It was an ordinary summer afternoon when I first found out about my grandpa's 1 garden.
That day, after school, instead of walking straight home, I decided to visit my grandpa, who lived just a few blocks away.
When I got there, I saw the front door was slightly open. I pushed it open but found nobody. Curiosity and 2 mixed within me as I ventured inside and noticed the backdoor wide open, leading to a path I'd never 3 before. There it was—a breathtaking garden, filled with flowers of all shapes and colors, greenery stretching out as far as my eyes could see. I walked 4 , marveling at the beautiful spectacle. Suddenly, I heard a rustling sound from a nearby bush, followed by a soft and familiar voice.
"I didn't 5 you to find this place, my dear," my grandpa said, emerging from behind the green leaves with a broad smile, holding a watering can.
6 by the beauty of the garden, I just stood there, taking in the view. After what felt like forever, I asked, "Grandpa, why didn't you tell me about this place?"
He shrugged and replied, "I wanted it to be a 7 , something you could discover on your own. It's more special that way, don't you think?"
Since that day, we would spend hours in the garden, tending to the flowers, sharing stories, and enjoying each other's 8 . That garden, which I discovered 9 , became our playground, a haven of peace in the midst of our bustling city lives.
Looking back now, I realize that the greatest thing I found in that garden was not the beautiful scenery, but the precious memories and 10 I built with my grandpa.
A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gap s in the （exist） research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic. A good literature review doesn't just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes（综合）, and （critical）evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.
Swedish students generally welcome AI tools in education, but 62% consider using chatbots in exams as cheating. However, the boundaries of cheating with AI remain uncertain. This result （show）in a survey from Chalmers University of Technology. The study, the first of its kind （investigate）students' attitudes towards AI in education has gathered crucial information and presented the results in an overview report. The researchers hope the survey's findings will empower students help them get a better understanding of AI's role in learning.
Rachel had always been fascinated with the mysteries of the sea. She dreamed of exploring the （deep）of it and discovering unknown creatures. Her obsession intensified when she discovered an old map in her grandfather's attic（顶楼）, which showed a place marked "hidden treasure". Ignoring her mother had warned, she started a small-boat adventure. After hours of searching with no luck, a friendly giant octopus appeared, guiding her to a secret cave she found treasures beyond her wildest dreams. From this experience, Rachel （know）that the bravest seekers often find the greatest treasures.
Stargazing Festivals in 2023
As more areas grow brighter with light pollution, national parks across the country have become dark-sky havens. Over the years, they are making a push to get certified as havens for sky-watching by the International Dark Sky Association, and they even host events like stargazing festivals to get travelers excited about astronomy.
·Bryce Canyon National Park—June 14-17
Situated in southern Utah, Bryce Canyon earned its dark-sky title in 2019. The35, 835-acre park is an ideal place to stay up late. This year, its annual astronomy festival includes guided stargazing sessions, lectures and "star stories" presentations, family-friendly activities, and even a performance by strings musicians in the northern Arizona-based Dark Sky Quartet.
·Shenandoah National Park—August 11-13
Conveniently located within a day's drive from two-thirds of Americans, Shenandoah National Park's night sky festival is a low-lift way to dabble in astronomy. The nearly 200,000-acre park will host ranger talks, public stargazing sessions, lectures, presentations, and activities for kids. Staffers are still working on this year's full schedule, but past events have covered topics ranging from space weather to nocturnal（夜间的） creatures.
·Great Basin National Park—September 14-16
Great Basin is one of the least crowded national parks, making it the perfect place to quietly appreciate the mysteries of the cosmos. Its annual astronomy festival is scheduled for this fall and includes guest speakers, constellation talks, observatory tours, and a photography workshop. During the festival's unique "Art in the Dark" program, participants will get to paint in low-light conditions and experiment with how their eyes perceive color.
·Joshua Tree National Park—October 13-14
Joshua Tree National Park, as the International Dark Sky Association notes, is the "nearest convenient place to go stargazing under a relatively dark sky" for the18 million people who live in the Los Angeles area. It became an official dark sky park in 2017, and each year, it hosts a night sky festival in the fall. As luck would have it, this year's dates overlap with an annular "ring of fire" solar eclipse. From Joshua Tree, the moon will appear to obscure between 70 and 80 percent of the sun.
Horseback Riding
Fourth-grader Maliah McCaster strolled into her classroom at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in New York, holding a toy pony.
In just a few hours, she would board a school bus alongside her classmates and head out for a morning of horseback riding. The weekly activity comes through a partnership with Victoria Acres Equine Facility in Guilderland, which offers a therapeutic riding program to empower individuals with disabilities.
Special education teacher Morgan Grimm said the activity, which takes place twice a week, has allowed Maliah, who has autism, to connect with others and enjoy a learning environment outside of a traditional classroom.
