat in mice's belly by half over four weeks, even if they ate more.US researchers say that social excitement aids weight loss by turning white fat into brown fat. White fat stores calories and makes us fatter, while brown fat burns energy to produce heat. Turning white fat into brown fat is extremely difficult, normally requiring long-term stay in cold conditions or exciting part of the body's nervous system.

    However, scientists from Ohio State University now think that having a busy social life is an even more effective way of changing white fat into brown fat. The team came up with their theory by studying the effects of various living environments on mice. Those, who lived alongside a greater number of mice, had more space and toys to excite themselves and they lost far more weight over the course of the study than their “couch potato” fellows.

    Study's author, Dr Mattew During whose team's findings appear in the journal Cell Metabolism, said,“I'm still amazed at the degree of fat loss that occurs.” Explaining how new technology had threatened face-to-face socializing, he added,“It's not just a sedentary (久坐的)lifestyle and high calorie foods, but an increasing lack of social activities.” Co-author Dr Lei Cao said,“Loneliness is a potential factor for cancer and death; it's equal to cigarette smoking to a certain extent. Social activities are very vital.”

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    We humans love to stare into our smart devices. We gaze for hours—about 10 hours and 39 minutes a day—at our computers, smartphones, tablets and televisions. Is all this staring bad for us? It might be, mainly because as we stare at our devices we are exposing ourselves to blue light.

    Blue light is a type of electromagnetic radiation with a very short wavelength that produces a high amount of energy. While it's true that light can damage our eyes under certain circumstances, there's no scientific evidence suggesting that blue light is harmful to our eyes. But many people still think it is, which is why blue light—blocking glasses are so popular. So do the glasses work?

    “Everyone is very concerned that blue light may be causing damage to the eye, but there's no evidence that it may be causing serious damage, "Dr. Rahul Khurana, clinical spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmologists, told Business Insider.

    Blue light exposure is nothing new. In fact, the sun is the largest source of blue light. Moreover, blue light is also present in LED light. But if blue light isn't harmful, then why are we constantly rubbing our eyes when we're looking at our screens? The answer is eyestrain(眼疲劳):More than 60 percent of people experience eye problems associated with digital eyestrain. And blue light, it seems, isn't the cause. Instead, our eyes are so strained because most of us blink less when we stare at our digital devices. So if eyestrain is the real issue, blue light-blocking glasses are probably of little use.

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    Standing in line for the latest iPhone at the Apple store  queuing for tickets to the match or even just waiting at the post office might just have got a lot easier.

Japanese car-maker Nissan announces that it has just the thing to relieve the painful legs of tired queuers.

    The new system of self-driving chairs is designed to detect when someone at the front of the queue is called, and automatically move everyone else one step forward in line.

    The new invention is shown in a company video, which shows a busy restaurant with customers waiting outside. In the video, diners are sitting in a row of chairs, but will not have to stand when the next hungry diner is called to a table. Instead, the chairs, equipped with autonomous technology that detects the seat ahead, move along a path toward the front of the line. When the person at the front of the queue is called, the empty chair at the front can sense it is empty and so moves out of line. Cameras on the remaining chairs then sense the movement and follow automatically.

    “The system, which is similar to the kind used in Nissan's autonomous vehicle technology, will be tested at select restaurants in Japan this year," Nissan said. "It appeals to anyone who has queued for hours outside a crowded restaurant: it rids the boredom and physical pain of standing in line,” Nissan added.

    Although Tokyo has some 160,000 restaurants, long queues are not uncommon. Chosen restaurants that meet the criteria will be able to show the chairs outside their restaurants next year. Nissan also released a short video showing the chairs being used in an art gallery, moving slowly in front of the various paintings to let viewers appreciate the art without the need to stand up.

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    Tencent announced yesterday that it will limit the daily time for youngsters to play its popular King of Glory game after parents and schools in Shanghai and other areas complained their children had become addicted to playing it.

    From tomorrow, children younger than 12 will only be allowed to play the game for a maximum(最大值) of one hour a day, and after 9 pm, they will be banned from logging into it, said Tencent. Those older than 12 will be able to play a maximum two hours a day.

    The game system will remind players the time they have been playing and young players will be forced to log out when the time is up.

    Tencent claimed these were the strictest measures in China's game industry to prevent addiction and the company expected they would ease parents' anxiety.

    The company also said it had updated its system for parents to keep tabs on their children using its games.

    Since February, parents can receive messages when children log in and spend money on the game after they connect children's game accounts with their mobile phone numbers.

