When you go to the doctor, you like to come away with a prescription (处方). It makes you feel better to know you will get some medicine. But the doctor knows that medicine is not always needed. Sometimes all a sick person needs is some reassurance that all will be well. In such cases the doctor may prescribe a placebo.

A placebo is a sugar pill, a harmless shot, or an empty capsule. Even though they have no medicine in them, these things seem to make people well. The patient thinks it is medicine and begins to get better. How does this happen?

The study of the placebo opens up new knowledge about the way the human body can heal itself. It is as if there was a doctor in each of us. The doctor will heal the body for us if we let it. But it is not yet known just how the placebo works to heal the body. Some people say it works because the human mind fools itself. These people say that if the mind is fooled into thinking it got medicine, then it will act as if it did, and the body will feel better.

Placebos do not always work. The success of this treatment seems to rest a lot with the relationship between the patient and the doctor. If the patient has a lot of trust in the doctor and if the doctor really wants to help the patient, then the placebo is more likely to work. So in a way, the doctor is the most powerful placebo of all.

A placebo can also have bad effects. If patients expect a bad reaction to medicine, then they will also show a bad reaction to the placebo. This would seem to show that a lot of how you react to medicine is in your mind rather than in your body. Some doctors still think that if the placebo can have bad effects, it should never be used. They think there is still not enough known about it.

The strange power of the placebo does seem to suggest that the human mind is stronger than we think it is. There are people who say you can heal your body by using your mind. And the interesting thing is that even people who swear this is not possible have been healed by a placebo.

“Shuan Q” is a meme (网络流行语) which can be used as a popular way to say “I’m speechless” with a matching emoji (表情包) at ached behind. No one can deny the power of the Internet. Some believe it makes language weaker but some see a brighter side, believing it makes online communication easier between strangers.

An elementary school teacher in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, says that the evolution of Internet slang is not all fun and carefree. From his daily observations, he believes the “geographic boundary” between Internet slang and formal language is disappearing. On many occasions, the composition she has received from pupil have been flooded with abbreviated slangs (网络梗).

During last year’s Two Sessions, several representatives put forward proposals such as “regulating online language” and “banning vulgar (粗俗) words”, specifically to address this issue, expressing the need to reduce online language misuse and strengthen the protection of Chinese.

However, many experts and scholars of linguistics and communication including Feng Zhiwei disagree. Feng, believes that Internet language is a natural product of the dynamic development of language, and it is not necessary to ban it.

More reasons to hate humidity: it expands global warming, a prof says.

Andrew Dessler, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences who specializes in research on climate, says that warming due to increases in greenhouse gases will lead to higher humidity in the atmosphere. And because water vapor itself is a greenhouse gas, this will cause additional warming. This process is known as water vapor feedback and is responsible for a significant portion of the warming predicted to occur over the next century.

“It’s a vicious cycle-warmer temperatures mean higher humidity, which in turn leads to even more warming,” Dessler explains.

The perspective by Dessler and co-author Steven Sherwood of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales is published in the current issue of Science magazine. In the article, they review and summarize the peer-reviewed evidence in support of a strong water vapor feedback and conclude that the evidence supporting it is overwhelming. “For years, there was a debate over this mechanism, with some even questioning if the water vapor feedback existed at all. But recent work on this feedback has moved its existence and strength beyond argument,” Dessler adds.

Predictions of significant global warming over the next 100 years by climate models require a strong water vapor feedback. Recent estimates suggest the earth will warm from 2 to 4 degrees Celsius (4 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit) over the next century—a scenario that could have devastating long-term consequences.

“Everything shows that the climate models are probably getting the water vapor feedback night, which means that unless we reduce emissions, it is going to get much, much warmer on our planet by the end of the century,” he adds.

Many scientists believe such warming rates are already happening. They can point to the summer of 2003, when a prolonged heat wave gripped Europe. According to the Earth Policy Institute, more than 35,000 people died that summer, with France recording over 14,000 deaths and Germany more than 7,000. Additionally, warmer temperatures are having an adverse effect in the Arctic, where rapid loss of ice is now occurring. “The only possible way future warming won’t be significant is if there exists some sort of off-setting negative feedback, which has yet to be discovered,” Dessler notes. “Most scientists, myself included, judge that to be a pretty unlikely possibility.”