In addition to the official basketball world, various other types of basketball are practiced around the world.

Wheelchair Basketball

    Wheelchair basketball was invented in 1946 by former American basketball players, who, after wartime injury, wanted once again to experience the excitement of a highly athletic sport within a team environment. It is now played in more than 80 countries by over 25,000 men, women and children with a physical disability which prevents them from playing competitive basketball on their feet.

http://www.iwbf.org

Beach Basketball

    Beach basketball is an exciting, non-stop action game played in the sand. The game was born more than forty years ago on the physical education fields of Gulf Shores School. This kind of basketball, invented by Philip Bryant, has grown from an extremely effective skill improvement game to a very popular, widespread competitive sport.

http://www.beachbasketball.com

Street Basketball

    Street Basketball or streetball is mainly played as a leisure game, but streetball players can also compete against each other. There are no specific streetball rules and the game is played outdoors; the players make up their own rules to play. Streetball is very popular among younger players and allows players to publicly show their own individual skills.

http://www.streetball.com

Deaf Basketball

    Basketball for the deaf (unable to hear in one or both ears) men and women has been played since the early 1920s. The game today has exactly the same rules as FIBA (International Basketball Federation).

http://www.dibf.org

Bankshot Basketball

    Bankshot is a new game of skill and challenge that is often described as “mini golf, but with a basketball.” Bankshot is the only sports system that allows the able-bodied and athletes with a disability to play together at the same time. This game is about no running, jumping, or body contact(接触)and relies on the shooting skill.

http://www.bankshot.com

    Chinese students always complain that they're under great pressure and don't get enough sleep. But they may be surprised to learn that they're much luckier than their peers (同龄人) in South Korea and Japan, according to a recently published report, conducted by Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences on the physical and mental health of senior high school students in the three Asian countries.

    According to the study among nearly 6,000 high school students in the three countries, Chinese students are the tallest but poorest in physical fitness. Chinese students are on average 168.17cm, compared with 167.61cm for South Korean students and 164.70cm for Japanese students. Chinese students asked for sick leave more than students in other countries. About 72 percent of Korean students never asked for sick and injury leave during high school, compared to 53 percent for Japanese students and 45 percent for Chinese students. Moreover, Chinese students drink alcohol and smoke earlier than Korean and Japanese students. Around 70 percent of Chinese students have drunk alcohol, compared to 50 percent for Korean and Japanese students.

    According to the survey, Japanese and South Korean students suffer more pressure than their Chinese peers. Statistics (统计) show 16 percent of students in China said they experienced mental pressure often over the past year, while the numbers in Japan and South Korea were 33 percent and 47 percent respectively. Their worries come from “study”, “future after graduation”, “friendships” and “relationship with their parents”. To go with stress, 57.9 percent of Korean students sleep the least, less than six hours a day, compared with 46.6 percent of Japanese students and 30 percent of Chinese students.

    More Chinese students were satisfied with their physical appearance, double that of students in the survey from Japan and South Korea. The report said that over half of students in South Korea had tried to lose weight in the past year, while in China the figure was only 22 percent.

    In measures of self-worth, such as “I think I am valuable” and “I think I am successful”, “I can complete many things”, “I won't give up to failure,” Chinese students showed greater self-confidence than students in Japan and South Korea.

    Tom Costello was once afraid of homeless Americans. “I was so afraid that if I saw a homeless person walking down the street, I'd cross the street,” he said.

    That changed seven years ago after his wife, Nancy, a volunteer at a homeless shelter, persuaded him to help with a holiday dinner for shelter residents. Tom remembered going to a store and buying socks for the residents. He knew many of them were in need of clothing.

    At the shelter, Tom said, he dropped a pair of socks into a bag for a woman. She asked him if she could have socks for a friend who wasn't with her that day. He gave her another pair. “She started to cry and told me that nobody had ever given her socks before,” Tom said, “Then she reached out and gave me a hug.” That experience at the shelter helped Tom end his fear of the homeless.

    It also led him to set up a group called “The Joy of Sox.”, which borrows from a name of a popular book. The group collects socks from donors and gives them mostly to shelters in the area where Tom and Nancy live. It has been expanding its reach and provides socks to homeless shelters in 21 states and other three countries now.

    Why socks? Tom explains that some Americans give food, coats and other clothing to shelters. But donating socks is not something most people think about. And, he said, socks are very helpful at keeping people warm, especially in cold weather. A man named Kiwi，who has lived in homeless shelters, said most of the time he could find enough food through shelters and soup kitchens. But socks were much more difficult to get, he noted.

