The lifestyle of families has changed because of science and industry（工业）.

    More Americans used to live on farms, nearly each family had many children. In a farm family, parents and their children often lived with grandparents. Uncles and aunties often lived nearby, too. But when industry became more important than agriculture（农业）in American life, families became smaller, industry needs lots of workers. They must be ready and able to move off the land and move again whenever necessary. It isn't easier for large families to move from place to place as small families can. Today, more and more small families have appeared, smaller families may have no children and they may have only a man and a woman because keeping children is really hard work. It takes parents not only money and time, but also much more energy and makes young couples（夫妇）busy working, studying and enjoying their lives all day. They are probably not important in keeping children.

    That's why the increasing of population in most developed countries are becoming more and more slowly, In China today, each family has only one healthy child because of one-child policy.

    In this way, the country can develop farther than before and young children can have more opportunities to get education and to find suitable jobs.

    My name is Mary. I am a middle school student. I like traveling. And I dreamed of visiting Beijing many times before. Last month I went there with my parents. I was so excited that I couldn't go to sleep the night before we started. I got up early and packed my backpack for the trip the next morning. It took us 25 hours to get there by train .After the breakfast and a short rest, we began our visiting plan. We visited many places of interest in Beijing, such as the Great Wall, the Palace Museum and the Summer Palace. They are all very fascinating, especially the Great Wall. We really enjoyed ourselves that week.

    After visiting so many exciting places of interest, I felt tired but happy because I learned a lot about the history of the city. As soon as I arrived home, I talked about it on the Internet with my classmates and showed them some photos that I took. They were happy to see the photos and they said what a great trip I had had.

    In the UK, bus journeys are very common. Buses are often convenient(便利的）for the people who live or work in the city center. Passengers can avoid heavy traffic and do not have to pay for the parking. However, taking the bus is just a necessary but boring part of life: they get on the bus, pay for it and sit down or find a place to stand when it is crowded. Everyone seems sad and bored. 

    In Latin America, however, bus trips can be wonderful. For a start, films are showed on the buses between cities for passengers to have fun along the journeys. Local buses do not show films. but drivers usually turn on the radio and it can be great for passengers to listen to songs and get relaxed. 

    Even better than films and music are the sights and sounds on the buses. Local buses always go to parts of the town that passengers would not visit by themselves. There passengers can see shops that they have never heard about. And they can also see other cultures of the town from the windows of the buses.

    Besides passengers' luggage(行李)is also interesting. It is common to see a happy dog's head getting out of somebody's bag or a lovely chicken "speaking cheerfully "under somebody's arm. Once on a bus in Peru a farmer even tied a sheep to the top of the bus. It was quite surprising.

    In all, taking the bus in Latin America is really fun and unforgettable.

    Is sleep important for children? A new study says yes.

    In America, most people don't get enough sleep. Children aged 5 to 12 are advised to sleep 10 to 11 hours every night, but most of them can't sleep that long. A study found that about 41 million American workers got less than six hours of sleep every night. Scientists worry that parents are passing their poor sleeping habits down to their children.

    In the study, Reut Gruber and some other scientists either added or reduced(减少) one hour of sleep for healthy children aged 7 to 11. They watched the children for five nights. They wanted to know if the amount of sleep can affect(影响) a child's behavior.

    Before the study began, students were asked to sleep the same amount of hours as usual. Their teachers were asked to record their behavior. After changing the children's sleep for five nights, the teachers had to record again. According to the two records, scientists found that those who slept one hour less behaved worse than those who slept one hour more. Students with less sleep were more likely(可能的) to feel sad and had more problems paying attention.

    The scientists chose to study children in their homes instead of in a laboratory, because they wanted to find out how everyday changes might affect children's behavior at school. "In the study, nobody became a talent, and nobody became crazy. But small changes in children can really make a big difference," says Gruber.

    We know health and happiness are important to our life. Here are some ways to get them.

      ①    Eat a lot of fruit and vegetable and less meat. Don't eat too much junk food.

      ②   It is best to get about eight hours of sleep a day. It is very bad for our health if we don't have enough sleep.

      ③   It stops you from having bad habits. To keep yourself busy, you can work around the house, spend time with your pet, write letters to your friends, do a sport, or do anything you enjoy.

      ④   Spend time and have fun with people. Talk with them, but don't talk about anything bad. You should stay with the people who are healthy and happy.

    Remember that nothing is more important than health and happiness.

A different kind of alarm clock

    When Matty Sallin, 24, was studying art and technology at New York University, he got an interesting task for the final exam：Create something for the ordinary family. He decided to create an alarm clock.

    "To get up in time, many people have to use an alarm clock every morning. But the sound of the clock is extremely noisy and unpleasant." he says. So before he started to design the new clock, he asked different people what they'd like to wake up to in the morning. A lot of them said, "The smell of bacon(培根)."

    So Sallin and his two classmates invented a new kind of alarm clock: a wooden box with a pig face and a digital clock that uses the smell of cooking bacon to wake people up. He explains, "There's no danger of burning, because I built it carefully, It uses special light bulbs(灯泡) instead of a fire for cooking and turns off automatically after ten minutes. "Just a few easy steps are required to set the "alarm".

    "What you do is to put a few pieces of bacon meat inside the box the night before, then you set the alarm," says Sallin. "If you set the alarm for 8：00, it will turn on at 7:50 and slow cook for ten minutes under the bulbs. Then the bulbs turn off and a fan blows the smell out through the nose of the pig."

    "So the pleasant smell of bacon will wake you up. There will be no more noisy alarms," says Sallin. "Then you can open the door on the side and pull the bacon out and eat it."

    When Sallin was a kid, he spent a lot of time making drawings of inventions. "I wanted to make a lift in my back yard and a special tree house," he says. "But I never really thought I'd become an inventor！"

    Sallin got an A for his alarm clock and went on to invent other things-but people continue to email him every day asking where they can buy his alarm clack. If he decides to produce and sell his special alarm clock, maybe he can build a successful business out of it.