Tone of voice is very important in human conversation. A person might use words that communicate one message and a tone that shows something very different. This possibility for confusion is one reason that businessmen encourage discussing things in person, rather than through email, as tone cannot be determined in the written form.

    The same rule is true with children. Children as young as a few months respond to a change in voice. It has been recorded that babies prefer to hear a story read by their own mother rather than another woman whom they do not know.

    Have you ever talked to someone who had little or no changes in their voice no matter what you were discussing? Think of the teacher or professor you had in the past that spoke in a monotone manner for the entirelecture. It is very boring and difficult to become interested in the topic.

    Parents should make an active effort to communicate with your child. If your child figures out how to open a box he or she has been struggling with and says “YES!” with pride in his or her voice, your response should be happy and excited (something encouraging, like “You did it!”). If you plainly said the same thing, you would not be matching the tone of your child.

    This applies to feelings that the child may express in everyday situations as well. If a child argues with a friend, your response should not be said in a high voice or with a smile. Seriously and sincerely you should say “You look sad” or “That must have been hard for you”.

    The tone of your voice expresses understanding, acknowledgement, connection and several other healthy things to your child. Although your words are very important, equally important is the tone with which you say those words.

    We ate on the go more than ever before. Here are three health apps that can help you better manage your health when you pursue your dreams.

⑴Doctors On Demand

    Doctors On Demand enables you to visit a doctor without ever leaving your home, helping you use a computer, tablet or smart phone to have a doctor video chat with you. The service will help you locate and connect you to licensed doctors, psychologists, pediatricians (儿科医生) and more. Fees can be paid with HAS&FSA. It costs $40 for 15 minutes with a doctor or $50 for 20 minutes with a psychologist.

⑵Text4baby

    I'm a big fan of Text4baby for a few reasons. The free service for pregnant women and new moms works by sending text messages to your smart phone three times a week with information about how to have a healthy pregnancy and baby. And the messages are timed to the pregnant woman's due date or the baby's date of birth, sending tips that are relevant to where a mother is in her pregnancy or where a baby is in stages of development. Tips range from breastfeeding to car seat safety to reminders about exercise, nutrition and more. The service combines interactive text messages, an app, video and web content in English and Spanish. Sign up by texting BABY to 511-411 or by downloading the app.

⑶RISE

    RISE, an app available on iPhone(coming to Android in 2016), pairs you up with (与……绑定) a registered dietitian to improve your diet and reach health goals. You share photos of your meals and your exercise for the day with your coach, who then looks for areas where you can improve and gives advice, helps you set goals and is there to pat you on the back virtually(虚拟地) when you hit a milestone. What's also great is that you can text as much as you want with your dietitian and there is no need to go into an office. Fees for this service range from $9 per month to $50 a month. There is a free 7-day trial so you can try it out for a week to see if it's fit for you.

    The Parthenon(帕特农神庙) in Athens is a building with a long and complex(复杂的) history. Built nearly 2,500 years ago as a temple celebrating the Greek goddess Athena, it was for thousands of years the church of the Virgin Mary of the Athenians, then a mosque (清真寺), and finally a ruin. The building was changed and the sculptures(塑像) much damaged over the centuries. By 1800 only about half of the original sculptural decoration remained.

    Between 1801 and 1805, Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire(奥斯曼帝国), which controlled Athens, acting with the full knowledge and permission of the Ottoman authorities，removed about half of the remaining sculptures from the fallen ruins and from the building itself. Lord Elgin loved Greek history and transported the sculptures back to Britain. The arrival of the sculptures in London had a huge effect on the European public, greatly increasing interest in ancient Greek culture and influencing contemporary artistic trends. These sculptures were gained from Lord Elgin by the British Museum in 1816 and since then they have all been on show to the public, free of charge.

    Since the early 1980s, however, the Greek government has argued for the return of all the Parthenon sculptures in the British Museum. They have also challenged the British Museum Board of Trustees' legal title to the sculptures.

