【推荐1】April 7^th is the World Health Day. To celebrate it and draw people’s attention to health, Class 17 has held a Health Corner. Here is a health tip from a student.

【推荐2】Travelling Economically

● Get a ride to travel destinations with friends or acquaintances (熟人). If people you know are driving to a location you would like to visit, take advantage of the opportunity to ask them for a lift. Offer to help with gas money or, if you don’t have any cash, offer a trade or service instead.     1    

● Practice safe hitchhiking to get around.    2     Ask each driver several questions before getting in the vehicle, including what their name is, where they are heading and why they are going there. Follow your gut instinct (直觉) and avoid getting into a car with anyone who gives you a bad feeling.

●    3    There are many ridesharing websites and apps that allow budget travellers to find a shared lift to their destination. These sites will also screen and identify the drivers, making the ridesharing experience safe and simple. Search for available rideshares in your area, which may vary in cost but will cost significantly less than travelling alone.

● Join a free hospitality (好客)-sharing community.     4    You will be able to chat with participating members living in the area you are travelling to and arrange accommodations before travelling. In addition to being able to sleep on someone’s couch or in their spare room, you may find someone to show you around the city.

● Camp at inexpensive campsites. Camping can be a budget-friendly activity if you find the right park or site.     5    Visit http://www.uscampgrounds.info/ for a comprehensive list of North American campgrounds, which indicates sites with a rate of $12 or less per night.

【推荐3】When teaching, always assume the worst! No, that’s not some world-weary call to pessimism, but actually a positive strategy for supporting students in the classroom. Consider the problems that can arise when you don’t do this, and instead take as your starting assumption that things are probably, basically okay:

Teacher: Did you get on all right with the homework questions?

Student: Er, yes…

Teacher: Are there any you want to go through?

Student: Er, no—it’s fine…

What’s going on here? The student clearly feels that “yes” is the expected answer to the first question, but having said that, they’re then more or less forced into answering “no” to the second. Any problems they might have experienced are buried, and consequently go unresolved.

A much better approach is to assume the worst, to the point of setting up failure as the starting point. Then, if necessary, the student can be in the happy position of bringing you good news, which gives the impression of placing them in a more powerful position. Let’s imagine that same exchange again:

Teacher: Those homework questions were hard. Did you manage any of them?

Student: Yes, I did the first one, but I couldn’t do any of the others.

Teacher: Okay—do you want to go through the others?

Student: Yes, please.

This time, we’ve made it easy for the student to admit their difficulties. There’s no pretense (借口) around everything being fine when it isn’t, and no shame in the student admitting to having problems, as that’s clearly the teacher’s starting assumption.

It takes no longer to frame things this way round, but makes it so much easier for the student to be honest. Paradoxically, it’s also much more positive in that the student is constantly exceeding the teacher’s expectations— “You managed question one? Well done! Now, let’s look at the others…”

Every counsellor knows that if they ask a client “Did you have a good week?”, they’re more likely to get a positive response, because it’s a leading question that doesn’t communicate a strong interest in hearing the truth. Instead, a more neutral question like “How was your week?” is much more likely to elicit an honest response.

The same applies in the classroom. We want to avoid fakery and being told what we want to hear. Instead, we have to probe for the problems, the difficulties, the things that make no sense to the student, and make it easy for them to tell us those things.

【推荐1】Ask yourself, “Why do you work so hard？What motivates you to do so?” Most of you may say a single word to answer both the questions: Family.

All of us inherit our physical features from our parents. However, when you start interacting with the outside world, you realize that they are not enough to ensure your success, not even your survival. It is the values passed on to you by your family such as patience, care, understanding and commitment that make your survival and growth possible.

You may or may not be aware, but your family was the first school you entered. “Survival of the fittest” is the golden rule in this world. In other words, “Let the unfit perish” is the motto. When you stepped into this world, you were unfit to survive on your own. From the first day you came into the world, you started learning about love, care and family relationships at home. For example, by observing your family members, you learned how family relationships work. As time went on, you matured and started taking note of other people outside your family and how your family members interacted with them. You also noticed how your family dealt with the ups and downs of life.

What you learned from your family becomes your value system and forms your perceptions and basis of actions. A person is known by his actions. It is your family that gave you an identity. Whenever you move from one place to another, you carry your family history with you. Have you ever noticed that your opinions always confirmed to the values you acquired from your family?

Every person’s relation to his family is similar to the earth’s relation to its environment, which acts as a protective layer. For a person, the importance of family is beyond calculation. The saying goes that you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. Spend your life showing those you love that they will always be family no matter what happens.

【推荐3】The Curiosity Detector was never fully sterilized before it landed on Mar. And there's been debate whether the rover drill might pollute certain subsurface areas thought to potentially give birth to life. But it turns out the detector may not need to drive somewhere to pollute that spot with Earth's micro-livings. Because if there are any tiny earth livings on the detector, the strong winds on Mars might be able to spread them around the Red Planet instead.

“Wind storms are very common on Mars. So you have one point of pollution, and given the proper conditions, you could spread whatever you were carrying there to distant places." Said Armando Azua-Bustos, a research scientist at the Center for Astrobiology at the Superior Council of Scientific Research in Spain.

Azua-Bustos is now more certain that such spread might be possible because of an experiment his team carried out in Chile's Atacama Desert-the conditions of which are greatly similar to the Mars'. There, his team placed containers along two paths cutting from the coast into the driest parts of the Atacama. One path was 30 miles long; the other 40 miles long. They waited for winds to deliver coastal dust to the containers. Then they grew whatever landed.