    Now, parents can connect phones, tablets or computers that their children use to play games, so that they can keep an eye on the children even if they have several game accounts, Tencent said.

    Song Zhe, a father of a Shanghai high school student, welcomed the measures but was not sure if they would be sufficiently effective. "I like the system that could lock up the devices as children can register many accounts," he said, "but children are so clever that they can always think out counter measures."

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    Britain's first zero-carbon homes are being built—and they look like something from a science-fiction movie.

    There are 25 eco-friendly homes currently being built in Southmoor, near Abingdon, Oxon. Buyers are able to have the final say on floor layouts，kitchens and bathrooms. One three-bedroom home is on the market for￡801 ,000,with a custom build available to suit your own specification. These eco-friendly houses are powered entirely by electricity from solar panels around the houses. They also have advanced ventilation (通风) systems, making sure that temperatures inside the building don't go beyond 25℃ for more than 10% of hours annually, as well as mini heat pumps to generate (产生) the heating and hot water on-site. Part of the cooling design includes avoiding east-or west-facing windows, and window shading.

    And they're in high demand. Ian Pritchett, of Ssassy Property, thinks the Government should do more to promote the construction of this type of housing. "Unfortunately, the Government relaxed the proposed 2016 zero-carbon targets after being lobbied(游说)by house builders," Ian explained. "At present, the main house-building corporations control the land and only build at the rate they are sure will sell, keeping the UK's housing shortage so that the normal rules of 'supply and demand' don't apply. When there is a shortage of housing, buyers have to purchase what is available rather than what they might want."

    In any sensible society, we would expect the planning system to actively encourage zero-carbon houses, and he tough on anyone failing to deliver the necessary standard. Instead, we have a planning system that focuses on other aspects such as numbers of bedrooms, garden sizes, and parking places. These are important aspects, but they pale into insignificance compared to the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Choose the one that fits best according to the information given in the passage you have just read.

    A round face, big eyes, soft fur and a quiet purr. It's not easy to resist the company of an adorable cat. No wonder French-German philosopher Albert Schweitzer once said, "There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."

    Indeed, it's no secret how much people around the world love cats. From China's Sina Weibo to US video-sharing site YouTube, bloggers across the globe love to show off their cats.

    In September, a charitable activity called "Cat Month" was held in Beijing. It was meant to encourage more people to care for our furry friends, especially stray cats.

    Cats become such a big part of pop culture in China that young people have come up with cat-related slang phrases, such as "cat slave" to refer to people who adore their cats, and "a daily dose of cats" to refer to having to watch a certain number of cat videos to get through the day.

    People in Japan are also huge fans of cats. As the birthplace of Hello Kitty and the "beckoning cat", Japan made a "cat train" that was ridden around the country by 30 stray cats in 2017. Passengers could sit and play with the cats on the train, offering the animals plenty of care and warmth.

    Istanbul, a historic city in Turkey, is also friendly to cats. In the recent documentary film Kedi, which hit Chinese cinemas in September, director Ceyda Torun showed us the daily lives of seven street cats with vivid narration. Cats there are not afraid of people. They go in and out of almost everywhere – coffee shops, markets, universities, and even government buildings. If you sit on a park bench, a cat is likely to come and snuggle with you.

    Seeing how cats have become a worldwide addiction, you may wonder why some people prefer cats over dogs. This may be down to how they identify with themselves – modern young people see the independent attitude of cats as something they value more.

    "Unlike dogs, who look at us with their loving eyes, cats appear to show off their independence. They ask for attention in a way that tells us that they desire human companionship, but they don't need it," author Marie-Louise von Franz wrote in her book The Cat: A Tale of Feminine Redemption.

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    Using a mobile phone before going to bed can damage your health, according to a major study.

    It says that radiation from the mobile phone can cause insomnia (失眠症) and headaches as well as cutting the time spent in deep sleep. Failing to get enough sleep can lead to depression, lack of concentration and personality changes. In teenagers and young children, lack of sleep can result in attention disorders and poor grades.

    The research showed that using mobile phones before bed causes people to take longer to reach the deeper stages of sleep and to spend less time in them.

    Deep sleep is important as it is the time when the body rejuvenates (更新) cells and repairs damage suffered during the day. Scientists found that using mobile phones an hour before sleep affects it. In the study scientists examined the sleep patterns of 36 women and 35 men aged 18 to 45. Some were exposed to radiation that is similar to what a person receives when using a mobile phone. The others received none. The results are as follows: The first group took longer to enter the first of the deeper stages of sleep and spent less time in the deepest one. However, the second group was opposite.

