Every day, millions of shoppers hit the stores in full force—both online and on foot— searching for the perfect gift. Aside from purchasing holiday gifts, most people regularly buy presents for other occasions throughout the year, including weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and baby showers. This frequent experience of gift-giving can cause ambivalent feelings in gift-givers. Many enjoy the opportunity to buy presents because gift-giving offers a powerful means to build stronger bonds with one’s closest persons. At the same time, many fear the thought of buying gifts; they worry that their purchases will disappoint rather than delight the intended receivers.

What is surprising is that gift-givers have considerable experience acting as both gift-givers and gift-recipients, but nevertheless tend to overspend each time they set out to purchase a meaningful gift. In the present research, we propose a unique psychological explanation for this overspending problem — i.e., that gift-givers equate how much they spend with how much receivers will appreciate the gift (the more expensive the gift, the stronger a gift-recipient’s feelings of appreciation). Although a link between gift price and feelings of appreciation might seem intuitive (凭直觉得到的) to gift-givers, such an assumption may be unfounded. Indeed, we propose that gift- receivers will seldom tend to base their feelings of appreciation on the significance weight of a gift than givers assume.

Why do gift-givers assume that gift price is closely linked to gift-recipients’ feelings of appreciation? Perhaps givers believe that bigger (i.e., more expensive) gifts convey stronger signals of thoughtfulness and consideration. According to Camerer (1988) and others, gift-giving represents a symbolic ritual(礼节), by which gift-givers attempt to signal their positive attitudes toward the intended receiver and their willingness to invest resources in a future relationship. In this sense, gift-givers may be motivated to spend more money on a gift in order to send a “stronger signal” to their intended receiver. As for gift-receivers, they may not consider smaller and larger gifts as representing smaller and larger signals of thoughtfulness and consideration.

In practical terms, people spend hundreds of dollars each year on gifts, but somehow never learn to measure their gift expenses according to personal insight.

 Remembering names is an important social skill. Here are some ways to master it.

●Recite and repeat in conversation.

   When you hear a person’s name, repeat it. Immediately say it to yourself several times without moving your lips. You could also repeat the name in a way that does not sound forced or artificial.

●Ask the other person to recite and repeat.

  You can let other people help you remember their names. After you’ve been introduced to someone, ask that person to spell the name and pronounce it correctly for you. Most people will be pleased by the effort you’re making to learn their names.

●Admit you don’t know.

  Admitting that you can’t remember someone’s name can actually make people relaxed. Most of them will feel sympathy if you say. “I’m working to remember names better. Yours is right on the tip of my tongue. What is it again?”

●Use associations.

   Link each person you meet with one thing you find interesting or unusual. For example, you could make a mental note: “Vicki Cheng－tall, black hair.” To reinforceyour associations, write them on a small card as soon as possible.

●Limit the number of new names you learn at one time.

   When meeting a group of people, concentrate on remembering just two or three names. Free yourself from remembering every one. Few of the people in mass introductions expect you to remember their names. Another way is to limit yourself to learning first names. Last names can come later.

●Go early.

Consider going early to conferences, parties and classes. Sometime just a few people show up on time. There’re fewer names for you to remember. And as more people arrive, you can hear them being introduced to others --- an automatic review for you.

Almost every day we come across situations in which we have to make decisions one way or another. Choice, we are given to believe, is a right. But for a good many people in the world. In rich and poor countries, choice is a luxury, something wonderful but hard to get, not a right. And for those who think they are exercising their right to make choices, the whole system is merely an illusion, a false idea created by companies and advertiser, hoping to sell their products.

    The endless choice gives birth to anxiety in people’s lives. Buying something as basic as a coffee pot is not exactly simple. Easy access to a wide range of everyday goods leads to a sense of powerlessness in many people, ending in the shopper giving up and walking away, or just buying an unsuitable item that is not really wanted. Recent studies in England have shown that many electrical goods bought in almost every family are not really needed. More difficult decision-making is then either avoided or trusted into the hands of the professionals, lifestyle instructors, or advisors.

    It is not just the availability of the goods that is the problem, but the speed with which new types of products come on the market. Advances in design and production help quicken the process Products also need to have a short lifespan so that the public can be persuaded to replace them within a short time. The typical example is computers, which are almost out-of-date once they are bought. This indeed makes selection a problem. Gone are the days when one could just walk with case into a shop and buy one thing; no choice, no anxiety.

       Home to me means a sense of familiarity and nostalgia（怀旧）. It’s fun to come home. It looks the same. It smells the same. You’ll realize what’s changed is you. Home is where we can remember pain, love and some other experiences: We parted here; My parents met here; I won three championships here.

       If I close my eyes, I can still have a clear picture in mind of my first home. I walk in the door and see a brown sofa surrounding a low glass-top wooden table. To the right of the living room is my first bedroom. It’s empty, but it’s where my earliest memories are.

