Here is your best chance to travel around the UK in 2012: More than 200 B&Bs（bed & breakfast）across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are selected to offer you amazing services for your stay at their lowest prices! Don't miss it. Just collect the vouchers（活动券）in our B&B Daily printed from 01/04/2012 to 07/04/2012 and book the stays for your travel following the terms and conditions below:

    The offer includes a room for the night and a breakfast the next morning.

The offer is of two kinds: ￡20 per room, valid（有效的）during stay period of 02/04/2012—31/05/2012 and then again 01/09/2012—31/10/2012；￡35 per room, per night, valid during stay period of 01/06/2012—31/08/2012.

    The offer is valid for a basic twin or double room only.

    The stay must be booked directly with the chosen B&Bs before 28/04/2012.

    Each voucher can only be used by the holder to book one room for one night.

    If voucher holders book either the ￡20 or ￡35 per room per night, any additional services such as lunch, evening meal or activities may require an extra charge. But these are not required in order to take up the offer. Please check directly with your chosen B&Bs to see what extra services are available.

    Vouchers must be presented on arrival. If no vouchers are presented, the     B&Bs may reserve（保留）the right to charge at full price for every night of stay.

    Vouchers may not be used together with any other offer.

    The voucher holders must pay for the stay in full at the time of booking. Additional ￡10 may be paid to confirm（确认）the booking and will be returned on arrival.

    The B&Bs reserve the right to refuse voucher holders' bookings for people under the age of 18.

    Anyone who has ever played the game of Tetris (俄罗斯方块) knows the game's surreal ability to spill into real life. After you shut off the game, you still see those Tetris blocks falling in your mind. You're grocery shopping and find yourself thinking about rearranging items on grocery shelves. Your mind continues to play the game, even when you're physically not.

    Robert Stickgold, a Harvard professor, noticed something similar after a day hiking a mountain. That night, he dreamt he was still going through the motions of mountain hiking. Curious about this, he tried something: he got a group of college students of various skill levels to play Tetris and let them sleep in the Harvard sleep lab.

    Over 60% of the students, including those who suffered from amnesia (健忘症), reported dreams of images of Tetris pieces falling, rotating (旋转), and fitting together. Interestingly, half the Tetris expert students reported such Tetris dreams, while 75% of the beginners did.

    A study found that playing Tetris can grow your brain and make it more efficient. Adolescent girls played the game for an average of 1.5 hours a week over three months. The cerebral cortex (大脑皮层) of the girls grew thicker, while brain activity in other areas decreased. Richard Haier, who had found that there was a "Tetris learning effect", in which the brain consumed less energy as mastery of the game rose, concluded, "The brain is learning which areas not to use."

    Haier's study showed that as the girls practiced playing the game, nerve cells made connections, communicating through synapses (a synapse is a connection between two nerve cells). When you learn something, you change those connections. Every time you reactivate(激活) a circuit, synaptic efficiency increases, and connections become more durable and easier to reactivate. Stickgold says sleep plays a role in this memory process.

    So to sum up, whenever you do specific tasks over and over again, they take up less of your brain power over time. And that's pretty amazing.

    Some parents can't resist the strong desire to help their children play hooky (逃学) for a trip. Five-year-old Erica and her siblings Alex, 9, and Kate, 12, missed school in Denver on Aug. 21, 2017. Their father Mr. Reed took them on a camping trip to Halsey to see the solar eclipse (日食). Kate had told her teachers she'd be absent and Mr. Reed let Erica's and Alex's teachers know, too. But he didn't ask for permission.

    Mr. Reed has loved astronomy since seeing Neil Armstrong walk on the moon on his sixth birthday. He says, “I want my own kids to have a similar kind of wonderment and hope about future discoveries.”

    Parents often dream of traveling with their children to teach them about science, geography and culture. Many teachers support them, as the Reed children's teachers did. Other teachers were angry about the extra work.

    Teacher Amanda says she feels frustrated when parents take students out of school for family trips. If she sends homework, she finds it's often returned incomplete or incorrect, because the absent student didn't hear her explanation in class. Some students suffer anxiety as they struggle to catch up. Research shows that students who are absent often, for any reason—excused or unexcused—performed more poorly in school.