    The findings will shock many parents. Many parents are always worried about their children's health. But they didn't have a better way to persuade them not to use a mobile phone.

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    Latin and the works of Sophocles (索福克勒斯，诗人) are no longer the preserve of private schools thanks to a project that links professors with underprivileged teenagers.

    The new project between King's College London (KCL)and Newham Sixth Form College in east

    London offering lessons in Classics to bright senior-three students is now in its second year.

    Students from disadvantaged backgrounds with high academic potential can attend the classes, which are designed to inspire and engage them in challenging topics that are often the preserve of private schools.

    Lecturers cover subjects including ancient literature, religion, theology, Persian history and philosophy. Some teenagers from neigh bouring state schools also attend. The students act out Greek plays such as Antigone by Sophocles and are encouraged to consider Classics as a degree.

    Edith Hall, a Classics lecturer at KCL, said:" We wanted to enable the students from Newham to understand the richness and relevance of the classical world. They have a unique opportunity to engage with world-class lecturers,”

    Juned Malek, 19, who is in his first year at KCL, was introduced to literature, theology, history and philosophy by the classical outreach program when he was at Newham. He now helps to run it. He said the program was"essential in making the myths that surround studying Classics disappear, namely that it is an elitist (精英）subject or that it has limited career opportunities".

    The analytical skills that the degree develops are in high demand by employers, particularly investment banks and law firms.

    He said all schools should teach Classics to give a" basic introduction of historical principles passed down through millennia", adding:" A limited classical education leaves you stuck in the constant present, lacking the ability to use the past as a frame of reference when making decisions. "

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A team of biologists recently studied rain-frogs in the forests of northern Ecuador. While doing so, they discovered a Mindo harlequin toad (五彩蟾蜍). The creature hadn't been seen alive in 30 years. The scientists couldn't believe their eyes."The three of us spotted it," Melissa Costales, a conservation biologist, said. Her partners were scientist Cesar Barrio-Amoros and guide Eric Oster-man." It took our brains a while longer than normal to recognize that we were watching an Atelopus mindoensis !"Their findings were published in the spring, in the journal Herpetology Notes.

Until recently, 13 of the 25 species of harlequin toads in Ecuador had gone unseen since the 1980s or early 1990s. Climate crisis is damaging their living conditions, and they can't find food that is suitable for them. Besides, people hunt for them to make money. However, scientists hold that most of them had been wiped out by a terrible disease called chytrid, which is especially harmful to the harlequin toad.

The Mindo harlequin is the latest harlequin toad species "to come back from the dead," says Costales. Since 2003, eight other species have been found, three of them in Ecuador. Costales says the Mindo harlequin may have developed a resistance to the disease. That would explain the toad's reappearance. And it could spell good news for other harlequins. Since discovering the first one, Cos-tales's team has found five more. They were all tested for chytrid. None had the disease. But that doesn't mean the survival of the species is guaranteed, Costales says. The harlequin toad is still endangered.

Costales is developing a conservation plan with a zoology museum in Ecuador. She wants to make sure the Mindo harlequin toad doesn't fall back into dying out." Each rediscovery gives us a second chance to develop better conservation strategies (策略),"she says." Not every day do we have the opportunity to rediscover a species that we believed to be extinct.

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To start a conversation about the secret to happiness, ABC News' health editor Dr. Richard Besser hosted a Twitter chat Tuesday.  Experts from the National Institutes of Health, Mayo Clinic, Harvard University and TEDMED, as well as clinicians and people from across the country, joined the one-hour discussion. There are countless ways to measure happiness. With research on the topic increasing, researchers have carried out surveys to study people's sense of well-being.

Angela Haupt, health and wellness editor for U. S. News and World Report, said, “Happiness indicators include life satisfaction, health and community engagement. ”

@toddkashdan added that, “despite problems with self-reports, there is no better way to measure happiness than focusing on personal thoughts and feelings. ”

While scientists try to find out what caused happiness, others often believe that true joy doesn't exist. Dr Friedman, a psychiatrist at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Hospital, said that “happiness is hard to measure, but easy to recognize. ”

Still, common themes about satisfaction come up in these conversations. Finding meaning in daily work was important. Indeed, researchers have found that having creative and purposeful work to do is a key factor in happiness.  But people were quick to state the importance of balancing work and family obligations.

