As countless unmade beds and unfinished homework assignments prove, kids need rules. Yet how parents make demands can powerfully influence a child's social skills, psychologists at the University of Virginia recently found after the conclusion of a study investigating the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

    Initially 184 13-year-olds filled out multiple surveys, including one to assess how often their parents employed psychologically controlling strategies, such as inducing guilt or threatening to withdraw affection. The kids rated, for example, how typical it would be for Dad to suggest that “if I really cared for him, I would not do things that caused him to worry”or for Mom to become “less friendly when I did not see things her way.”

    The researchers followed up with the subjects at ages 18 and 21, asking the young adults to bring along a close friend and, later, a romantic partner if they had one. These pairs were asked to answer hypothetical (假设的) questions that were purposefully written to inspire a difference of opinion. “We wanted to see whether they could navigate a disagreement in a healthy way, ”says study leader Barbara Oudekerk, now at the U. S. Department of Justice's bureau of statistics.

    In the October issue of Child Development, Oudekerk and her colleagues report that the 13-year-olds who had highly controlling parents struggled in friendly disagreements at age 18. They had difficulty stating their opinions in a confident, reasoned manner in comparison to the kids without controlling parents. And when they did speak up, they often failed to express themselves in warm and productive ways.

    The researchers suspect that pushy parents ruin their child's ability to learn how to argue his or her own viewpoint in other relationships. Although parents do need to set boundaries, domineering strategies imply that any disagreement will damage the bond itself. Separate findings suggest that parents who explain the reasons behind their rules and turn disagreements into conversations leave youngsters better prepared for future arguments.

    The consequences of tense or domineering relationships appear to get worse with time. This study also found that social difficulties at 18 predicted even poorer communication abilities at age 21. Psychologist Shmuel Shulman of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, who did not participate in the work, thinks these conclusions convincingly reveal how relationship patterns “carry forward” into new friendships.

    The softshell turtle species is officially listed as endangered by the IUCN Red List. Scientists long thought softshell turtles were extinct in the Cambodian part of the Mekong River until they discovered some stragglers (掉队者) in the early 2000s.

    The species had quite a wide historical range across Asia, but much of that range is now completely gone. Much of the turtle's habitat in Southeast Asia have disappeared due to urban and industrial development along the Mekong River. The sand where turtles multiply is routinely carried away for use in construction projects, while fishing nets lift up hatchlings. People also take turtles and their eggs to sell for food.

    Initial surveys in 2003 and in 2007 found two small populations of the softshell turtles along a 30-mile stretch (水域) of the Mekong River. Since then, conservation groups have worked with local communities and officials to increase the wild population of these endangered turtles, including a program to hire former egg collectors to help search for and protect nests instead of harvesting the eggs.

    For the last decade, WCS, Conservation International, the Turtle Survival Alliance and local groups have worked to protect turtle nests. Their goal is to ensure eggs will multiply and hatch, and that baby turtles grow strong enough to eventually take care of themselves in the wild.

    A team recently released 150 hatchlings back into their natural habitat, bringing the total to more than 7,700 baby turtles in the past 10 years.

    Whether in the home or the workplace, social robots are going to become a lot more common in the next few years. Social robots are about to bring technology to the everyday world in a more humanized way, said Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist at the robot company Jibo.

    While household robots today do the normal housework, social robots will be much more like companions than mere tools. For example, these robots will be able to distinguish when someone is happy or sad. This allows them to respond more appropriately to the user.

    The Jibo robot, arranged to ship later this year, is designed to be a personalized assistant. You can talk to the robot, ask it questions, and make requests for it to perform different tasks. The robot doesn't just deliver general answers to questions; it responds based on what it learns about each individual in the household. It can do things such as reminding an elderly family member to take medicine or taking family photos.

    Social robots are not just finding their way into the home. They have potential applications in everything from education to health care and are already finding their way into some of these spaces.

    Fellow Robots is one company bringing social robots to the market. The company's "Oshbot" robot is built to assist customers in a store, which can help the customers find items and help guide them to the product's location in the store. It can also speak different languages and make recommendations for different items based on what the customer is shopping for.

    The more interaction the robot has with humans, the more it learns. But Oshbot, like other social robots, is not intended to replace workers, but to work alongside other employees. "We have technologies to train social robots to do things not for us, but with us," said Breazeal.

    Phillip Island is a small island and nature reserve off the coast of South Australia, about 140 km from Melbourne. On the island you can see koalas, kangaroos and the main attraction, the Penguin Parade（归巢）on Summerland Beach.

    As dusk was approaching, we made our way down to the beach, as did everyone else. On the beach was a stone grandstand, rather cold on the behind, so bring a coat or blanket to sit on. As it got darker, people talked less, keeping an eye out on the beach to see the arrival of that first penguin.

    Suddenly there was movement at the edge of the surf and all heads turned as one. There, standing by the edge of the water was the smallest penguin we had ever seen. He looked left, then right, as if he was considering crossing a busy road and then he ran quickly across to the sand dunes and the penguin holes.

    He must have been the scout(侦查员), because after him, there came groups of penguins, some consisted of two or three penguins, and some had about ten or fifteen, but they all made the same mad dash across the sand into the holes, as if they couldn't get there fast enough. The groups started to lessen and finally no more penguins emerged from the sea.

    We sat on the grandstand for a while, not talking, just feeling awed(敬畏的) at what we'd just seen. Neither of us had ever seen penguins in the wild before, only in zoos and it was an amazing feeling.

    You could see the penguins here every evening and morning, but they weren't in cages or in small pools. The sea was their playground and it is a sight we would definitely recommend to anyone.

    You weren't allowed to take flash photographs as it scared them. After the penguins had gone to their holes, you could walk along boardwalks and see them there. That's got to be worth a look.

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It's normal to long for the taste of potato chips or a cheese-covered pizza. Even though they're full of calories, eating them occasionally won't do much harm. However, according to the new numbers, young people are becoming more gluttonous. The BBC's Good Food Nation Survey showed that on average, 16 to 20-year-olds ate fast food at least twice a day in the UK. So what's behind this fast food binge (狂热)?

WebMD, an online publisher of news and information of human health and well-being, surveyed nearly 600 teenagers and adults in the United States. They found that the most common reason was our busy lifestyle. More than 92.3 percent of respondents said they were too busy to cook. Many find it challenging to balance work and life, and the convenience of fast food meets their needs. Fast food is readily available in corner stores and vending machines (自动售货机). Remember those instant noodle cups from the supermarket? They're ready in minutes, and you can store them at home for a long time.

But many people think this trend does no good. Sarah Toule, head of health information at World Cancer Research Fund, told the BBC: "It's frightening that people, especially younger generations, are eating so much fast food loaded with fat, sugar and salt, but offers little nutritional value."

She added, "Especially high in calories, fast food leads to unhealthy weight gain — which in turn increases the risk of 11 cancers later in life."

So what is the right thing to do? Toule suggested that young people should prepare meals in advance and learn to include the different food groups in their diets.