选择知识点

A new study shows that only aggressive negotiators get what they want. Researchers found the most effective strategies for securing a bigger salary were to be aggressive and "not take no for an answer". Workers who began pay negotiations and pursued a raise aggressively had the most success, the study found.

   Employees who had "done their homework" in advance of negotiations also earned themselves more holidays. But more employees who compromised in the hope of not worsening relationships fared(进展)the worst as they eventually caved in(屈服)to management wishes.

   Researchers discovered that workers who avoided salary discussions in interviews, almost never got a raise.

   Their study found those who actively sought out a raise earned an average $ 5000 more every year than those who didn't. They also found almost no difference between methods in male and female workers, suggesting that career-driven women were just as "competitive" during salary negotiations.

   Professor Crystal Harold said the study wanted to open up the "black box" of the negotiating process. "Our results suggest workers who were more prepared for the negotiation process were able to use more aggressive strategies," said Professor Harold. "By 'prepared', I mean those who learned more about the market value of their positions, did their homework on the organization and perhaps inquired about previous offers made about the organization. These individuals were empowered and were generally more aggressive." She added, "Furthermore, workers who used a more competitive strategy, such as not taking no for an answer, threatening to withdraw from the process if the offer was unacceptable, were successful in raising their salary."

   The researchers interviewed 149 newly hired workers from different industries, who were asked to fill out questionnaires asking them what they did to earn a pay raise.

A study by St. Louis University has found that a lovable dog named Sparky and a robotic dog AIBO, were about equally effective at reducing the loneliness of nursing home residents. The study confirmed previous findings that dogs have a good effect on nursing home residents（居民）.

    Dr. Andrew Smith led the Stanford University team that built a home-assistance robot."If humans can feel an emotional tie with robots, some day they could be not just our assistants, but also our companions," he said.

To test whether residents responded better to Sparky, a trained dog, or the Sony-made robotic dog, researchers divided 38 nursing home residents into three groups at three long-term care centers in St, Louis.

One group had weekly 30-minute one-on-one visits with Sparky; another group had similar visits with AIBO; a control group had no contact with either dog. The groups' respective levels of loneliness were tested by having them answer a number of questions at the beginning and near the end of the visits.

After two months, both groups that had contact with the dogs were less lonely and more attached. Most of the elderly regarded Sparky, a 9-year-old dog, as an audience for their life stories, said investigator Marian Banks.

"He listened attentively, wagged his tail, and allowed them to pet him," said Banks, who adopted and trained Sparky after finding him in a street behind her home seven years ago.

Those who were together with AIBO took a little longer to warm to the robotic creature. Over time, however, they grew comfortable with him, and petted and talked to him. He would respond by wagging his tail, vocalizing（发出声音）, and blinking his lights.

    "AIBO is charming once you start to interact with him," said the study's author, Dr. William Banks, " He's an attractive sort of guy. He gives a feeling: of being personal, not just a robot."

Tea and coffee are two of the most widely consumed drinks in the United States. With popularity and interest in tea continuing to grow in recent years, many consumers have recently considered making the switch from coffee to tea, if they have not done so already. All the buzz surrounding tea and coffee may have you wondering, what are the differences? As it turns out, the differences are many and varied.

In the US, interest in tea ranges from coast to coast with the highest in Hawaii and California but stretching to the eastern states of Vermont and New York. On the other hand, the highest interest in coffee tends to be concentrated more in the north and western regions(地区), with the highest search volumes appearing in the states of Hawaii, Washington and Minnesota.

Differences between tea and coffee also vary in origin and production. All tea comes from the harvested leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant, while there are about 60 different species of coffee

plants. Production of tea is quicker and more efficient: Camellia sinensis plants only need to grow for three years before they are ready to process; coffee plants take up to five years.

Perhaps the most concerning issue consumers have when considering making the switch to tea is the question of caffeine. The good news is, when it comes to tea and caffeine, there is something for everyone. Unlike coffee, which typically only comes in decaffeinated and regular, there are several varieties of tea available, based on caffeine preference.

