Selena Gomez and I are scheduled to meet at a low­key coffee shop in Encino. Not wanting to keep the superstar waiting, I arrived at nine, 20 minutes early. As I was catching up on e­mails, Selena quietly scooted into the seat next to me. No bodyguard. Not even a drop of makeup. She was ten minutes early and no one else in the restaurant looked up so much. Selena was wearing Bebe shorts. She had a baby face and ordered a hot chocolate.

    After making small talk about what she wore for the shoot, she dived into the subject of her career. Selena declared 2012 the year of movies. She filmed three: Spring Breakers, a drama; The Getaway, an action flick; and Hotel Transylvania, a comedy. Each is a marked move away from the teen style that made her a household name.

    Now that her Disney days are behind her, Selena is at that unstable point in a child star's career where she is trying to grow up—both as a person(she turned 20 in July)and as an artist. “Being part of the Disney Channel was such a blessing, and I'm super happy with what my show accomplished, but acting is something I would like to take on more seriously.” She continued, “I don't necessarily feel accomplished. I want to create a whole different person when it comes to acting.”

    Selena has been working fulltime since she was seven years old and scored a role on Barney&Friends. In 2007, when she was offered the lead in Wizards of Waverly Place, Selena, her mother, and her stepfather uprooted from Texas to LA , where they are settling now.

    Some materials are obtained from natural resources that are changed by chemical processes in a laboratory. The resulting artificial materials are synthetic, or human-made.

    Plastic is a synthetic substance, obtained from petroleum, a fossil fuel. The molecules（分子）in petroleum are split and then linked into chains. Plastic is an example of a polymer, a material made of repeating patterns of atoms linked together. Most polymers are synthetic. They are made by polymerization, the process of chemically linking many smaller molecules to form a larger molecule that has different physical features. Some polymers, such as proteins, occur naturally.

    Plastic is a key component of many products. When heated into an almost-liquid form, plastic can be made into fibers, sheets, or molds（模具）. It can be mixed with other elements to remain flexible, or it can harden into a solid. Plastic fibers can be made into clothing or carpeting. Sheets of plastic can be made into plates. Molded plastic can be sued for protective helmets or car bumpers.

    Most plastics can be reheated and remolded repeatedly. This feature makes plastic very easy to use. Polymers can be pulled into fine strings or molded into almost any kind of shape. For example, tubes of plastic can be shaped into bottles by different processes. One such process is extrusion blow-molding. Most plastics are also resistant to many chemicals that might harm other materials. This quality is the reason that so many cleaning liquids are packaged in plastic bottles.

    Plastics are good insulators that can stop electricity or heat to pass through. Look around your kitchen, and observe where plastics are used. Pot handles are sometimes made of plastic, as are cooking tools, toaster controls, and microwave cookware. Food-storage wraps and containers may be made of plastic. Take a walk outdoors, and note all the plastic items you see. Gardening tools, such as watering cans and sprayers, are often made of plastic. Swings and slides made of plastic do not become as hot as metal, so they are safer for play. Because plastics can be heated, remolded, and made into something else, they can be recycled and reused.

    The softshell turtle species is officially listed as endangered by the IUCN Red List. Scientists long thought softshell turtles were extinct in the Cambodian part of the Mekong River until they discovered some stragglers (掉队者) in the early 2000s.

    The species had quite a wide historical range across Asia, but much of that range is now completely gone. Much of the turtle's habitat in Southeast Asia have disappeared due to urban and industrial development along the Mekong River. The sand where turtles multiply is routinely carried away for use in construction projects, while fishing nets lift up hatchlings. People also take turtles and their eggs to sell for food.

    Initial surveys in 2003 and in 2007 found two small populations of the softshell turtles along a 30-mile stretch (水域) of the Mekong River. Since then, conservation groups have worked with local communities and officials to increase the wild population of these endangered turtles, including a program to hire former egg collectors to help search for and protect nests instead of harvesting the eggs.

    For the last decade, WCS, Conservation International, the Turtle Survival Alliance and local groups have worked to protect turtle nests. Their goal is to ensure eggs will multiply and hatch, and that baby turtles grow strong enough to eventually take care of themselves in the wild.

    A team recently released 150 hatchlings back into their natural habitat, bringing the total to more than 7,700 baby turtles in the past 10 years.