"She's a super sensory girl. On the days that we're not here, she's seeking a lot more attention and her behaviors are a bit increased. But on the days we come back from the farm, she's a lot calmer," Grimm said. "We're seeing an increase in her making sentences and her overall language."
The 10-year-old is one of four students with autism who are participating in the pilot program, officially launched at the Guilderland farm earlier in the spring. They recently had their fourth riding session.
Victoria Acres, founded in 2012, provides more than 2,300 riding lessons and therapies every year. The recent addition of an indoor riding facility has allowed the nonprofit to expand its programs year-round, providing an average of 48 lessons per afternoon.
Despite the busy schedule, the farm pays extra attention to the health and well-being of its eight therapy horses, ensuring each animal participates in a maximum of three half-hour sessions each day. Many of the animals are older, which makes them especially suitable for therapy due to their gentle, calm nature.
Like other nonverbal students, Avery uses a "tap-tap" motion to signal the horse to move forward. His feet barely reach the stirrups, but he looks at ease and confident as he rocks back and forth atop the gentle giant.
"He looks like a cowboy," said Kristin Munrett, principal of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary.
As the children explored the property with their support staff, pointing at the donkeys and watching the horses graze, it was clear why the executive director of the nonprofit, Erin Pashley, called it her happy place.
Research from the University of Pennsylvania has shown that social media users are likely to share posts that contain information that they feel is relevant to themselves or to the people they know. In other words, people share posts that they believe to have value—either to themselves or to their relationships with others.
A new study has found that merely encouraging people to consider the value led to increased activity in the areas of the brain associated with sharing decisions and increased a person's motivation to share an article.
"A lot of prior research on what makes posts go viral has focused on identifying the characteristics of messages that are shared often or not shared often," says lead author Christin Scholz. "We're looking at the neural mechanisms of sharing decisions. Targeting those mechanisms could be a way to encourage the spread of high-quality health information."
During the study, led by senior author Emily Falk, participants were instructed to consider sharing articles about healthy living from The New York Times while their brain activity was measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging （fMRI）.
Inside the fMRI scanner, participants were asked to think about sharing an article with a specific goal in mind: to either "help somebody"（use the article to relate positively to others）or to "describe yourself"（use the article to present yourself positively to others）. As a control, participants were assigned the neutral "to spread information" goal.
"In all areas of life, people want to present themselves in a positive light or to relate positively to others," Scholz says. "Our method encourages people to identify ways in which they can fulfill these motives through the sharing of health articles. If they are successful, they should be more likely to decide to share the article."
After reading the headline and summary of a health-related article, participants were asked to consider what they might say or write to another study participant if they were to share the article with them, keeping in mind their assigned goal. Finally, participants rated their likelihood to share the article in real life.
Thinking about sharing in terms of how it might help someone else not only increased activation in brain regions associated with self-related thinking, value-related thinking, and social-related thinking（particularly mentalizing—the act of imagining what others are thinking）, but also increased a person's self-reported willingness to share an article.
"I think we're only scratching the surface in terms of how you could encourage people to share high-quality health information," Scholz says. "A health communicator might want to focus on being accurate and clear and not have to worry about whether their content is emotional to get clicks. We're trying to find ways to focus on the would-be sharer, to help them find personal meaning in sharing content that can benefit others and society."
In our information-driven society, shaping our worldview through the media is similar to forming an opinion about someone solely based on a picture of their foot. While the media might not deliberately deceive us, it often fails to provide a comprehensive view of reality.
Consequently, the question arises: Where, then, shall we get our information from if not from the media? Who can we trust? How about experts—people who devote their working lives to understanding their chosen slice of the world? However, even experts can fall prey to the allure of oversimplification, leading to the "single perspective instinct" that hampers（阻碍）our ability to grasp the intricacies of the world.
Simple ideas can be appealing because they offer a sense of understanding and certainty. And it is easy to take off down a slippery slope, from one attention-grabbing simple idea to a feeling that this idea beautifully explains, or is the beautiful solution for, lots of other things. The world becomes simple that way.
Yet, when we embrace a singular cause or solution for all problems, we risk oversimplifying complex issues. For instance, championing the concept of equality may lead us to view all problems through the lens of inequality and see resource distribution as the sole panacea. However, such rigidity prevents us from seeing the multidimensional nature of challenges and hinders true comprehension of reality. This "single perspective instinct" ultimately clouds our judgment and restricts our capacity to tackle complex issues effectively.
It saves a lot of time to think like this. You can have opinions and answers without having to learn about a problem from scratch and you can get on with using your brain for other tasks. But it's not so useful if you like to understand the world. Being always in favor of or always against any particular idea makes you blind to information that doesn't fit your perspective. This is usually a bad approach if you would like to understand reality.
