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."

    A “lost tribe” that reached America from Australia may have been the first Native Americans, according to a new theory.

    If proved by DNA evidence, the theory will break long established beliefs about the southerly migration of people who entered America across the Bering Strait, found it empty and occupied it.

    On this theory rests the belief of Native Americans to have been the first true Americans. They would be classified to the ranks of escapee, beaten to the New World by Aboriginals (土著人) in boats.

    To a European, this may seem like an academic argument, but to Americans it is a philosophical question about identity, Silvia Gonzales, of Liverpool University said.

    Her claims are based on skeletons found in the California Peninsula of Mexico that have skulls quite unlike the broad Mongolian features of Native Americans. These narrow-skulled people have more in common with southern Asians, Aboriginal Australians and people of the South Pacific Region.

    The bones, stored at the National Museum of Anthropology (人类学) in Mexico City, have been carbon-dated and one is 12,700 years old, which places it several thousand years before the arrival of people from the North. “We think there were several migration waves into the Americas at different times by different human groups,” Dr. Gonzales said. “The timing, route and point of origin of the first colonization of the Americas remains a most contentious topic in human evolution.”

    But comparisons based on skull shape are not considered conclusive by anthropologists, so a team of Mexican and British scientists, backed by the Natural Environment Research Council, has also attempted to take out DNA from the bones. Dr. Gonzales declined yesterday to say exactly what the results were, as they need to be checked, but indicated that they were consistent (一致) with an Australian origin.

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    David is eight. One day his friend Rose says to him, “This Sunday is my birthday. Can you come to my birthday party?” David says, “Yes.”

    On Sunday, David asks his mother if he can go to the party. His mother says, “Yes, you can go, but you must be polite. Don't ask for any food. They will give you some.” “All right, Mum.” David answers and he goes to Rose's house on his bike.

    There are lots of kids at the party. They play together for some time, and then Rose's mother gives them some food, but she forgets David. He waits and waits and then he takes his plate up and asks, “Do you want a nice clean plate?”

    Katie was in big trouble. She was such a sweet kid; a third­grade teacher always dreamed of having a classroom filled with Katies; she has never had a discipline(纪律) problem. I just couldn't imagine why she had made her parents so angry.

    It seemed that Katie had been running up sizable charges in the lunch room. Her parents explained that Katie brought a great homemade lunch each day, and there was no reason for her to buy school lunch. They assumed a sit­down with Katie would solve the problem, but failed. So they asked me to help them get to the bottom of this situation.

So the next day, I asked Katie to my office."Why are you charging lunches, Katie? What happened to your homemade lunch？" I asked. "I lose it，" she responded. I leaned back in my chair and said, "I don't believe you, Katie." She didn't care." Is someone stealing your lunch, Katie？" I took a new track. "No. I just lose it." she said. Well, there was nothing else I could do.

The problem was still unsolved the next week when I noticed a boy who was new to the school sitting alone at a lunch table. He always looked sad. I thought I would go and sit with him for a while. As I walked towards him, I noticed the lunch bag on the table. The name on the bag said " Katie " .

    Now I understood and I talked to Katie. It seemed that the new boy never brought a lunch, and he wouldn't go to the lunch line for a free lunch. He had told Katie his secret and asked her not to tell anyone that his parents wanted him to get a free lunch at school. Katie asked me not to tell her parents, but I drove to her house that evening after I was sure that she was in bed. I had never seen parents so proud of their child. Katie didn't care that her parents and teacher were disappointed in her. But she cared about a little boy who was hungry and scared.

    Katie still buys lunch every day at school. And every day, as she heads out of the door, her mom hands her a delicious homemade lunch.

    In most people's opinion, the tiger is not an animal that we would ordinarily think of as being chicken. However, one tiger, which lives in an English zoo, turned out to be more cowardly (胆小的) than his keepers could ever have imagined.

    Tanvir, a two-year-old Bengal tiger, got stuck at the top of a new 5m-high activity tower in the zoo, after climbing it for the first time.

    The wooden tower had been designed to provide mental exercise for Tanvir by testing his ability of dealing with troublesome situations, but after climbing it in just a few seconds, he lost his courage when it came to coming back down. Tanvir went on to spend nearly two days at the top of the tower trying to collect the courage to attempt to get down.

    A spokesperson for the zoo said that several days before Tanvir had taken half an hour to get down a lower tower only 1.5m high, and the taller tower had clearly been too much challenging for him.

    "Every time he got to the edge, he looked out, put a paw over, and thought, 'no, I cannot make it!" 'laughed Samantha Cordrey, Tanvir's keeper. In the end Tanvir's hunger defeated his fear, and after almost 48 hours he made his way down. Burying himself in a big meal just like a hungry pig, Tanvir seemed to forget such a shameful experience for a while.

    It appears that his experience would not be the worst in Tanvir's life if he continued to act like a chicken. It is not known whether he will take courage to go back up his exercise tower again.

    The whole episode (插曲) only serves to show the difficulties faced by zoo staff in creating environments that will improve animals' living ability in enclosed space.