    A Hong Kong Disneyland park admission ticket is your passport to a full day of magical adventures. Learn the ways to buy your tickets now.

    Three types of 1-day ticket are available:

    Free admission for Child aged under 3.

    Book Online Now

    Purchase tickets conveniently through our website, then pick up your tickets starting from 1 hour after you have purchased online.

    Purchase Tickets Directly at Hong Kong Disneyland Ticket Express

    You can purchase tickets at the Hong Kong Disneyland Ticket Express, conveniently located at the MTR Hong Kong Station. Open from 9:00 am — 8:00 pm on Mondays to Fridays and from 9:00 am — 5:00 pm on Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays.

    Purchase 2 Park Tickets at one of the following locations and receive a FREE limited-edition Disney gift:

    ★ Avenue of Stars Kiosks

    You can purchase tickets at Avenue of Stars Kiosks in Tsim Sha Tsui. Open daily from 9:00 am — 10:30 pm.

    ★ Asia World-Expo Box Office

    You can purchase tickets at Asia World-Expo Box Office. Open Mondays to Fridays from 10:00 am — 6:00 pm.

    Reserve Tickets for Hotel Guest

    As a hotel Guest of Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel or Disney's Hollywood Hotel, Park tickets are reserved for your purchase at front desk. Open daily from 9:00 am — 8:00 pm.

    Buy at Hong Kong Disneyland Main Entrance

    Guests can purchase tickets on the day of their visit at the Main Entrance Ticket Booths or Guest Relations Windows. Open daily from 30 minutes before Park opening until Park closes.

After releasing a short video on April 27 about planting and cooking peas, Chinese food blogger Li Ziqi witnessed her followers on YouTube go beyond 10 million.

This puts Li, who shot to fame with short videos recording her traditional and peaceful lifestyle in China's countryside, among the ranks of the most popular Chinese-language content creators on the platform.

"It's really surprising. I didn't expect such a wide response," Li told Xinhua in an interview, noting she was surprised by how foreign fans were taken with her works. "What I present is just a lifestyle I've long followed and appreciated," she said. "Maybe it's also what many other people have valued."

Li's YouTube videos center on her life with her grandmother in the rural parts of Sichuan Province. In the videos, Li, often dressed in graceful traditional dresses, rises at sunrise, rests at sunset, plants seeds and harvests flowers, cooks Chinese dishes and crafts bamboo furniture. Unlike many other food bloggers, Li's videos set China's countryside as the stage and start with how the foods are planted and harvested on the farm. She rarely speaks in the process.

Li's overseas followers have praised her videos for showing the amazingly charming, simple and beautiful side of China's rural life, but back home, there have long been debates on whether her presentation is unrealistically poetic.

In response, Li, who was raised in the countryside, said she never needs special arrangements when shooting a video about rural life as "everything is in my mind." "In the countryside, planting flowers, vegetables and trees is not difficult. There are tough elements of rural life of course, but I didn't put them in my videos," Li said. "Most people today are facing much stress in work and life, so I hope they can feel relieved and relaxed when watching my videos."

Children who were behind in their development at age 4-5 were almost three times as likely to have been out of education,employment,or training at age 16-17,analysis of pupil data has found. 

4-5-ycar-olds in England are assessed by the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile,and those who reach the boundary of a"good level of development"are considered"school ready". 

The new study in the journal BMC Public Health has found a significant gap in Not in Education,Employment or Training (NEET)outcomes between those who were ready and unready for primary school. The research drew on data from more than 8,000 Bradford young people whose records are linked as part of the Connected Bradford project. The research found that 11%of children who were not school ready went on to be NEET at 16-17, compared to just 4%of children who were school ready. 

Lead author Dr Matthew Warburton,Research Officer at Leeds' School of Psychology, said:"These findings tell us that there are clear,early indicators for children and young people being at risk of disadvantage in late adolescence. As schools routinely collect this data,the research could be used to kickstart early intervention in schools based on primary school readiness. "

The research team,which also included academics from Lancaster University and the Bradford Institute for Health Research,say this shows a clear need for early intervention by schools to reduce disadvantage in later life. 

This echoes the message from a series of N8 Child of the North and Centre for Young Lives reports on the need to put children and young people first. Senior author Dr Amy Atkinson,Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University said:"Data from the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile is readily available for millions of children and young people in England. This information could,and should,be used to identify pupils at increased risk of becoming NEET. "