March 21 has been declared World Sleep Day, a time to recognize and celebrate the value of sleep. Many sleep experts hope it will be a wake-up call.

    According to a poll (民意调查) by the National Sleep Foundation, nearly 4 in 5 Americans don't get as much sleep as they should during the workweek. On average, adults are thought to need at least eight hours of sleep a night, although some can manage with less and some won't do well without more. But the survey found that, on weekdays, only 21% of Americans actually get a full eight hours of sleep, and another 21% get less than six hours.

    To many of us, the thought of spending more time sleeping is, well, a big yawn. On the other hand, the thought of being smarter, thinner, healthier and more cheerful has a certain appeal. And those are just a few of the advantages that can be ours if we consistently get enough sleep, researchers say. Also on the plus side: We're likely to have better skin, better memories, better judgment, and, oh, yes, longer lives.

    “When you lose even one hour of sleep for any reason, it influences your performance the next day,” says Dr. Alon Avidan, director of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center.

    A study published last year found the same to be true even of children. When kids aged 8 to 12 slept for just one hour less for four nights, they didn't function as well during the day.

    But sleeping has an image problem.“We see napping or sleeping as lazy,” says Jennifer Vriend, a clinical psychologist in Ottawa, Canada, and the leading author of the study with children.“We put so much emphasis on diet, nutrition and exercise. Sleep is in the back seat. In fact,”she adds,“no matter how much we work out, no matter how well we eat, we can't be in top physical shape unless we also get plenty of sleep.”

    Since many of you are planning to study at a college or university in the future, you may be curious to know what your future study will be like. This is the question I want to discuss with you today.

    First, let's talk about what your weekly timetable will look like. No matter what your major may be, you can expect to spend between four and six hours a week for each class attending lecture. Lectures are usually in very large rooms because some courses such as Introduction to Sociology or Economics often have as many as two or three hundred students, especially at large universities. In lectures, it's very important for you to take notes on what the professor says because the information in a lecture is often different from that in your textbooks. Also, you can expect to have exam questions based on the lectures. So it isn't enough to just read your textbooks; you have to attend lectures as well. In a typical week, you will also have a couple of hours of discussion for every class you take. The discussion part is a small group meeting usually with fewer than thirty students where you can ask questions about the lectures, the reading, and the homework. In large universities, graduate students called teaching assistants, usually direct discussion parts

    If your major is chemistry, or physics, or another science, you'll also have to spend several hours a week in the lab doing experiments. This means that science majors spend more time in the classroom than non-science majors do. On the other hand, people who major in subjects like literature or history usually have to read and write more than science majors do.

    With its snow-covered mountains and a variety of wildlife, Yellow Stone National Park is one of the scenic treasures of the United States. Located primarily in Wyoming, the park hosts millions of visitors every year. If you plan to travel within the park, keep in mind advice from the National Park Service.

    Seasonal Travel

    Travel varies vastly from season to season. Roads are generally open in the summer except for cases of rock or mud slides, wild fires, accidents or road construction. Early snows in the fall can cause some roads to close temporarily. In the winter almost all roads are closed to motor vehicles, but snowmobiles and other snow vehicles with tracks are allowed. Roads begin to open for the spring by the latter part of April but can close if snowfall continues.

    Driving Time

    Grand Loop is the main road through Yellowstone National Park; it passes by most of the major attractions. These include Old Faithful, Yellowstone Lake and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. The maximum speed limit on the Grand Loop is 45 miles per hour, but the speed limit drops during some of the winding and twisting sections of this narrow road. Allow yourself at least two days to fully travel the loop due to the size of the park and being sometimes stuck in heavy traffic.

    Safety Awareness

    Buffalo(水牛)often block the roads in the park as they move through the fields. If a group is traveling across the road you are on  you can either wait for them to pass or find an alternative route. If you get out of your vehicle, the National Park Service says to stay at least 25 yards from any buffalo (and 100 yards or more away from bears and wolves). Buffalo are particularly unpredictable and charge people at speeds up to 30 mph.

    You can take your bicycle on any public roads and routes designed for bikes, but bicycles are not allowed on the park roads which are narrow with few shoulders. Altitudes range from 5, 300 to 8, 860 feet. The National Park Service recommends cyclists wear helmets and noticeable clothing.

