When you write a text message or an email, you might put a smiling face or other pictures at the end to make the message more fun. These pictures are emojis. The first emojis were on Japanese mobile phones in the 1990s. Later, they were used on Apple's iPhone and Android phones. Now they are everywhere!

Before emojis, there were emoticons. The word is a mixture(混合) of emotion(感情) and icon(图标). Emoticons are made of the signs you can find on your keyboard, for example:) for a smiley or @};—for a rose. The first use of :-)was in 1982 and it was called "joke marker". Emoji is a Japanese word which means pictograph: e(picture) +moji (character). Emojis are real pictures, for example ，or . There are 1851emojis that can be used on mobile phones and other devices. There are all kinds of emojis, from faces and weather to things in the kitchen and animal.

    In England, we have a saying: A picture paints a thousand words. For many people, an emoji is like a punctuation mark(标点). It's like the tone of voice when we speak on the phone, or hand movements(gestures) used in conversation. Emojis are also changing the way we write. The more we use emojis, the less we use slang(俚语), such as LOL or OMG.

    When someone speaks and looks serious, we try to look serious, too, and when someone smiles, we smile as well. This is how we show empathy(同感) and make friends(and enemies!). But when we're online, we can't see the person's face and there's no emotion. The invention of emojis changed that! Scientists in Australia have discovered that when we look at a smiley face online, the same parts of the brain start working as when we look at a real smiley face. Our mood changes, and we try to change our face to match the emoji. This is something we learn as we get older. Our brains have developed this ability over the last two or three years. This means that emojis have created a new brain pattern(模式)in us!

Should children do housework? Different people have different ideas. Some parents will say that their children are too busy for housework. Other parents will ask their children to do housework，but the housework doesn't get done. That's a problem. 

Doing housework is good for children. Doing housework helps them develop an awareness of the needs of others. One small study，done over a period of 25 years，found that young adults will succeed in their mid﹣20s depend on whether they took part in housework tasks at the age of 3 or 4. Those who early shouldered responsibilities developed a sense of responsibility in other areas of their lives. 

But few kids are doing much around the house at all. In a survey of 1，000 American parents，75 percent said they believed doing housework made kids" more responsible". Yet only 36 percent of those said they required their children to do housework. 

Sports and homework are not the housework﹣free reasons. The goal，after all，is to raise a kind of adults who can balance a caring role in their families and communities. Housework teaches that balance. 

What should you do when getting children to do housework? Never accept their excuses. Don't worry if you must repeat yourself again and again. If you're spending more time getting the child to do housework than it would take to do it yourself，then you're doing it right. Can a payment help?I don't think so. If you're trying to teach kids to shoulder the responsibility of a home，paying them for housework is not the right choice. 

 In a new study, researchers found a fact. Whether it's sports practice, music lessons or a usual catch- up with friends, when children are doing after- school activities, they may feel happier and healthier than those who always look at a screen.

 What's more, children's happiness improved when they joined in after- school activities, while things were completely ▲ when they spent time on social media (媒体) or playing video games.

 The researchers studied 61,759 school students from Grade Four to Grade Nine. They worked out how many days every week children joined in after- school activities from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm. Then they compared the number to well- being factors (幸福的因素 ) like satisfaction, sadness and worry.

 Lead researcher Dr. Rosa Virgara said the research showed how some out- of- school activities can improve children's happiness, while others, especially screens, can be bad for their mental(精神上的) and physical health." Screens are a big distraction(分散注意力的事物) for children of all ages. Whether children are playing games, watching TV or using social media, there is something about all screens that hurts their happiness," she said.

 The study also showed that even children who were already happy also benefited (得益于) from joining in after- school activities." This shows that there is a big need to find ways to encourage children of all ages and backgrounds to join in activities that keep them away from TVs, computers and smart phones," Dr. Rosa Virgara said.

Book Report by Alice Brown

Name of the book: The Twins' Forest Adventure

Writer: Polly Hunts

Main characters: Andy, Daniel, the squirrel (松鼠)

Summary(概要):

Andy and Daniel are brothers. One day, they go into the forest and spend the whole afternoon there. 

The sky turns dark and they cannot find their way back. Suddenly, they fall into a big hole. 

In the hole, they become very small. They meet a squirrel and become friends with it. Then they go on a journey with the squirrel. During the journey, they meet different animals. They have lots of fun. They stay overnight at the squirrel's home. 

The next day, they are still in the hole, but they are back to their original( 原 来 的 ) size. They finally climb out of the hole after two hours. They think that it must be a dream, but they see the squirrel nearby. It is waving(挥手) to them. 

Opinion:

This story isn't exciting. I think Polly's other books like The Twins in the Mysterious Cave and The Twins' Deep- Sea Discovery are much more exciting. I hope her new book The Twins' African Trip will be better. I bought it from the bookshop yesterday. 

Do you ever feel like there's not enough time in the day? That time is somehow racing away from you, and it is impossible to fit everything in. But then. you step outside into the countryside and suddenly everything seems slower, more relaxed, like time has somehow changed. It's not just you-recent research showed nature can control our sense of time.

Richardo Correia, the researcher at the University of Finland, found that being in nature may change how we experience time and perhaps, even give us the sense of time abundance(充裕). Correia compared people's experiences of time when they performed different types of tasks in cities and natural environments. It showed that people reported a sense of expanded time when they were in nature compared to when they were in cities. For example, a walk through the countryside felt longer than a city walk of the same distance.

It's not just our sense of time in the moment which appears to be changed by the natural world, and it's alsoour sense of the past and future. Earlier research shows that spending time in nature helps to move our focus from44the immediate(目前的) moment towards our future needs. So rather than focusing on the stress of the demands(需求)on our time, nature helps us to see the bigger picture. This can help us focus on what's important so that we meet our long-term goals. This is partly because spending time in nature appears to make us less impulsive(冲动的)，enabling us to think more about future benefits instead of wanting immediate ones.