When I walked into the house after school, I found my dad at home.

    "What are you doing home already?" I asked casually.

    "Andrew, I was laid off today," he answered quietly.

    I was sure he was joking. "No, you weren't. Why are you really home?"

    Then I noticed his expression and realized he was telling the truth. My father has always been a hard worker and prided himself on his career. My father's unemployment created many changes in our lives. He was home all day, which meant my bed had to be made, my room cleaned up, and my homework done right after school. I would come home every day to find him at the computer searching for jobs. I began to notice how down he seemed, and how losing his job had affected his self-esteem, though he tried to be optimistic. He asked my brother and me to spend less money. I gave up my allowance, which even though it wasn't much, felt like the right thing to do. I also found a part-time job.

    After several difficult months of searching, my dad decided to go in a totally different direction. He explained that he never wanted to be laid off again, so he was going to start his own business. Day by day, I watched him build it, and I admired how much time and energy he devoted to it.

    One evening I asked if he needed help. "Only if it doesn't interfere（打扰，妨碍） with school," he said, which sounded like a yes.

    I showed up at his office the next afternoon, and most afternoons after that for two months. I always knew he was a hard worker, but watching him in action really influenced me. Although this was one of the worst experiences for our family, it taught me a lot about dealing with adversity. Now I know that through creative problem-solving, I can always find Plans, ask for help, and take risks.

    Many parents have learned the hard way that what sounds like open communication is often the very thing that closes a youngster's ears and mouth. One common mistake is the Lecture, the long monologue that often starts with “When I was your age” Eighteen-year-old Kelly calls lectures “long, one-side discussions in which I don't say much.”

    Kids reflexively(条件反射地)shut down in the face of a lecture. Their eyes glaze over(呆滞),and they don't register any incoming information. Listen to 13-year-old Sarah describe her least favorite times with her mom and dad. “First, they scream. Then comes the ‘We're so disappointed' speech. Then the ‘I never did that to my parents' lecture begins. After that, even if they realize how ridiculous they sound they never take it back.”

    Lines like “When you have children of your own, you'll understand” have been seriously said by parents since time immemorial. But many of our expert parents, like Bobby, a registered nurse and mother of three, feel that by falling back on clichés(陈词滥调)to justify your actions, we weaken our position.

    Since kids are creatures of here and now, the far-off future has no relevance to them. Therefore, good communicators like Bobby suggest, “Give specific reasons for your actions in present language: ‘I'm not letting you go to the party because I don't think there will be enough adult supervisions.'”

    Betty, who lives in Missouri, uses an indirect approach. “I find that warnings are accepted more readily if I discuss a news article on a subject I am concerned about. My husband and I talk about it while our children absorb the information. Then they never think I'm preaching(布道).”

This really helped when Betty's kids began driving. Instead of constantly repeating “Don't drink; don't speed,” she would talk about articles in the paper and express sympathy for the victims of a car crash. Betty made no special effort to draw her kids into the conversation. She depended on a teenager's strong desire to put in his opinions—especially if he thinks he isn't being asked for them.

    As we all know,drinking beers while running can upset the stomach.However,that's all part of the attraction of the Beer Mile,a unique race that has participants competing in running and drinking.The Beer Mile Race started off as a tradition in 1990,when a group of Canadians thought it would be fun to race each other while drinking a few beers.But it has come a long way since then.The Beer Mile Race is now a major sporting event with around 100,000 official competitors,brand name sponsors and so on.In 2015,the first Beer Mile World Classic was held in San Francisco,where all of the record holders from Canada and the United States came together for the competition.But this year,the event was organized in London,in an effort to take in more competitors about the sport outside North America.

    The rules of the race are pretty simple: runners have to consume four beers before each of the four 400-meter laps making up the famous Beer Mile.The beers can come in bottles or cans but should not be less than 355ml and must be at least 5% alcohol.The drink like apple juice will not do.Runners must drink the beers within a 10 meter zone before the start/finish line and then they are required to tip the bottle/can over their heads to confirm it is empty.

    In the case of vomiting（呕吐）during the race,and yes,there's quite a bit of that during the Beer.Mile,offenders must complete one more lap at the end of the race.Organizers mention that even in the case of vomiting several times, only one more lap must be completed.

    This year,the Elite Men's race was won by Canadian Corey Bellemore,who also set a new world record with a time of 4 minutes and 34 seconds.“I just drink the beers as quickly as I could,hold them down and get the burps（饱嗝）out,”Corey said.“If you can drink a beer in 8 seconds and also run very fast with a feeling of vomiting,then you'll be fine like me.”

    Oxford English Dictionary editors recently said that "run" has become the word with the most meanings in English, with more than 645 different usage cases for the verb form alone. This entry(条目), took one professional dictionary writer nine months of research to complete. How could three little letters be responsible   for so many meanings?

    Think about it: When you run a fever, for example, those three letters have a different meaning than when you run a bath to treat it, or when your bathwater runs over and makes your bath runner wet, forcing you to run out to the store and buy a new one. There, you run up a bill of $85 because besides a small carpet and some cold medicine, you also need some thread to fix the run in your stockings and some tissue for your runny nose and a carton of milk because you've run through your supply at home, and all this makes fear run through your soul because your value club membership runs out at the end of the month and you've already run over your budget on last week's grocery run when you ran over a nail and now your car won't even run properly. God—you'd do things differently if you ran the world.

    When the OED's first edition came out in 1928, the longest entry belonged to another three letter word: "set". Today, it has some 200 meanings.

    Why is "run" suddenly the Swiss Army Knife of verbs? According to British author Simon Winchester, "run" has earned some major lift during the Industrial Revolution (工业革命), when new inventions chose it as their verb of choice. "Machines run, clocks run, computers run there are all of those that began in the middle of the 19th century," Winchester says.

    So, ready to run through the whole list of definitions(定义)? You'll have to wait for the next edition of the OED, expected in 2037.

    When you get a cut, you cover it with a bandage. How do you know when to change it? Maybe you just wait until it's wet or dirty. But when people have long-term or chronic (慢性的)wounds that take months to get better, changing bandages too early or to late could make healing take even longer. Changing the dressing on a wound too often can provide an opportunity for infections to get in. But if a bandage gets very wet very quickly from the inside, it might be filling with pus (脓)--a sign an infection has begun. Judging just when to change is important.

    Chronic wounds are common in people who are older or who have certain health conditions. Chronic wounds affect around 6.5 million people per year in the United States. When Anushka Naiknaware, 13, learned about chronic wounds, she decided to make a device that could alert a person when it's time to change their bandages.

    After a lot of trials and errors, the teen settled on a design that used an “ink” filled with carbon nanoparticles(纳米粒子). The teen loaded her ink into a printer cartridge (墨盒) to print onto her special paper, which was to be made into bandage. Well, actually, Anushka loaded her ink into many, many printer cartridges. Just changing a printer cartridge isn't easy, and filling one is even harder.

    The small printed papers cost only 5 to 10 cents, Anushka estimates. The Bluetooth sensor is more expensive, but the teen notes that it could be used over and over again. She also knows there is a long way to go before her design can help patients. It hasn't been tested on a real person yet. “You have to make sure everything works perfectly,” she says.