The most common use of intelligence test scores is to tell in advance degree of academic success. Such scores are used in some communities as bases for admitting able children to schools at ages younger than normal, and they are very generally used to determine admissions to schools beyond public secondary school. Another use common in elementary schools involves comparing such scores with performances in various subjects to find out children who are working below capacity.

The greatest problem in using intelligence tests for the purpose of prediction is that no dependable criterion of their accuracy exists. The ideal criteria would be objective and reliable achievement tests following instructions in each subject, but there are few such tests, especially at the college level. Studies have shown that correlations(相关性) between intelligence tests and achievement tests in various subjects through secondary school range roughly from 0.5 to 0.8. Such correlations are fairly high, but they do not suggest anywhere near complete agreement.

At the college level there are two major tests used as criteria of admission. By far the more important is the College Entrance Examination, constructed by the Educational Testing Service authorized by the College Entrance Examination Board. These tests are returned to the Educational Testing Service for scoring, and the results are then made available to the various colleges authorized by the students to receive them. The second test of this type is the American College Test, which operates in essentially the same fashion.

Both tests constitute(组成) measures of certain skills, abilities, and knowledge that have been found to be related to success in college. Their correlations with academic success are limited for three outstanding reasons. First, measures of achievement in college are themselves perhaps no more reliable than those in elementary and secondary schools. Second, intellectual factors do not alone determine academic success, especially at the college level. Many students drop out of schools because they are inadequately motivated or because they dislike the instructional programme. Third, correlations are lowered because the use of such tests for denying admission to some students means that the range of scores for those admitted is restricted, and such restrictions tend to reduce correlations.

For many students, preparing for an exam involves last-minute efforts of intense cramming(死记硬背), but getting ready for an exam is not all about studying.

There are other important things a student can do to ensure his success on an exam, such as maintaining a positive state-of-mind and good physical health. Just as an athlete prepares for a game or a race with a regimen of mental and physical exercises, a student has to do everything he can to be ready for an exam. Here are a few things you absolutely have to do when preparing for an exam.

A few days before the exam, you want to complete all of the main reading assignments for your course and make notes for yourself. That means reading lecture notes, revising past assignments, and books that are relevant to the upcoming examination. By doing this, you will be able to understand the major concepts in the course that you have to understand to pass your exam. Moreover, revising course notes helps you to understand what has been taught, which places you in a better position to answer any question you might come across. Should you come across a concept that you do not understand, approach your instructor or fellow students, and ask them for assistance. Ask them to help you understand the concepts so that if they come up in the exam, you will not struggle to answer them.

Knowing the key concepts of this course, the next step is to develop a realistic study timetable. Coming up with a schedule you can stick to is one of the best exam preparation approaches you can use. With a realistic schedule, you know how much time you will spend reading up on a course or a concept. A timetable arranged around eight hours of continuous studying, for instance, is not realistic. Very few students are capable of concentrating for long durations, and even fewer are capable of internalizing information gathered during long study sessions, especially if they use digital technology in their studies.

While the majority of study advice guides focus on how to prepare mentally for an exam, getting the rest of your body into the mood is equally important. Physical and mental readiness will give you the extra energy you need to take a long test. One great way to prepare your body for an exam is by listening to music. You can listen to your favorite songs while showering or when commuting to the exam location. Scientific studies show that music improves recall and memory encoding by binding information with auditory input.

One of the tips before an exam students often ignore is wearing the appropriate clothes. While choosing what to wear on exam day, think about the weather. You’re most likely going to be seated for a couple of hours during the exam. During this time, you shouldn’t have to put up with uncomfortable temperatures occasioned by the clothes you wear. The right clothing safeguards against distractions, allowing you to concentrate fully on the job at hand.

Feeling extreme loneliness can increase an older person’s risk of premature (过早的)death by 14 percent, according to research by John Cacioppo, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.

Cacioppo and his colleagues’ work shows that the impact of loneliness on premature death is nearly as strong as the impact of disadvantaged socioeconomic status, which they found increases the chances of dying early by 19 percent. A 2010 meta﹣analysis showed that loneliness has twice as much impact on early death as obesity does, he said.

The researchers looked at dramatic differences in the rate of decline in physical and mental health as people aged. Cacioppo and his colleagues have examined the role of satisfying relationships on older people to develop their resilience ([rɪˈzɪliəns] 快速恢复的能力；适应力), the ability to feel better quickly after something unpleasant, and grow from stresses in life.

The consequences for health are dramatic, as feeling isolated or separated from others can disturb sleep, elevate blood pressure, increase morning rises in the stress hormone cortisol ([‘kɔ:tɪsɒl] 皮质醇), change the gene expression in immune cells, increase depression and lower overall subjective well﹣being, Cacioppo pointed out in a talk, “ Rewarding Social Connections Promote Successful Aging.”

