【推荐1】More students than ever before are taking a gap year (间隔年) before going to university. It used to be called the “year off” between school and university. The gap-year phenomenon originated (起源) with the months left over to Oxbridge applicants between entrance exams in November and the start of the next academic year.

This year, 25,310 students who have accepted places in higher education institutions have put off their entry until next year, according to statistics on university entrance provided by the University and College Admissions Service (UCAS).

That is a record 14.7% increase in the number of students taking a gap year. Tony Higgins from UCAS said that the statistics are good news for everyone in higher education. “Students who take a well-planned year out are more likely to be satisfied with, and complete, their chosen course. Students who take a gap year are often more mature and responsible.” he said.

But not everyone is happy. Owain James, the president of the National Union of Students (NUS), argued that the increase is evidence of student hardship—young people are being forced into earning money before finishing their education. “New students are now aware that they are likely to leave university up to £ 15,000 in debt. It is not surprising that more and more students are taking a gap year to earn money to support their study for the degree. NUS statistics show that over 40% of students are forced to work during term time and the figure increases to 90% during vacation periods,” he said.

【推荐2】Some Most Common Senior Year Mistakes

    1    You’d better find out how to avoid these common mistakes. Finding a balance between having fun and studying for your courses is a great way to start preparing for college, since you will be called upon to do this during your college years.

Here we’ve listed some top mistakes students make so that you can make sure you don’t make them.

Skipping Classes

Skipping classes could mean missing valuable information for the coming tests.     2     As is known to all, information you’ll need for your major (专业) in your college program may be covered during a high school lecture you miss.

Forgetting to Study

When you feel less motivated to study, remind yourself that every good grade gets you closer to finding a college that offers a great program in the major you want. Keep your eyes on the prize!

    3     To stay on top of your assignments, calculate how long you think something will take you, and then double it. That way you’ll have ample time to get your work done.

Daydreaming about Your Future Too Much

Your mind now might be wandering, thinking around about degrees, majors, possible careers, study abroad and many other things. These are all exciting future possibilities, but don’t forget the here and now.    4    

Failing to Use Available Resources

Teachers know about all the challenges you’re facing.     5    This help can be in the form of extra office hours, a review of topics covered, study guides, sample exams, or other tools to help you improve your grade. Take advantage of them.

【推荐3】When I was senior student, I couldn't understand my science teacher's instructions (指令) which upset me a lot. So when it comes to home schooling our daughters, my husband volunteered to teach them science. But at that time he was too busy, I had to teach them instead.

One morning, I noticed the sky was a beautiful blue, and the air was filled with the sweet smell of flowers, I decided the lessons would be taught outside.

I got the girls ready. We headed up into the forest, setting ourselves by a pond. My elder daughter Saoirse began catching frogs, while my younger daughter Ula looked at me, waiting to be instructed. I handed her a drawing board and the colored pencils. “We wait and see if something comes along. In the meantime, just draw what's around you.” I told her.

Just then a bird flew across the water, and settled in front of a fallen tree. I quickly told Ula, worried that she’d not seen the creature. But she had, and she began drawing it.

An hour later, she finished her picture and I found she drew the bird on her paper amazing well. But there was one other interesting fact about this drawing: she also drew me, sitting beside her.

Staring at this child's drawing of us watching a bird, I realized how I'd lived for 40 years, gathered 10 years of higher education, and never understood the basis of science before this moment. It is a sense of wonder: it isn't about correctly reciting words from textbooks. It is first about stepping outside and admiring the world around us.

From that day on, it was I not my husband that acted as the science teacher.

【推荐2】During the winter in the Southern Hemisphere, a blue point of light shines overhead. The brilliant point on the sky, which looks like a bright star, is actually two stars in close orbit — accompanied by the closest known black hole to Earth.

