Instagram is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends and family. Take a pictureor video, choose afilter to transform its look and feel. and then post to Instagram—it's that easy. You can even share to Facebook. Twitter andmore. It's a new way to see the world. So many photos of food are contained on Instagram—now a pop-up diner in London is taking advantage of this new trend by letting people settle the bill for their meals simply by uploading photos of their dishes to social networks.

    I always thought people's taking pictures of their food was kind of silly, but at this new pop-up restaurant in the UK, I'd probably do it too.“The Picture House”is the world's first pay-by-photo restaurant—you order, click a photo of the food, share on Instagram and eat for free!

    The restaurant belongs to frozen food giant(巨人) Birds Eye, who came up with the idea to cash in on people's addiction with photographing food and sharing the pictures online. They conducted a survey and found out that more than half of the British population regularly took pictures of their meals. So they realized it was a better way to advertise their new dining range.

    The pop-up diner was open in Soho, London for three days in May, and is now moving to other major UK cities. They serve two-course meals that customers don't have to pay for, if they photo and lnstagram it.

    The restaurant is a part of Birds Eye's“Food for Life”campaign, a new marketing project that aims at changing the way people look at frozen food.“Taking photos of food enables people to show off and to share their mealtime moments—from the everyday to the special.” said marketing director Margaret Jobling.

    The reaction to The Picture House has been great so far and the pay-by-picture concept has proven to be an effective way. Alternative payment methods are actually gaining popularity among a lot of businesses. Last year in a cafe in Germany customers pay by how much time they spend there, not by what they eat.

    Adding math talk to story time at home is a winning factor for children's math achievement, according to a new research from a university. The study from psychologists Sian Beilock and Susan Levine shows a marked increase in math achievement among children whose families used Bedtime Math, an iPad app that delivers engaging math story problems for parents and children to solve together.

    Even children who used the app with their parents as little as once a week saw gains in math achievement by the end of the school year. The app's effect was especially strong for children whose parents tend to be anxious or uncomfortable with math.

    Previous research from this group has demonstrated the importance of adults' attitudes about math for children's math success. For example, a recent study found that math-anxious parents who help their children with math homework actually weaken their children's math achievement.

    The new findings demonstrate that structured, positive interactions around math at home can cut the link between parents' uneasiness about math and children's low math achievement.

     “Many people experience high levels of anxiety when they have to solve a math problem, with a majority of adults feeling at least some worries about math,” said Beilock, professor in Psychology and author of Choke, a book about stress and performance. “These math-anxious parents are probably less likely to talk about math at home, which affects how competent their children are in math. Bedtime Math encourages a dialogue between parents and kids about math, and offers a way to engage in high-quality math interactions in a low-effort, high-impact way.”

    Study participants included 587 first-grade students and their parents. Families were given an iPad installed with a version of the Bedtime Math app, with which parents and their children read stories and answer questions involving math, including topics like counting, shapes and problem-solving. A control group received a reading app that had similar stories without the math content and questions related to reading comprehension instead. Children's math achievement was assessed at the beginning and end of the school year. Parents completed a questionnaire about their nervousness with math.

    The more times parents and children in the math group used the app, the higher children's achievement on a math assessment at the end of the school year. Indeed, children who frequently used the math app with their parents outperformed similar students in the reading group in math achievement at year's end.

    March, April and May are months full of festivals and events all over the world. Here are some wonderful festivals around the world that happen in spring.

    SongKran--Thailand

    Dates: 13th-15th, April

    In Thailand, it's time to celebrate the coming monsoon season, which will bring the rain many people have been looking forward to. They celebrate it with a festival called Songkran，when people head out to the streets with water guns to spray(喷，洒）everyone who walks past. If you walk on the streets where the festival is celebrated, prepare to get soaked!

    Naghol--Vanuatu

    Dates: Every Saturday from April to May

Every year, villagers come together to celebrate the harvest of yams, an important part in the people's diet in Vanuatu. The festival is most famous for its “land diving ceremony”. During the ceremony men and boys dive to the ground from high wooden towers with only two thin vines(藤条) attached to their ankles(脚踝). The divers' heads have to lightly touch the ground when they jump—something very dangerous if the vines are not measured properly.

Cherry Blossom Viewing —Japan

    Dates: The cherry blossom season is different from year to year depending on the weather forecast.

