Here are a few practical apps that can help you with your studies, and beyond.

    MyHomework

    Price: Free

    Platform: iOS and Android

    As you star your new term, let the planning app MyHomework create a personalized study schedule. Rank as one for the best homework management apps by USA Today, this app allows you to prioritize(排序)assignments by color-coding subjects. It also reminds you of every single deadline and upcoming test you have. MyHomework is not only for smart phones but also for Apple Watch.

    Notability

    Price: 18 yuan

    Platform: iOS

    Taking good notes is important to good results. As a result, one note-taking app, Notability, is gaining popularity among students. This app allows users to take handwritten notes on touch screens and type essays. Plus, Notability users can easily share files with classmates through e-mail or cloud services like iCloud.

    Sleep Cycle

    Price: 6 yuan

    Platform: iOS and Android

    For students struggling to wake up on time during school days, Sleep Cycle can be your lifesaver. It cleverly records your sleep. After you wake up, the app shows your sleep quality through easy-to-read graphics(图表). Even better, Sleep Cycle has an intelligent wake-up mode. It wakes you up when you are in your lightest sleep state with the help of soft music. This stress-free wake-up call can potentially improve your daily productivity.

    MyMoney

    Price: Free

    Platform: iOS and Android

    MyMoney, a Chinese money management app, can help you achieve financial independence. This popular app allows you to add up all your accounts including campus(校园)cards and transportation cards. And it tracks your every expense(开支)to help you understand your spending habits. If any of your accounts is low, MyMoney will alarm you.

    Do you always agree to do things that you are unwilling to do? Are you the type of person who always says "yes"? I've come to learn that it is very important to learn to say NO! It's okay. People are still going to like you. They may even respect you more because they know you are honest.

    I'm not saying to say "no" to someone who really needs your help. I'm talking about refusing that meeting that you really do not want to attend or that birthday party that you don't want to be a guest at.

    Think for a moment how you feel when you say YES to something that you really don't want to do. If you're like I once was, you can't sleep at night and you think about it too much. It weighs on your mind. You try to find ways out. Whatever you're saying to yourself, if you really wanted to go, you wouldn't have all of these thoughts.

    So, why not just say NO from the beginning? Maybe you feel like if you don't show up at the meeting (by the way, it is not the one you must attend) your boss isn't going to like you or your co-workers won't respect you. Maybe you feel as if your mom, dad or sisters won't love you as much if you don't do everything for them that they ask every occasion.

    If these people are your true friends, family members, or a good boss, they will like or love you the same no matter what. People treat you the way you teach them to, and if you're someone who always says "yes", then that's what they're expecting.

    You need to do what is right for you. Of course we do have real obligations in life to fulfill, but we do not have to do everything others want us to do.

    A body image is the way a person views his or her body. It affects how a person “feels” about his or her body. For example, when not looking in a mirror, people have a sense of what their bodies look like. A positive body image is having a realistic and accepting view of your body. However, very few women have a positive body image. Society, dieting, eating disorders, and overweight are all related to a negative body image.

    A century ago, full and curvaceous (曲线美的) bodies were admired. They were also more natural for women to keep. Nowadays, the best female body has a tiny waist, flat stomach, thin legs, and is very slim. Women are told to weight less than ever before. Supermodels are the new women's idols. However, most of them are teenagers, and many of them have eating disorders or diet strictly. Trying to follow these standards is hard to most women. As a result, they starve themselves, or exercise—excessively (过度地), or both.

    Most women who know the standard of beauty and body weight are dieting to reduce weight and change their figures. Eating disorders are not simply unhealthy diet habits; they are considered as mental illnesses and can sometimes end in death. Strict dieting or food restriction combined with a negative body image can become an eating disorder.

    A negative body image can also lead to overweight. This is due to excessive eating to comfort bad feelings about their bodies. In addition, yo-yo dieting, which often follows a negative body image, leads to increasingly higher weights with each diet attempt.

    A negative body image is bad for women. I may help them to see an advisor who is good at treating women with negative body images. Lastly, if society worked on encouraging healthy lifestyles and healthy looking bodies for women, a lot of good would come from it.

    While famous foreign architects are invited to lead the designs of landmark buildings in China such as the new CCTV tower and the National Center for the Performing Arts, many excellent Chinese architects are making great efforts to take the center stage.

    Their efforts have been proven fruitful. Wang Shu, a 49-year-old Chinese architect, won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize—which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize in architecture—on February 28. He is the first Chinese citizen to win this award.

