Parents who help their children with homework may actually be bringing down their school grades. Other forms of prenatal involvement, including volunteering at school and observing a child's class, also fail to help, according to the most recent study on the topic.
The findings challenge a key principle of modern parenting(养育子女) where schools except them to act as partners in their children's education. Previous generations concentrated on getting children to 
school on time, fed, dressed and ready to learn.
       Kaith Robinson, the author of the study, said, "I really don't know if the public is ready for this but there are some ways parents can be 
involved in their kids' education that leads to declines in their academic performance. One of the things that was consistently negative was
 parents' help with homework." Robinson suggested that may be because parents themselves struggle to understand the task." They may 
either not remember the material their kids are studying now, or in some cases never learnt it themselves, but they're still offering advice."
       Robinson assessed parental involvement performance and found one of the most damaging things a parent could do was to punish their children for poor marks. In general, about 20% of parental involvement was positive, about 45% negative and the rest statistically
 insignificant.
      Common sense suggests it was a good thing for parents to get involved because "children with good academic success do have involved
 parents ", admitted Robinson. But he argued that this did not prove parental involvement was the root cause of that success." A big 
surprise was that Asian-American parents whose kids are doing so well in school hardly involved. They took a more reasonable approach, conveying to their children how success at school could improve their lives."

    Parents whose children show a special interest in a sport feel very difficult to make a decision about their children's careers. Should they allow their children to train to become top sportsmen and sportswomen? For many children it means starting schoolwork very young. And going out with friends and other interests have to take a second place. It's very difficult to explain to a young child why he or she has to train five hours a day, even at the weekend, when most of his or her friends are playing. Another problem is of course money, In many countries money for training is available from government for the very best young sportsmen and sportswomen. If this help can not be given, it means that it is the parents who have to find the time and the money to support their child's development and sports clothes, transport to competitions, special equipment, etc. All can be expensive.

    Many parents are worried that it is dangerous to start serious training in a sport at an early age. Some doctors agree that young muscles may be damaged by training before they are properly developed. Professional trainers, however, believe that it is only by training when young that you can reach the top as successful sports person. It is clear that very few people do reach the top, and both parents and children should be prepared for failure even after many years of training.

    Most people know that listening to music when they are feeling down or depressed can encourage their spirits.

    However studies have also shown that music, especially certain tones can reduce stress. Music can change brainwave patterns, deepen breathing, and bring on a totally stress-free and more open mindset（心态）. Using music to relax when considering a particular problem may not only raise your mood, but also could help you reach that "a-ha"moment and find a solution.

    Music has also been shown not only to make you feel good, but also, to be a great motivator. For example, during exercise, listening to music can keep you going, or get you to exercise more by helping you to ignore negative feelings of tiredness and focus on the pleasurable feelings you get from being absorbed in the music.

    Music is mainly used to record emotion. When we listen to a piece of music we share the artist's feelings on a visceral（本来的）level. That can be sad, and who among us hasn't put on a painful love song to share in the misery after a bad break-up? On the contrary, we can share in the delight of songs of joy and happiness, or any song or piece of music that reminds us of a particular happy time in our past.

    So next time you are feeling down, put on Beethoven' s Ode to Joy, I bet you will feel a lot better about whatever it was that was bothering you!

    That cold January night, I was growing sick of my life in San Francisco. There I was, walking home at one in the morning after a tiring practice at the theatre. With opening night only a week away, I was still learning my lines. I was having trouble dealing with my part-time job at the bank and my acting at night at the same time. As I walked, I thought seriously about giving up both acting and San Francisco. City life had become too much for me.

    As I walked down empty streets under tall buildings, I felt very small and cold. I began running, both to keep warm and to keep away from any possible robbers. Very few people were still out except a few sad-looking homeless people under blankets.

    About a block from my apartment, I heard a sound behind me. I turned quickly, half expecting to see someone with a knife or a gun. The street was empty. All I saw was a shining streetlight. Still, the noise had made me nervous, so I started to run faster. Not until I reached my apartment building and unlocked the door did I realize what the noise had been. It had been my wallet falling to the sidewalk.

    Suddenly I wasn't cold or tired anymore. I ran out of the door and back to where I'd heard the noise. Although I searched the sidewalk anxiously for fifteen minutes, my wallet was nowhere to be found. Just as I was about to give up the search, I heard the garbage truck(垃圾车) pull up to the sidewalk next to me. When a voice called from the inside,  "Alisa Camacho?" I thought I was dreaming. How could this man know my name? The door opened, and out jumped a small red-haired man with an amused look in his eye. "Is this what you're looking for?" he asked, holding up a small square shape.

    It was nearly 3 a.m. by the time I got into bed. I wouldn't get much sleep that night, but I had gotten my wallet back. I also had gotten back some enjoyment of city life. I realized that the city couldn't be a bad place as long as people were willing to help each other.

    Two young giant-panda twins born in the United States have returned home to China, but are straggling to adapt to the language and food.

    The 3-year-old sisters, Mei Lun and Mei Huan, wens the first surviving panda twins to be born in the United States, and were returned to China from Zoo Atlanta on Nov. 5. But the pair still understand English belter than Chinese, and prefer American biscuits to Chinese bread.

    A zoo-keeper said that his main concern is that the pair are so addicted to American biscuits that everything they eat — from bamboos to apples — has to be mixed with biscuits. They even want to snack on (零食) biscuits when drinking water.

    The zoo -keeper is trying to wean them off their biscuit habit, gradually replacing the American food with Chinese bread. Mei Huan is adapting, but Mei Lun doesn't want to touch the unfamiliar bread.

    Mei Lun is the livelier of the two, often jumping onto the roof and hanging upside down from a rail, but her slightly younger sister Mei Huan is calmer, preferring to sit still, observe her new environment and occasionally snack on bamboo.

    A language barrier is also reported. While the pair respond to their own names, and understand some English phrases such as “come here,” they don't understand the Sichuan dialect of Chinese.

    The news caused some laughter on Chinese social media, with some users commenting that the pandas would soon get used to Sichuan's famously spicy cuisine.

    Thomas Hardy, probably the most searching and knowledgeable novelist of our time, was born on June 2, 1840, in Dorsetshire, England. He died on January 11, 1928. In his youth, Hardy read much and dreamt of becoming a poet, but he studied and practiced architecture as an assistant to a London architect, winning a prize for design. The fine descriptions of structure in his novels were probably somewhat due to his architectural training.

    For five years he worked hard to practise writing poetry, but when he was twenty-seven, Hardy turned to fiction. His first story was accepted two years later, but upon the advice of George Meredith he decided not to publish it. His first novel, Desperate Remedies, appeared in 1871. During the next twenty-five years he published fourteen novels and two collections of short stories.

    Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) he never surpassed (超越) in happy and delicate perfection of art. This and his next novel, A pair of Blue Eyes (1873), begin to show deep irony (讽刺) which is so obvious throughout Hardy's writings.

    Far from the madding Crowd (1874) was his first popular success. In it is shown Hardy's amazing power of describing nature as symbolic background for his characters, an organic part of the action of his story. This was the earliest of what he called his novels of character and environment, which included The Return of the Native, Tess of D'Urbervilles, his masterpiece, and Jude the Obscure. Not until he was fifty-eight years old was his first collection of poems published, and he was sixty-four when the first part of The Dymats, surprised the literary world.