Cacioppo, one of the nation’s leading experts on loneliness, said older people can avoid the consequences of loneliness by staying in touch with former co﹣workers, taking part in family traditions, and sharing good times with family and friends ﹣ all of which give older adults a chance to connect with others about whom they care and who care about them.

”Retiring to Florida to live in a warmer climate among strangers isn’t necessarily a good idea if it means you are disconnected from the people who mean much to you,” said Cacioppo. Population changes make understanding the role of loneliness and health all the more important,he explained. “People have to think about how to protect themselves from depression, low subjective well﹣being and early death. “

Although some people are happy to be alone, most people develop from social situations in which they provide mutual support and establish a strong bond. Evolution encourages people to work together to survive and accordingly most people enjoy companionship compared to be alone.

It is not solitude (独处)or physical isolation itself, but rather the subjective sense of isolation that Cacioppo’s work shows to be so destructive. Older people living alone are not necessarily lonely if they remain actively engaged in social life and enjoy the company of those around them. Some aspects of aging, such as blindness and loss of hearing, however, place people at special risk of becoming isolated and lonely, he said.

Cutting global warming pollution would not only make the planet healthier, it would make people healthier too, new research suggests.

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions could save millions of lives, mostly by reducing preventable deaths from heart and lung diseases, according to studies released Wednesday and published in a special issue of The Lancet British medical journal.

“Relying on fossil fuels leads to unhealthy lifestyles, increasing our chances of getting sick and in some cases takes years from our lives,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a telecast briefing from her home state of Kansas. “As greenhouse gas emissions go down, so do deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. This is not a small effect.”

“Instead of looking at the health ills caused by future global warming, as past studies have done, this research looks at the immediate benefits of doing something about the problem,” said Linda Birnbaum, director of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Some possible benefits seemed highly speculative, the researchers confirmed, based on people driving less and walking and cycling more. Other proposals studied were more concrete and achievable, such as eliminating cook stoves that burn dung, charcoal and other polluting fuels in the developing world.

“And cutting carbon dioxide emissions also makes the air cleaner, reducing lung damage for millions of people,” doctors said.

“Here are ways you can attack major health problems at the same time as dealing with climate change,” said lead author Dr. Paul Wilkinson, an environmental epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Wilkinson said the individual studies came up with numbers of premature deaths prevented or extra years of life added for certain locales.

For example, switching to low-polluting cars in London and Delhi, India, would save 160 lost years of life in London and nearly 1,700 in Delhi for every million residents, one study found. But if people also drove less and walked or biked more, those extra saved years would soar to more than 7, 300 years in London and 12,500 years in Delhi because of less heart disease.

Measurement done right can transform your organization. It can not only show you where you are now, but can get you to wherever you want to go. Measurement is important to high performance, improvement, and, ultimately, success in business, or in any other area of human effort. Measuring what matters is more important than most things we do. Here are 5 ideas for how to become more conscious of what you can stop doing, in order to make the time for performance measurement.

1. Stop reporting measures that no one uses. Be daring—stop reporting what you know isn’t being used, and if anyone notices, use it as an opportunity to start a conversation about how to decide what is worth measuring and reporting.

2. Reduce your time in meetings and the number of meetings you attend. Meetings always take longer than they need to. The big time wasters are tangents, people arriving late and violent agreements that mistakenly sound like useful debates. Start on time, finish early and diplomatically manage the discussion. Reduce and Agree only to meetings that have a clear purpose that is aligned to your role and responsibilities. Don’t go to meetings out of obligation or interest alone.

3. Rank your main concerns and drop the bottom 10. List your tasks, both what you are doing and what you should be doing, and rank them in order of importance. Simply stop doing the bottom 10—they are likely to have consequences far less than failing to measure what matters. Design your weekly schedule to make time for measurement. Set a regular time in your diary that you block out for measurement related activities, and then put the remainder of your tasks around that. Put the big rocks (the important stuff) in first and you’ll fit more of the smaller rocks in anyway.

4.Bring up measurement in conversations and existing meetings. Don’t wait for measurement time. Use natural conversations that have even minor importance to performance and results as an opportunity to talk about measures that matter. Set yourself progress goals for choosing, creating and using measures, and reward yourself when you achieve them. You can get others to hold you accountable. Agree progress goals with your manager or colleagues or customers for choosing, creating and using measures. Set regular check in time with them to pat you on the back or face the music.

5.Save time by stopping when it’s good enough. Stop over processing whatever you do, and get clear about the point at which you’ve done what will work, and don’t waste time.

Problem: On the scale of problems, “pictures of food on the Internet” is firmly first-world. And that is almost certainly a too-generous definition of “problem.” When it comes to photographing and putting your dinner on line, I say live and let live, you know? Maybe your salad was particularly inviting and pleasing that night, and I, too, have spent many an hour clicking “random” on Smitten Kitchen and salivating（流口水）.

