【推荐1】On May 23, 1989, Stefania Follini came out from a cave at Carlsbad, New Mexico. She hadn’t seen the sun for eighteen and a half weeks. Stefania was in a research program, and the scientists in the program were studying body rhythms. In this experiment Stefania had spent 130days in a cave, 30 feet in depth.

During her time in the cave, Stefania had been completely alone except for two white mice. Her living place had been very comfortable, but there had been nothing to tell her the time. She’d had no clocks or watches, no television or radio. There had been no natural light and the temperature had always been kept at 21℃.

The results were very interesting. Stefania had been in the cave for over four months, but she thought she had been there for only two. Her body clock had changed. She hadn’t kept to a 24-hour day, she had stayed awake for 20～25 hours and then had slept for 10 hours. She had eaten fewer meals and had lost 171bs in weight as a result! She had also become rather depressed.

How had she spent her time in the cave? As part of the experiment she’d done some physical and mental tests. She’d recorded her daily activities and the results of the tests on a computer. This computer had been specially programmed for the project. Whenever she was free, she’d played cards, read books and listened to music. She’d also learned French from tapes.

The experiment showed that our body clocks are affected by light and temperature. For example， the pattern of day and night makes us wake up and go to sleep. However, people are affected in different ways. Some people wake up naturally at 5:00 a.m., but others don’t start to wake up till 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. This affects the whole daily rhythm. As a result the early risers are at their best in the late morning. The late risers, on the other hand, are tired during the day and only come to life in the afternoon or evening!

【推荐2】Money might not grow on trees, but scientists have confirmed that gold is found in the leaves of some plants. Researchers from Australia say that the presence of the particles (颗粒) in a eucalyptus (桉树) tree’s leaves shows that deposits (矿藏) are buried many meters below. They believe that the discovery offers a new way to find the valuable metal in difficult-to-reach areas.

Dr Mel Lintern said: “We have found a lot of the easy particles in Australia in this way. Now we are trying to find the more difficult ones that are buried tens of meters below. And the trees are providing us with a method to be able to do this.”

Using a vast machine that uses X-rays to explore matter in detail—they found gold in the leaves and small thin branches.

“We need 500 eucalyptus trees growing over a gold deposit to have enough gold in the tress themselves to make a gold ring,” said Dr Lintern. However the presence of the particles pointed to richer deposits buried more than 30m below. He added, “We believe that the trees are acting like a pump(水泵). They are bringing life-giving water from their roots, and in doing so, they are taking smaller gold particles up into the leaves.”

The scientists said that research on plants could offer a better and simpler method to discover gold deposits. Dr Lintern said: “Not only do we believe it is a way of saving the exploration cost, because exploring for these deposits can be quite expensive, it also reduces the damage to the environment because we are taking a very small amount from the trees themselves, as well as the leaves and branches on the ground. The plant-analyzing(分析) method is certain to work!”

【推荐2】Anna Akter, a nine-year-old student at a floating school in Bangladeshi remote Natore district, says she might have missed out on her education during annual floods without her boat-based classroom. The same goes for Khushi Khatun, who also studies at the boat school where she gets free tuition and materials. “Had there been no such school, she would have had to walk two kilometers along a muddy path or take a boat journey which may have discouraged her from studying, said her father, a farmer in Pangasia village.

Each year, much of the Bangladesh countryside is hit by flooding. With around two thirds of the country's 160 million people living in rural areas, during a normal rainy season, some 1.5 million students are estimated to be affected by floods.

The boats first served as the school bus, collecting children from different riverside stops. Instead of the students going to school, the school reaches them,” said Mohammed Rezwan, founder of Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, the non-profit organization that introduced the country's first floating school system.

Rezwan, an architect, was born and brought up in Natore district, and he himself was lucky as he didn't miss school in the rainy season thanks to his family's boat. While at university, it occurred to him that if children couldn't make it to school, their classroom should go to them. So he established Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha in 1998 with $ 500 from his savings and scholarship money, and the floating school concept was launched in 2002.

The floating schools cover an area of 2 square km, offering primary level education to local children who might otherwise have stayed away from school. Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha now also trains adult villagers on children's and women's rights, nutrition and health, and how to farm ducks and fish alongside vegetables in “floating gardens, helping them adapt to the impacts of climate change.

【推荐3】Most of my life I had lived in a Black and Latino community. Neither of my parents had made it past middle school and I was the first in my family to ever set foot on a college campus. By contrast, most of my peers came from generations of college educated family and had grown up in rich, white suburbs. Instead of sharing with others how I was feeling, I isolated myself and thought I could get through it if I just focused on studying. During the weeks leading up to my sophomore year winter break, I finally decided I would drop out. Fortunately, that wasn’t the end of the story. I found strength and guidance to continue through to graduation.

Counseling(咨询) provided me a space to release and process my emotions. My counselor provided me books and other resources to understand what I was experiencing and she helped me feel empowered.

Volunteering with a campus organization that guided children in Chicago housing projects provided me a consistent reminder for why I was in college. My interactions with students who reminded me so much of my own friends back home inspired me to commit to working for access to higher education for low-income youth. I also got involved with a summer urban internship(实习生) program, where I cooperated with a group of student leaders to start a conference to dialogue about issues of race and class.

