【推荐1】Adulting is hard. While high school students are at the forefront of technological and learning skills, it’s often not until they leave home that they learn everyday life skills. Some believe that high schools should offer a common sense course in which students are taught how to pay bills, change a tire or cook. Now, one Kentucky school is offering an “adulting day” to teach such skills to students in their senior year.

A class at Bullitt Central High School in Shepherdsville, Ky., traded in their algebra and literature classes for a day to learn some positive life skills, according to Wave 3 News.

“I think that the idea occurred to me, originally, when I saw a Facebook post that parents passed around saying they needed a class in high school on taxes and cooking, ” Christy Hardin, director of the BCHS Family Resource & Youth Services Center, told Wave 3. “Our kids can get that, but they have to choose it. And “Wednesday” was a day they could pick and choose pieces they didn’t feel like they had gotten so far.”

Members of the community helped provide the lessons for the students one on one, including local police who taught them how to interact with officers during traffic stops, a speaker who explained how to decipher the difference between homesickness and depression, and others who discussed how to use credit cards, how to cook in a dorm room and how to change a tire.

While many people on Facebook applauded the idea, with some arguing, “This should be taught in every high school,” others wondered what became of home economics.

Now known as Family and Consumer Sciences, these courses teach students how to cook, sew and budget, along with other skills. In many districts, however, the classes are electives and students do not always choose to take them.

“About time this came back, it was called Home Economics,” one woman wrote. “In today’s diverse make up of families it would be a welcome addition.”

Another shared, “We had home economics that taught us to cook and learned how to sew. We also had business math that taught us banking and finances. Why in the world is that not taught today? I mean, a special day called adulting to teach kids this stuff? Should be a required class credit.”

【推荐3】Until the 1980s, the American homeless population comprised mainly older males. Today, homelessness strikes much younger part of society. In fact, a 25-city survey by the US Conference of Mayors in 1987 found that families with children make up the fastest growing part of the homeless population. Many homeless children gather in inner cities; this transient (变化无常的) and frequently frightened student population creates additional problems — both legal and educational—for already overburdened urban school administrators and teachers.

Estimates of the number of homeless Americans range from 350,000 to three million. Likewise, estimates of the number of homeless school children vary radically. A US Department of Education report, based on state estimates, states that there are 220,000 homeless school-age children, about a third of whom do not attend school on a regular basis, but the National Coalition for the Homeless estimates that there are at least two times as many homeless children, and that less than half of them attend school regularly.

One part of the homeless population that is particularly difficult to count consists of the “throwaway” youths who have been cast out of their homes. The Elementary School Center in New York City estimates that there are 1.5 million of them, many of whom are not counted as children because they do not stay in family shelters and tend to live by themselves on the streets.

Federal law, the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, includes a section that addresses the educational needs of homeless children. The educational provisions of the McKinney Act are based on the belief that all homeless children have the right to a free, appropriate education.

【推荐1】In partnership with the Anchorage School District, Youth Summit Awards, an evening event honouring kids for amazing contributions within their community, focuses on good deeds, kindness, community involvement, friendship in the classroom or just kids doing something awesome in their neighborhood or school that makes our area a better place. There will be a red carpet style ceremony where each honoree will receive a plaque (纪念匾)with their name on the front. READ MORE

【推荐3】Artificial intelligence （Al） could soon help screen for Alzheimer's （阿尔茨海默症）disease by analyzing writing. A team from IBM and Pfizer says it has trained Al models to spot early signs of the illness by looking at language patterns in word usage.

Other researchers have already trained various models to look for signs of cognitive impairments （认知损伤）by using different types of data, such as brain scans and clinical test results. But the latest work stands out because it used historical information from the Framingham Heart Study, which has been tracking the health of more than 14,000 people from three generations since 1948. If the new models' ability to pick up trends in such data holds up in forward-looking studies of bigger and more diverse populations, researchers say they could predict the development of Alzheimer's disease a number of years before symptoms become severe enough for typical diagnostic methods to pick up. And such a screening tool would not require invasive （入侵性的）tests or scans.

Researchers praise the study as a solid contribution to the field that might draw more attention and resources to Al detection of Alzheimer's disease. It's one of the very few works that analyze the big-scale, real-life data that was collected over a very long period of time.

The new models might have been more accurate if it could have contained handwriting. This ability could provide additional clues. Using Al speech analysis to diagnose Alzheimer's disease is a growing area of research, and other systems have focused on detecting changes in audio samples. These contain clues such as speech pauses, which are not found in writing.

Whether written or spoken, language samples offer a relatively noninvasive source of information for monitoring peoples, cognitive health, compared with brain scans and other laboratory tests. Collecting such language data could be done cheaply and remotely—though doing so would still require strict informed permission and private information safeguards for the individuals creating the samples. This is especially true because some people may not want to even know how likely they are to develop Alzheimer's disease.

【推荐3】During his sophomore (大学二年级) year, Ben took a few business classes. They got his head spinning with ideas to start his own business. He started by thinking about things he liked. First, it was clothing, then coffee. He thought about opening up a coffee shop. But both ideas seemed too hard and costly.

Some might give up right there and keep going about their regular life. But Ben is different. He kept thinking and came up with the idea of selling his own brand of coffee. He felt like there was potential to do this without too much money or risk. He didn’t give up. So he took to the Internet and started doing research. He eventually found a coffee bean supplier. He had to learn about all of the legalities (法律事务) of starting a business. It all seemed daunting but he stuck to it.

After setting up his business and starting to order coffee, he began testing different versions with his friends and family. He got feedback and improved his product. He appropriately named his company Clouds Coffee Company. He had a little bit of savings from his birthdays but that was far away from starting a business. So, he traded with an advertising designer to help him with his naming, logo, product pictures, photography, and website design. In return, he would supply him with coffee in exchange for his design talent!

Ben received great support from his tutor, Clyde Rucker, a very successful businessman and the best friend of his grandparents. Many others in the community supported Ben in his earliest days, trying to help him succeed at such a young age. They were inspired by his activeness and energy. And his good coffee!

Ben Cloud is a fantastic example of a young person struggling to become the best version of himself.