From herbal teas that are naturally free of caffeine, to high quality green and black teas that offer less than half the caffeine of coffee, to high caffeine teas such as our specially formulated HiCAF® blends that contain slightly more caffeine than a cup of coffee, there is a variety sure to suit your needs. As an added bonus, the lower acidity levels in tea tend to be gentler on the stomach for a more comforting pick-me-up.

So what is the answer, coffee or tea? If you are looking for the most healthful benefit possible, tea is probably the winner. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If, like many Americans, the rising popularity in tea has your interest piqued, the images below will help to clearly spell out the differences between tea and coffee.

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New York Transit Museum: Ghost Station Tour

City Hall Station, an abandoned station of the New York Rapid Transit (运输) subway, was originally the last stop at the southern end of the subway line. Opened in 1904, the station was designed to be the most impressive station of the city’s new subway system.

City Hall Station remained in use until 1945, when the station had to be closed due to certain changes in the city’s subway system. As more and more passengers started to travel by subway, it became necessary to add more cars to subway trains. This meant that subway platforms needed to be extended to fit the longer trains. However, City Hall Station was originally built with a short, bent platform, making improvements to the station difficult. Rather than trying to rebuild it, officials chose to abandon City Hall Station in favor of another nearby station, the Brooklyn Bridge Station. Thus, City Hall became a “ghost” (鬼，幽灵) station on the New York subway line, a modern underground ruin.

Although the station is no longer used by subway travelers, the New York Transit Museum has found a new use for the station. The museum has reopened City Hall Station for tourists. Due to the historic significance and beauty of this station, the New York Transit Museum schedules special tours of the station. With some new features added, the station has been named as a landmark by the U.S. government.

Tour Information and Reservations

Please make reservations with the Transit Museum from Tuesday to Friday, 10 am to 4 pm. Payment in advance is required for tours and must be received at least one week before the scheduled tour. Payment can be made by credit or check.

Tours may require a lot of walking. Wear good walking shoes and comfortable clothes. For your safety, follow the instructions of the tour guide when touring abandoned stations, stay with the group at all times, and follow instructions or signs at the facilities.

Photography is not permitted inside abandoned facilities and some tours have been restricted since 2001 due to security concerns. Please check before booking.

You’ve probably heard about sports coaches, fitness coaches, voice and music teachers, career counselors, psychiatrists (精神病医师) and other specialists who teach skills and help us cope with daily life.

But there’s a rapidly growing kind of professional who does a little bit of everything. She or he is called a “life coach”. People who are at crossroads in their lives, and corporations that want to give certain employees a career boost, are turning to them for help.

The idea that one person’s success story can change other people’s lives for the better goes back at least to the 1930s. Dale Carnegie’s famous self-improvement program “How to Win Friends and Influence People” came along soon thereafter.

 But this new style of life coaches includes more than enthusiastic speakers or writers. They use their own experiences in business, sports, military service, or psychotherapy (心理疗法) to help others make critical life decisions.

They often give their approach a slogan, such as “energy coaching” or “fearless living” or “working yourself happy”.

 Dave Lakhani in Boise, Idaho, for instance, works with salespeople to develop what he calls a “road map”. He says an ongoing relationship with a coach is like having a personal fitness trainer for one’s career and life outside work.

 Lakhani’s Bold Approach coaching firm also donates some of its time to help people who are anything but successful — including battered women and struggling single mothers.

 But others in the so-called “helping professions” are not thrilled about the life-coaching movement. They say that anyone, trained or untrained, can call himself or herself a life coach, and that slick (华而不实的) promoters who mess with people’s lives can do more harm than good.

Many parents understandably want to ensure that their children will become financially successful. To that end, they push them to earn top grades and high scores so they can get into the best schools.

   In addition, the potential rewards of greatness, particularly in sports, have increased dramatically. That encourages some parents to pressure a child to become a professional athlete. As a cautionary(警告的) tale, Taylor, who works with young achievers and their parents, recommends the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer." It illustrates(说明,阐明), he says, what can happen when parents become overly invested in their child's achievements and activities.