    Garrick agreed to miss five days of school for the Antarctic trip last year as a senior high school student, however. Managing the homework was a challenge, but it helped him gain time management skills. “And the trip is worth the effort,” he says, “sparking his interest in international relations. You can't really put a price on changing your world view,” Garrick says. “That's what travel has done for me. It has changed how I think about things.”

    CHICAGO -- New research on vegetables and aging gives mothers another reason to say "I told you so." It is found that eating vegetables appears to help keep the brain young and may slow the mental decline（下降） sometimes associated with growing old.

    On measures of mental sharpness, older people who ate more than two servings of vegetables daily appeared about five years younger at the end of the six-year study than those who ate few or no vegetables.

    The research in almost 2,000 Chicago-area men and women doesn't prove that vegetables reduce mental decline, but it adds to mounting evidence pointing in that direction. The findings also echo（回应） previous research in women only.

    Green leafy vegetables including spinach（菠菜）, kale and collards （甘蓝） appeared to be the most beneficial. The researchers said that may be because they contain healthy amounts of vitamin E, an antioxidant（抗氧化剂） that is believed to help fight chemicals produced by the body that can damage cells.

    Vegetables generally contain more vitamin E than fruits, which were not linked with slowed mental decline in the study. Vegetables also are often eaten with healthy fats such as salad oils, which help the body absorb vitamin E and other antioxidants, said lead author Martha Clare Morris, a researcher at the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center.

    The fats from healthy oils can help keep cholesterol（胆固醇）low and arteries （动脉）clear, which both contribute to brain health. The study was published in this week's issue of the journal Neurology and funded with grants from the National Institute on Aging.

The summer I turned 16, my father gave me his car — a gift wasted on me at that age. The important thing was that Hannah and I could drive around.

    Hannah was my best friend, a year younger but much taller, almost five foot ten. "Hannah's a knockout," my mother always said. And that summer she signed with a modeling agency. She was already doing runway work.

    A month after my birthday, Hannah and I went to the movies. On the way home, we stopped at the McDonald's drive-through, putting the fries on the seat between us to share. "Let's ride around a while," I said. It was a clear night, full moon slung low over the desert. Taking a turning too fast, I plowed (撞)through a neighbor's wall and drove into a full-grown tree.

    We were taken in separate ambulances. I'd cracked(使裂开)my cheek bone; Hannah's forehead had split wide open. End of her modeling career. What would I say to her?

    When her mother, Sharon, came into my hospital room, I started to cry. She sat beside me and took my hand. "I rear-ended(追尾) my best friend when I was your age, "she said, "I totaled her car and mine."

    "I'm so sorry." I said.

    "You're both alive," she said, "The rest is window dressing. I forgive you. Hannah will too."

Sharon's forgiveness allowed Hannah and me to stay friends throughout high school and college, to be at each other's weddings … The scars are so faded that no one else would notice, but in the sunlight I can still see it just below her hairline — for me, a mark of grace(优雅).

    Misael is three times the size of other children at his age due to a symdrome(综合症 状) which means he is unable to stop eating.

    He is so heavy that he often stops breathing while sleeping — leaving his parents fearing that one day he may not wake up. His dad Manoel Abreu, 38, said, "Everything is hard for him — he is a baby carrying an adult's weight. His heart must be working under a lot of pressure. If he doesn't get the treatment he requires, there is a very good chance that he will pass away."

    Miseal, from Sanot, Brazil, was born a healthy 6lb 6oz, but immediately he started piling on the pounds. Doctors believe he may be suffering from Prader-Willi symdrome, a rare genetic condition that leaves him with greed. He now weighs a heavy 178lb and is still gaining despite following a low-fat diet and walking for 40 minutes each day.

    Mum Josiane, 37, said, "He has been putting on a lot of weight since he was a baby—even when I was breastfeeding him. But it was only when he was one and a half years old that we began to worry. He was gaining 3kg a month and was starting to get very heavy. We know we could lose him at any time. Sometimes when he is sleeping, I watch him to see if he is breathing. I cry a lot because we want to help him. But I am also very proud of him because he doesn't surrender(投降)."

    Misael visits a doctor every three months to try to control his condition, but currently there is no cure for Prader-Willi symdrome. Paediatric neurologist(儿科神经科专家)

    Lucio said, "Every time we meet, he has put on a lot of weight — sometimes up to 5 kg. I think Misael could get help from someone outside Brazil — both medically and financially — so that he can get the laboratory and genetic testing he needs."