Soft winds blew throughout the Windy City today. We welcomed the winds, as it was another hot day in Chicago. The wind blew, bringing us some coolness and making the weather not that hot. But it was a beautiful summer day with a blue sky.

    Chicago is a great city for eating, and we have enjoyed tasting the different foods. Last night, we tried one of the city's most famous foods: deep-dish pizza. Chicago claims credit for the rich and cheesy thick-crust pizza, covered with a sweet tomato sauce. We topped it with olives and green peppers.

    We were touring the city, mainly looking for delicious local foods. Today, we enjoyed a Polish specialty at lunch: Pierogis, an Eastern European dumpling-like dish, filled with foods like potatoes, cheese, mushrooms, cabbage and meat. Polish immigrants started settling in Chicago in the 1850s, and the city has one of the largest Polish communities in the U.S.

    We took a break from exploring the city to talk with some of you! Ashley and Caty logged onto the Internet for an on-the-road version of TALK2US. We spoke to an English teacher in Tokyo, Japan, and a graduate student in India.

    Meanwhile, Adam searched for some locations around the city to shoot some video. He chose a spectacular spot: Navy Pier, Chicago's most-visited attraction. The winds from Lake Michigan keep visitors cool, and the view of the Chicago skyline never fails to impress. In fact, the view made all of us head over heels!

    Our time in Chicago has come to an end. Tomorrow, the true journey begins, as we pass through Illinois and into Missouri via Route 66. Springfield, the home of Abe Lincoln, and St. Louis, the "gateway to the West," wait for us.

    Wearing a red nose for a day may seem like a strange way to raise money for charity. However, it seems to work in Britain

Red Nose Day (RND) is well-known in the UK. The aim of the day is to raise money for a charity called Comic Relief which helps people in need in Africa and in the UK.

    Red nose?

    Comic Relief was started in 1985 by the scriptwriter Richard Curtis. It's called Red Nose Day, as on this day many people buy a plastic red nose to wear! The money made from selling red noses goes to the charity.

    When is RND?

    Red Nose Day takes place every two years in the spring and is now so famous that many people consider it to be an unofficial national holiday. For example, many schools have non-uniform days. This year Red Nose Day was on 13^th March 2015.

    Money

    Across Britain, people are encouraged to “Do Something Funny for Money”. The money that is collected helps children to go to school, and educates the adults with HIV and AIDS. Comic Relief also works closely with disabled and elderly people to make sure they have equal rights and a better life.

    So, if you are ever in the UK on Red Nose Day, now you know why you may find normal people wearing red noses and doing silly things! It's all for a good cause! If you want to find out more about the day, have a look at the official Read Nose Day website.

    Living and dealing with kids can be a tough job these days, but living and dealing with parents can be even tougher.

    If I have learned anything in my 18 years, it is communication that is very important, both when you disagree and when you get along. With any relationship, you need to let others know how you are feeling. If you are not able to communicate, you drift apart. When you are mad at your parents, or anyone else, not talking to them doesn't solve anything.

    Communication begins with the concerns of another. It means that you can't just come home from school, go up to your room and ignore everyone. Even if you just say and see how their day was for five minutes, it is better than nothing.

    If you looked up the word “communication” in a dictionary, it would say “the exchange of ideas, the conveyance of information，correspondence (通信)，means of communication: a letter or a message”. To maintain a good relationship, you must keep communication strong. Let people know how you feel, even if ifs just by writing a note.

    When dealing with parents, you always have to make them feel good about how they are doing as a parent. If you are trying to make them see something as you see it, tell them that you'll listen to what they have to say, but ask them politely to listen to you. Yelling or walking away only makes the situation worse.

     This is an example: one night, Sophie went to a street party with her friends. She knew she had to be home by midnight after the fireworks, but she didn't feel she could just ask to go home. That would be rude. After all, they had been nice enough to take her along with them. Needless to say, she was late getting home. Her parents were mad at first, but when Sophie explained why she was late, they weren't as mad and let the incident go.

    Communication is the key factor here. If Sophie's parents had not been willing to listen, Sophie would have been in a lot of trouble. Communication isn't a one-way deal: it goes both ways. Just remember: if you get into a situation like Sophie's, tell the other person how you feel—listening is the key factor to communication.

    As any parent knows too well, sometimes a little white lie is the only way to make a naughty child quiet. Indeed, parents have shared the top white lies they've told their children. While some of them are amusing, others are somewhat cruel.

