If you're wondering when you might get the flu, a new study indicates you should keep an eye on your local weather report.

    According to a research published in the Journal of Clinical Virology, if you keep your eye on the weather and watch for the first major dip in the temperature, you can essentially mark your calendar in prediction for an outbreak the flu.

    To figure out how the weather and flu outbreak may be connected, researchers analyzed statistics of 20,000 people in an area over three seasons. The number of people who caught the flu was then compared with local weather data.

    After each season, the team noticed one consistent finding: The first really cold period with low outdoor temperatures and low humidity (湿度) was always followed by a week of a mass influenza outbreak.

    The researchers say that aerosol particles (气溶胶粒子) containing virus and liquid are more able to spread in cold and dry weather. So, in theory, if you sneeze or cough and the surrounding air is very dry, the air will absorb the moisture and the particles containing the virus keep spreading through the air for a longer period of time.

    Luckily there are ways to keep off the illness regardless of the weather. Washing your hands, coughing into the crook (弯曲) of your arm and getting vaccine (疫苗) are the best ways to prevent the flu from spreading. People over the age of 65, pregnant women and young children are at the highest risk of developing complications (并发症) related to the virus, according to the CDC.

    As you enter university, you are likely to be confused by new demands and challenges. You need to decide for yourselves what you want to achieve when you graduate. It is important that you have appropriate and realistic expectations of a university education and know how far you can go towards achieving your personal and academic goals, so that you will have a sense of achievement at the end of your first year as well as when you graduate.

        This website aims to be a quick one stop information hub to help you understand more about learning at HKU and make better use of HKU's support services.

    University Life is an adventure that—literally everyone here is a key player.

    Your strategic moves at each stage have a direct impact on the outcomes of this adventure. The key to winning is mainly about how you manage your resources, especially your time. Most successful players engage themselves in activities that meet their needs and goals.

    First Year Experience

    As a new player, you may find yourself standing at the crossroads and wondering which directions you should go. An open mind for handling new challenges and a roadmap or planning and setting priorities during your stay at     HKU are what you need to start your journey.

    And don't forget to check out the following to familiarize yourself with the 'game rules', 'support and resources' and 'opportunity cards' on hand:

    * HKU Education aims to help to fulfill what you are expected to achieve.

    * The key cards that contribute to your academic, professional and social excellence, e. g. Horizons Office, Common Core, Centre for Sports and Exercise (CSE), Centre for Applied English Studies (CAES).

    Parents may think they're smart about where they store medicines, but their kids are smarter. Nearly 60,000 young children are rushed to the hospital every year after getting into medicines not meant for them, according to a new report from Safe Kids Worldwide.

    The report finds little connection between what parents know about storing medicines safely and what they actually do. Nine out of 10 parents know that medicines should be stored up and away out of reach and sight, but 7 out of 10 of them admit not doing that. They leave medicines out on kitchen counters, sinks and sofas, believing babies and toddlers(学步者)aren't tall enough or strong enough to reach them. Unfortunately, they probably can. Children as young as a month have ended up in an emergency department because they'd been poisoned by getting into a medicine that was left within reach.

Most poisonings related to medicines—particularly among babies and toddlers—occur within their home. Kids develop rapidly and they want to explore their environment. At certain ages they have a lot of hand-to-mouth activity, and so it's very common for them to explore their environment and then try to taste what they find.

    The new Safe Kids worldwide report includes a survey of 2,000 parents with children under age 6. While the number of children visiting an emergency department for accidental poisonings had declined since the 2010 maximum, the decline has slowed in recent years.

    Prescription and over-the-counter medicines cause the most severe poisonings, but vitamins and supplements(补充品)can also cause problems. There are steps families can take to lower the risk for an accidental medicine poisoning.

    The boss of a big company needed to call one of his employees about a serious problem with one of the main computers.

    He dialed the employee's home phone number and was greeted with a child's whisper, "Hello?" The boss asked, "Is your daddy at home?" "Yes," whispered the small voice. "May I talk with him?" The man asked.

    To the surprise of the boss, the small voice whispered, "No." Wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, "Is your mommy there?" "Yes," came the answer. "May I talk with her?" Again the small voice whispered, "No."

    Knowing that it was impossible that a young child would be left home alone, the boss decided he would just leave a message with the person who should be there watching over the child. "Is there anyone there besides you?" The boss asked the child. "Yes," whispered the child, "a policeman."

    Wondering what a policeman would be doing at his employee's home, the boss asked, "May I speak with the policeman?"

    "No, he's busy," whispered the child. "Busy doing what?" asked the boss. "Talking to daddy and mommy and the fireman," came the whispered answer.

    Growing concerned and even worried as he heard what sounded like a helicopter(直升机)through the earpiece on the phone, the boss asked, "What is the noise?" "A helicopter." answered the whispered voice. "What is going on there?" asked the boss, now alarmed.

    In a serious whispering voice the child answered, "The search team just landed the helicopter." Alarmed and concerned and more than just a little disappointed, the boss asked, "Why are they there?" Still whispering, the young voice replied along with an unclear giggly(窃笑), "They are looking for me."

    In 2011, Nancy Ballard went for a routine checkup that turned into something extraordinary. In fact, she was carrying a painting of a plant she'd done when she arrived at her doctor's San Francisco office. "It would be great if we had artwork like that for our chemotherapy (化疗) rooms," the nurse said. Ballard asked to see one.

    She was shocked by what she found. The walls were dull and bare, and the paint was chipping (剥落). It was a depressing room for a depressing routine—patients restricted to chemo drips for perhaps several hours, often with nothing to look at other than those sad walls. Ballard didn't have cancer herself, but she could sympathize with the patients. "I couldn't imagine how anyone could even think about getting healthy in a room like that," she says. As it happens, Ballard's physician, Stephen Hufford, was ill with cancer himself, so finding time to decorate the rooms was low on his to-do list. So Ballard made it her mission to brighten up the place.

    She started by e-mailing 20 local designers. "I wrote, 'You don't know me. But my heart hurts after seeing these rooms," she remembers. She then asked whether they would donate their time and money to transform just one of Dr. Hufford's rooms each.

    As it happened, six of them wrote back almost immediately. Six rooms got new paint, light fixtures, artwork, and furniture. Dr. Hufford was delighted. "All the patients feel relieved of the pain because of it," he said. He even noted that his own tone of voice was different in the rooms and that he was better able to connect with his patients.

    Ballard was so encouraged by the patients' reactions that she created a nonprofit, Rooms That Rock 4 Chemo, to raise money and decorate more spaces. Since then, she has worked on 20 projects, including one in Pennsylvania. "We were in Philadelphia for a ribbon cutting, and a woman was there on her third battle with cancer," says Ballard. "When she saw what we'd done, she said, 'I'm gonna beat it this time. I thought I wasn't going to, but now I know I'm gonna beat it".