As children begin to head back to school, there are several things that you can do to make sure that your child stays healthy and performs at their peak potential during the school year.

    1). Make sure your child is up to date on their immunizations(免疫). The summer is a good time to schedule visits to the doctor's as your child is not in school, and the visit won't require that your child miss school days.

    2).Encourage proper nutrition. America faces childhood obesity(肥胖). This means that the percentage of overweight children is increasing each year, and this will place your child at risk of developing a variety of diseases when they are middle age or even young adults. You can start helping your child to become healthier by offering fruits and vegetables at home instead of calorie heavy potato chips and candy.

    3). Get your child involved in sports activities. Activities in high school such as track and cross-country are important for socialization for your child, as well as helping to improve their health. You can get your child interested in wholesome activities by discussing with them how you enjoyed similar activities in high school.

    4). Have the birds and the bees conversation with your child. Many children become sexually active in junior school and senior high school, and the sooner you discuss sex with your child the sooner they will be prepared. Tell your child that there is always the possibility of infecting a sexual disease when two people have sex; and discuss with your child the use of condoms. The sooner you start having this embarrassing situation the better.

    5). Know your child's friends. You can do this by inviting your child to bring their friends over to your house for a pizza night, or by chatting with them when they stop by your house. If you find your child's friend has a bad reputation, then you could consider introducing your child to a different network of people, such as through the girl/boy scouts. Forbidding your child from seeing a certain person may only lead them to rebel and become closer to that person.

    6). Discuss with your child the seriousness of drug use and abuse. Your child may not realize that using drugs can have serious consequences. Your child may get the false impression that drug use is his right. Explain to a child that saying no to drugs is their right, and that anybody offering them drugs is not their friend.

    7). Help your child to avoid a life long smoking addiction by discussing with them the consequences of smoking. The sad fact is that most smokers became addicted when they were in their teenage years, and are unable to quit for long periods of time and often die many years earlier due to their smoking habit which increases the risk of lung cancer, heart disease, and a variety of medical conditions. Even if you are a smoker yourself, you can discuss with your child about how damaging smoking can be on a person's health.

    8). Impress upon your child the importance of traffic rules. Tell them that it is OK to wear a seat belt in anyone's car, because it may save their life one day. If your child rides a bicycle or a skateboard, then discuss with them the importance of always wearing a helmet. As you child becomes qualified for driver's permit, you should discuss with them the importance of prevention from drinking and driving.

    9). Be cautious about signs of depression in childhood. A surprisingly large number of children may become depressed, and a small number of teenagers and children commit suicide(自杀) each year. Realize that any signs of unusual depressed mood, angry outbursts, suicidal comments, feelings of hopelessness, and loss of enjoyment of activities with friends may be signs of depression.

    Papa's jaw dropped when Mama told him that Sister had cheated on her final exams—not to succeed but to fail. “It's unbelievable!” he said. “Sister has always been so proud of her good grades!”

    “Yes, she has,” said Mama. “But it's not unbelievable. It just shows how badly she wanted off the swimming team.”

    “Wanted off the swimming team?” said Papa. “She never said anything about that to me.”

    “Of course she didn't,” said Mama. “She was afraid you'd blow your top. You already had her getting a swimming scholarship to college and winning gold medals at the Olympics. Can you imagine how much pressure she must have felt? For her, being on the team couldn't have been much fun.”

    “Oh, my god!” Papa said, clapping a hand to his forehead. “I've been so stupid! I just thought she'd want to be a champion swimmer because she's so good at it.”

    “It's like anything else, dear,” said Mama. “No matter how good at it you are, if it stops being fun, you won't want to do it anymore.”

    Papa put his head in his hands.

    “She must be really mad at me,” he mumbled. “Maybe I should say sorry to her.”

    Sister's footsteps could be heard on the stairs. She came into the kitchen and looked hopefully up at her parents.

    “Honey,” said Mama with a smile, “your papa and I have decided that there's no reason for you to be on the swimming team if you don't want to.”

    Sister's face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Yippee!” she cried.

    “And,” added Papa, “there's no need for any more drills. I'm sure you'll bring your grades back up all by yourself.”

    Sister ran to Papa and jumped into his arms. She gave him a big hug. “I'm going to go play cards with Lizzy!” she said. “See you later!”

    From the kitchen window, Mama and Papa watched their daughter run down the sunny road toward Lizzy's house.

    “It's good to see her happy again,” said Mama.

    “It sure is,” Papa agreed. “As for the swimming team, there's always next year.”

    “If?” Mama prompted him.

    “Oh, right,” said Papa. “If she wants to.”

    Mama smiled. “At least you're learning, dear,” she said. She kissed him.

    “Well, you know what they say,” Papa said. “Better late than never.”

    They may be teenagers, but 17-year-old Brittany Bull and 16-year-old Sesam Mngqengqiswa have grand ambitions(雄心) — to launch Africa's first private satellite (卫星) into space. They are part of a team of high school girls from Cape Town, South Africa, who have designed and built equipment for a satellite that will orbit over the earth's poles scanning Africa's surface.