    In October 2013, Davion Only made an appeal on the Internet. He had learned that his biological mother had died not long before. "My name is Davion and I've been in foster care (寄养照管) since I was born," he said, "but I'm not giving up hope. "

    The heartbreaking appeal spread quickly, and Only's foster agency received calls from more than 10,000 people. Only ended up travelling to Ohio to live with a family. But after Only got into a physical fight with one of his elder would-be brothers, the family changed their minds.

     Back in Florida, Only passed through four different temporary homes over the following year, until he called Connie Going, his adoption case worker, to make a special request. Only had known Going for nearly ten years, and had asked every year if she would adopt him, but she always hesitated. "I always believed there was a better family than us out there," Going said in an interview. But last July, when Only called and asked again if she might adopt him, Going said something felt different. "When he asked me, my heart felt this ache and I just knew he was my son," she said.

     So Going, 52, invited Only to start spending time with the rest of her family-her two daughters, Sydney, 21, and Carly 17, and a son Taylor, 14, who she also adopted out of foster care. Eventually, after seeing how well the arrangement was working, Going, who had rented a bigger home, started adopting Only. Only moved in with her family last December. He officially joined Going's family on April 22, 2015 when the adoption papers went through.

    "Today, I feel blessed and honored to have been chosen to be the parent of all my children," Going said.

    I had an experience some years ago, which taught me something about the ways in which people make a bad situation worse by blaming themselves. One January, I had to hold two funerals for two elderly women in my community. Both had died "full of years", as the Bible would say. Their homes happened to be near each other, so I paid condolence(吊唁) calls on the two families on the same afternoon.

    At the first home, the son of the deceased(过世的)woman said to me, "If only I had sent my mother to Florida and gotten her out of this cold and snow, she would be alive today. It's my fault that she died." At the second home, the son of the other deceased woman said, "If only I hadn't insisted on my mother's going to Florida, she would be alive today. That long airplane ride, the sudden change of climate, was more than she could take. It's my fault that she's dead."

    You see that any time there is a death, the survivors will feel guilty. Because the course of action they took turned out bad, they believe that the opposite course—keeping Mother at home, putting off the operation—would have turned out better. After all, how could it have turned out any worse?

    There seem to be two elements involved in our willingness to feel guilty. The first is our need to believe that the world makes sense, that there is a cause for every effect and a reason for everything that happens. That leads us to find patterns and connections both where they really exist and where they exist only in our minds.

    The second element is the view that we are the cause of what happens, especially the bad things that happen. It seems to be a short step from believing that every event has a cause to believing that every disaster is our fault. The roots of this feeling may lie in our childhood.

    A baby comes to think that the world exists to meet his needs, and that he makes everything happen in it. He wakes up in the morning and summons the rest of the world to his tasks. He cries, and someone comes to attend to him. When he is hungry, people feed him, and when he is wet, people change him. Very often, we do not completely outgrow that childish view that our wishes cause things to happen.

Pooja Rai was a young architecture student in 2014 when she went with a friend to give food to a local orphanage. She was surprised at what she saw.

Kids were playing with anything they could get their hands on. One group was rolling around a broken metal pipe. Two boys were trying to play badminton, using old shoes as rackets. "Play shouldn't just be part of a rich kid's lifestyle. All kids have a right to enjoy their childhoods." Rai says.

Over the next few weeks, she talked with friends about collecting money for a playground. And that's when she thought of old tires. Around 100 million tires are thrown away in India every year. Could they reuse them as playground materials and help the environment, too?

That idea became a reality in 2015, using old tires—all cleaned, carefully looked over to make sure they are safe to use, and painted in bright colors. The following year, she created Anthill Creations, which has built 275 playgrounds across India —celebrating the power of play in public spaces. orphanages, and schools.

"Our work always begins with talks with kids about what they want from this space." says Rai. Sometimes it can take a few hours, or a few visits, until children are ready to open up. She also draws on her experience as an architect. "I found that spaces are powerful in shaping people's behavior." she says.

Most of the play spaces Rai designs feature large tire sculptures of cars, buildings, or animals, paired with more classic elements of swings and jungle gyms.

In one girl's school in Bengaluru, the children wanted their play space to be shaped into a boxing ring, with tires doubling up as punching bags. "Their teacher was unsure about it." Rai remembers. "But the girls said they didn't want people to see them as weak. They wanted to practice self-defense and grow stronger." In December 2019, this playground became a reality.