Canadian short story writer Alice Munro wonthe Nobel Prize for Literature. Eighty-two-year-old Munro is only the 13thwoman to win the 112-year-old prize．

Munro didn't publish her first collectionof short stories until she was 37 years old, but her stories have always beenwell-received. Lots of her stories share similar themes and characters, buteach story has its own twists and turns.

Even though she's won Canada's most famousliterary award, the Giller Prize, twice, winning the Nobel Prize for Literatureis the cherry on top of Munro's career. “It brings this incredible recognition，both of her and her career，and of the dedication to the short story,”said one person.

Along with the well-respected title comes1.3 million dollars. Munro said everything was “so surprising and wonderful”and that she was “dazed by all the attention and affection that has been comingmy way.”

Munro knew she was in the running—she wasnamed the second-most likely person to win this year's prize, after HarukiMurakami（村上春树）of Japan—but she never thought that she would win.

Munro's win also represents the long wayCanadian writers have come. “When I began writing there was a very smallcommunity of Canadian writers and little attention was paid by the world. NowCanadian writers are read, admired and respected around the globe,” Munro saidon Thursday.

She is technically not the first Canadianto win the Nobel Prize for Literature, but many like to think that she is．In 1976 Saul Bellow, who was born in Quebecbut moved to Chicago when he was still a child, won the prize. Even though hewas born in Canada, he is mostly considered to be an American writer.

“This is a win for us all. Canadians, byour very nature，are not very nationalistic,” said Geoffrey Taylor. “But things like thissuddenly make you want to find a flag．”

She wasn't sure whether she would keepwriting if she won the prize，saying that it would be “nice to go out with a bang. But this may change mymind.”

    When Russell Lyons volunteered for the first time, he read “Goodnight Moon” to a class of San Diego preschoolers. And it wasn't reading — he'd memorized the book and was reciting it out loud. He was 4. Still, he said it felt good there, in front of the other kids, lending a hand. He wanted more of that feeling.

    Thirteen years later, he's getting a lot of it. He's on a five-month road trip across America — not sightseeing, but volunteering.

    The University City resident has spent time at an animal reserve in Utah, a women's shelter in St. Louis, a soup kitchen in New York, a retirement home in Tucson. This week he's in Los Angeles, at a program that supports disabled youth.

    “I just like helping people and feeling that something I do is making a difference,” he said. He resists the idea that his “Do Good Adventure” is all that unusual. It bothers him that the media often describe young people as lazy, self-centered. So he sees his trip as a chance to make a statement, too. “About 55 percent of teens do volunteer work, higher than the rate for adults” he said, according to a 2002 study. “Not everybody knows that. ”

    Of course, some teens do volunteer work because it looks impressive on their college applications. Lyons said he mentioned his trip on his applications. But charity work is a habit with him. Even before the cross country trip, he was volunteering about 200 hours a year at various places. He's made sandwiches for homeless families in Washington D.C. He's taught math to fifth-graders in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

    He gets some of that drive from his mother, Lesley Lyons, who has been involved in nonprofits for much of her life. She was there when her son “read” to the preschoolers — a memory of hers “that will never go away.”

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    Chinese students aren't the only ones who have a sleep loss problem. In Australia, teenagers are also missing, on average, one hour's sleep every night during the school week.

    Organized activities and homework push bedtimes later, the first large-scale Australian study of children's sleeping habits has shown. Their sleep deprivation (剥夺) is enough to cause “serious drop-offs in school performance, attention and memory”, and governments should consider later or flexible school start times, said the study's leader, Tim Olds.

    His survey, of more than 4,000 children aged 9 to 18, found those who slept least did not watch more television but spent their time socializing (相处) with family or friends or listening to music.

    “Almost all children get up at 7 or 7:15 — they have to get to school on time,” said Olds. He favors a later start over an earlier finish because he believes organized sports and activities would still consume the latter end of the day.

    Olds' research also establishes lack of sleep as a cause of weight gain in children, and a possible source of future problems with depression, anxiety and increased susceptibility (易感性) to illness.

    It was already known that overweight children sleep less, but Professor Olds found sleep duration(时长) was strongly linked to weight across the full range of body sizes. The thinnest children sleep 20 minutes more than the obese. This showed being overweight had no specific effect on sleep patterns, and it was more likely that shorter sleep times stimulate (刺激) appetite and make kids hungry.

    The US National Sleep Foundation says teenagers aged 13 to 18 need eight to nine hours' sleep a night. Younger school-aged kids need 9 to 11 hours.

    On that basis, Professor Olds said, half of Australian children are under-sleeping on weekdays and a quarter on weekends.

