I'd always dreamed of exploring Africa, ever since I read my first Tarzan (《人猿泰山》)comic as a child. Finally, in 2004, to celebrate my 60th birthday, I went to Tanzania to experience a safari （东非游猎）and climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. Seated next to me on the flight was Tanzania's minister of water and wildlife development. We talked for thousands of miles, and he arranged me to visit a school. When I toured the school, I was shocked. The leaky (漏的) roofs turned the dirt floors into mud during the rainy season, and the walls couldn't keep out the heat, cold or bugs (小昆虫). The school was in need of all material goods, but the kids possessed great human spirit.

    It broke my heart that these children had to struggle to survive, so I asked the headmaster what it would cost to feed them. As little as 20 cents per child per day, he told me. Immediately I got home, I founded Kids of Kilimanjaro. Since then we've grown to provide hot lunches for nearly 13,000 schoolchildren every day. The free lunch program has eased a major problem the youngsters face.

    I know a good education could really make a difference in these children's lives. My parents always stressed the importance of education. I paid my own way through college in Tokyo by teaching English to students and businesspeople. After attending university I moved to San Francisco, when I was 25 years old. In 1978 I realized my American dream when I founded my own company. My success all started with a good education.

    It's amazing that something as simple as a nutritious lunch can change and enrich so many lives. Giving young people a better, healthier life can inspire them to go all the way through college and lead a movement that transforms their country.

    Internet Security Awareness

    MS-ISAC

    “Kids Safe Online”

    2017 Virginia Poster Contest(比赛)

    Official Rules

    Contestants

    The contest is open to all Virginia public, private Kindergarteners -12 in the United States, District of Columbia and the U.S. Territories (领土).

    Judging Criteria

    Posters will be judged on the following criteria:

    Clear message conveyed by the text and artwork

    Creativity, originality and artistic quality

    Visual clarity - easily read

    Bright and colorful

    Must not use published materials.

    Winners

    Virginia will select the top 5 winning posters from each grade group (K-5, 6-8, 9-12) and send them to the National Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) Internet Security Awareness Poster Contest. The Virginia winners will receive a certificate of appreciation. MS- ISAC will select four winners in each grade and award a prize. These winners will have the honor of having their artwork made into a poster calendar which will be handed out throughout the country and may also be used in campaigns to raise awareness among children of all ages about the Internet.

    Posters will not be returned!

    Deadline

    All posters must be received by midnight, Jan. 6, 2017.

    Poster should be mailed to:

    Kids Safe Online Poster Contest Virginia Information Technology Agency Commonwealth Security & Risk Management

    11751 Meadowville Lane Chester, VA 23836

    Electronic posters can be sent to: CommonwealthSecurity@virginia.gov

    Contest Timeline

    Now through Jan. 6, 2017

    Students create their posters and the school can choose up to 15 posters to send to VITA by midnight January 6, 2017.

    No Later than Jan. 27, 2017

    Virginia posters will be judged and the top 15 posters will be sent to MS-ISAC for national judging.

    Jan. 30 to March 3, 2017,

    MS-ISAC will perform national judging. Winners will be declared no later than March 24, 2017

    My students entered the art room with their usual eagerness to see what they would be learning in today's class. Little did they know they were going to be students for a new teaching method that is spreading the nation.

    I often use videos as previews and supplements (补充) to our art lessons providing students with a variety of artists showing their skills in real-life situations outside the classroom. Finding a new painting technique called glue batik(胶水蜡染),  I thought of something new I hadn't tried before!  How awesome would it be to learn a new technique together with artists? The lesson was planned, presented to the students without any introduction or set objectives. I also asked the students to watch and pause the video as often as they needed to.

    They watched as the artist explained and showed her skills, taking notes on her steps and results. After the video, they shared what they felt the artist's objectives were, her end result using art vocabulary as well as the steps they would need to know to present their own examples. Then they began creating their works using the glue batik technique.

    Surfing the Internet a couple of weeks later, I found that the teaching method I used sounded very familiar to a new movement in education called flipped teaching, which was developed by Jonathan Bergmann. He asked his students to watch video lectures at home and do exercises (homework) in class under supervision (监督). He found that grades went up and he also found time for other types of activities, which Bergmann states are more important than the videos.

    Back to my art class, the students were learning to get ideas, make predictions, and explain reasoning to their classmates. Together they compared, asked questions and made discoveries as they presented the technique.

