Boys'schools are the perfect place to teach young men to express their emotions and involve them in activities such as art, dance and music．

    Far from the traditional image of a culture of aggressive masculinity(男子气概)，the absence of girls gives boys the chance to develop without pressure to be consistent to a stereotype(传统观念),a US study says．

    Boys at single-sex schools were said to be more likely to get involved in cultural and artistic activities that helped develop their abilities to express their emotions,rather than feeling they had to obey the “boy code” of hiding their emotions to be a “real man”.

    The findings of the study are against the received wisdom that boys do better when taught alongside girls．

    Tony Little，headmaster of Eton，warned that boys were being ignored by the British education system because it had become too focused on girls．He criticized teachers for failing to recognize that boys are actually more emotional than girls．

    The research argued that boys often perform badly in mixed schools because they become discouraged when their female peers do better earlier in speaking and reading skills．

    But in single-sex schools teachers can adjust lessons to boys' learning style，letting them move around the classroom and getting them to compete in teams to prevent boredom, wrote the study's author, Abigail James of the University of Virginia．

    Teachers could encourage boys to enjoy reading and writing with “boy-focused” approaches such as themes and characters that appeal to them．Because boys generally have sharper vision，learn best through touch, and are physically more active, they need to be given “hands-on” lessons where they are allowed to walk around.” Boys in mixed schools view classical music as feminine(女性的)and prefer the modern type in which violence and sexism are major themes.” James wrote.

    Single-sex education also made it less likely that boys would feel they had to give in to a stereotype that men should be “masterful and in charge” in relationships.“In mixed schools boys feel pressed to act like men before they understand themselves well enough to know what that means.” the study reported.

    The first day of the month of May is known as May Day. It is the time of year when warmer weather begins. People celebrate the coming of summer with customs that are expressions of joy and hope after a long winter. Today, May Day activities have been moved to the May Day holiday on the first Monday of the month. It is a public holiday when families take advantage of the time off to visit some of the UK's many attractions, including parks, zoos, historic buildings, ancient towns and villages and beautiful countryside.

    May Day celebrations have their origins in the Roman festival of Flora, the goddess of fruit and flowers, which marked the beginning of summer. People would decorate their houses and villages with leaves and flowers they picked at daybreak in the belief that the vegetation spirits would bring good luck. In the very early morning, young girls went into the fields and washed their faces with dew (露水). They believed this made them very beautiful for the following year.

    May Day was an important day in the Middle Ages and was a favorite holiday of many English villages. People of the time used to cut down young trees and stick them in the ground in the village to mark the arrival of summer. This is the origin of the maypole (五月柱). People danced around them in celebration of the end of winter. Maypoles were once common all over England and were kept from one year to the next. The tallest maypole is said to have been put up in London on the Strand in 1661. It stood more than 143 feet high and was cut down in 1717, when it was used by Newton to support a new reflecting telescope (反射式望远镜) invented by Dutch scientist Huygens.

    Perhaps no one knows the power of imagination better than Chinese writer Liu Cixin. Until four years ago, Liu worked full-time as a computer engineer at a power plant in Shanxi province. He only wrote science fiction in his spare time. But it was during this time that Liu's imagination took flight. He did what he might never have the chance to do in real life – wander in space, fight with aliens, and visit planets light-years away.

    But even with such a powerful imagination, Liu, 55, probably hadn't expected that he would become the first Asian to win the Hugo Award, science fiction's highest prize, in 2015. Perhaps neither did he think that former US president Barack Obama would read his novel The Three-Body Problem, nor that on Nov 9 in Washington DC, he would win the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. It's the first time a Chinese writer has ever won the award.

    In his acceptance speech, Liu said that he owed his imagination to Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), a famous UK sci-fi author. He said that reading Clarke's 1968 classic novel 2001: A Space Odyssey in the early 1980s had a great effect on him.

    “My mind opened up like never before. I felt like a narrow river finally seeing the sea,” Liu said. “That night, in my eyes, the starry sky was completely different from the past. For the first time in my life, I was awed (使……敬畏) by the mystery of the universe.”

    But no matter how far away Liu's imagination takes him, somehow his novels always stay rational.

    In The Three-Body Problem, for example, Liu tells a tale of aliens invading Earth. But unlike other alien stories, Liu talks more about relationships between civilizations(文明), rules of survival, and the meanings of life. And in The Wandering Earth, Liu looks ahead to the day when our solar system comes to an end and humans have to look for a new place to live. However, all his visions and solutions are based on “hard science”. Liu's works aren't simply daydreams.