Instead, constantly test your favorite ideas for weaknesses. Be humble about the extent of your expertise. Be curious about new information that doesn't fit, and information from other fields. And rather than talking only to people who agree with you, or collecting examples that fit your ideas, consult people who contradict you, disagree with you, and put forward different ideas as a great resource for understanding the world. I have been wrong about the world so many times. Sometimes, coming up against reality is what helps me see my mistakes, but often it is talking to, and trying to understand, someone with different ideas.
If this means you don't have time to form so many opinions, so what? Wouldn't you rather have few opinions that are right than many that are wrong?
A Way Out of Social Anxiety: Volunteering and Acts of Kindness
As a socially anxious introvert, I can attest（证明）to the benefits of serving others through volunteering in my community.
A volunteer job doesn't need to require stepping into a busy room full of 100 people at a school or hospital. This kind of work is much more suitable and agreeable for introverts.
When I help elders or people with disabilities who are more isolated and lonelier than I am, I feel my nervousness and self-consciousness disappear. My social awkwardness loses its grip on me when I'm focused on helping someone else rather than myself or my social performance. Unlike showing up at a job interview, business meeting, or speaking engagement, working as a volunteer with people in need takes the spotlight away from being measured or judged.
Social scientists have an apt name for stressful social situations where we need to perform and would likely be judged or evaluated. The "social-evaluative threat" is particularly threatening for people with social anxiety as stress hormones rapidly increase. Any time we are in evaluative situations where we are judged by others, we face this social-evaluative threat and endure a sudden rush of stress hormones that increase anxiety. Yet when we are in situations where we are offering casual acts of kindness or nurturing others we tend to feel less threatened or judged by others. Helping others and sharing simple acts of kindness does not pose such a social-evaluative threat, but instead, calms and soothes us. Neuroscientists have studied the warm glow of doing good that makes us feel good.
"Kindness may help socially anxious people," says Dr. Lynn Alden, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia. She found that acts of kindness may help to counter the socially anxious person's fear of negative evaluation by promoting more positive perceptions and expectations of how other people will respond.
A. Some people are naturally reserved while others are rather outgoing.
B. In social anxiety disorder, fear and anxiety lead to avoidance which can disrupt our life.
C. Indeed, my own act of kindness has always been a sure bet to bring me out of my shell.
D. Instead, my volunteer service consists of quiet one-on-one visits with isolated older adults.
E. When I am giving my free time to help others, I feel truly liberated in my mission to serve.
F. High-performance events such as public speaking or job interviews can be really unbearable.
G. She and her colleagues conducted a study with 115 undergraduate students who had reported high levels of social anxiety.
"What if…?" thinking is anytime you try to guess the future outcome of an action you take. For example, "I want to ask for a pay raise but what if…?" Your mind then fills in the blank with many alternate scenarios, almost all of them negative.
It's a powerful combination of focusing on the negative and the unrealistic. It causes you to suffer through events that may not even happen as you try to predict the future and work out how you'll cope with all these possible（yet unlikely）scenarios. But the absolute worst thing about "what if…" thinking though, is that it tries to convince you it's helping. You tell yourself that you're just preparing yourself, you're protecting yourself. But "what if…" thinking rarely leads to taking practical, preventative actions. Instead, you torture yourself by imagining all sorts of terrible outcomes, all in the name of being "prepared", the idea of which is captured beautifully by this quote:"Do not be fooled by 'what if…' thinking! You are not a fortune teller. Even if you were, mentally rehearsing how you'll cope with a negative outcome has limited usefulness. You're much better off just coping with the situation once when it happens." By torturing yourself imagining all the possible bad things that could happen, you end up living through all these horrible possibilities that you don't have to.
Even if you do get it right, and one of the negative scenarios is the outcome, you're unlikely to remember your well-rehearsed comeback or safety strategy in the heat of the moment.
Another separate problem with "what if…?" thinking is that it makes you so fearful of all these potentially hideous outcomes that it stops you from actually living through the situation, if you can at all avoid it.
By stopping yourself from acting, not only do you cut off the potential benefits of actually asking, but you also cut off the opportunity to see that your predictions were wrong—because you don't test them out by entering the situation regardless. Unchallenged like this, "What if…" thinking seems like it actually protects you and seems even more "helpful" next time around.
Once you've decided on a course of action, "what if…" has got much louder and soon will stop you from taking action. I like to not give them an opportunity. Once you've made a decision, force your own hand: make the phone call straight away, enroll and pay for the course, make an appointment in your calendar, etc. before your fears and negativity even get a chance to get up off the couch.
"What if…" thinking actually protects one because it cuts off the opportunity to see that one's predictions were wrong.