But I assume if you’re making the effort to arrange your food artfully and preserve its memory in a digital archive, you must... like food. And want it to taste good. A recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology suggests that spending time focusing on images of food makes the food itself less satisfying.

Methodology: The researchers assumed that imagining enjoying something might lead to satiation -- the feeling that makes the second piece of cake taste not-quite-as-good as the first. To test this, they had some people participate in two experiments that they were told were separate -- one in which they rated how appetizing different photos of food looked, and one in which they ate some peanuts and rated how much they enjoyed them.

A separate group of people did the same experiment again, but in the photo-rating portion, some were asked to rate how appetizing the food was or to choose a preference between two foods, and some were asked to rate the brightness of the photo itself.

Results: The more photos of food people looked at, the less they enjoyed the peanuts -- if they were looking at photos of salty food. People who looked carefully at images of sweets enjoyed the peanuts more, suggesting that imagination causes satiation only if you’re imagining a similar food. In the second experiment, participants who focused on the brightness of the photos were able to enjoy the peanuts more than those who were thinking about the deliciousness of foods while they looked at the images.

Implications: You’ll probably enjoy your food more if you don’t take a picture of it, or scroll through images of cookies at work and then eat one when you get home. This also has potential implications for advertisers, who may unknowingly be giving away satiation for free when they show images of chicken wings or whatever in front of us all day long. But luckily the study provides a hint: Try not to think about the food’s taste while you take a photo -- just focus on your composition.

Imagine living in a country torn by war. Or maybe you live in a place where there are few jobs and little chance to earn a living. Your family decides to move — not to another town, but to another country. You and your family have become immigrants. People are called immigrants when they move to a foreign country to make their homes.

People become immigrants for many reasons. The most common one is economic opportunities. Most immigrants are attracted to other countries by the promise of jobs, farmland, or business opportunities.

Other people become immigrants in order to get away from mistreatment or natural disasters. They are refugees (难民). Some refugees move to avoid wars and political unrest. Others are seeking freedom to express their religious views. Still others are uprooted by disasters, such as terrible flooding or drought.

Some people have become immigrants against their will. Captured in Africa, shipped to foreign lands and forced to work as slaves, many early African immigrants to North and South America came in chains.

Except for Native Americans, all people came to the United States from someplace else. For nearly 500 years, immigrants have landed on America’s shores seeking a better life. Throughout American history, immigrants often worked low-paying, dangerous jobs that other people refused to do.

Immigrants from around the world helped shape American life. Many immigrants absorbed the customs and language common to most Americans. They also brought their own traditions, including music and foods. Over time, many of these traditions have become part of American life.

The first European immigrants to America hoped to colonize (使成为殖民地) new lands. By the mid-1500s, Spaniards had ventured into Florida, California, and the American Southwest. French immigrants arrived in the early 1600s and built their first colony in Canada. The English also arrived in the early 1600s. They established 13 colonies along America’s Atlantic Coast.

In the 1700s, England became the major power in colonial North America. But many European immigrants came to live in the English colonies. They included people from Sweden, Holland, Germany, Scotland, and Ireland.

Immigrants still come to the United States seeking freedom and economic opportunities. Most new immigrants no longer come from Europe. They come mainly from Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Asia.

Today, the U. S. government limits the number of immigrants into the country each year. People who sneak illegally into the United States are called illegal immigrants, who, if caught, would be sent back to their home countries.

Sons who have fond childhood memories of their fathers are more likely to be emotionally stable in the face of day-to-day stresses, according to psychologists who studied hundreds of adults of all ages.

“As our study shows, fathers do play a unique and important role in the mental health of their children much later in life,” Psychology professor Melanie Mallers of California State University said.

For this study, 912 adult men and women, who were between 25 and 74 years old, completed short daily telephone interviews about that day’s experiences over an eight-day period. The interviews focused on the participants’ psychological and emotional distress (i.e., whether they were depressed, nervous, sad, etc.) and if they’d experienced any stressful events that day. In addition, the participants also reported on the quality of their childhood relationships with their mother and father.

People who reported they had a good mother-child relationship reported three percent less psychological distress compared to those who reported a poor relationship, according to Mallers.

Men who reported having a good relationship with their father during childhood were more likely to be less emotional when reacting to stressful events in their current daily lives than those who had a poor relationship, according to her findings.

Also, the quality of mother and father relationships was significantly associated with how many stressful events the participants confronted on a daily basis. In other words, if they had a poor childhood relationship with both parents, they reported more stressful incidents over the eight-day study when compared to those who had a good relationship with their parents.

Mallers theorized why healthy or unhealthy relationships may have an effect on how people handle stress as adults. “Perhaps having caring parents equips children with the experiences and skills necessary to more successfully navigate their relationships with other people throughout childhood and into adulthood.” she said.