Chat participants(参与者) agreed that money does not surely bring happiness. And studies agree once people's basic needs like food and housing are met, higher incomes do little to improve your happiness.  At last, people found value in their connections with others.  Research shows that having support through friends, family, and social networks can bring happiness.  Many agree with @drmommy, who said “I measure my happiness by the loving people that are around me. ”

So, can we increase our happiness?  Expressing gratitude(感激) is a possible way of feeling happiness. Researchers have found that people who regularly write down things for which they are grateful in “gratitude journals” have increased satisfaction in life, higher energy levels, and improved health.  In one study, people who read a letter of appreciation to someone in their lives prove happier almost one month later.  Performing acts of kindness can raise your moods

Data show that our relationships matter, too. People who are interested in meaningful conversations with friends or family are reported to be happier than those who don't. Close interpersonal ties and strong social support are important for happiness.

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With their pipes and lids to avoid spills, coffee cups have long been the substitute for adults. Now Starbucks is going all in on the concept by swearing to get rid of straws by 2020—and it's all for a very good reason. This move is an answer to our own partners about what we can do to reduce the need for straws. Not using a straw is the best thing we can do for the environment.

In place of plastic straws, Starbucks plans to offer recyclable lids for all iced drinks and paper straws for coffee. The transition is already taking place in Starbucks' hometown of Seattle, where a ban on plastic straws went into place on July 1. By rolling this out in all 28, 000 of their stores by 2020, the company says they are annually removing more than one billion straws from going into circulation—and potentially the ocean.

Starbucks' decision to gradually stop using single-use plastic straws is a shining example of the important role that companies can play in stopping the tide of ocean plastic. With eight million metric tons of plastic entering the ocean every year, we cannot afford to let industry sit on the sidelines. Marine life has a 50% death rate when it swallows plastic—yet researchers believe there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by the year 2050 if this rate of litter continues. That means there can be an immediate positive impact if we swap plastic straws for environmentally friendly alternatives.

The smart design on the cup for cold drinks comes from Starbucks' in-house team of designers and has been in development for two years. However, the announcement comes as outcry (尖叫；倒彩) increases over the dangers that plastic straws can cause to marine life. Other companies making the eco-friendly swap also announced plans last month to test alternatives to plastic straws.

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Today, methane (甲烷) is a central but under-appreciated part of the fight against climate change. Human activity releases far less methane than carbon dioxide, but methane packs a heavier punch. Over the course of20 years, a ton of the gas will warm the atmosphere about 86 times more than a ton of carbon dioxide. Chief among the reasons for methane emissions (排放) are the gassy output of raising farm animals ( cows release it most) , rice production ( certain environments involve micro-organisms that make it) and the fossil fuel industry( pipelines leak it) .

Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries, making it hard to reduce its concentrations. By contrast, methane has a half-life of roughly ten years. If new emissions can be cut to below the rate at which old emissions reduce, the concentration of methane remaining in the atmosphere will soon fall, slowing global warming.

A big step would be to stop millions of tons of methane from leaking out of fossil fuel industry each year. Natural gas operators will be able to sell more gas in exchange for an acceptable investment so as to monitor and repair leaks. The International Energy Agency estimates that 40% of methane emissions from fossil fuels can be cut at no cost for firms.

The harder task is to reduce emissions from agriculture, but even here farmers can draw on new ideas, including developing new forms of feed for farm animals, and changing how rice field is irrigated.

However, politicians and the public tend to ignore the effects of cutting methane emission. But dealing with the gas with the efforts of the ordinary people would have a large effect at a relatively low cost.

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Attending college can be expensive, and applying to college can be costly as well. With today's college application fees averaging around $80, you can expect to spend hundreds of dollars on college before you are even accepted into a school.

One of the easiest ways to save money on college application fees before you begin applying is to narrow down your list of schools. To save money, try to limit the schools to which you apply to about 2—3 reach schools and 2—3 safety schools.

At some schools, being a relative of a graduate can secure you a free application. If you are applying to a school where one of your parents or grandparents is a former graduate, check to see if you're qualified for it.

Research the preferred method of applying for each school on your list. Some schools offer free online applications, yet charge a fee for paper submissions. This is because online applications save schools the cost of employing a staff member to physically enter the application information.

Several states, such as Michigan and North Carolina, take part in College Application Week, where many schools in the participating states cancel their application fee for the week. Be sure to contact the schools to which you are applying to see if they participate in College Application Week and when the programme takes place in that state.

Apply for early admission. If you have already decided on which college is your top choice, consider applying under an Early Action or Early Decision admission programme. If you are accepted, you won't have to submit application fees to other schools.

For more information regarding college applications and the fees associated with them, contact your high school advisor or the admissions department at your school(s) of interest.