       There is the dining room table where I celebrated birthdays and where I cried on Halloween---when I didn’t want to wear the skirt my mother made for me. I always liked standing on that table because it made me feel tall and strong. If I sit at this table, I can see my favorite room in the house, my parents’ room. It is simple: a brown wooden dresser lines the right side of the wall next to a television and a couple of photos of my grandparents on each side. Their bed is my safe zone. I can jump on it anytime---waking up my parents if I am scared or if I have an important announcement that cannot wait until the morning.

I’m lucky because I know my first home still exists. It exists in my mind and heart, on a physical property（住宅）on West 64th street on the western edge of Los Angeles. It is proof I lived, I grew, and I learned.

Sometimes when I feel lost, I lie down and shut my eyes, and I go home. I know it’s where I’ll find my family, my dogs, and my belongings. I purposely leave the window open at night because I know I’ll be blamed by Mom. But I don’t mind, because I want to hear her say my name, which reminds me I’m home.

D

                             Disappearing Roots

    I have fond memories of following my mother to the wet market in Ghim Moh area, walking around the jungle of stands, trying not to slip and fall in my slippers and carelessly getting nay feet wet from the water that dropped off from the fish counters and vegetable stands to the stone floor,  listening to her bargain in Teochew to the vegetable seller who in the next minute would start talking

 to another customer in Malaysian.

     The book store in Ghim Moh that my brother James and I visited frequently as kids, closed 4 years ago after over 30 years in business. I used to appreciate the fact that it had changed little over the course of three decades, the shelves still stocking the same types of notebooks that I had bought as a 7-year-old kid.  It was our childhood landmark and it had allowed me to follow my childhood footsteps on its same worn concrete floors.

    I noticed that a big shady tree just outside of the Ghim Moh market had been removed and in its place stood a skinny tree that could not shade the little dog that was sitting under it, desperate for some shade in the hot mid-day sun.

     Yes, in Singapore we have pictures in museums and books reminding us of our local heritage (遗产) Many of our favorite places can only be read about nowadays in books or magazines.

     We are physical beings. We make sense of our world and our relationship to our world through our senses.  Sometimes, it's not enough to just read about it.  We have to feel it,  smell it, touch it so  as to form our own memories of it, our own stories, and in turn share those experiences and stories with other people.

      I'm pretty sure I'm not alone.

   Many people who work in London prefer to live outside it, and to go to their offices or schools every day by train, car or bus, even though this means they have to get up early in the morning and reach home late in the evening.
  One advantage of living outside London is that houses are cheaper. Even a small flat in London without a garden costs quite a lot to rent. With the same money, one can get a little house in the country with a garden of one’s own.
   Then, in the country one can rest from the noise and hurry of the town. Even though one has to get up earlier and spend more time in trains and buses, one can sleep better at night and during weekends, and on summer evenings, one can enjoy the fresh, clean air of the country. If one likes gardens, one can spend one’s free time digging, planting, watering, and doing the other jobs which are needed in a garden. Then, when the flowers and vegetables come up, one has the reward of one who has shared the secret of nature.
   Some people, however, take no interest in country things: for them, happiness lies in the town, with its cinemas and theatres, beautiful shops and busy streets, and dance halls and restaurants. Such people would feel that their life was not worth living if they had to live it outside London. An occasional walk in one of the parks and a two-week-visit to the sea every summer is all the country they want: the rest they are quite prepared to leave to those who are glad to get away from London every night.

Dear Max,

    Your mother and I don't yet have the words to describe the hope you give us for the future. We believe all lives have equal value, and that includes the many more people who will live in future generations than live today. Our society has an obligation to invest now to improve the lives of all those coming into this world, not just those already here.

    Our hopes for your generation focus on two ideas: advancing human potential and promoting equality.

    Today your mother and I are committing to spend our lives doing our small part to help solve these challenges. I will continue to serve as Facebook's CEO for many, many years to come, but these issues are too important to wait until you or we are older to begin this work. By starting at a young age, we hope to see compounding benefits throughout our lives.

    As you begin the next generation of the Chan Zuckerberg family, we also begin the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation. Our initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities. Over short periods of five or ten years, it may not seem like we're making much of a difference. But over the long term, seeds planted now will grow, and one day, you or your children will see what we can only  imagine.

    We will give 99% of our Facebook shares --currently about $45 billion -- during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others.

Though Malala Yousafzai is 17, she does not use Facebook or even a mobile phone so that she can’t lose focus on her studies. She spent her summer vacation flying to Nigeria to campaign for the release(释放) of girls caught by the extremist Islamist group Boko Haram, but also worrying about her grades, which recently took a worrisome dip. She confronted President Obama about American drone policy(无人机政策) in a meeting last year, but finds it difficult to make friends with her fellow students in Birmingham, England.