    Taylor also laments (为...悲痛) the pervasive (到处存在的) pop-culture messages, that emphasize success and happiness, particularly success. Popular culture, he notes, offers extremely narrow definitions of success: wealth, fame, power, status, and beauty. "Very few people can live up to that."

    Taylor uses sports as an example of good parental intentions gone awry (走歪;走错). When he was growing up in the 1950s, it would have been embarrassing for parents to attend sport spractice sessions. "We expected our kid world to be a kid world," he recalls. "We had zero expectations for parents to be observers and cheerleaders. A parent too much in evidence (引人注目 )would have been embarrassing, as if we needed monitoring. We felt just as much loved as the current generation."

    By the late 1970s, parental attendance at games had become a must. "It's a sign that you're a good parent if you go to all the games," Taylor says. "The really good parents go to all the practices, too. You have to be there for your kid, cheering your kid, protecting your kid."

    Today, Taylor says, a good parent is defined as "somebody who is there for the kid's extracurricular(课外的) activities, rather than someone who is home cooking a nice meal."

 Sometimes yout'll hear people say that you can't love others until you love yourself. Sometimes you'll hear people say that you can't expect someone else to love you until you love yourself. Which statement do you prefer? Either way, you've got to love yourself first and this can be tricky. Sure we all know that we're the apple of our parents' eyes, and that our Grandmas think we're great talents and our Uncle Roberts think that we will go to the Olympics, but sometimes it's probably struggling to think such nice thoughts about ourselves. If you find that believing in yourself in a challenge, it is time for you to move a step to a positive self-image and learn to love yourself.

   Self-image is your own mind's picture of yourself. This image includes the way you look, the way you act, the way you talk and the way you think. Interestingly, statistics show that our self-images are often quite different from the images others hold about us. Unfortunately, most of these images are more negative than they should be and it seems we are much stricter with ourselves. Thus changing the way you think about yourself is the key to strengthening the confidence and changing your self-image and your whole world.

   The best way to defeat a passive self-image and stay confident is to step back and decide to stress your successes. That is, make a list if you need to, but write down all of the great things you do every day. Don't allow doubts to occur in it.

   It very well might be that you are experiencing a negative self-image because you are usually too strict with yourself or too stubborn and can't move past one flaw or weakness that you see about yourself. Well, roll up your sleeves and make a change of it as your primary task. If you think your're silly because you aren't good at math, find a tutor. If you think you're weak because you can't run a mile, get to the track and practice. If you think you're dull because you don't wear the latest trends, go straight to a shop to buy a few new clothes. But remember, just because you think it doesn't mean it's true.

   The best way to get rid of a negative self-image is to realize that your image is far too subjective, and to actively convince yourself of your positive qualities. Changing the way you think and the style of doing things and working on those you need to improve will go a long way towards promoting a positive self-image. When you can pat(拍) yourself on the back, you'll know you're well on your way. Never submit to your negative self-image! Good luck!

  There exist cruel wars, fighting and sadness in the world today, so it's not only necessary, but also essential to have a good sense of humor just to help us go through difficult times in our lives. Putting a smile on someone's face when you know they are feeling depressed, as the saying goes, makes me feel good and warms my heart.

   How would you feel if you could not joke around with your wife, husband, child, co-worker, neighbor, close friend, or even just someone that you are standing in line with at your corner store? I am always saying things that make others smile or laugh, even if I don't know the person I'm joking around with. My Grandma always found humor in everything she did, even if it was the hardest job anyone could imagine. This not only relieves stress in any situation, but also is a common manner to speak to others that are around you.

   I know of a few people that don't have a funny bone in their bodies, as they say. Everyone around them could be rolling on the floor after hearing a great joke and they would sit there without the slightest smile on their face. They don't get the joke that makes others laugh. I am busting a gut while they just sit there, looking at me as if I were from outer space. How can people not get a really funny joke?

