【推荐1】With overseas education becoming popular, every year thousands of students migrate around the world to pursue some or the other educational course that would give them global exposure. Studying abroad is extremely exciting. Everything is new and interesting.     1     The following are the things you should make sure to do while you’re abroad.

Keep your schedule tight. Plan your schedule wisely. Divide your time between life, work and studies. While you’re in a new country, try making the most out of it. Go out with your peers, befriend the local students, and learn their culture and their language.     2     Meanwhile do not compromise on your studies or neglect your schoolwork. Write down your experiences, so that you can cherish them forever.

    3     Be open to new experiences, new ways of doing things, new rules and regulations and lots of new information. Don’t hesitate to make notes of things you might tend to forget. Try to be a part of your new environment and get involved with the locals. Be prepared to live on the staple food of the host country. Blend into the environment and try something different. Meet people and make new friends.

Budget your finances. When you’re overseas, taking care of your finances becomes really crucial. Since everything is new, there’s so much to understand and discover and all that comes at a price. To make our experience free of trouble, it becomes very simple to waste.     4    

You’re studying in a new country.     5     So, if you keep an open mind, you might meet incredible people, taste some delicious food and have your perspective on the world radically changed, which wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t in a different country.

【推荐2】Math is a necessary skill that people use throughout their lives. Unfortunately, many children and adults feel stressed and anxious when they have to do math. They may be experiencing what is called “math anxiety”. Because of this, many people believe that they are bad at math and don’t like math.

A recent research has shown that some children as young as 6 years old may feel anxious about math. A team of researchers asked 154 children in grades 1 and 2 questions like “How do you feel when taking a big test in your math class?” The children expressed how nervous they felt by pointing to a position on a scale (刻度), where there were different faces from a very nervous face on the left to a calm face on the right. After answering these questions, the children took a math test. These researchers found that almost half of the children who participated in the study said that they were at least somewhat nervous about doing math. Also, children with higher math anxiety got worse scores on the math test.

Scientists have also found that math anxiety develops in children who experience certain kinds of social situations that influence their thoughts or feelings. This means that the child’s emotions, opinions, or behaviors are affected by things that other people say or do. For example, teachers with high math anxiety were more likely to have students with poorer math achievements at the end of the school year.

Good news is that researchers have found tools to help people with math anxiety. These tools are called interventions (干预). For example, researchers did an intervention where they asked children with math anxiety to write about their math-related worries. Then they found that children’s math test scores improved. Therefore, it is advised to talk to classmates and teachers about math anxiety. This is the first step toward helping to reduce the possibly harmful effects of math anxiety.

【推荐3】Many students have difficulty keeping their things organized. What can we do to assist them? Learning Management System (LMS) is an app teachers can use to upload and present all the information students need: documents, grades, the assignment calendar, etc.     1    

Track assignments and calendars. Teachers can create calendars or charts in their LMS showing the upcoming schedule for projects and readings, which allows students to see clearly what assignments are left to complete and when they're due.     2    Instead of digging through their backpacks for homework, now, students can quickly tell the teacher exactly what they have done.

Follow teachers' feedback. With an LMS, students can submit a typed document and receive direct feedback from their teachers in comments typed on the side of the doc. The comments are tied to specific phrases in the students' text. Students can easily access them, and better yet, they can then respond to the teacher's comment, creating a dialogue or conversation that the student can refer back to later.     3    

    4    In the past, after receiving the dreaded red-pen comments on their essays, students would have to scrawl out corrections on the messy draft and then write a whole new draft on a separate piece of paper.     5     Students struggling with writing production, expressive language, and attention issues should have an easier time with this kind of work using formats like Word, Google Docs, and PowerPoint.

We now live in a digital world. Thankfully for our students, especially those with learning challenges, LMS helps them become more independent and confident in their studies.

【推荐1】Several days ago Spanish fashion brand Zara sparked a fierce debate after releasing its latest campaign featuring a Chinese model with freckles (雀斑). Actually, there are some different beauty standards between the East and the West.

In East Asia, freckles might be considered a “destructive weakness” for celebrities, especially actors or singers. Although normal people don’t care that much, subconsciously they might prefer a “clean” face. Generally speaking, freckles are more likely to appear if people are out in the sun frequently, and most East Asian women avoid the sun as best they can.

Having freckles, instead, is a trademark for unconventional beauty in the Western world, and some call freckles “angel kisses”. For most westerners, having freckles is no longer just something you have to live with; instead, it is something to be desired. After all, not everyone is lucky enough to have freckles.

When it comes to eye shapes, it seems Western and Chinese beauty standards don’t see eye-to-eye. Many Chinese think girls with big eyes are the most beautiful. If their eyes have a double-fold eyelid, that is considered perfect. However, most foreigners seem to prefer Chinese girls with slanted (斜的) and narrow eyes and eyebrows. Chinese known model Lyv Yan is often considered the country’s most beautiful by foreigners, while quite a few Chinese people think her appearance doesn’t fit with traditional beauty standards.

Young, girly feature or hot and mature feature? Zhao Liying from China, Aragaki Yui from Japan and Lim Yoon-A from South Korea enjoy high popularity in Asia, as they boast bright faces with warm smiles, which win them lots of male fans. The three young celebrities represent Asia’s beauty standards: women with cute, girly features. Most women in Asia try their best to stay young accordingly. Unlike Chinese girls, Western girls think a more mature look shows independence and uniqueness. The superhero Wonder Woman is an ideal type for most.

As ties continue to grow between China and the West, it is unavoidable that these beauty standards develop. But one thing’s for sure-no matter how you look, you are who you are, and that should be satisfaction enough.

【推荐3】This summer we witnessed interview teams at the North Pole wearing short sleeve shirts due to the warm weather. A study published on Aug 29 revealed more concerning issues in the supposedly coldest area of the world. Zombie ice from a massive Greenland ice sheet was confirmed to be melting, which would eventually raise global sea levels by at least 10 inches (27 centimeters) on its own, reported Associated Press (AP).

Zombie ice is the kind of ice that is still attached to thicker areas of ice, but is no longer getting fed by larger glaciers. Since glaciers are getting less snow to complement (补充) the amount of ice melted, once the zombie ice is melted, it cannot be re-formed.

Scientists decided to look at the balance of the ice. In perfect balance, snow in the mountains of Greenland flows down and thickens the sides of glaciers, balancing out what’s melting on the edges, according to AP. But in the last few decades, there is less refill and more melting, creating an imbalance.

Study co-author William Colgan at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland told AP that 3.3 percent of Greenland’s total ice volume will melt eventually. “Starving would be a good phrase” for what’s happening to the ice, Colgan added.

With a great number of natural resources buried under the earth, areas of melted ice revealed treasures that attracted the world’s richest men. According to CNN, in early August, there was a “treasure hunt” in Greenland. Billionaires, including Bill Gates and others, financially backed KoBold Metals, a US-based mineral exploration company, to explore the rare metals under the glaciers in Greenland. The company told CNN that since there were enough minerals to power hundreds of millions of electric vehicles, the critical resource is capable of powering the green energy transition.