With online courses, anyone can gain knowledge in any field of interest for free. You can educate yourself and get a certificate after finishing the course.

Coursera

    It offers high-quality courses from top universities for free to everyone to improve your resume, advance your career, expand your knowledge, and gain your confidence. This online learning website provides courses from Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, and University of Pennsylvania. Learn more at https://coursera.com

Udemy

    Its goal is to promote education by enabling anyone to learn online. It seeks to hugely change education by inviting millions of experts worldwide to teach and share what they know. Whether you want to learn business, arts, health, music or technology, there is a course for you. Learn more at https://udemy.com

iTunes U

    If you are a student who uses Apple devices, you will be happy to know that you have access to iTunes U, which gives you access to different educational courses from all leading universities for free! Learn more at https://iTunesU.com

Skillfeed

    If you hope to learn a new skill, or improve your Photoshop skills, it offers unlimited access to high-quality video courses from a worldwide community of instructors. You have a month's free trial, after which you will pay a monthly fee to gain unlimited access to all courses. Learn more at https://skillfeed.com

UC Berkeley

    It offers courses in Japanese, legal studies and public health. Since they are recordings of actual lectures, they are short of lecture notes and extra materials. However, each course has audio recordings of lectures through iTunes U or video recordings of lectures through YouTube. Learn more at https://ucberkeley.com

    On her first day in New York City, teaching students from low-income families at an after-school program, Alyssa Kapasi noticed so many kids were lining up for free sandwiches and fruit in the cafeteria. Many of these poor students don't get enough food to eat at home, so a free school lunch or a free after-school meal might be the most food they would get all day.

    Kapasi, who graduated from private school, was shocked. Therefore, she was determined to help. “I want other kids to understand that if they meet a problem, they don't have to wait to be an adult to salve it,” says Kapasi. She and a group of friends are now putting their programming skills ta work to create an app called Food for Thought, which will allow parents, students and even kind-hearted strangers to donate to a lunch account for a student in need at a nearby school.

    About 20 million American kids receive free lunches. Two million more quality for reduced-price meals, and those students' families may pay for part of their food. When they don't have the money on any day, the students might have to choose an “alternative meal” such as a free cheese sandwich.

    One clever feature of the app which is being supported by donation from companies and social investors—is that it provides anonymity (匿名) to lunch recipients and donors. To receive financial help, a family will need only a recommendation from a school administrator, and no one else knows.

    “I want to make the application a platform where all users feel no shame in using it,” says Kapasi. She hopes to test the app in a school district next month. And then, she will devote herself to charity.

    “How can we live longer?” many people wonder. Being sociable looks like a good way to add years to your life. Relationships with family, friends, neighbors, even pets, will all do the trick, but the biggest longevity (长寿) boost seems to come from marriage or an equal relationship. The effect was first noted in 1858 by William Farr, who wrote in 1858 by William Farr, who wrote that widows and widowers (鳏夫) were at a much higher risk of dying than their married peers. Studies since then suggest that marriage could add as much as seven years to a man's life and two to a woman's, The effect holds for all causes of death, whether illness, accident or self-harm.

    Even though the odds are stacked against you (the conditions are not favourable to you), marriage can more than compensate. Linda Waite of the University of Chicago has found that a married older man with heart disease can expect to live nearly four years longer than an unmarried man with a healthy heart. Likewise, a married man who smokes more than a pack a day is likely to live as long as a divorced man who doesn't smoke. There's a less pleasant side, however, as partners are more likely to become ill or die in the couple of years following their spouses; death, and caring for a spouse with mental disorder can leave you with some of the same severe problems. Even so, the odds favour marriage. In a 30-year study of more than 10,000 people, Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School describes how all kinds of social networks have similar effects.

    So how does it work? The effects are complex, affected by socioeconomic factor, health-service provision, emotional support and other more physiological mechanisms (机制). For example, social contact can boost development of the brain and immune system, leading to better health and less chance of depression later in life. People in supportive relationships may handle stress better. Then there are the psychological benefits of a supportive partner.

    A life partner, children and good friends are all recommended if you aim to live to 100. The best social network is still being mapped out, but Christakis says: “People are interconnected so their health is interconnected.”

    A small school in rural India is gaining attention over the fact that all 300 students are ambidextrous(左右手都灵巧的). Data shows that only one percent of the global population is ambidextrous, but the ambitious founder of Veena Vandini School, in Madhya Pradesh, is aiming to change that, starting at a local level.

    A former soldier and Veena Vandini School founder VP Sharma stated that he was inspired to focus on ambidexterity training by India's first president Rajendra Prasad who was in office from 1950 to 1962. Unexpectedly, the president was ambidextrous. "I read in a magazine that Dr. Rajendra Prasad, India's first president, used to write with both hands. This inspired me to give it a try, “Mr. Sharma said.”Later when I launched my school at my native village, I tried training the students. "

    "We begin training students from standard Ⅰ and by the time they reach standard Ⅲ, they are comfortable writing with both the hands,” Sharma added. "Students of up to standard Ⅶ can write with speed and accuracy. Further, they can write two scripts at the same time, one with each hand. Students also know several languages, including Urdu."

    Every 45-minute class at Veena Vandini includes 15 minutes devoted to handwriting practice, ensuring that every student develops the ability to write with both hands. VP Sharma also believes that the skill better enables students to learn multiple languages, and has them practice writing the same words in different languages at the same time. Although it is widely believed to help increase concentration, more recent studies have found that this is false and studying to become ambidextrous can, in fact, harm cognitive development.

    A Scientific American study revealed that ambidextrous children performed worse than left- or right-handers on a range of skills, especially in math, memory, and logical reasoning. A study in northern Finland indicated that children who are ambidextrous are much likelier to develop mental health issues, including ADHD, language problems, and academic problems.

    I'm a single person and live with my dog. Jed isn't just my dog. He is my family. He goes everywhere with me. So I was overjoyed last year to hear that Bunnings was allowing dogs on a leash(皮带)- into their stores.

    But no sooner had the rule come in than it was quickly repealed(撤销). A little girl in Victoria had walked up to a Jack Russell in a store and been bitten(咬伤). That was it. No more dogs.

    I don't know the whole story. But here's what I have to say: dogs bite sometimes and kids are sometimes difficult to control.

    There is nothing I love more than a kid who wants to touch Jed. But what's even better is when they ask permission first.

    I was at my local dog park last week. It's huge, with an off-leash dog area to one side and a fenced-off kids' playground a good distance away. There was a family there that morning —parents and two young girls playing near the dog area. The elder girl started crying at the sight of Jed—" puppy! There a puppy! "Jed went right up and started licking(舔)her, which only made her cry louder.

    My dog was frightened and tried to get away. The little girl ran after him, shouting loudly. The parents did nothing; they just let their kid frighten my dog and then said I should have stopped him from licking her.

    While they had a choice to play elsewhere, I did not. So I had to walk Jed away.

    "I just don't want to have to meet a dog when I go shopping," said one caller on a radio show yesterday. Look, I get that. But the thing is, I don't always want to have your kid kick the back of my seat for two hours on a plane.

    When I lived in the UK and the US, I couldn't walk through the stores without stopping to pat dogs. Why can't we follow their practice?

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