【推荐1】Raising teenagers can be both difficult and rewarding(有回报的). They are becoming young adults. Almost all teenagers will have some behavioral outbursts(爆发) with their families during this period of life.     1     Here are some ideas that may create positive(积极的) experiences for teens and parents.

Have meals together. Mealtime is when we check in with each other.     2     Eating meals together offers a way for parents and kids to share what is on their minds. It brings families closer by creating trust and understanding to help guide children through the challenges of the teen years.

    3     As teens develop their own sense of independence, it gets harder to find time to talk. Talk in the car together, when doing dishes together, or any time you have a chance. Remember that no matter how big their problems seem, what most teens want is love and support. Help them connect with their families and communities. During these years, help teens learn that their words and actions mater.     4     Others may find connection through spiritual communities or from having more responsibilities at home. Connecting with families and communities also helps keep teens safe from riskier activity.

Find time to have fun together! What do you both enjoy? Playing chess? Going to the ballet? Volunteering in your community? Take time to have fun and enjoy each other’s company. No one wants the attention of people they love to be focused only on what not to do. This is true for teenagers, too.     5    

【推荐1】A starfish has five identical arms with a layer of “tube feet” beneath them. Have you ever wondered whether starfish have defined front and back ends—and if they have no heads at all? The answer, suggests new genetic（基因的）research, is the opposite. “It’s as if the starfish is completely missing a trunk,” said Laurent Formery at Stanford University. “And it’s best described as just a head crawling along the seafloor.”

Starfish belong to echinoderms with lines of symmetry（对称）radiating out from a center point, like spokes on a wheel. So the unusual animals have unique body plans（结构）arranged in five equal sections that greatly differ from the bodies of bilateral animals, which have left and right sides mirroring each other.

Starfish begin as fertilized eggs that hatch and become larvae（幼虫）that float in the ocean for weeks to months before settling on the ocean floor. There, they go through a process that transforms a bilateral body into a star shape. “This has been a mystery for centuries,” said Christopher Lowe at Stanford University.

Researchers used new methods of genetic sequencing to create an unprecedented 3D map to determine where genes were expressed as starfish developed and grew. They found that genetic features associated with the development of a head were detected all-over the starfish especially concentrated in the center of the star and the center of each “arm”. Meanwhile, gene expression for trunk sections was largely absent. This suggested that starfish “have the most dramatic example of decoupling of the head and the trunk regions that we are aware of today,” said Formery.

Studying groups like echinoderms could solve some of the most complex mysteries about the evolution of life on Earth. “People are generally not drawn to these animals, and yet they probably represent how much of life got started,” Lowe said. Understanding how animals like starfish have developed could also allow insights into the varied ways that different species remain healthy. Daniel Rokhsar at the University of California said, “If we explore unusual animals that are operating in unusual ways, that means we are broadening our perspective of biology. This is eventually going to help us solve both ecological and biomedical problems.”

【推荐3】Workers at the National Galleries of Scotland recently experienced quite a surprise after they X-rayed a painting by Vincent van Gogh. Hidden on the back of the painting Head of a Peasant Woman, which Van Gogh completed in 1885, was a self-portrait (自画像) of the Dutch painter. No one had ever found it.

The hidden self-portrait had been covered by glue and cardboard that had been attached to the back of the painting. “It was absolutely exciting,” Lesley Stevenson, the museum’s worker, said about the discovery. “We weren’t expecting much of the little painting when we performed the scans,” she said. But museum experts quickly changed their expectations when they looked at the X-rays. “We didn’t see much of the peasant woman, but we saw the lead white that Van Gogh used for his face showing up after the X-ray went through the cardboard,” she added.

Van Gogh painted Head of a Peasant Woman as part of a series of works focused on the working-class residents of Nuenen, a small farming community in the southern part of the Netherlands where he lived briefly in the 1880s. The woman in the painting is Gordina de Groot, a farm worker. She wears a white headpiece. In a letter that Van Gogh penned about the series in 1885 to Anton Kerssemakers, a friend, he described his excitement at his working-class subjects. “I’m working with great pleasure these days, for I would rather paint people than paint anything else,” he wrote.

Van Gogh also loved creating self-portraits, producing about 20 paintings of himself by the end of his life while he was living in Paris. Recreating his own image was a cheap way for him to practice portraiture as he didn’t have to spend money hiring models, according to a report.

Art historians at the National Galleries hope that the hidden self-portrait may help us understand the life of the artist. The museum is currently considering how to best remove the unwanted protective materials without harming the painting.

【推荐1】The freedom that most of us enjoyed as kids — the freedom to explore new places, to run around — no longer exists. For various reasons, today’s parents are too worried to let children have the kinds of experiences that most of us took for granted. Parents are afraid of strangers in the park, or of sacrificing their child’s future by letting them ‘waste’ an afternoon playing in the backyard instead of taking piano lessons.

The free-range parenting movement is a direct response to that fear. It tells parents that one of the best things they can do for their child is to get out of the way every once in a while. Free-range parenting argues that children grow happier, healthier and more adaptable, when they are given the freedom to play, create, fight, compromise, fail and figure things out for themselves.

The seeds of the free-range parenting movement were planted in 2008, when journalist Lenore Skenazy wrote a column for The New York Sun titled “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone”. Her son had been begging for the chance to ride the subway and bus back home alone, so Skenazy gave him a subway map, $20, a prepaid subway card and change for a phone call.

The kid made it home just fine. Better than fine, even. He was “jumping with delight”, wrote Skenazy. Yet the column was controversial, setting off a national conversation about parental responsibilities, child safety and where parents and the law should draw the line between childhood freedom and neglect.

Is free-range parenting really a safe and smart way to raise kids in the 21st century, or is it an extreme response to the rise of “helicopter” parents? Are we ready to let our children run freely in the streets or have we lost too much trust in our communities? And even if we want to give our kids more independence, will the law allow it?