   Laughing is essential to keep your stress levels under control. Without humor we would find ourselves with a lot of psychological problems, or on a lot of medications to keep us from going crazy. There is too much sadness in this present world. It drives people crazy. We all need to find a way to avoid the sadness and bring a little light into our lives. Therefore, I believe our best medicine is to get together and tell some jokes and have some fun laughing together.

In our old neighborhood, neighbors chatted over fences. Newcomers were welcomed with chocolate and bread. It had been easy to find friends there. Our new community was different. It seemed that family roots grew deep, deep as the Mississippi River that flowed past the tiny river town.

   We'd moved to decrease my husband's distance to work. Only thirty miles.

   After living there for six months, I was ready to move back home. I was lonely without a friend. My three boys were lonely. My husband, Lonny, seemed okay, but he spent his days at work.

   Lonny noticed my sinking disposition.

   "Shawnelle, you look unapproachable," he said. He and I were sitting in lawn chairs. Samuel, our three-year-old son, sat in his own little chair.

   "What do you mean?"

   "Body language. You placed our chairs fifteen yards away from everyone else. "

   "It doesn't matter. I'm not going to have friends here." Just then Samuel looked up. "Mom's right, Dad. And we just want to go home."

   That's when I knew that I needed an adjustment. I didn't want my boys to learn that the way to work through a tough time was to use a wounded and bitter attitude.

   Over the next few months I smiled when I didn't feel like it. We signed up for reading programs at the library and often visited parks and the bike path along the river.

   One afternoon Samuel and I climbed up the stairs to the library activity room. A woman who I hadn't seen before sat at a long table with a tiny boy.

   "Hi," she said. "I'm Tammy. Do you need a seat? There's one right here."

   I sat down next to Tammy. Soon class was over, and we still had a lot to say. "Why don't you come over later?" Tammy asked. "I live on a farm. There's plenty of room for the kids to run. "We went. And since that day, we've been back a million times.

   When I look back, I'm grateful for that tough time. I learned to persevere. I'm glad I didn't give up.

   And as for my boys, they learned a lesson too. "Keep moving forward" is what I tell them and "Your heart will follow."

Coffee at a friend's! We sat trying to make conversation while her three children grappled (扭打) with one another on the floor. Suddenly I remembered that I had brought some glass marbles (玩具子弹) with me—a whole bag full. I spilled them out on the floor, in the hope that the little angels would play with them in peace. Far from it: a heated argument broke out. I didn't understand what was happening until I looked more closely. Among the countless marbles there was just one blue one, and the children fought for it. All the marbles were exactly the same size and shiny and bright. But the blue one had an advantage over the others—it was one of a kind. I had to laugh at how childish children are!

   Rata sunt cara, said the Romans. Rare is valuable. In fact, the scarcity error is as old as mankind. My friend with the three children is a part-time real-estate (房地产) agent. Whenever she has an interested buyer who cannot decide, she calls and says "A doctor from London saw the plot of land yesterday. He liked it a lot. What about you? Are you still interested?"The doctor from London—sometimes it's a professor or a banker—is, of course, not true. The effect is very real, though: it causes prospects to see the opportunity disappearing before their eyes, so they act and close the deal. Why? This is the potential shortage of supply. Objectively, this situation is incomprehensible: either the prospect wants the land for the set price or he does not—regardless of any doctors from London.

   In one study, students were asked to arrange ten posters in order of attractiveness—with the agreement that afterward they could keep one poster as a reward for their participation. Five minutes later, they were told that the poster with the third highest rating was no longer available. Then they were asked to judge all ten once again. The poster that was no longer available was suddenly classified as the most beautiful. In psychology, this phenomenon is called reactance: when we are deprived (剥夺) of an option, we suddenly consider it more attractive. It is also known as the Romeo and Juliet effect: because the love between the tragic Shakespearean teenagers is forbidden, it knows no bounds (难以自己).

   In conclusion: the typical response to scarcity is failure in clear thinking. Assess products and services solely on the basis of their price and benefits. It should be of no importance if an item is disappearing fast, nor if any doctors from London take an interest.