A study published in Child Development,the top－ranked educational psychology journal,provides some of the strongest evidence yet that gesturing may have a unique effect on learning.Teachers in the United States tend to use gestures less than teachers in other countries.

     "Gesturing can be a very beneficial tool that is completely free and easily employed in classrooms," said Kimberly Fenn,study co－author and assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University."And I think it can have long－lasting effects."

    Fenn and Ryan Duffy of MSU and Susan Cook of the University of Iowa conducted an experiment with 184 second－,third－ and fourth－graders in Michigan elementary classrooms.

    Half of the students were shown videos of an instructor teaching math problems using only speech.The others were shown videos of the instructor teaching the same problems using both speech and gestures.In the speech－only videos,the instructor simply explains the problem.In the other videos,the instructor uses two hand gestures while speaking,using different hands to refer to the two sides of the equation.Students who learned from the gesture videos performed better on a test given immediately afterward than those who learned from the speech－only video.

    Another test was given 24 hours later,and the gesture students actually showed improvement in their performance while the speech－only students did not.

    While previous research has shown the benefits of gestures in a one－on－one tutoring－style environment,the new study is the first to test the role of gestures in equivalence learning in a regular classroom.

    The study also is the first to show that gestures can help students transfer learning to new contexts—such as transferring the knowledge learned in an addition－based equation to a multiplication－based equation.

    Fenn noted that U.S.students lag behind those in many other Western countries in math and have a particularly hard time mastering equivalence problems in early grades."So if we can help them grasp this foundational knowledge earlier," she said,"it will help them as they learn algebra and higher levels of mathematics."

    Artificial intelligence keeps defeating human, it is making countless victories against human in different fields of life and trying to push human to the corner.

    Google's DeepMind has defeated the world's number one player Ke Jie. Human brain somehow has been replaced by a machine and scientists are working very hard on developing a human brain by implanting a chip and connecting it to the thick neuron that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. Well, who doesn't want to get his brain upgraded to be as smart as the brain of Albert Einstein or Charles Darwin?

    Humans will probably one day invent a brain that can be implanted in the human skull and reprogram all the human thoughts, but this invention doesn't seems to be happening in the foreseeable future since human brain took millions of years to evolve. Some scientists believe that human will defeat death in the next twenty hundred years but they can't really predict how long it's going to take to develop a human brain that can completely replace the natural brain.

    Despite of this accomplishment in the field of artificial intelligence, it couldn't crease people from believing that science can't stand alone. For instance, AI can imitate human brain and most of the time outperforms it, but there are still a lot of hidden secrets. AI outsmarted Ke Jie has consciousness unlike the AI, Ke Jie felt sad when he was defeated and buried his face in his hands but the AI didn't feel happy and celebrate his victory.

    The computer of 1960 is the same as the computer of 2017 in terms of consciousness, there is no signs so far telling us that there is an algorithm(运算)that can make a conscious computer and decipher (译解) its feelings. We can predict what the future will look like according to the past, especially from scientific point of view but the development of human brain seems unpredictable and unknown.

    PhoneSoap: Charge and Clean Your Phone

    You may charge your phone every day, but do you clean your phone as much? Whatever your hands touch, your phones touch. It has been discovered that some phones have 18 times more bacteria and viruses than any surface in a public restroom. So it probably won't surprise you that a 2011 University of London study found that one in six of our phones have bacteria and viruses on them—specifically, the bacteria called E. coli.

    The research on bacteria and viruses led to the invention of PhoneSoap. It is not actually liquid like dishwasher soap. It is a phone charger that uses the electromagnetic radiation (辐射) used in hospitals to kill 99.9 percent of bacteria and viruses, cleaning your phone while it charges.

    “There are really certain types of bacteria and viruses that we should not be in touch with, and they are really on our phones,” says Wes Barnes, the PhoneSoap co-founder. It all started while his cousin and co-founder, Dan LaPorte, was in his cancer research lab at college. “He realized he got the idea of getting rid of bacteria and viruses on the phones,” said Barnes. “In the lab they used UV-C light for destroying them. He realized this would be the fastest, most powerful way to kill any bacteria and viruses living on electronic machines.”