    When you think of a jungle adventure, what comes to mind? Are they gorgeous birds flying through the air or monkeys jumping through the forest? Do you think of plants? Probably not. After all, plants aren't the most exciting living things in the world. They just sit there and absorb water and nutrients from the soil and the sun. But actually there are also some plants that eat insects and even small animals from time to time. We call these unusual things carnivorous(食肉性) plants. Although most carnivorous plants eat small insects, larger carnivorous plants in some hot and wet areas have been known to capture rats, birds, and frogs.

    One carnivorous plant many people are familiar with is the Venus flytrap. Its unique “jaws” will function when flies and other small insects touch it. Once its jaws close on its victim, it produces a chemical substance that breaks down the insect and absorbs the insect's nutrients.

    There are several other examples of carnivorous plants. For example, some plants can catch insects with their leaves, which are like a tall narrow wineglass, while some trap their victims with sticky tentacles(触手). And some growing in ponds and streams absorb their victims like underwater cleaners. Carnivorous plants tend to grow in areas where the soil is very thin and lacks necessary nutrients. These plants must find other sources for the nutrients they need.

    Trapping and eating insects allows these unique plants to survive. Unfortunately, human and environmental factors continue to threaten the limited environments where you can find wild carnivorous plants.

    Still for many people, the thought of a plant eating an animal seems very strange. In fact, more than one person has turned the idea into a scary story or movie. Carnivorous plants don't pose any danger to humans, though. Unless you're the size of a tiny insect, you don't have to worry about falling prey to a Venus flytrap.

My First Marathon

    A month before my first marathon, one of my ankles was injured and this meant not running for two weeks, leaving me only two weeks to train. Yet, I was determined to go ahead.

    I remember back to my 7th year in school. In my first P.E. class, the teacher required us to run laps and then hit a softball. I didn't do either well. He later informed me that I was “not athletic”.

    The idea that I was “not athletic” stuck with me for years. When I started running in my 30s, I realized running was a battle against myself, not about competition or whether or not I was athletic. It was all about the battle against my own body and mind. A test of wills!

    The night before my marathon, I dreamt that I couldn't even find the finish line. I woke up sweating and nervous, but ready to prove something to myself.

Shortly after crossing the start line, my shoe laces(鞋带) became untied. So I stopped to readjust. Not the start I wanted!

    At mile 3, I passed a sign: “GO FOR IT, RUNNERS!”

    By mile 17, I became out of breath and the once injured ankle hurt badly. Despite the pain, I stayed the course walking a bit and then running again.

    By mile 21, I was starving!

    As I approached mile 23, I could see my wife waving a sign. She is my biggest fan. She never minded the alarm clock sounding at 4 a.m. or questioned my expenses on running.

    I was one of the final runners to finish. But I finished! And I got a medal. In fact, I got the same medal as the one that the guy who came in first place had.

    Determined to be myself, move forward, free of shame and worldly labels(世俗标签), I can now call myself a “marathon winner”.

    This morning my family and I went to a friend's home to help her get things back in order. She was one of the unfortunate people whose home was recently destroyed by a tornado(龙卷风). One side of her home fell off and the roof was gone over a large part of the house. Torrential rain fell the rest of the night and all of the next day following the tornado, creating even more damage to her belongings. The home is a total loss. Still, there is much that is valuable, and our job today was to help her sort through the remain and find anything with actual value that she may want to take with her.

    My husband helped to move furniture and other things to the storeroom while our two younger children helped clean up the yard. My oldest daughter and her boyfriend helped as well, and my another daughter with me swept up all of the areas of debris, sorting it for things that are important. We worked systematically, clearing the main living space first, then moving on to the kitchen, laundry area, then the master bedroom.

    By the time we were done today, though there was no denying the home had met with disaster, we had gone far to restore order from the loss that had been there before.

    My thought in entering the day was that our friend, who had been having trouble sleeping, was being affected by that loss negatively. I hoped that if we could restore order, she would finally start to feel some sense of peace and her mind would quiet and allow her the much-needed rest she so deserves.

    She posted on Facebook just a little while ago that for the first time she was sleeping at night. For me, what a wonderful and deeply meaningful way to begin the New Year!