The newly discovered black hole is about 1,011 light-years from our solar system in the star system HR 6819. Published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics, the object is locked in an orbit with two visible stars. It is estimated about four times the mass of the sun and about 2,500 light-years closer than the next black hole. “It seems like it’s been hiding in plain sight,” says astronomer Kareem El-Badry, a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in binary star (双子星) systems but wasn’t involved with the study. “HR 6819 is such a bright star (system) that people have been studying it since the 80s, but it seems like it’s had some surprises.”

“If you find one that is very close to you, and you assume you’re not special, then they must be out there everywhere,” says lead study author Thomas Rivinius, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. Researchers have long estimated that the Milky Way is home to hundreds of millions of black holes, objects whose gravitational fields (引力场) are so strong, not even light can escape. But finding these dark objects has proven extremely difficult. Dozens of black holes in the galaxy have been spotted “feeding” on nearby clouds of gas — a process that sends out x-rays as the material moves around the edges of the black hole. But the majority of black holes in our galaxy cannot be seen, so the only way to find them is by observing their gravitational effects on surrounding objects.

In follow-up work, researchers led by study co-author Petr Hadrava aim to study the light given off by HR 6819 and understand the precise identity of the two close stars.

【推荐3】Recently I was visiting some websites when I came across a collection of strange beach photos where everyone had a cloth wall surrounding their little patch of sand. I had never seen anything like that before, and I was intrigued, so I started surfing the Internet to look for all sorts of phrases that might throw light on the mystery of Polish beach separators.

I found a site on Poland's affairs that covered this “ phenomenon” quite exactly. According to the site, beach separators have been part of Polish beach-going culture for a long time, but have recently been getting a lot of attention online, after foreign tourists started posting photos on social networks.

Beach separators vary in size according to the size of the group. You'll see tiny ones only surrounding the space around a single beach towel, and giant ones separating a large part of the beach. They aren't designed to protect their users away from prying eyes. It's no secret that strong winds are very common on the shores of the Baltic Sea, so they were originally meant to allow beach-goers to enjoy sunbathing without having their belongings blown away or sand blown in their faces.

However, in recent years, people have begun criticizing them. During the summer, beach separators are placed so close to each other that a person can hardly pass between them, let alone find a place to put their own beach towels. This creates a problem for foreign tourists unfamiliar with them, who just want a place to lie down on the sand. And thus they can easily create all kinds of conflicts due to lack of space. For example, some people leave the beach for hours but leave their separators in place to make sure that their space doesn't get occupied by someone else.

Though I have visited a fair number of seaside resorts across Europe, I hope that I will go to visit it one day.

【推荐1】Polar bears normally need sea ice to hunt seals, but an isolated (孤立的) group of polar bears living on the mountainous coast of southeast Greenland have figured out how to make a living, even though the sea ice there melts away early in the year.

These bears have found a way to supplement (补充) their limited sea ice supply by hunting on freshwater ice that comes from glaciers on land. The glacial ice falls off in pieces into fjords (峡湾), where the pieces get together into a floating platform that the polar bears use to catch seals, according to a report in the journal Science.

Climate change is making sea ice less and less. “Loss of sea ice is the primary threat to polar bears,” says Kristin Laidre of the University of Washington, lead author of the new study. But, she says, this new work suggests some bears might be able to deal with a decreased amount of sea ice - at least for a while - in places like Greenland where they can take advantage of floating glacier ice.

While local people have long known that bears live in southeast Greenland, it’s a remote, challenging environment that’s not frequented by humans. “It’s a coastline with huge mountain peaks, lots of winds, extreme conditions and plenty of fogs.” says Laidre, who has spent years working with colleagues to survey polar bears living on Greenland’s 1,800-mile-long east coast.

To see what they could find in southeast Greenland, the team had to take helicopters from the nearest settlement and fly for two hours in a straight line to the coast. “We arrived in these fjords, very isolated fjords, and there’s essentially no sea ice or very poor sea ice offshore,” says Laidre, explaining that the researchers expected to find few bears. “But there were a lot of bears in these fjords,” she says. “It was clearly just a unique habitat.”

The sea ice continues to exist in these fjords for only around a hundred days a year, she notes, meaning that bears don’t have much time to use it as a hunting ground.