Knowledge is empowering. I read books and intentionally chose courses to learn more about topics related to immigration, race, social class and urban education. These courses and books helped me gain a much deeper understanding of my own racial experiences of oppression(压制). Most importantly, I was empowered with the knowledge I needed to work against injustice and inequality.

【推荐2】Have you ever wanted to stop eating something sweet but you just couldn’t? Is it the first thing you do when you get home from school to look in the biscuit tin? Can you eat a huge bar of chocolate all by yourself? Can you say “no” to sweets at parties? If you can’t, then there is a reason … perhaps you are a sugar addict! Does that sound funny? Well, doctors say that people who eat sweets regularly can easily become addicted to sugar. What’s more, most sugar addicts don’t even realize that they are addicted! Sugar addiction is serious because it can really damage your health. Doctors say that we should eat food which is healthy such as fresh fruits and vegetables, and that we shouldn’t eat a lot of sugar, fat or fast food. But sugar addicts can’t follow this advice. They know they must stop eating sweet food, but they can’t.

So what can you do if you think you are addicted to the taste of sugar? Well, here is some advice:

Eat some fresh fruits when you really want something sweet to eat.

Cut down some sweet food slowly.

Don’t try to stop eating it at once.

You have to tell your parents. If they know, they will help you.

【推荐1】The following picture books are a wonderful way to improve the summer experience with kids.

Vampirina at the Beach by Anne Marie Pace

Vampirina and her best monster friend head to the beach during the full moon on a perfect summer night to   enjoy all the fun and festivities the beach has to offer. Along the way, Vampirina's beach adventures highlight the importance of beach safety to ensure a heroic adventure for all.

Available from Amazon,﹩11.50

Summer by Alice Low

Summer brings so many things to a spirited boy, an eager girl, and an excited little dog. The season is filled with adventure. With clever rhyming words, clever phrasing, and playful images, children will love following along as this energetic trio takes in all the sunshine, big beach waves, fireworks, and sweet treats of this truly memorable time of year.

Available from Amazon, ﹩6.23

Waiting for Pumpsie by Barry Wittenstein

Summer is the season of baseball, and there's no better way to celebrate summer than with the true story of Pumpsie Green's rise from the minors to the Boston Red Sox in 1959. As the final major league team to include black athletes, young Bernard and his family travel to Fenway Park to witness Pumpsie Green take the field in this inspirational tale of equality and progress.

Available from Amazon,﹩9.61

【推荐2】Yawning is something we all do—maybe because we’re bored carrying out tedious tasks or because we’re tired. Sometimes, just seeing other people yawn can set you off. But is this biological function really contagious, and why do we do it in the first place?

Many of us think we open our mouths when we yawn to take in more oxygen, but in fact it appears there is no clear biological reason. A new research suggests it might be because yawning cools the brain down and prevents it from overheating, much like the fan in your laptop. This might be why we’re more likely to feel drowsy and yawn in warm temperatures.

What is clear is that we yawn more when we’re exhausted and ready for a nap, and we can’t control when we do it—once we start, there’s no stopping us! But it’s also true that yawning is a very contagious behaviour. John Drury, a researcher from Sussex University, told the BBC that “dogs yawn when their owners yawn. Animals yawn to each other. It happens whether you want to or not.”

His research into this cognitive behaviour found that there is a connection with our social group and how close we are to the people in it. If we identify with the person who exhibits the behaviour, we are likely to copy it too.

Other researches by the University of Nottingham in 2017 found similar results. They asked volunteers to watch other people yawn. They found their ability to resist yawning when others around them yawned was limited. And the urge to yawn was increased when people were told they couldn’t. They also found, when using electrical stimulation(刺激), that they were able to increase people’s desire to yawn. These findings, they say, could be useful because it could help treat other conditions like Tourette’s, which involve the same area of the brain.

【推荐3】Picture a young Chinese woman in a field, dressed in traditional clothing, as she picks flowers to create makeup for her cheeks. Imagine the same person making a bamboo sofa, cooking soy sauce from scratch and cooking up all sorts of delicious dishes.

It may sound hard to believe, but such a person exists in modern China, and her name is Li Ziqi. On Dec 14, 2019 she won Person of the Year in the category of cultural influence awarded by China Newsweek.

With a fan base of more than 21 million people on Sina Weibo and 7 million followers on video-sharing site YouTube, Li has made a name for herself in a series of videos that show a pre-industrial Chinese way of life in rural Sichuan province. "I want to do my part to let more people know about Chinese culture," the vlogger told China.org.cn. "Much of the popularity of my videos can be attributed to the attraction of Chinese culture.'

Li seems to be a master of all kinds of skills - cooking, paining, designing and farming. She raises silkworms to sew a quilt for her grandmother and grows plants. Many videos show her picking seasonal ingredients from her own garden and cooking them up with her wood-fired wok (锅). A warm bowl of soup for the winter, a lighter plate of noodles for the summer, Li follows the seasons in her cooking, as China's traditional 24 solar terms also do, and makes food suitable for the particular climate.

“She told the stories of China's culture and that of China," the official Sina Weibo account of China Central Television noted. The success of Li Zigi also comes from her "passion for life, for her home and for her culture".

Indeed, Li's simple pleasures amaze people living in the hustle and bustle of big cities.

"In today's society, many feel stressed," she told the South China Morning Post. "When they watch my videos at the end of a busy day, I want them to relax and experience something nice, to take away some of their anxiety and stress."