    The cherry blossom season has huge importance to the people of Japan, who celebrate the days when the flowers finally blossom. Only a few days later, the petals(花瓣）fall to the ground, like pink snowflakes. This is one of the most beautiful things to see. In Japan, almost everyone has picnics in the parks to view the flowers.

For your next out-of-this-world vacation, you now have the option of literally going out of this world—-but it'll cost you $ 40 million. Then again, can you really put a price tag on having the time of your life? According to a new report from Popular Mechanics, Russia is looking to build a luxury hotel in outer space. There you will wake up to a breathtaking blue planet—--the earth! The hotel is expected to be stationed on the International Space Station (ISS).

While space tourism itself isn't exactly a novel idea, the notion of building a hotel out there hasn't been raised before. Really, other companies are still focused on the transportation part of the puzzle—-after all, a trip to space is enough for most folks.

    According to Popular Mechanics, the hotel will include a luxury orbital suite with big windows, personal hygiene(卫生) facilities, exercise equipment, and yes, WiFi. Because if you can't share your experience on social media, did it really even happen?

    Of course, the reasons behind the hotel aren't just for fun and games. Apparently, space tourism might be able to help the Russians pay for another module to add to the International Space Station. Russian space contractor RKK Energia is currently building the first such module, which will give scientists a laboratory and power supply station from which to conduct tests.

    If any of this is going to happen, however, Russia is going to have to hurry. With the ISS expected to be out of use in 2028, there's little time to build the hotel and find wealthy tourists to actually buy a trip into outer space.

    So if you've recently come into a fortune and are interested in what could be the time of your life, ISS is calling your name.

    I had the meanest mother in the whole world. While other kids ate candy for breakfast, I had to have porridge, eggs or toast. When others had Coke and candy for lunch, I had to eat a sandwich. But at least I wasn't alone when I was sad. My sister and two brothers had the same mean mother as I did.

    My mother preferred to know where we were at all times. She had to know who our friends were and where we were going. We had to clean clothes and take a bath every day. The other kids got to wear the same clothes for days. We could not lie in bed "sick" in order to miss school.

    The worst is yet to come. We had to be in bed by nine each night and get up at eight the next morning. We couldn't sleep till noon like our friends. So while they slept, my mother was brave to break the Child Labour Laws. She made us work. We had to wash dishes, make beds, and learn to cook and all kinds of things at home. I believe she lay awake thinking up all things for us to do.

    My mother was a complete failure as a mother. Two of her children received higher education. None of us have ever been taken away by the police or divorced (离婚). She forced us to grow up into educated and honest adults. I am now trying to raise my three children this way. I am filled with pride when my children call me "mean". Why? Because now I thank God every day for giving me the meanest mother in the world.

    Everybody sleeps, but what people stay up late to catch or wake up early in order not to miss varies by culture.

    From data collected, it seems the things that cause us to lose the most sleep, on average, are sporting events, time changes, and holidays.

    Around the world, people change sleep patterns thanks to the start or end of daylight-saving time（夏令时间）. Russians, for example, began to wake up about a half-hour later each day after President Vladimir Putin shifted the country permanently to "winter time" starting on October 26.

    Russia's other late nights and early mornings generally correspond（相一致）to public holidays. On New Year's Eve, Russians have the world's latest bedtime, hitting the hay at around 3:30 a. m.

    Russians also get up an hour later on International Women's Day, the day for treating and celebrating female relatives.

    Similarly, Americans' late nights, late mornings, and longest sleep fall on three-day weekends.

    Canada got the least sleep of the year the night it beat Sweden in the Olympic hockey（冰球）final.

    The World Cup is also chiefly responsible for sleep deprivation. The worst night for sleep in the U. K. was the night of the England-Italy match on June 14. Brits stayed up a half-hour later to watch it, and then they woke up earlier than usual the next morning thanks to summer nights, the phenomenon in which the sun barely sets in northern countries in the summertime. That was nothing, though, compared to Germans, Italians, and the French, who stayed up around an hour and a half later on various days throughout the summer to watch the World Cup.

    It should be made clear that not everyone has a tool to record their sleep patterns; in some of these nations, it's likely that only the richest people do. And people who elect to track their sleep may try to get more sleep than the average person. Even if that's the case, the above findings are still striking. If the most health-conscious among us have such deep swings（明显改变）in our sleep levels throughout the year, how much sleep are the rest of us losing?