An organization, Eye Care 4 Kids, is bringing much-needed eye care to poor kids. It provides free eye examinations for kids from poor families. Founded by Joseph Carbone in 2001, the organization has helped around 100,000 children in Utah and Nevada.

    Now, Cecil Swyers, a biomedical(生物医学的) engineer who was once a poor child himself, is bringing the charity's(慈善) services to poor students in Arizona, so that vision impairment(视力受损) doesn't stand in the way of their education.

    “Eye Care 4 Kids is bringing eye care and glasses to families that wouldn't have the means to pay for them,” said Mario Ventura from Isaac Elementary School District, the first school district in Arizona to receive its services.

    Good vision is important to a child's learning experience. According to a study, up to 80 percent of learning happens through sight for children between 6 and 18 years old. Without proper eye care, it's difficult for students to learn better and succeed.

    Swyers is hoping that by bringing the organization to Arizona he'll help a lot more students. He teamed up with two other organizations to get doctors to volunteer their time with the group. Using an Eye Care 4 Kids mobile clinic, Swyers visited Alta E. Butler Elementary School and has already helped 40 students.

    The school was grateful to receive the eye care, especially since the services came to them. “It's great for us,” said Assistant Principal Cindy Alonso.

    Swyers is hoping to bring Eye Care 4 Kids' services to other schools in the state. He said that hopefully his work will have a positive effect on students' futures. “If we can help students while they're young, we can make a difference in their futures,” he said.

    Young children from poor families are more likely to consume junk food and fizzy drinks(汽水) than their richer companions. A study of 1,800 four- and five-year-olds found more than half of those from poor backgrounds drank at least one a week, compared to just four in ten oofy kids. They also drank less milk and consumed more fruit juice which is also linked to child obesity (肥胖) caused by high sugar intake(摄取量).

    The phenomenon also relates to children who spend more than two hours a day in front of a TV or playing computer games—whatever their social circumstances. A companion study also found children from poor families were more likely to eat chips, sweets and chocolate. Professor Kate Storey said, “when you are looking at that age group, and such a large percentage of very young kids in the study are consuming a large amount of soda(苏打汽水)，it is quite concerning. ”

    The researchers carried out the study by surveying the parents of their participants to find out their dietary habits. Professor Storey said, “If you are drinking a lot of soda and fruit juice, they can displace(取代)consumption of water and milk, which are important not just for ending thirst, but for developing healthy bones and teeth, and health and wellness in general.”

    Co-researcher Dr John Spence said, “Dietary behavior and intake patterns are influenced heavily by what happens in the first few years with children, and they maintain those patterns throughout childhood and into adolescence(青少年时期).” In addition to basic health education, this study identifies a need in how we are dealing with poverty and recognizing there is more to poverty than simply the number of dollars people have.

    Professor Storey said that shows how education can make a difference and lead to healthier eating habits, regardless of what is happening at home. “Many families live in places that might not be very healthy for them and, as a result, they make unhealthy food choices. You can start making a difference in different places. It calls for action in multiple settings, schools and communities, for example. That light-bulb moment can happen in a variety of places,” Professor Storey added.

Senses That Work Together

    When we think about how our senses work, we usually imagine them operating separately: you sniff a flower, and the smell is delivered uninterrupted from nose to brain. However, it's more complex than that. Most evidence for cross modal perception (知觉) comes from studies into sound and vision (视觉). But research that shows other senses crossing over is coming out all the time, and it seems that even sound and smell sometimes form an unlikely pairing.

    When New York researchers, Daniel Wesson and Donald Wilson, tried to find out the truth about a "mysterious” area of the brain called the olfactory tubercle, they had to deal with this fact. Originally, they only intended to measure how olfactory tubercle cells in mice responded to smell. But during testing, Wesson noticed that every time he put his coffee cup down, the mouse cells jumped in activity. In fact, the olfactory tubercle is well-placed to receive both smell and sound information from the outside world. Later they found that among separate cells, most responded to a smell but a significant number were also active when a sound was made. Some cells even behaved differently when smell and sound were presented together, by increasing or decreasing their activity.

    Of course, mice aren't people, so research team has been carrying out further experiments. They pulled together a group of people and gave them various drinks to smell. Participants were asked to sniff the drinks, and then match them to appropriate musical instruments and produce the notes at different levels. The results were interesting: piano was regularly paired with fruity fragrances; strong smells sounded like the instruments that are made of metal.

    Further research found that listening to different sounds can change your perceptions. Studying taste this time, the team ordered some special toffee (太妃糖) and put together “soundscapes” corresponding to bitterness and sweetness. Participants tasted similar pieces of toffee while listening to each soundscape, and found the toffee more bitter or sweeter, depending on which soundrack they were listening to.

