According to scientists’ research, the month in which babies are born could affect them in some ways. Babies born in spring get sick easily. Children born under Aquarius (Jan. 21st ----Feb. 19th)may be less clever than those born in other seasons. They may also have shorter lives than those born in autumn. Scientists believe many of the differences can be explained by the mother's exposure to sunlight in pregnancy(怀孕).

Sunlight helps lead to the production of Vitamin(维生素) D in the body. The lack (缺乏)of vitamin D in the first months of life may have a bad effect on health.

You know the feeling — your ears start to warm up, your tongue goes numb (麻木的), and you start sweating and taking deep breaths. You’ve just eaten something spicy, knowing it would be painful, but you chose to do it anyway. Are humans just masochistic (自讨苦吃的), or is there something else going on? 【小题1】

Spicy isn’t actually a taste like salty, sweet, sour and bitten — it’s a sensation. 【小题2】. When we eat foods containing capsaicin (辣椒素), our bodies are tricked into thinking the temperature is actually rising. In trying to relieve the burning sensation, our bodies release endorphins (内啡肽) which control pain and, at the same time, give a feeling of pleasure — like painkillers.

This is what is happening chemically, but there is also a conscious side to choosing spicy food. Dr Tamara Rosenbaum, a Cognitive Neuroscientist, explains in an interview with the BBC that this is 【小题3】. Furthermore, we obtain pleasure from the other ingredients chilli is generally cooked and eaten with—including fat, sugar and salt. So — like skydiving — eating chilli is a form of thrill-seeking, 【小题4】

Humans, one of the few mammals on Earth that developed a taste for capsaicin, started cultivating chilli peppers about six thousand years ago. Human intervention changed the chilli pepper to suit human tastes and needs — including the pepper’s colour, size and capsaicin content-helping to explain the many different types of chilli peppers now available. 【小题5】. We eat around 57.3 million tons of peppers globally each year, and chilli is a key ingredient in traditional dishes from Mexico to Korea.

Yawning sends out certain messages-it can be either “oh, this movie is so boring” or “I probably need to get some sleep”. But did you know that a yawn can also help your brain to cool down when it is overheated?

A new study, led by. Andrew Gallup from Princeton University and Omar Eldakar from the University of Arizona, both in the US, has indicated that yawning could be the brain’s natural way of regulating temperature. People yawn more often when the temperature outdoors is lower than their body temperature but are less likely to yawn when it is hotter outdoors, according to Sciencedaily.com.

The research team did an experiment on 160 people, 80 in summer and 80 in winter, to examine how often they yawned at different air temperatures. The study found that people yawned more often in winter than in summer. Scientists say that when the air temperature is lower outside the body, there is heat exchange between the overheated brain and the cool air. But when the air temperature is higher than or equal to the body, people are less likely to yawn because the hot air they breathe in will make the brain even hotter.

When people yawn, their jaw is also stretched (拉伸), which enhances blood f low and may also help cool the brain.

The study showed that the amount someone yawned could be related to the amount of time they spent outside. The longer people spent outside in summer, the less they yawned. Nearly 40 percent of participants yawned within their first five minutes outside, but after that the percentage was reduced to less than 10 percent.

However, the result was the opposite in winter. The number of people who yawned increased when they spent more than five minutes outdoors. But the change was only slight compared to summertime.

According to Gallup, this is the first report to show that yawning frequencies change depending on season. This could help us to better understand the way our brains work. It may also help us understand the reason why frequent yawning can sometimes be a sign of brain disease.