El Nifio, a Spanish term for “the Christ child”, was named by South American fisherman who noticed that the global weather pattern, which happens every two to seven years, reduced the amount of fishes caught around Christmas. El Nifio sees warm water, collected over several years in the western Pacific, flow back eastwards when winds that normally blow westwards weaken, or sometimes the other way round.

The weather effects both good and bad, are felt in many places. Rich countries gain more from powerful Nifio, on balance, than they lose. A study found that a strong Nifio in 1997-98 helped American’s economy grow by 15 billion, partly because of better agricultural harvest, farmers in the Midwest gained from extra rain. The total rise in agricultural incomes in rich countries is greater than the fall in poor ones.

But in Indonesia extremely dry forests are in flames. A multi-year drought in south-east Brazil is becoming worse. Though heavy rains brought about by El Nino may relieve the drought in California, they are likely to cause surface flooding and other disasters.

The most recent powerful Nino, in 1997-98, killed around 21,000 people and caused damage worth $36 billion around the globe. But such Ninos come with months of warning, and so much is known about how they happen that governments can prepare. According to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), however, just 12% of disaster-relief funding in the past two decades has gone on reducing risks in advance, rather than recovery and rebuilding afterwards. This is despite evidence that a dollar spent on risk-reduction saves at least two on reconstruction.

Simple improvements to infrastructure(基础设施）can reduce the spread of disease. Better sewers(下水道）make it less likely that heavy rain is followed by an outbreak of the disease of bad stomach. Stronger bridges mean villages are less likely to be left without food and medicine after floods. According to a paper in 2011 by Mr Hsiang and co-authors, civil conflict is related to El Nino’s harmful effects—and the poorer the country, the stronger the link. Though the relationship may not be causal, helping divided communities to prepare for disasters would at least reduce the risk that those disasters are followed by killing and wounding people. Since the poorest are least likely to make up for their losses from disasters linked to El Nino, reducing their losses needs to be the priority.

Many of us mistakenly believe that it’s wrong to think we have many good qualities. We may spend a lot of time blaming ourselves for our negative qualities, thinking that self-criticism is the key to improving our performance. However, a constant focus on our supposed shortcomings can stop our efforts to make friends with other people. How can we believe that others could like us if we believe our inner being is flawed(有缺点的)?

If someone seems to dislike you, the reason for that dislike might have little or nothing to do with you. The person who doesn’t like you might be fearful, shallow, busy or shy. Perhaps you and that person are simply a mismatch for each other at this particular time.

Don’t take yourself out of the game by deciding that your flaws are bigger than your good qualities. In fact, some of the very qualities you consider to be flaws may be irresistible to someone else. For all the factors that might cause one person to reject you, there are at least as many factors that will work in your favor with someone else.

You might be thirty pounds over your ideal weight, but you may have a wonderful laugh and a real enthusiasm for life. There are many people who don’t mind your extra pounds. You may drive a shabby car, but you might be a great dancer and a loyal friend. There are people looking for loyalty, fun, sweetness, or wisdom, and the package it comes in is not important. If you are worried that you are not beautiful enough to attract friends, keep in mind that not everyone is looking for physical beauty in their friends. You can decide to feel inferior because you don’t have much money or you don’t drive a nice car. You can believe that this is the reason that you don’t have many friends in your life. On the other hand, if you are very wealthy you may be suspicious that everyone is after your money and that nobody really likes you as a person.

The point is that you can focus on anything and believe it’s the reason you do not have friends and cannot make any.

Did you know that something as simple as the wallpaper on your computer can tell people a lot about you? According to researcher Donna Dawson, our computers say something about what weˈre like because they are part of our “personal space.”

       A picture of a child or family on the screen often means the person cares deeply about their loved ones. A photo of the person surrounded by friends shows they value their popularity and probably work well with other people. On the other hand, pictures showing examples of past successes, like winning a prize may mean a person is only interested in themselves.

       Pictures of nature and natural scenery tell people that you are driven to succeed and use the pictures to relax and remove the pressure in your life. Cityscapes, pictures of cities or towns, show that you enjoy travel and adventure. Most people with cityscapes as their wallpaper are optimistic, happy people who feel even better thinking about the places theyˈve visited or want to visit.

       Pictures of animals show that you are optimistic and kind-hearted. You are often happy and you enjoy life and act young. Cartoons or drawings show that you are a multitasker, someone who does many things at once. You have many responsibilities, but you deal with them well. Thatˈs one reason you like having something to smile about when you look at your computer wallpaper.