    The British Museum, however, insists that it exists to tell the story of cultural achievement throughout the world, from the dawn of human history over two million years ago until the present day. The museum considers itself an important resource for the world: the breadth and depth of its collection allows the world public to re-examine cultural identities and explore the complex network of interconnected world cultures.

    It also says that, within the context of this unparalleled collection, the Parthenon sculptures are an important representation of ancient Athenian civilization. Each year millions of visitors admire the artistry of the sculptures and gain insights on how ancient Greece influenced — and was influenced by — the other civilizations that it came across.

    Lights out, phones on. Many teenagers reach for their smartphones or tablets at bedtime, but it may be a good idea to switch off before you hit the pillow.

    According to a study by researchers at Murdoch and Griffith Universities in Australia, using mobile devices late at night could harm teenagers' sleep and lead to an increased risk of mental health problems.

    The study was carried out on more than 1,000 Australian high school students aged between 13 and 16. It lasted four years as student participants moved from Year 8 to Year 11.

    During the study, students were asked what time of the night they received or sent text messages and phone calls, and how well they slept.

    The results are impressive. When the study started in Year 8, more than 85 percent of the students had a mobile pone and around one-third of these students never used phones after lights out. In contrast, 93 percent of Year 11 students had a mobile phone and only 22 percent of then had no late night mobile use when the study concluded four years later.

    As the levels of mobile phone use increased, there was a growth in poor sleep behavior among the students. Meanwhile, mental health problems also increased. Students in Year 8 who were more likely to use phones at night were found to have higher levels of depression (抑郁) and lower self-esteem (自尊心) one year later.

    Lynette Vernon, lead author of the study, explained that phones affect our sleep patterns because of the unnatural blue light they produce. This light could affect the level of hormones (荷尔蒙) in the body, disrupting (打乱) its balance.

     “The more you sit in bed and watch TV, play with your tablet, and play with your phone at three o'clock in the morning, the more these things affect the slow waves of your sleep pattern and give your poor quality sleep,” Mark Levi, a Sydney-based sleep doctor said.

    Based on the findings, the researchers suggested parents should focus on guiding their children's use of mobile devices.

    According to Vernon, the solution is not simply to ban teenagers from using their devices, but teach them better ways of using them

     “Back when they're aged 7 to 10, you have to be a role model. If you put your phone away at night and it doesn't go into your bedroom, it becomes normalizedin the household and you have a much easier job,” he told The Guardian.

    Reading may be fundamental, but how the brain gives meaning to letters on a page has been a mystery. Two new studies fill in some details on how the brains of efficient readers handle words. One of the studies, published in the April 30 Neuron, suggests that a visual-processing area of the brain recognizes common words as whole units. Another study, published online April 27 in PLOSONE, makes it known that the brain operates two fast parallel systems for reading, linking visual recognition of words to speech.

    Maximilian Riesenhuber, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University in Washington, D. C. , wanted to know whether the brain reads words letter by letter or recognizes words as whole objects. He and his colleagues showed sets of real words or nonsense(无意义的词语)words to volunteers undergoing FMRI scans. The words differed in only one letter, such as “farm” and “form” or “soat” and “poat”, or were completely different, such as “farm” and “coat”or “poat” and “hime”.The researchers were particularly interested in what happens in the visual word form area, or VWFA, an area on the left side of the brain just behind the ear that is involved in recognizing words.

    Riesenhuber and his colleagues found that neurons(神经元)in the VWFA respond strongly to changes in real words. Changing “farm” to “form”, for example, produced as great a change in activity as changing “farm” to“coat”, the team reports in Neuron. The area responded slowly to single-letter changes in made-up words.

    The data suggests that readers grasp real words as whole objects, rather than focusing on letters or letter combinations. And as a reader's exposure to a word increases, the brain comes to recognize the shape of the word. “Meaning is passed on after recognition in the brain”, Riesenhuber says.

    The researchers don't yet know how longer and less familiar words are recognized, or if the brain can be trained to recognize nonsense words as a unit.