    Any foreigner who has tried to learn Chinese can tell how hard it is to master the tones required to speak and understand. And anyone who has tried to learn to play the violin or other instruments can report similar challenges.

    Now researchers have found that people with musical training have an easier time learning Chinese. Writing in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience，researchers from Northwestern University say that both skills draw on the same parts of the brain that help people discover changes in pitch(音调).

    One of the study's authors，Nina Kraus，said the findings suggested that studying music "actually tunes our sensory system" .This means that schools that want children to do well in languages should hesitate before cutting music programs，Dr. Kraus said. She said music training might also help children with language problems.

    Mandarin(普通话)speakers have been shown to have a more complex encoding(编码) of pitch patterns in their brains than English speakers do. This is because in Mandarin and other Asian languages，pitch plays a central role. A single­syllable word can have several meanings depending on how it is intoned.

    For this study，the researchers looked at 20 non­Chinese speaking volunteers，half with no musical background and half who have studied an instrument for at least six years.

    As they were shown a movie，the volunteers also heard an audio tape of the Mandarin word “mi” in three of its meanings: squint，bewilder and rice. The researchers recorded activities in their brain stems to see how well they were processing the sounds. Those with a music background showed much more brain activities in response to the Chinese sounds.

    The lead author of the study，Patrick C.M. Wong，said it might work both ways. It appears that native speakers of tonal languages may do better at learning instruments.

    Sometimes you'll hear people say that you can't love others until you love yourself. Sometimes you'll hear people say that you can't expect someone else to love you until you love yourself. Either way, you've got to love yourself first and this can be tricky. Sure we all know that we're the apple of our parents' eyes, and that our Grandmas think we're great talents and our Uncle Roberts think that we will go to the Olympics. But sometimes it's a lot harder to think such nice thoughts about ourselves. If you find that believing in yourself is a challenge, it is time you should build a positive self-image and learn to love yourself.

    Self-image is your own mind's picture of yourself. This image includes the way you look, the way you act, the way you talk and the way you think. Interestingly, our self-images are often quite different from the images others hold about US. Unfortunately, most of these images are more negative than they should be. Thus changing the way you think about yourself is the key to changing your self-image and your whole world.

    The best way to defeat a passive self-image is to step back and decide to stress your successes. That is, make a list if you need to, but write down all of the great things you do every day. Don't allow doubts to occur in it.

    It very well might be that you are experiencing a negative self-image because you can't move past one flaw or weakness that you see about yourself. Well, roll up your sleeves and make a change of it as your primary task. If you think you're silly because you aren't good at math, find a tutor. If you think you're weak because you can't run a mile, get to the track and practice. If you think you're dull because you don't wear the latest trends, buy a few new clothes. But remember, just because you think it doesn't mean it's true.

    The best way to get rid of a negative self-image is to realize that your image is far from objective, and to actively convince yourself of your positive qualities. Changing the way you think and working on those you need to improve will go a long way towards promoting a positive self-image. When you can pat (拍) yourself on the back, you'll know you're well on your way. Good luck!

    Next month, I'm traveling to a remote area of Central Africa and my aim is to know enough Lingala — one of the local languages — to have a conversation. I wasn't sure how I was going to manage this — until I discovered a way to learn all the vocabulary I'm going to need. Thanks to Memrise, the application I'm using. It feels just like a game.

    "People often stop learning things because they feel they're not making progress or because it all feels like too much hard work," says Ed Cooke, one of the people who created Memrise. "We're trying to create a form of learning experience that is fun and is something you'd want to do instead of watching TV."

    Memrise gives you a few new words to learn and these are "seeds" which you plant in your "greenhouse". When you learn the words, you "water your plants". When the application believes that you've really memorized a word, it moves the word to your "garden". And if you forget to log on, the application sends you emails, reminding you to "water your plants".

    The application uses two principles about learning. The first is that people memorize things better when they link them to a picture in their mind. Memrise translates words into your own language, but it also encourages you to use "mems". For example, I memorized motele, the Lingala word for "engine", using a mem I created — I imagined an old engine in a motel (汽车旅馆) room.

    The second principle is that we need to stop after studying words and then repeat them again later, leaving time between study sessions. Memrise helps you with this, because it's the kind of application you only use for five or ten minutes a day.

    I've learnt hundreds of Lingala words with Memrise. I know this won't make me a fluent speaker, but I hope I'll be able to do more than just smile when I meet people in Congo. Now, I need to go and water my Vocabulary!