    Studies like this are helping scientists correctly describe our understanding of the senses, and how the brain combines them with its advantage. The consequences are worth considering. Could we see musicians work together with chefs to produce sound-improved food and drink? Will you be ordering a coffee with a soundrack to bring out your favorite smell? Come to think of it, that could be one thing you hope coffee shop chains don't get round to.

    When you're on the go, your best friend and resource can be your phone. In the age of smart phones, apps are like guiding stars: They can point you in the right direction for a hotel, list expenses, send postcards, and much more. When used together, these apps can be the basic travel tool, placing a wealth of information at your fingertips no matter where you are on the planet. U.S. News Travel has picked the essential travel apps, known for their utility and reliability. Best of all, they cost absolutely nothing.

    Trip It

    Your Personal Travel Agent

    Be your own travel agent and plan every detail of your trip-- from car rental to accommodating restaurants-- with Trip It. You can make travel schedule by hand, or simply forward the email confirmations of your flight, rental car, train tickets, and hotels to plans.

Weather Free

    Your Go-To Meteorologist(气象学者)

    Stop trying to explain the weather forecast on the evening news (particularly when it's in a foreign language.) The Weather Free app informs you (in English) of the climate in various locations. It features the local weather, and other key factors that will inform your decision about what to wear before stepping outside.

    Goby

    Your Event Guru

    When you're in a foreign city, you sometimes look around and ask: Where are all the people? Goby has the answer. This app pinpoints the neighborhood hot spots (including museums, hotels, eateries, and more) in your neighborhood. But its true value comes in finding nearby events. You'll discover concerts, plays, and more right around the corner.

    I'm not so sure I like my friends any more. I used to like them — to be honest. We'd have lunch, talk on the phone or exchange e-mails, and they all seemed normal enough. But then came Facebook and I was introduced to a sad fact: many of my friends have dark sides that they had kept from me.

    Today my friends show off the more unpleasant aspects of their personalities via Facebook. No longer hidden, they're thrown in my face like TV commercials — unavoidable and endless advertisements for the worst of their personalities.

    Take Fred. If you were to have lunch with him, you'd find him warm, and down-to-earth. Read his Facebook and you realize he's an unbearable, food-obsessed bore. He'd pause to have a cup of coffee on his way to save a drowning man — and then write about it.

    Take Andy. You won't find a smarter CEO anywhere, but now he's a CEO without a company to lull. So he plays Mafia Wars on Facebook. He's doing well — level 731. Thanks to Facebook, I know he's playing about 18 hours a day. Andy, you've run four companies — and this is how you spend your downtime(业余时间)? What happened to golf? What happened to getting another job?

    Take Liz. She is positive that the H1N1 vaccine(甲流疫苗) will kill us all and that we should avoid it. And then comes Chris who likes to post at least 20 times a day on every website he can find, so I get to read his thoughts twice, once on Facebook and once on Twitter.

    In real life, I don't see these sides of people. Face to face, my friends show me their best. They're nice, smart people. But face to Facebook, my friends are like a blind date which goes horribly wrong.

    I'm left with a dilemma. Who is my real friend? Is it the Liz I have lunch with or the anti-vaccine lunatic(狂人)on Facebook? Is it the Fred I can grab a sandwich with or the Fred who weeps if he's at a party and the wine isn't up to his standards?

    The common cold is the world's most widespread illness, which is probably why there are more myths(神话) about it than any of the other illnesses.

    The most widespread mistake of all is that colds are caused by cold. They are not. They are caused by viruses passing on from person to person. You catch a cold by coming into contact, directly or indirectly, with someone who already has one. If cold causes colds, it would be reasonable to expect the Eskimos to suffer from them forever. But they do not. And in isolated Arctic regions explorers have reported being free from colds until coming into contact again with infected(感染的) people from the outside world by way of packages and mails dropped from airplanes.

    At the Common Cold Research Unit in England, volunteers took part in Experiments in which they gave themselves to the discomforts of being cold and wet for long stretches of time. After taking hot baths, they put on bathing suits, allowed themselves to be doused(浸入) with cold water, and then stood about dripping(滴干)wet in drafty(通风的) rooms. Some wore wet socks all day while others exercised in the rain until close to exhaustion. Not one of the volunteers came down with a cold unless a cold virus was actually dropped in his nose.

    If cold and wet have nothing to do with catching colds, why are they more frequent in the winter? In spite of the most painstaking research, no one has yet found the answer. One explanation offered by scientists is that people tend to stay together indoors more in cold weather than at other times, and this makes it easier for cold viruses to be passed on.

    No one has yet found a cure for the cold. There are drugs and pain suppressors such as aspirin, but all they do is to relieve the symptoms.