       Then, what does plain blue wallpaper tell us about a person? According to Dawson, a person with plain blue wallpaper probably values their privacy and keeps work from becoming too personal.

Cell Phone Are the New Cigarette

When you get in your car, you reach for it. When you are at work, you take a break to have a moment alone with it. When you get in to a lift, you play with it.

Cigarette? Cup of coffee? No, it’s the third most addictive thing in modern life, the cell phone. Experts say that it is becoming more difficult for many people to curb their longing to hug it more tightly than most of their personal relationships.

With its shiny surface and its smooth and satisfying touch, the cell phone connects us to the world even as it disconnects us from people three feet away. In just the past couple of years, the cell phone has challenged people in ways its inventors in the late 1940s never imagined.

The costs are becoming even more obvious, and I don’t mean just the monthly bill. Dr. Chris Knippers, working at the Betty Ford Center in Southern California, reports that the overuse of cell phones has become a social problem not much different from other harmful addictions: a problem that limits one-on-one personal contact, and an escape from reality.

Sounds extreme, but weˈve all witnessed the evidence: the person at restaurant who talks on the phone through an entire meal, ignoring his kids around the table; the women who talks on the phone in the car, ignoring her husband; the teen who texts messages all the way home from school, avoiding contact with kids all around him.

Is it just rude, or is it a kind of unhealthiness? And pardon me, but how is this improving the quality of life?

Jim Williams, an industrial sociologist based in Massachusetts, notes that cell-phone addiction is part of a set of symptoms in a widening gulf of personal separation. He points to a study by Duke University researchers that found one-quarter of Americans say they have no one to discuss their most important personal business with, Williams says studies show that we donˈt have as many friends as our parents. “Just as more information has led to less wisdom, more acquaintances via the Internet and cell phones have produced fewer friends.” he says.

It is interesting to see that the force of only 6 or 7 people pushing in the same direction can cause up to 1,000 pounds of force-enough to break brick walls. During a deadly stampede(逃奔), people can even die standing up. People die when pressure is put to their bodies in a front to back direction, causing them not to be able to breathe.

If you are in a crowd, the first and most important thing is to make yourself familiar with your surroundings and find different exits. No matter where you are, make sure you always know how to get out. Make yourself aware of the type of the ground you are standing on, and know that in a crowd of moving people wet ground can cause you to fall.

When in danger, a few seconds can make a difference, giving you the possibility of making use of your escaping route. Always stay closer to the escape route. If you find yourself in the middle of a moving crowd, do not fight against the pressure, do not stand still or sit down, because you can easily get trampled（踩踏）. Instead, move in the same direction of the crowd; make use of any space that may open up to move sideways to the crowd movement where the flow is weaker.Keep your hands up by your chest, like a boxer-it gives you movement and protects your chest. If you fall, get up quickly. If you can’t get up because you are injured, get someone to pull you up. If you have kids, lift them up.

If you fall and cannot get up, keep moving in the same direction of the crowd, or if that is not possible, then cover your head with your arms; do not lie on your stomach or back.

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving Day and the Friday before Cyber Monday in the United States. It is not a federal holiday, but is a public holiday in some states. Many people take a day of their annual leave on the day after Thanksgiving Day. Some people use this to make trips to see family members or friends who live in other areas or to go on vacation. Others use it to start shopping for the Christmas season. Many organizations also close for the Thanksgiving weekend.

Shopping for Christmas presents is also popular on Black Friday. Many stores have special offers and lower their prices on some goods, such as toys. Public transit systems may run on their normal schedule or may have changes. Some stores extend their opening hours on Black Friday. There can also be congestion on roads to popular shopping destinations.

Black Friday is one of the busiest shopping days in the USA. There are two popular theories as to why the day after Thanksgiving Day is called Black Friday. One theory is that the wheels of vehicles in heavy traffic on the day after Thanksgiving Day left many black markings on the road surface, leading to the term Black Friday. The other theory is that the term Black Friday comes from an old way of recording business accounts. Losses were recorded in red ink and profits in black ink. Many businesses, particularly small businesses, started making profits prior to Christmas. Many hoped to start showing a profit, marked in black ink, on the day after Thanksgiving Day.

Easy to make and cheap to buy, instant noodles have long been China's ultimate convenience food.

Since it was a snack for students, a meal on the train, or just the go-to choice for hungry workers, more than 46.2 billion packets were sold in China in 2013. But it seems this industry has gone off the boil. By 2016 those sales had declined to 38.5 billion, according to the World Instant Noodle Association, a drop of almost 17%.