    Everyone wants to win, and everybody knows it. Take the case of Olympic athletes, who train hard each day for years to reach the top of their sport and hopefully win a gold medal. Since every competitor's goal is to win, we assume that the silver medalists would be less happy than gold-medal winners, but still happier than those in third place. Common sense says that our levels of happiness should have something to do with our levels of achievement – except that often this isn't the case.

    Researchers found that bronze medalists actually appeared on the whole to be happier than silver medalists. How could that be? The answer, in a word, is gratitude. Silver medallists, who compared themselves to the gold medalists, experienced disappointment at having been close to winning the gold, but falling short. The bronze medalists, on the other hand, were thankful to have won a medal at all, comparing themselves to all those who didn't even reach the Olympic platform.

    If happiness, then, is the aim of life, perhaps our achievement-centered culture is getting it all backwards. We focus on what we want rather than on what we have. We forget to be grateful, and as a result we forget to be happy.

    We're from a culture that teaches us to envy others – another person achievements – and that is always looking forward to what comes next. Yet in a better society, might we not look at what all of our earlier nexts have already earned us?

    I encourage any person who struggles with frustration （挫折）in their life to take out a notebook and a pen each evening before bed, and to write down all the things that they have gratitude for. It's not a cure for dissatisfaction, to be sure, but many people quickly discover that, when they actually stop to think about it, they have things pretty good and happiness comes.

    Those bronze medalists, after all, can't be wrong.

Dear Maya Shao­ming,

    To me, June 6, 1990 is a special day. My long­awaited dream came true the minute your father cried, "A girl！"You, little daughter, are the link to our female line, the legacy of another woman's pain and sacrifice 31 years ago.

    Let me tell you about your Chinese grandmother. Somewhere in Hong Kong, in the late fifties, a young waitress found herself pregnant(怀孕) by a cook. She carried the baby to term, suffered to give it birth, and kept the little girl for the first three months of her life. I like to think that my mother—your grandmother—loved me and fought to raise me on her own, but the daily struggle was too hard. Worn down by the demands of the new baby and perhaps the constant threat of starvation, she made the painful decision to give away her girl so that both of us might have a chance for a better life.

    Having a baby in her unmarried state would have brought shame on the family in China, so she probably kept my existence a secret. Once I was out of her life, it was as if I had never been born. And so you and your brother and I are the missing leaves on a family tree.

    Do they ever wonder if we exist?

    Before I was two, I was adopted by an Anglo couple. I grew like a wild weed and grasped all the opportunities they had to offer—books, music, education, church life and community activities. In a family of blue­eyed blonds, though, I stood out like a sore thumb. Moody and impatient, burdened by fears that none of us realized resulted from my early years of need, I was not an easy child to love. My mother and I conflicted countless times over the years, but gradually came to see one another as real human beings with faults and talents. Lacking a mirror image in the mother who raised me, I had to seek my identity as a woman on my own. The Asian American community has helped me regain my double identity.

    But part of me will always be missing: my beginnings, my personal history, all the delicate details that give a person her origin. Nevertheless, someone gave me a lucky name "Siu Wai". "Siu" means "little", and "Wai" means "clever". Therefore, my baby name was "Clever little one". Who chose those words? Who cared enough to note my arrival in the world?

    I lost my Chinese name for 18 years. It was Americanized for convenience to "Sue". But like an ill­fitting coat, it made me uncomfortable. I hated the name. But even more, I hated being Chinese. It took many years to become proud of my Asian origin and work up the courage to take back my birth name. That, plus a little knowledge of classroom Cantonese, is all the Chinese culture I have to offer you. Not white, certainly, but not really Asian, I try to pave the way between the two worlds and bridge the gap for you. Your name, "Shao­ming", is very much like mine—"Shao" means "little". And "ming" is "bright", as in a shining sun or moon. Whose lives will you brighten little Maya? Your past is more complete than mine and each day I cradle you in your babyhood, generously giving you the loving care I lacked for my first two years. Sweet Maya, it doesn't matter what you "become" later on. You have already fulfilled my wildest dreams.

    I love you,

Mummy

    "Dreams may be more important than sleep. We all need to dream," some scientists say. Dreams take up about one quarter of our sleeping time. People have several dreams each night. Dreams are like short films. They are usually in colour. Some dreams are like old films. They come to us over and over again. That may be because the dreamer is worrying about something. Dreaming may be a way of trying to find an answer. Some people get new ideas about their work from dreams. They may have been thinking about their work all day. These thoughts can carry over into dreams.
    Sometimes we wake up with a good feeling from a dream. But often we can't remember the dream. Dreams can disappear quickly from memory. Too much dreaming can be harmful. The more we sleep, the longer we dream. The mind is hard at work when we dream. That is why we may have a long sleep and still wake up tired.