    After retirement, Michael Kennedy could have chosen to take walks around his seaside home. Instead, the former mechanical engineer engaged himself in the toughest task of his life - keeping the thundering waves of the Norfolk coast.

    The 73-year-old has spent the past 14 years building his own sea wall at Hunstanton, piling up rocks picked from the sandy beach to slow the erosion （侵蚀）of the soft limestone （石灰岩）and chalk cliffs. It's estimated that Michael has shifted 200 tons of stone in the last 14 years.

    “It's a real labour of love because I come down here whatever the weather, in spring, summer, autumn and winter,” said the divorced father of two. “It keeps me fit and I love it.”

    Mr Kennedy moved to the area after retiring from the London Underground. Nicknamed Fred Flintstone by locals, he tries to move at least 40 pounds of rocks in two-hour sessions which he finishes by 2 pm.

    Everything he collects is placed into piles at the foot of the cliffs. Larger rocks go at the bottom to provide the main line of defence and smaller ones are placed at the top. He also picks up rubbish and prides himself on having created a spotless, stone-free sandy beach for holidaymakers to enjoy.

    The work goes on six days a week. Saturdays are his day off so that the Chelsea “fanatic” can watch football and other sports. However, there are signs that he is becoming a victim of his own success, as the number of stones has dwindled significantly in recent months.

    “It's confusing, Mr Kennedy said. “Usually every year the stones just come in with the sea but this year we haven't had any.” He added, “I hope to still be doing it when I'm 100 but perhaps just four days a week instead of six.”

    Town mayor Peter Mallam said Mr Kennedy had become “quite a local legend”. “It's fascinating. Everyone knows of the old guy who collects the stones. He's done a sterling effort.”

    Even plant can run a fever, especially when they're under attack by insects or disease. But unlike human, plants can have their temperature taken from 3,000 feet away straight up. A decade ago, adopting the infrared（红外线） scanning technology developed for military purposes and other satellites, physicist Stephen Paley came up with a quick way to take the temperature of crops to determine which ones are under stress. The goal was to let farmers precisely（精确的） target pesticide（杀虫剂） spraying rather than rain poison on a whole field, which always includes plants that don't have pest problems.

    Even better, Paley's Remote Scanning Services Company could detect crop problems before they became visible to the eye. Fixed on a plane flown at 3,000 feet at night, an infrared scanner measured the heat sent out by crops. The data were transformed into a color﹣coded map showing where plants were running "fevers". Farmers could then spot﹣spray, using 50 to 70 percent less pesticide that they otherwise would.

    The bad news is that Paley's company closed down in 1984, after only three years. Farmers resisted the new technology and long﹣term supporters were hard to find. But with the renewed concern about pesticides on produce and refinements（改进） in infrared scanning, Paley hopes to get back into operation. Agriculture experts have no doubt that the technology works. "This technique can be used on 75 percent of agricultural land in the United States," says George Oerther of Texas A&M, who recently retired from the Department of Agriculture, thinks remote infrared crop scanning could be adopted by the end of the decade. But only if Paley finds the financial support which he failed to obtain 10years ago.

    Does your older brother think he's cleverer than you? Well, he's probably right. According to a new research published in the journal Intelligence, the oldest children in families are likely to have the highest IQs and the youngest the lowest.

    A number of studies have suggested that IQ scores decline with birth order. In the most recent study, at Vrije University, Amsterdam, researchers looked at men and women whose IQ had been tested at the ages of 5, 12, and 18.

    The results, which show a trend for the oldest to score better than the youngest in each test, involved about 200,000 people. That showed that first-borns had a three-point IQ advantage over the second-born, who was a point ahead of the next in line.

    The order of birth can also affect personality, achievement, and career, with first-borns being more academically successful and more likely to win Nobel prizes. However, eldest children are less likely to be radical(不同凡响的) and pioneering. Charles Darwin, for example, was the fifth child of six.

    Exactly why there should be such differences is not clear, and there are a number of theories on environmental influences on the child.

    The so-called dilution(稀释法) theory suggests that as family resources, both emotional and physical, as well as economic, are limited, it follows that, as a result , as more children come along, the levels of parental attention and encouragement will drop. Another theory is that the intellectual environment in the family favors the first-born who has, at least for some time, the benefit of individual care and help.

    The theory which enjoys the most support is that the extra time and patience that the earlier-borned get from their parents, compared with those arriving later, gives them an advantage.