Baby girls make their way to dolls as soon as they can crawl, while boys will head for the toy cars,  a study has shown. The findings, the first to show consistent differences in very young babies, suggest there is a biological basis to their preferences.

    Psychologists Dr Brenda Todd from City University London carried out an experiment involving 90 babies aged nine months to 36 months. They were allowed to choose from seven toys. Some were boys' toys - a car, a digger, a ball and a blue teddy.  The rest were girls' toys: a pink teddy, a doll and a cooking set. They were placed a meter away from the toys, and could pick whichever toy they liked. Their choice and the amount of time they spent playing with each toy were recorded.

    Of the youngest children (nine to 14 months), girls spent much longer playing with the doll than boys, and boys spent much more time with the car and ball than the girls did. Among the two-and three-year-olds, girls spent 50 percent of the time playing with the doll while only two boys briefly touched it. The boys spent almost 90 percent of their time playing with cars, which the girls barely touched. There was no link between the parents' view on which toys were more appropriate for boys or girls, and the children's choice.

    Dr Brenda Todd said: “Children of this age are already exposed to much socialization. Boys may be given ‘toys that go' while girls get toys they can care for, which may help shape their preference. But these findings agree with the former idea that children show natural interests in particular kinds of toys. There could be a biological basis for their choices. Males through evolution have been adapted to prefer moving objects, probably through hunting instincts（本能）, while girls prefer warmer colors such as pink, the color of a newborn baby.”

    Health experts are calling for action to increase cancer care and control in the developing world. A medical research paper says cancer was once thought of as a problem mostly in the developed world. But now cancer is a leading cause of death and disability in poor countries as well. Experts from Harvard University and other organizations urge the international community to fight cancer actively, saying it should be fought in the way HIV/AIDS has been fought in Africa.

    Cancer kills more than 7.5 million people a year worldwide. Almost two thirds are in low-income and middle-income countries.

They discover cancer kills more people in developing countries than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. But the world spends only 5% of its cancer resources in those countries.

    Felicia Knaul from Harvard Medical School was one of the writers of the paper. She was in Mexico when she was found to have breast cancer. She received treatment there and her experience showed her the sharp difference between the rich and the poor in treating breast cancer.

    Felicia Knaul says, “And we are seeing how this is attacking young women. It's the number two cause of death in Mexico of women thirty to fifty-four. All over the developing world, it's the number one cancer-related death among young women. I think we have to again say that there is much more we could do about it than we are doing about it. ”

    Professor Knaul met community health workers during her work in developing countries. They were an important part of efforts to reduce deaths from the cancer. They were able to persuade people to get tested to prevent the illness. The experts say cancer care does not have to be costly. For example, patients can be treated with lower-cost drugs.

    The students are having their chemistry class. Miss Li is telling the children what water is like. After that, she asks her students some questions, “Boys and girls! What is water? Can you tell me?" She waits for a few minutes, but no one answers her. Then Miss Li asks again. “Why don't you answer my question? I tell you what water is like, right?”

    Then a boy puts up his hand and says, “Miss Li, you tell us that water has no color and no smell. But I think that water is something that is black when I wash my hand in it.” All the students begin to laugh. Miss Li laughs too. Then another boy puts up his hand, Miss Li says “What do you think, Wang Bing?” The boy says:” Miss Li, where can we find water that has no color and no smell?”

    “Why do you say so?” Miss Li asks.

    “The water in the river behind my house is always black and it has a bad smell.” answers the boy. And most of the children think he is right.

 “I am sorry to hear that, children.” says the teacher. “Our water is getting dirtier. That is a problem. All of us must try our best to make it clean again.”

Letter One

Dear Editor,

    After I finish my homework, I often go online and chat with my friends. Sometimes I play computer games. But my parents hate to see me playing games on the computer. Maybe they have heard too much news about how QQ and computer games harm children. Once I went to a net bar(网吧) to play games after school. But after that I told my parents that I was playing basketball at school. I said so because I didn't want to make them unhappy. I feel bad about it. However, I need to rest for a while by playing computer games after studying for a long time. I really want my parents to understand that. Do foreign parents do the same to their children? Please help me.

Li Ping,

Beijing

Letter Two

Dear Li Ping,

    I don't think it's strange for parents to keep their children away from anything bad. Foreign parents will do the same as your parents! They may not let their children watch TV for too long a time, or like your parents, they don't want their children to play computer games.

    Talk to your parents and be honest to them, I think. Tell them what you are doing and why you are doing so to make them understand you. It's never good to do things behind your parents. They aren't fools as you think sometimes! Our parents seem to know what is the best for us.

Remember: to be honest is the best way.

Good luck,

Rebecca

    Floating on the surface of the seas of the world are billions of tons of small plants and animals called plankton. Most of these plants and animals are too small for the human eye to see. They move about lazily with the currents, providing a basic food for many larger animals. Plankton has been described as the equivalent (相等的东西) of the grasses that grow on dry land, and the comparison is an appropriate one. In potential food value, however, plankton far outweighs that of land grasses. One scientist has estimated that while grasses of the world produce about 49 billion tons of valuable carbohydrates(碳水化合物) each year, the sea's plankton produces more than twice as much.

    Despite its enormous food potential, little effort was made until recently to farm plankton as we farm grasses on land. Now scientists have at last begun to study this possibility, especially as the sea's resources appear even more important as a means of feeding an expanding world population.

    No one yet has seriously suggested that “planktonburgers” may soon become popular around the world. As a possible farmed supplementary food source, however, plankton is gaining considerable interest among scientists.

    One type of plankton that seems to have great harvest possibilities is a tiny creature called krill(磷虾). Growing to two or three inches long, krill are a major food source for the giant blue whale, the largest animal ever to live on the Earth. Realizing that this whale may grow 100 feet and weigh about 150 tons, it is not surprising that each one swallows more than one ton of krill daily.

    Krill swim about just below the surface in huge schools sometimes wide, mainly in the cold Antarctic. Because of their pink color, they often appear as an entire reddish mass when viewed from a ship or from the air. Krill are very high in food value. If krill can feed such huge creatures as whales, many scientists reason, they must certainly be competitors among possible new food sources for humans.

Between 1945 and 2000, educators employed a fairly uniform approach. The teacher was the sun in the classroom, and all lessons and activities centered around him or her. Educators stressed the importance of discipline and obedience(服从) within the classroom, and students were expected to follow very rigid standards for behavior and academic performance. The stated goal of this model was to ensure fairness by applying the same expectations; however, the result was that only a few students succeeded while many others were left behind.

When computers and Internet technology entered the classroom a few decades ago, another pattern appeared and progressive educators immediately saw the opportunity to change the way school worked. Instead of needing to focus on the teachers for the vast majority of the day, students could use computers, websites, and even games to learn new materials and improve their skills and knowledge. Not all educators welcomed this shift, however, as some believed it took power and responsibility away from the teachers and cheapened the educational experience for learners.

Over the last decade, two distinct camps of educators have emerged. Tech advocates stress that computers and Internet technology allow students to learn at their own pace in an environment that makes them feel comfortable, while the traditional classroom sets a pace that many learners can't keep up with and often makes students feel uncomfortable. Traditionalists, on the other hand, believe that over-reliance on tech limits students' ability to develop their own knowledge and skills and does little to prepare them for the realities of being adults in the real world.

Regrettably, the inability of these two parties to find an agreement has prevented the growth of our education system. We must learn from what worked in the past while adopting the best of our new technologies to create an education system that reflects our modern world. If we can't get all our teachers on the same page, then we will be at risk of failing future generations.