We humans are superstitious, believing that Friday the 13th is bad luck and finding a penny is good luck. Here, then, are three of the most common superstitions.

Careful with that mirror

According to folktales, breaking a mirror is sure to bring yourself seven years of bad luck. The superstition seems to arise from the belief that mirrors don’t just reflect your image; they hold bits of your soul. That belief led old American Southerners to cover mirrors in a house when someone died, for fear that their soul might be trapped inside.

Like the number three, the number seven is often associated with luck. Seven years is a long time to be unlucky, so people have come up with solutions after breaking a mirror. These include touching a piece of the broken mirror to a tombstone or powdering the broken mirror.

Knock on wood

This phrase is designed to break away from bad luck: “Breaking that mirror didn’t bring me any trouble. Knock on wood.” The phrase may come from old tales about good spirits in trees or from an association with the Christian cross.

No umbrellas inside

…And not just because you’ll hurt someone’s eyes. Opening an umbrella indoors is supposed to bring bad luck. The origins of this belief vary from a story of an ancient woman who happened to have opened her umbrella moments before her house fell to the tale of a British prince who accepted two umbrellas from a visiting king and died within months.

1.What may bring good luck?

A. Dating on Friday the 13th. B. Knocking on wood.

C. Opening an umbrella inside. D. Breaking a mirror.

2.What should you do to drive bad luck away after breaking a mirror?

A. Hide the pieces for seven years. B. Put the pieces in a tombstone.

C. Cover the other mirrors in a house. D. Make the pieces into powder.

3.Which phrase may originate(起源) from religion?

A. Careful with that mirror. B. Knock on wood.

C. No umbrellas inside. D. Lucky number seven.

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While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers’ fields or on the battlefield. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.

Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”

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In the village where I grew up, everyone knew an old man, who lived a simply life and spent all his time painting. The villagers used to admiring his works and he often gave his paintings to his friends. Whenever he was offered money, he would not take them. He said he painted for a pleasure. He once gave one of his paintings to my father, whom actually wasn’t interested in art. Years later I found it in our old house. By that time the old man has died and people started to recognize his paintings as great works of art, which was worth lots of money. An art gallery made me an offer of $5,000 for this painting and I nearly sold it, so then I decided not to. It always reminds me my childhood and of the old man who didn’t really want to make money by paint.

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Finding the Real You

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Easy Ways to Keep Your Brain Sharp

Everyone is forgetful, but as we age, we start to feel like our brains are slowing down a bit—and that can be a very annoying thing. 1. Read on for some techniques worth trying.

1. 2.

People who regularly made plans and looked forward to upcoming events had a 50 percent reduced chance of Alzheimer's disease (早老性癡呆癥), according to a recent study. 3. Something as simple as setting a goal to have a weekly coffee date with a friend will do. There's evidence that people who have a purpose in life or who are working on long or short-term goals appear to do better. In other words, keep your brain looking forward.

2. Go for a walk.

Mildly raised glucose (葡萄糖) levels can harm the area of the brain that helps you form memories and physical activity can help get blood glucose down to normal levels. In fact, exercise produces chemicals that are good for your brain. 4.

3. Learn something new.

Take a Spanish class online, join a drawing club, or learn to play cards. A study found that mental stimulation (刺激) limits the weakening effects of aging on memory and the mind. But the best thing for your brain is when you learn something new and are physically active at the same time. 5. or go dancing with your friends.

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B. This can be especially harmful to the aged.

C. It should be something like learning gardening.

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F. Luckily, research shows there is a lot you can do to avoid those moments.

G. In other words, when you take care of your body, you take care of your brain.

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