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 16 years, it is that communication is very important, both when you disagree and when you get along. With any relationship, you need to let other person 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 “Hi”, 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 （表达）of information, correspondence （通信）, means of communication: a letter or a message”. To maintain (保持) a good relationship, you must keep communication strong. Let people know how you feel, even if it's 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, not 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, telling the other person how you feel-listening is the key factor to communication.

    Most animals on land are known to us, but many living things underwater are not. Now let's get to know some of them.

    Sea cucumber

    Sea cucumber are strange animals living at the bottom of the sea. They wear brown or white green coats. When summer comes, they stay deep to sleep because they are afraid of heat. And when it is autumn, they move to shallow (浅的) water and get their food.

    Pike

    The pike is a kind of freshwater fish. They are good swimmers and like swimming near boats, waiting to be fed. They have sharp teeth to catch fishes. When they are young, they live in groups. However, when they grow up, they prefer to live alone.

    Cuttlefish

    A cuttlefish can swim quite fast, so it is also called rocket (火箭) fish. It has eight arms and two feelers on its head, just around its mouth. It ejects ink (喷墨) when it is in danger. Its meat is delicious, and it is often the first choice for many people.

    Octopus

    An octopus has long arms, with which to catch food and protect itself. When it is sleeping, one or two of its arms are still on duty, keeping moving. Once it feels something dangerous, it can wake up at once to take action.

    Why do some people live to be older than others? You know the standard explanations: keeping a moderate diet, engaging in regular exercise, etc. But what effect does your personality have on your longevity（长寿）? Do some kinds of personalities lead to longer lives? A new study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society looked at this question by examining the personality characteristics of 246 children of people who had lived to be at least 100.

    The study shows that those living the longest are more outgoing, more active and less neurotic (神经质的) than other people. Long-living women are also more likely to be sympathetic and cooperative than women with a normal life span. These findings are in agreement with what you would expect from the evolutionary theory: those who like to make friends and help others can gather enough resources to make it through tough times. Interestingly, however, other characteristics that you might consider advantageous had no impact on whether study participants were likely to live longer. Those who were more self-disciplined, for instance, were no more likely to live to be very old. Also, being open to new ideas had no relationship to long life, which might explain all those bad-tempered old people who are fixed in their ways.

    Whether you can successfully change your personality as an adult is the subject of a longstanding psychological debate. But the new paper suggests that if you want long life, you should strive to be as outgoing as possible.

    Unfortunately, another recent study shows that your mother's personality may also help determine your longevity. That study looked at nearly 28,000 Norwegian mothers and found that those moms who were more anxious, depressed and angry were more likely to feed their kids unhealthy diets. Patterns of childhood eating can be hard to break when we're adults, which may mean that kids of depressed moms end up dying younger. Personality isn't destiny, and everyone knows that individuals can learn to change. But both studies show that long life isn't just a matter of your physical health but of your mental health.

    In films, dads change from cruel men to loving souls. Here is a list of good and bad movies dads.

    Atticus Finch in To kill a Mockingbird(知更鸟)

    GOOD DAD : A man whose wife has died with a young family and a busy job as a lawyer, Gregory Peck's character in the 1962 film is one of the great heroes of American cinema Firm but fair he teaches his children respect and human decency(正派). Harper Lee's novel gets a respectable transposition(转变)to film, thanks to Gregory Peck's perfect performance.

    Jack Torrance in The Shining

    BAD DAD: When Jack Torrance, his wife, Wendy, and son, Danny, escaped from the cold winter to the Overlook Hotel we know that Jack has hardly been a model father. But when Jack becomes extremely angry and tries to murder his family with an axe, Danny used his intelligence to defeat him and left him to freeze to death.

    George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life

    GOOD DAD: James Stewart's character is a father-of-four who is saved from the edge of suicide (自杀)and realizes his positive effect on others' lives. Much of the film is unpleasant, with George shouting at his children as he faces financial problems. But finally the lovable father realizes the worth of his own life, the value of friendship and the importance of being a loving dad.

    Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back(帝国大厦)

    BAD DAD: When the unfriendly cyborg(半机器人)told Luke Skywalker that he was his father ,the son's reaction says it all: “No! No!” It's hardly a joyful welcome to the family. For most of his son's life, Darth Vader has been an absent dad—and he has just cut off Luke's hand. You can understand why Father's Day cards might not be available.

    Nobel prize-winners, legendary (传奇的) authors, and famous scientists — you might think all these people were born to be creative. However, that's not always the case.

    While well-known figures like Pablo Picasso and Albert Einstein did their most significant (重要的) work in their youth, famous American poet Robert Frost and English-born natural scientist Charles Darwin were known as "late bloomers" – people whose talents were not noticeable until later in life.

    This idea of "peaking" at different times inspired new research from the United States. "Many people believe that creativity is exclusively (独有地) associated (有联系的) with youth, but it really depends on what kind of creativity you're talking about," said Bruce Weinburg, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and co-author of the study.

    According to the study, published earlier this month in the journal De Economist, there are two types of people: conceptual (概念的) and experimental thinkers.

    To reach this conclusion, researchers took the 31 previous winners of the Nobel Prize in economics and arranged them according to when they did their most significant work, to identify (识别) their creative peaks.

    Some peaked from ages 25-29. Classified as conceptual thinkers, these people think outside of the box, coming up with new ideas before they become used to the conventional way of doing things.

    The second creative peak came with economists in their 50s. These are experimental thinkers who have been in their field for a long time. This allows them to learn from errors and experiment with different processes, before eventually finding new solutions.

    "Whether you hit your creative peak early or late in your career depends on whether you have a conceptual or experimental approach," said Weinburg. He added that their study isn't limited to economics, saying it can apply to other creative disciplines (知识领域). So if you're struggling to come up with new ideas, don't panic. Your creative peak may be yet to arrive.

    Why are people interested in eating raw foods or whole foods? One reason is that eating these types of food reduces the risk of acid accumulation in your body.

    Raw and whole foods are usually digested more efficiently than cooked and refined foods. When we cook foods, we destroy the natural enzymes (酶) that are part of the food in its raw form. These enzymes were intended by nature to help us digest the food. When we consume food without these natural enzymes, our bodies either digest the food improperly or allow too many nutrients to be absorbed into the bloodstream. In both instances, the result is obesity. When too many nutrients are absorbed at once, the body grows fat. Improperly digested food moves slowly through the digestive tract, where it becomes increasingly acidic. To protect its vital organs from this acidic waste, the body changes the acid into fat and stores it safely away from the organs.

    Processed foods contain chemical elements, which might confuse the appetite mechanism that tells us when we've had enough to eat; as a result, people often overeat. Processed foods also upset the digestive cycle. The body will either identify these foods as allergens and then store them safely away from the organs as fat, or the remains of undigested food will become acidic and enter the bloodstream as acid waste, which will stick to the blood vessel walls and block the passage of vital oxygen and nutrients heading for the body's cells. The body's metabolism (新陈代谢) becomes inactive, and the result is weight gain and obesity.

    The accumulation of acid in the digestive tract makes digestion increasingly inefficient. When that happens, even healthy foods can become acidic and the food allergies will become more common.

    To stop this vicious circle in its tracks, people need to consume food and supplements that will neutralize the acid already accumulated in body. Eating the right types of raw and whole foods can help. It's also important to restore your enzyme balance. You need to identify and avoid the foods that cause acid accumulation and consume the foods that increase enzyme production. If you truly want to change and help your body heal itself, you need to take an active approach.