    Wang serves as head of the Architecture Department at the China Academy of Art (CAA). His office is located at the Xiangshan campus (校园) of the university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Many buildings on the campus are his original creations.

    The style of the campus is quite different from that of most Chinese universities. Many visitors were amazed by the complex architectural space and abundant building types. The curves (曲线) of the buildings perfectly match the rise and fall of hills, forming a unique view.

    Wang collected more than 7 million abandoned bricks of different ages. He asked the workers to use traditional techniques to make the bricks into walls, roofs and corridors. This creation attracted a lot of attention thanks to its mixture of modern and traditional Chinese elements (元素).

    Wang's works show a deep understanding of modern architecture and a good knowledge of traditions. Through such a balance, he had created a new type of Chinese architecture, said Tadao Ando, the winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize.

    Wang believes traditions should not be sealed in glass boxes at museums. "That is only evidence that traditions once existed," he said.

    "Many Chinese people have a misunderstanding of traditions. They think tradition means old things from the past. In fact, tradition also refers to the things that have been developing and that are still being created," he said.

    "Today, many Chinese people are learning Western styles and theories rather than focusing on Chinese traditions. Many people tend to talk about traditions without knowing what they really are," said Wang.

    The study of traditions should be combined with practice. Otherwise, the recreation of traditions would be artificial and empty, he said.

It was the early 1950s, and I was a member of the A class at Armidale Senior High School in norther New South Wales. 

In the second and third years we all did General Maths, and our teacher was Mrs Lindsay-Clare Lindsay. Her arrival at our classroom was always quick, "Good morning everyone!" Then our books would be out, and we would watch her closely. 

I've thought a lot about Clare Lindsay over the years. What was her special magic? There are two reasons and I think they're necessary for all excellent teachers. She loved her subject, and she loved us, in a patient and objective way. She had no favorites that I can remember, and she called us all by our first names pleasantly She had a way of teaching that I loved. 

"Now we could go down this path couldn't we? We could argue this, and then this, but that doesn't work because of this. No Can Do(NCD)!" She would put a big cross, and write" NCD" against what she had put down. "Right! Why not go down this new path?" And she would show us that this new way worked. It was fun. We, whether the poor students or the skilled, all did well because of her. I've never found maths difficult, and I_put_that_skill_down_to_her. 

In the fourth and fifth years,we were divided into the science and arts streams(按学生能力划分的班级), and Mrs Lindsay didn't teach us any more. But as the Leaving Certificate exams were coming, one of my friends became nervous about how much maths he didn't know. With great courage, he went to see Mrs Lindsay, and asked if she would help him prepare for his General Maths paper. "Of course!" she said, and did just that, after school, in her own time. He passed. What a good teacher!

The reopening of an Asian American-owned bookstore in Manhattan's Chinatown following a January fire has received a warm welcome back from its supporters.

Yu &. Me Books, which is regarded as the first female-owned Asian American bookshop in New York City, has raised more than $369,000 for repairs since a tragic fire on January 4. It reopened on Wednesday. "We are so excited to welcome you all back to our Yu &. Me Books home," the store announced on Instagram. "We can't wait to shed tears, laugh loudly and open our hearts with all of you who have made us feel at home."

The fire in an apartment above the bookstore on Mulberry Street killed one of the building's residents. Smoke and water damage also devastated Yu & Me Books, destroying almost all its inventory and equipment, according to a GoFundMe campaign that store owner Lucy Yu set up to make up for the costs.

During the restoration and renovation (翻新) of the original bookstore, the business operated from a location within The Market Line, an underground marketplace on the Lower East Side, and several pop-up shops (临时店铺) in the city.

"It was a bookstore I always wanted to visit, and I'm so happy that they were able to reopen," Charlotte Leinbach, a teacher for New York City's Education Department said. Leinbach hadn't been to the bookstore before the fire, but she had heard quite a bit about its fate. She bought two books, the second and third in the series Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

"It's hard to find a lot of books written in Japanese, and then translated into English," she said. "The design of the bookstore is really nice, and the layout is great. I am glad that they also sell used books. I love buying new books because it's fresh and it's nice, but it's always nice to see people in the community giving their books back and reselling and just passing them on." She said she will continue to support the women-run small businesses that focus on people and authors of color.

"I actually came on the day of the opening, but there were too many people, and it was too crowded, so I just haven't had a chance to look at it," Liam Li, another Asian American, said. "This place is unique. It's in Chinatown. As Asians live in New York City, I feel this offers the most space for the community. I understand like a minority in this society, it is not easy to have a store like this," she added.