“I want to have fun, but I don’t quite know how,” she wrote in the edition of her autobiography for young readers.

On Friday, Ms. Yousafzai became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and she was called out of her chemistry class to hear the news.

Ms. Yousafzai began campaigning for girls’ education at the age of 11, three years before she was shot by the Taliban. The prize she received on Friday accepts what she has taken on, but also shows the expectations to her: Can she truly influence the culture of her home country of Pakistan, which she cannot even visit because of threats to her safety, and where many people see her as a tool of the West?

And in an interview last August, Ms. Yousafzai said that she rarely watches television and deleted the Candy Crush game from her iPad to prevent a growing addiction(成瘾). As a child in Pakistan, she had access to only a handful of books, she said, but one was a biography of Dr. King, giving her an early sense of what one activist could accomplish.

In a brief speech in Birmingham on Friday, she called the prize “an encouragement for me to go forward and believe in myself.”

New York Cityis preparing to end its ban on cell phones in schools, dooming an industry that appeared near dozens of schools where teens could park their phones in a van for a dollar a day.

The out-of-sight, out-of-mind rule is already applied at most New York City high schools. Even with the phone ban still on the books, students at those schools are told, “If we don’t see it. we don’t know about it.”

But at the 88 city school buildings where metal detectors have been equipped to keep weapons out, the ban is strictly introduced because the detectors catch phones, too.

Students at schools with metal detectors must either leave their phones at home or shell out for storage. For those students, many of whom have spent hundreds of dollars storing phones and other things over their high school periods, the ban can’t end soon enough.

“This costs a dollar every day, and it’s a pain to get in that line just so I can get my phone back so I can go home,” 16-year-old Adam Scully said after getting back his phone from the storage van parked outside his school.

Adam said leaving his phone at home is impossible, adding, “It’s not because I’m overly attached to my phone. It’ because my mom might need to reach me.”

Parents of teens who attend schools with metal detectors say they too would welcome an end to the phone ban.

Walter McIntyre, who has two children atClara Barton High SchoolinBrooklyn, said he now drives his children to school and holds onto their phones during the school day — even though many of their classmates leave their phones in a van.

“They don’t trust them in those places.” McIntyre said. “They don’t want to lose their phones because they know they’re not getting another one.”

The security problem came out when a Pure Loyalty van was robbed in theBronxin June of 2012 and hundreds of students lost their phones.

For many of us, a little time with our smartphones or iPads before sleep is the highlight of the night. But would you still think it is relaxing if you knew that it damages or destroys your sleep? Scientists say that's exactly what it does.

In ancient times, when there were no lamps, telephones or smartphones, the sun was the main source of light. When the sun went down, our brains took that as a signal to start producing melatonin(褪黑素), a chemical that helps us sleep.

However, a healthy amount of melatonin can only be produced in complete darkness.Any light in your bedroom—even the one on the alarm clock or the charging indicator on your cellphone—could disturb the process, not to mention something as bright as smartphone and iPad screens. We tend to hold these much closer than a television or laptop, which allows them to shoot far more light straight into our eyes.

“This is particularly worrisome in populations such as young adults and adolescents, who already tend to be night_owls，” said researcher Brittany Wood at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.“Lack of sleep among teens is leading to depression, self­harm, low concentration and poor performance at school，” she added.

While all lights are the enemy of sleep, not all colors of light have the same effect. Our eyes are particularly sensitive to blue light, which is common during the day. Most of the light coming from electronic screens is blue light and it fools our brain into thinking it's still daytime. By contrast, orange or red light has less influence on melatonin production, because our brains recognize it as a signal that the day is ending, according to The Telegraph.

Asking yourself to keep your hands off your smartphone before bedtime might seem unreasonable, but you should at least remember to dim the screen or hold it farther away from your eyes. You could also wear a pair of orange sunglasses that take away the harmful blue light.

1.According to the passage, we can know ________.

A．it's a good habit to play with smartphones or iPads late into night

B．scientists suggest we should avoid using smartphones or iPads

C．darkness makes a great impact on the amount of melatonin

D．the sun was the only source of light in ancient times

2.Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A．The darker it is, the more melatonin will be produced.

B．The lighter it is, the more melatonin will be produced.

C．The more melatonin you have, the worse you'll sleep.

D．The more electrical equipment you have, the more melatonin will be produced.

3.The underlined part in Paragraph 4 refers to those ________.

A．who are young adults or adolescents

B．who don't perform well in school

C．who are addicted to a television or laptop

D．who are short of sleep at night and perform poorly in daily life

4.In the writer's opinion, which is a correct suggestion?

A．You should go to bed when the sun goes down.

B．You should use an orange or red light electronic screen.

C．You should wear a pair of blue sunglasses when sleeping.

D．You should avoid blue light as possible as you can before bedtime.