“This phenomenon shows an unnoticeable while continuous change in China's consumption（消费）patterns,” said Zhao Ping of the Academy of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. He told the China Daily, “Consumers are more interested in life quality than just filling their bellies these days.”

About 730 million people in China now have access to the Internet according to government figures. And about 95% of those are using smart phones to connect. And apps that offer food delivery to your home, office or wherever you happen to be are a real fast-developing industry. 

Their menus are undoubtedly more expensive than a pot of instant noodles. But these meals can still be inexpensive, and arguably more tasty, depending on your favor.

But put in the global background, China is still easily the biggest market for instant noodles. In fact, China's consumption was roughly equal to Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, India, the US, South Korea and the Philippines combined.

And that means global noodle manufacturers are unlikely to turn away from the Chinese market. Japan's instant noodle business Nissin Foods, for example, is planning to land on the stock market in Hong Kong, by which operation it hopes to raise about 145 million dollars. It is rare for a Japanese firm to list in Hong Kong, but Nissin is talking up its prospects in China, where it is already the fifth biggest brand.

“Some consumers stopped consuming instant noodles, but most consumers want to increase the quality (of food they consume),” chief executive Kiyotaka Ando told CNBC last week.

“We can supply high-quality products so we have more possibility to develop our business.”

Bundle up ! Jack Forest has paid another visit to the Midwest. For the second time this week, a major winter storm has left people from Oklahoma to the Great Lakes struggling to stay safe and warm. Heavy, wet snow has shut down major highways, delayed flights and left hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners without power.

The storm began in Texas on Sunday and rapidly traveled north. A gust of 75 mile per hour winds pushed the storm up towards Oklahoma, bringing fifteen inches of snow to parts of Oklahoma. It then moved east and hovered (盘旋) over Chicago, Illinois, dropping four inches of wet snow on top of the city and its suburbs. Airlines canceled nearly 500 flights at Chicago’s O’ Hare and Midway airports. Taking into account the safety of their students in the storm, many schools in the affected states either delayed opening or did not open at all.

In Kansas City, Missouri, up to ten inches of snow had fallen before midday on Tuesday. The city’s mayor, Sly James, declared a state of emergency. Most government and office buildings were shut down. Some hospitals were forced to close urgent-care clinics. The Missouri Department of Transportation has told people to stay off all roads and major highways.

While heavy snowfall is not usual for this part of the country at this time of year, it is the amount of moisture (湿气) in the snow that makes conditions extra treacherous. When snow is especially damp, it weighs down trees and brings down power lines. Roofs can cave in under the pressure and roads can become very icy. The strained power lines have cut off electricity to more than 100,000 homes and business in the Midwest.

As snow falls and the temperature continues to drop, people are preparing the best they can to stay dry and safe. The wintry mix of sleet (雨夹雪) , rain and snow is making travel difficult for even snowplows and repair vehicles. “It’s snowing, blowing, drifting, everything,” said Robert Branscecum, a trucker from Illinois. “ I am not leaving anytime soon.”

Pigeons may only have a brain the size of a thimble (顶针), but it appears that pigeons can categorize and name objects in the same way human children learn new words.

A new study from the University of Iowa has shown that the birds are capable of learning to categorize 128 different photographs into 16 basic categories.

Scientists taught three pigeons to sort out different kinds of dogs or types of shoes, for example by using a particular symbol in exchange for a reward. When they were shown black and white pictures of previously unseen dogs or shoes, the birds were able to correctly match these with the corresponding symbols.

The scientists behind the project say this is a similar approach taken by young children when they are first learning words for objects. However, the researchers said it took their birds around 40 days to perfect the task of learning just 16 categories.

Professor Edward Wasserman, who led the work, said: “Our birds’ rate of learning appears to have been quite slow. Would children learn faster than pigeons? Almost certainly. However, our pigeons came to the experiment with no background knowledge at all. Thus, the more relevant comparison group may be newborn babies, who indeed take 6–9 months to learn their first words.”

Writing in the journal Cognition, the researchers said their experiment was a very simple mirror of the way children are taught words — by their parents pointing to pictures and asking them to name the object.

Pigeons are known to be smarter than many birds. Professor Bob McMurray, who also took part in the study, said the results showed that human learning is not as unique as was previously believed.

He said: “Children are facing a huge task of learning thousands of words without a lot of background knowledge to go on. For a long time, people thought that such learning is special to humans. What this research shows is that the ways in which children solve this huge problem may be shared with many species.

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. White fat stores calories and makes us fatter, while brown fat burns energy to produce heat. Turning white fat into brown 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. 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. ”