    Once in space, the satellite will collect information on agriculture, and food security within the continent. Using the data/we can try to determine and predict (预测) the problems Africa will be facing in the future”, explains Bull, a student at Pelican Park High School.“Where our food is growing, where we can plant more trees and vegetation and also how we can monitor remote areas,” she says. “We have a lot of forest fires and floods but we don't always get out there in time.'' Information received twice a day will go towards disaster prevention.

    It's part of a project by South Africa's Meta Economic Development Organization (MEDO) working with Morehead State University in the US.

The girls (14 in total) are being trained by satellite engineers from Cape Peninsula University of Technology, in an effort to encourage more African women into STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics).

    Scheduled to launch in May 2017, if successful, it will make MEDO the first private company in Africa to build a satellite and send it into orbit.

    Mngqengqiswa comes from a single parent household. Her mother is a domestic worker. By becoming a space engineer or astronaut, the teenager hopes to make her mother proud. “Discovering space and seeing the Earth's atmosphere, it's not something many black Africans have been able to do, or get the opportunity to look at I want to see and experience these things for myself,” says Mngqengqiswa.

    Her team mate Bull agrees, “I want to show to fellow girls that we don't need to sit around or limit ourselves. Any career is possible-even aerospace.”

    In the near future, daily newspapers and monthly magazines will probably disappear. Electronic media（媒体） can provide the same information faster and cheaper. The Internet, together with laptops and mobile phones, makes it possible that almost everyone can at any time and in almost any place get some news for free or for few fees.

    You'll browse the computer newspapers or magazines just like turning on TV. An electronic voice will tell you stories about the latest events. You'll even get to choose the kind of voice you want to hear. Want more information on the brief story？ A simple touch makes the whole text appear.

    There are the predictions from the experts working on the newspapers of the future. Imagined as part of home media and entertainment systems, computer newspapers and magazines would unite printed and broadcast news, offering information and analyzing video images of news events.

    The continuing loss of readers will lead to a small number of advertisements in newspapers. It makes no sense to spend millions of dollars to print ads.

    With the development of technology, more and more electronic media have been created until now, but replacing the traditional newspapers and magazines has a long way to go, because the resistance to computer newspapers and magazines from journalism（新闻业） may be much stronger. Since it is such a cultural change, it may be not until the present journalists（新闻工作者）, who aren't used to it, die off that the newspaper industry is not considered as an industry any longer. Anyway, technology is making the traditional newspapers and magazines disappear gradually.

    Passenger pigeons (旅鸽) once flew over much of the United States in unbelievable numbers. Written accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries described flocks (群) so large that they darkened the sky for hours.

    It was calculated that when its population reached its highest point, there were more than 3 billion passenger pigeons—a number equal to 24 to 40 percent of the total bird population in the United States, making it perhaps the most abundant bird in the world. Even as late as 1870 when their numbers had already become smaller, a flock believed to be 1 mile wide and 320 miles (about 515 kilometers) long was seen near Cincinnati.

    Sadly the abundance of passenger pigeons may have been their undoing. Where the birds were most abundant, people believed there was an ever-lasting supply and killed them by the thousands.

    Commercial hunters attracted them to small clearings with grain waited until pigeons had settled to feed, then threw large nets over them, taking hundreds at a time. The birds were shipped to large cities and sold in restaurants.

    By the closing decades of the 19th century, the hardwood forests where passenger pigeons nested had been damaged by American's need for wood, which scattered (驱散) the flocks and forced the birds to go farther north, where cold temperatures and storms contributed to their decline. Soon the great flocks were gone, never to be seen again.

    In 1897, the state of Michigan passed a law prohibiting the killing of passenger pigeons but by then, no sizable flocks had been seen in the state for 10 years. The last confirmed wild pigeon in the United States was shot by a boy in Pike County, Ohio, in 1900. For a time, a few birds survived under human care. The last of them, known affectionately as Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914.

    Many people like traveling, but they cannot take their dogs wherever they go. Some people let their dogs stay alone at home while others ask someone else to take care of their pets. If you're leaving your beloved pet at home for a holiday, it can turn into a bad experience. Luckily, you don't have to worry about your dogs anymore because Rover can cover for you while you are on leave. Rover is the latest service to offer at home dog boarding. It's a good alternative (替代物) to boarding your dog at a dog boarding kennel (狗舍) or your neighbor's house.

    The way Rover works is sort of like Airbnb. Dog owners surf the Rover website or app for pet sitters (照看者), which can be organized by zip code (邮政编码) and available dates. Information of pet sitters is provided, complete with many reviews, specific services and rates. Now Rover has over 25,000 pet sitters in more than 5,000 US cities. And they're all experienced pet sitters.

    After finding someone that meets your needs, just send messages to the pet sitter to arrange a meeting. Then, like Rover says, all that is left to do is relax! Rover's pet sitters are encouraged to send text and picture information throughout the day, and if there's a medical emergency, the site will send a vet (兽医). Besides, don't worry about a pet sitter who fails to help you, because someone else will soon take his or her place.

    Happy doggie, happy travels—that sounds good to us. To learn more about Rover, click here.