A new study says electronic toys are not helping babies learn.

    "Even if companies are marketing them as educational, they're not teaching the babies anything at this time," said Anna Sosa the study's author.

    Researchers listened to audio(声音的) recordings of parents playing with their babies aged 10 months to 16 months. The researchers compared the experiences when the children played with electronic toys, traditional toys such as blocks, or when the children looked at books. What they found is that parents talked less with their babies when the babies played with electronic toys.

    Why is this important? Research shows that how quickly children develop language is often based on what they hear from parents. When the infants played with electronic toys, parents said little to their children. But with traditional toys, such as blocks, parents shared the names and descriptions of the animals, colors and shapes as their children played. There was even more information given by parents as their babies looked at the pictures in books.

    Of course, there is no need for parents to throw out electronic toys, but they should look at their infants' play with such toys as entertainment, not a learning experience.

    Toy Industry Association spokeswoman Adrienne Appell responded to the study. She said it is important that parents make time to play with their children. "Playing is a way that kids can learn so much, not only cognitive(认知的) skills, but social and developmental skills," she said. She added that play should be balanced, including time for just "make believe" activities, as well as traditional and electronic toys.

    We have a problem，and the strange thing is that we not only know about it, but also celebrate it. Just today, someone boasted (自夸) to me that she was so busy she's averaged four hours of sleep a night for the last two weeks. She wasn't complaining; she was proud of the fact. She is not alone.

    Why are rational (理性的) people so irrational in their behavior? The answer is that we're in the midst of a bubble (泡沫). I call it “The More Bubble”.

    The nature of bubbles is that something is overvalued until—eventually—the bubble bursts, and we're left wondering why we were so irrational in the first place. The thing we're overvaluing now is the opinion of doing it all, having it all, achieving it all.

    This bubble is being enabled by a combination of three powerful trends: smart phones, social media, and extreme consumerism (消费主义). The result is not just information overload, but opinion overload. We are more aware than at any time in history of what everyone else is doing and, therefore, what we should be doing. In the process, we have been sold a bill of goods: that success means being supermen and superwomen who can get it all done. Of course, we boasted about being busy—it's code for being successful and important.

    And our answer to the problem of more is always more. We need more technology to help us create more technologies. We need to move our workload to free up our own time to do yet even more.

    Luckily, there is a solution to asking for more: asking for less, but better. A growing number of people are making this change. I call these people Essentialists.

    These people are designing their lives around what is essential and removing everything else. These people arrange to have actual weekends (during which they are not working). They create technology-free zones in their homes. They trade time on Facebook with calling those few friends who really matter to them. Instead of running to different meetings, they put space on their plans to get important work done.

    So we have two choices: We can be among the last people caught up in “The More Bubble,” or we can join the growing community of Essentialists and get more of what matters in our one precious life.

    City College

    ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS

    All high school graduates and anyone 18 years of age or older, with or without a high school diploma, are suitable for admission. Individuals under the age of 18 who possess a high school diploma are also suitable for admission.

    HOW TO ENROLL IN CREDIT COURSES

    New and readmitted students must complete and hand in a credit admissions application form available online at www.ccsf.edu.

    BEFORE YOU REGISTER:

    Learn about your skill level in English and Math through our assessment service;

    Attend an orientation (新生报到会) to hear about support services

    Meet with a counselor (adviser) to select your courses;

    Find out if you are required for attending the entrance examinations.

    HOW TO ENROLL IN NONCREDIT COURSES

    Courses in Noncredit Programs are free of charge (no enrollment fee). For information on how to enroll in noncredit courses, click here.

    PARKING

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    SERVICES

    City College services include a bookstore, cafeteria, health center, tutoring center, career and transfer center, counseling, financial aid, library, learning resource center, student government offices, campus police, disabled students programs and more.

    When hospital staff are in full scrubs (手术衣), their faces are almost completely covered by their caps and face masks, and we can only see their eyes and eyebrows. In order to solve the problem, a doctor in Sydney, Australia, called Rob Hackett launched a campaign named "Theatre (手术室) Cap Challenge"-encourage hospital staffs to write their' names and roles on their caps. At first, his colleagues didn't take it seriously. However, with time going on, it has been adopted around the world with studies from the US and UK reporting how this simple idea can decrease human errors in healthcare.