    PhoneSoap looks like a little metal suitcase. Your phone rests in to charge and get cleaned at the same time. Instead of plugging your phone into the wall, you'd plug it into the PhoneSoap charger box. The process only takes a few minutes but, Barnes says, “The idea is that you can leave it in there overnight if you want to keep charging. Reflective paint keeps the light completely around the phone so it cleans the phone fully.”

    The co-founders spent 2013 finding the right companies and they started shipping the product in late November. By last week's International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, PhoneSoap was all grown-up. Both co-founders have left their previous jobs and are selling PhoneSoap nonstop. “We're shipping almost more than we can handle each day,” Barnes says. “It's been a great adventure.”

    One of the most firmly established idea of manliness is that a real man doesn't cry. Although he might shed a tear at a funeral, he is expected to quickly regain control. Sobbing openly is for girls. One study found that women cry significantly more than men do—five times as often, on average, and almost twice as long per period.

    Historically, however, men routinely wept, and no one saw it as shameful. For example, in the Middle Ages, knights cried purely because they missed their girlfriends. In The Knight of the Cart, no less a hero than Lancelot weeps at a brief separation from Guinevere. There's no mention of the men in these stories trying to restrain or hide their tears. They cry in a crowded hall with their heads held high. Nor do their companions make fun of this public crying; it's universally regarded as an admirable expression of feeling.

    So where did all the male tears go? The most obvious possibility is that this shift is the result of changes as we moved from an agricultural society to one that was urban(城市的) and industrial. In the Middle Ages, most people spent their lives among those they had known since birth. If men cried, they did so with people who would sympathize. But from the 18th to 20th centuries, the population became increasingly urbanize, and people were living in the midst of thousands of strangers. Furthermore, changes in the economy required men to work together in factories and offices where emotional expressions and even private conversations were discouraged as time wasting.

    Yet human beings weren't designed to swallow their emotions, and there's reason to believe that holding back tears can be harmful to your well-being. Research from the 1980s has suggested a relationship between stress-related illnesses and inadequate crying. Weeping is also, somewhat related with happiness and wealth. Countries where people cry the most tend to be richer and more confident.

    We all love our children and we all know how competitive the world is these days. What's it going to be like when our children leave school? Will they have the skills they need to stay ahead of the competition?

    All children need two basic skills to succeed. They must be able to read and they must be able to write. And with so much information available to them these days, they must be able to read quickly and accurately. That's why your children need to be able to speed-read.

    It's ironic (讽刺的) that at this time of space-age technology, we've gone back to one of the earliest forms of mass communication—the written word. The Internet has introduced a revival (重新流行) of writing, and if you can't keep up, you'll be left behind. You certainly don't want your children to be left behind.

    You can help to make sure that your children are excellent writers—you can help them to learn how to use their language. Better still, you can learn with them!

    You and your children can spend time together in a worthwhile pursuit (事业)—learning how to write. Forget the theme parks, the computer games, the expensive movies and interesting sports. If you want your children to have treasured memories of time spent with you, learn together.

    For less than you would pay for tickets to a theme park, you can invest in your children's future—help them learn to write well with my six-part writing course.

Don't stand by while your child is left further and further behind.

    It is well known that male humpback whales(座头鲸)are skilled singers. Their songs are thought to attract females in high frequency sounds while to compete with other males in low frequency sounds. Research led by the Wildlife Conservation Society has now made a new discovery.

    The study looked at the songs of two humpback whale populations, based on sound recordings collected from 2013 to 2018. One group was based in the South Atlantic, off the coast of Gabon, and the other in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar.  Analysis of the recordings showed that the two groups picked up musical ideas from each other and borrowed phrases and themes into their latest song. This suggested that the males from the two groups came into contact with each other over the five years and shared songs.

    To uncover this musical cooperation, researchers recorded the songs and transcribe them into more than 1,500 individual sounds and patterns, or song units.  They found that the units were composed into larger phrases, which were then repeated to form themes. These themes were sung for hours at a time, or even days. By 2018, both populations have been singing largely the same songs.

    "This similarity in the songs shows that these two populations come into closer contact than other southern populations, explains Dr Melinda Rekdahl, leading author of the study. As well as being an interesting phenomenon, she explains that those songs allow even greater insight into the workings of the humpback whale populations.