On both paths, they found amounts of bacteria species, which suggests that micro-livings are indeed able to fly over the driest and most sun-shined desert on Earth in just a few hours—and arrive unharmed. The details are in the journal Scientific Reports.

The researchers say wind could therefore be a way to easily pollute another planet with Earth micro-livings if spacecraft aren't sterilized—or a way for Martian life in once-fertile areas to give birth to others by lying on dust in the wind.

【推荐1】Digging out potato tubers (茎块) is one of the greatest rewards gardens have to offer. Children in particular are surprised at seeing these tubers that almost magically become chips, mash (泥) or baked potatoes.

Happily, potatoes are very easy to grow. Seed tubers are placed in good garden soil, ideally with some compost (堆肥) for every square meter, in a sunny spot, about 10cm deep at 30cm intervals in rows 60-70cm apart.

Seed tubers are offered as earliest and second earliest and maincrop. The second earliest and maincrops can be stored for winter use but earliest are usually consumed in summer.

Seasoned potato growers buy early seed potatoes in February and place them in a cool, reasonably light place and let them sprout (发芽). It takes six weeks for small sprouts to form.

Early potatoes are typically planted from middle March in the South, but are likely to emerge before the first season finishes in May. The shoots are frost-sensitive requiring protection on cod nights with either earth or newspapers.

Second early and maincrop potatoes are planted in middle April—the frost risk will be low, but not absent, by the time they emerge. As the stems (茎) grow, soil should be drawn around them until the leaves meet in the row in early summer. At this stage, the potato field is a series of ridges (脊，垄). The tubers form in the ridge, protected from light that turns them green. Covering with black plastic or a thick layer of compost is also accessible instead of ridging, but plastic is not sustainable and slugs (鼻涕虫) can multiply in compost.

Once the flowers are fully open, it is time to dig plants when the tubers are the size of a hen’s egg. They grow rapidly but gradually lose their juicy new potato flavour, so harvest freely.

【推荐2】Farmers in Italy’s famous Tuscany area are struggling to save grape and olive crops influenced by a heatwave and dry conditions. A lack of (缺乏) rainfall since spring has even influenced plants that traditionally grow well in hot and dry weather.

In San Casciano in Val di Pesa, near Florence, olive trees line the hillsides. But farmers say the dry soil is preventing the trees from producing the usual production of fruit.

Tuscany is famous around the world for its olive oil and wine from grapes. But growers in the area say dry, hot weather always has a great influence on the crops and harms (损害) production. But this year’s heat and lack of water happened during an important time, when the flowers were changing to fruit. Without water, many flowers fall to the ground before they can produce fruit. This year’s oil production could be cut by up to 60 percent.

Olive growers have decided to change some of their farming methods. They have used a new watering method to make up for the lack of rainfall and hot temperatures. The method works with a pipe placed under the trees to drop water little by little.

The influences of weather change have harmed production and plants, but they have also created new areas in Italy where crops can be grown. A few years ago, olive farms were mainly found in hot and dry areas such as Sicily. Now, areas such as Val d’Aosta in the far north of Italy — which is famous for its snow sport holiday places and mountains — can produce their own oil.

Climate change is also influencing wine crops in Tuscany. In Chianti, for example, September is normally the month for the yearly grape harvest (收获). But with continued high temperatures, many grapes are ripening(成熟) earlier than expected. Apart from the drop in grapes caused by the current heatwave, wine growers also have to deal with other serious weather events. An ice storm recently harmed 40 percent of grapes in the area.

【推荐3】High in the treetops, strange ferns(蕨类植物) hold a tree trunk. Below these fork-leaved ferns and closer to the centre of the ferns are disk-shaped, brown ferns. The ferns form a type of complex, interdependent society previously considered limited to animals, researcher reported in Ecology.

Kevin Burns, a biologist at Victoria University of Wellington was attracted by one species—the staghorn ferns while conducting fieldwork. “I realized they never occur alone,” says Burns. He compares the fern groups to an upside-down umbrella made of plants. Ferns with long, green strap fronds(带状蕨叶) appeared to direct rainwater to their centre, where disk-shaped, brown “nest” fronds live. That reminded Burns of eusocial(群居社会性的) insect groups, where different generations live together and divide labour and reproductive roles. Burns wondered if the ferns could be eusocial.

His team’s analysis of fronds revealed 40 percent couldn’t reproduce, and the members were mainly nest fronds. This suggests a reproductive division of labour. Tests on the fronds’ absorbency confirmed nest fronds take in more water. Previous research found networks of roots running widely, meaning nest fronds have the ability to satisfy strap fronds’ thirst. The fronds divide labour, much like ants. They also analysed genetic samples and found most groups consisted of genetically identical individuals. High degrees of genetic relatedness are also seen in eusocial insects.

Taken together, Burns thinks the features show ferns’ eusociality. Water and nutrient exchange is known in other plants. Though, the division of labour is a key feature setting staghorn ferns apart. A stressful life in treetops—far away from the soil—may have contributed to the ferns forming such a lifestyle by providing water and nutrient security, Burns says.

Scientists see benefits in broadening eusociality to include plants. “They’re some of the most flexible livings things,” biologist Karen Kapheim says. She thinks the ferns’ behaviour reasonable. “A received opinion is that plants are simpler organisms and they could be made light of(轻视). Science is revealing more about how plants communicate. Adding social behaviour fits in with this new understanding of plants.”