    "I went to a theatre where there were about 20 doctors and nurses in the room," Dr. Rob Hackett said. "I struggled to even ask to be passed some gloves because the person I was pointing to thought I was pointing to the person behind them, because I don't know their names." said Rob. As we all know, doctors are a stressful profession. When faced with life and death, they need to save the patient's life for a second. At the moment, effective communications are important.

    "The 'Theatre Cap Challenge' is in response to concerns about how easily avoidable mistakes and poor communication are contributing to rising harmful events for our patients." said Rob. "We need to develop systems which reduce mistakes and misunderstanding without causing harm. For this to happen, we need to let everyone know we're human." he added On the other hand, from the patients' viewpoint, caps with names on them can make patients more unworried. When everyone appears the same, it is extremely difficult to distinguish who is who. Knowing them relaxed.

    Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Gwendolyn Brooks wrote hundreds of poems during her lifetime. She was known around the world for using poetry to increase understanding about black culture in America.

    Her poems described conditions among the poor, racial inequality and drug use in the black community. She also wrote poems about the struggles of black women. But her skill was more than her ability to write about struggling black people. She was an expert at the language of poetry. She combined traditional European poetry styles with the African American experience.

    In her early poetry, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about the South Side of Chicago. The South Side of Chicago is where many back people live. In her poems, the South Side is called Bronzeville. It was A Street in Bronzeville that gained the attention of literary experts in 1945. Critics praised her poetic skill and her powerful descriptions of the black experience during the time. The Bronzeville poems were her first published collection.

    In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She won the prize for her second book of poems called Annie Allen. Annie Allen is a collection of poetry about the life of a Bronzeville girl as a daughter, a wife and mother. She experiences loneliness, loss, death and being poor. Ms. Brooks said that winning the prize changed her life.

    Her next work was a novel written in 1953 called Maud Martha, Maud Martha received little notice when it was first published. But now it is considered an important work by some critics. Its main ideas about the difficult life of many women are popular among female writers today.

    In some of her poems, Gwendolyn Brooks described how what people see in life is affected by who they are. One example is this poem, Corners on the Curing Sky.

    By the end of the 1960s, Gwendolyn Brooks' poetry expanded from the everyday experiences of people in Bronzeville. She wrote about a wider world and dealt with important political issues.

    There are always stories in the life that can hardly be forgotten and will restore our hope for holidays every time we recollect.

    Johnny and I, along with our two young sons, Barry and Doyle, lived in a village in southern Alabama in 1979. We had bought the boys a bicycle for the New Year, and had hidden it in the garage ,where Johnny would assemble (组装)it on New Year⁵ s Eve after the kids fell asleep. But that day, Johnny had to go to Brookley Air Force Base in Mobile, an hour away, to repair a jet. I had my hands busy with baking, preparing for holiday dinner and caring for two energetic boys.

    Just as I was making the chocolate cake, a neighbor knocked on the door. It was Beatrice, who was the only person on our road with a telephone. The base had called to say that a heavy tool had come apart suddenly, hitting Johnny's arm and breaking the bone. My brother Otto took me to the base hospital while my mother stayed with the children.

    We got there to find Johnny with a cast (石膏)on his arm, anxious to get home regardless of the doctor's orders. It was New Year's Eve, Johnny argued, and he had the bike to assemble for his boys. The doctor said he'd consider dismissing him the next morning if Johnny could find someone to drive him home. On New Year's morning, Johnny called the base and was told everyone was off duty; there was no one to drive him home. Johnny kept making calls. At last, a big blue car with the Air Force sign rolled up.

    I was putting dinner on the table when hearing the car. We were thrilled to see Johnny assisted by a uniformed Air Force officer. With Otto's help, Johnny assembled the boy's gift, and they all had a good time that afternoon. Our hearts were full of gratitude to the people who had gone the extra mile to bring us together.