    “Father Christmas is watching you,” “Carrots will make you see in the dark” and “Your pet has gone to live on a farm” are among the top white lies parents tell their children. The top 20 list of little lies that adults use shows that four in five parents have told their children something that isn't true. The threat of Father Christmas is on the top, with 62 percent of parents employing St. Nick to keep their kids under control. The second on the list is: “We'll see”, which any little one knows really means “no”.

    The majority of British people say that they lie to their children to protect their innocence, to save them from being upset or to stop them behaving badly. The top white lie told to kids about their pets is “your pet has to live on a farm in the countryside”, which is employed after one dies or has gone missing. On average, parents think that children are ready to start learning about death at the age of seven and a half.

    One 62-year-old recalled that when he was four, his cat ran away, because it kept having its tail pulled. It was 53 years later that it was revealed that the cat had actually been given away to stop it from scratching the furniture. One respondent (应答者) said that he still remembered that when he was young, he believed his father's statement that the entire world used to be in black and white before colour photography came along.

    Forty percent of parents say that they would definitely lie to their children to keep up their belief in Father Christmas, and over all say they'd certainly tell the truth about a pet dying. However, one in ten parents say they've replaced their children's dead pet with a one looking the same to cheat their children into believing it was still alive and well, found the study by Blue Cross pet charity.

    On Tuesday, scientists announced that they have discovered the bones of four settlers in Jamestown, Virginia. Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in what become the United States. The bones were unearthed under the floor of a Jamestown church which was discovered in 2010 and is considered as America‘s first Protestant church.

    The Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation at Historic Jamestowne and the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History announced that the settlers held high leadership positions. The men, Rev.Robert Hunt,Capt. Gabriel Archer,Sir Ferdinando Wainman,and Capt. William West, all played a role in the Jamestown settlement. After being lost to history for more than 400 years, the discovery of their remains provides new clues about their life and the importance of religion in the 1600s.

    “This is a very important discovery,” Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation President James Horn said in a statement. “These men were among the first founders of English America."

    About 100 people settled along the James River in what would become the first English settlement m 1607. During that time, settlers in Jamestown were faced with famine and disease The colony was nearly wiped out due to conflict with Native Americans in the area and with other English settlers.

    "They lived and died at a hard time in the history of the settlement , when Jamestown almost ended in  failure," Horn said. “The bones of these men help fill in the stories of their lives ”

    The Smithsonian and the Rediscovery Foundation found the remains in November of 2013. Scientists used 3-D technology to locate the exact gravesites of the men. The team wanted to identify its findings before announcing the discovery. They identified the men using historical records and studied the chemicals of the bones to learn what the men ate and where they came from.

    Findings from the burials will go on display within weeks at Historic Jamestowne. The site also plans to honor the men and will keep their bones in a safe place for future study.

    Developed by researchers and designers specializing in typography(印刷术)and behavioral science, Sans Forgetica is a new font(字体)designed to help readers better remember the information they read by forcing them to spend a bit more time on each word.

    The design of Sans Forgetica is based on a font called Albion, but with substantial  modifications(修改)to reduce familiarity and attain its goal of engaging the brain more and helping the reader retain(保留) more information. It was developed by scientists at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, who believe it could help students studying for exams.

    “We believe this is the first time that specific principles of design theory have been combined with specific principles of psychology theory in order to create a font, ”Behavioral economist Jo Peryman told DW.

    If fonts are too familiar, readers often glance over them without their brain creating may  memories of what was read. At the same time, if a font is too outlandish, the brain has to struggle too much to decipher(破译)it while neglecting the retention of information. According to its developers, “Sans Forgetica lies at a sweet spot where just enough obstacle has been added to create that memory retention.” Its modifications force readers to spend more time, but not too much time, reading each word, allowing the brain to engage in deeper cognitive processing.

    So does Sans Forgetica actually work? Does it help readers better remember the information they read? So far, studies have shown that it can make a difference, although not a significant one.

    One experiment had 96 participants recall word pairs presented in three different fonts. They remembered 69 percent of the word pairs written in Sans Forgetica, compared to 61 percent for the other fonts. In a different experiment, 303 students took a mock(模拟)multiple-choice exam, and whenever the text was presented in Sans Forgetica, they remembered 57 percent of the text, compared to only 50 percent of the surrounding text written in Arial font.

    So Sans Forgetica won't give you the memory of an elephant, but if you're the kind of person who believes every little bit helps, it might be worth a try.