Visitor Oyster cards are electronic smart cards that come fully charged with credit. Whether you're making a one-off trip to London or you're a regular visitor, using an Oyster travel smart card is the easiest way to travel around the city's public transport network. Simply touch the card on the yellow card reader at the doors when you start and end your journey.

Advantages of a Visitor Oyster Card

    A Visitor Oyster card is one of the cheapest ways to pay for single journeys on the bus, Tube, DLR, tram, London Overground and most National Rail services in London:

● Save time—your card is ready to use as soon as you arrive in London.

● It's more than 50% cheaper than buying a paper travel card or single tickets with cash.

● There is a daily price cap—once you have reached this limit, you won't pay any more.

● Enjoy special offers and promotions at leading London restaurants, shops and entertainment venues—plus discounts on the Emirates Air Line cable car and Thames Clippers river buses.

Buy a Visitor Oyster card

    Buy a Visitor Oyster card before you visit London and get it delivered to your home address. A card costs￡3 (non-refundable) plus postage. Order online and arrive with your Oyster in hand! You can also buy a Visitor Oyster card from Gatwick Express ticket offices at Gatwick Airport Station and on board Eurostar trains travelling to London.

Add Credit to Your Visitor Oyster Card

    You can choose how much credit to add to your card. If you are visiting London for two days, you can start with ￡20 credit. If you run out of credit, add credit at the following locations:

● Touch screen ticket machines in Tube, DLR, London Overground and some National Rail stations .

● Around 4,000 Oyster Ticket Stops found in newsagents and small shops across London.

● TFL Visitor and Travel Information Centers .

● Tube and London Overground station ticket offices .

● Emirates Air Line terminals .

    Parents who help their children with homework may actually be bringing down their school grades. Other forms of parental involvement, including volunteering at school and observing a child's class, also fail to help, according to the most recent study on the topic.

    The findings challenge a key principle of modern parenting where schools expect them to act as partners in their children's education. Previous generations concentrated on getting children to school on time, fed, dressed and ready to learn.

    Keith Robinson, the author of the study, said, "I really don't know if the public is ready for this but there are some ways parents can be involved in their kids' education that leads to declines in their academic performance. One of the things that was consistently negative was their parents' help with homework." Robinson suggested that may be because parents themselves struggle to understand the tasks."They may either not remember the material their kids are studying now, or in some cases never learnt it themselves, but they're still offering advice."

    Robinson assessed parental involvement performance and found one of the most damaging things a parent could do was to punish their children for poor marks. In general, about 20% of parental involvement was positive,  about 45% negative and the rest statistically insignificant.

    Common sense suggests it was a good thing for parents to get involved because "children with good academic success do have involved parents", admitted Robinson. But he argued that this did not prove parental involvement was the root cause of that success. "A big surprise was that Asian-American parents whose kids are doing so well in school hardly involved. They took a more reasonable approach, conveying to their children how success at school could improve their lives."

EVENTS

Aug.31-Sept.4,Laughter Bus

Cape Town, South Africa

Lovely sightseeing tour with laughter, fun and festivities. The tour departs(启程) from Cape Town towards the Garden Route, stopping at beautiful and interesting places, enjoying lunch at the seaside and sharing laughter with local communities. Cost:$800.

+277222-97454, info@laughterbus.co.za  Sept. 17-18, Laughter Yoga 2-day Certified Leader Training

Irvine, California, USA

10 am-5 pm daily at Irvine Valley College. Learn to laugh for health without the need of jokes. Start a laughter club, share laughter with elders and kids, and earn income sharing happiness. Includes practice with Jeffrey Briar. Costs: $ 295.

▪ (949)376-1939, JBriar@LYInstitute.org

Set. 30, Laughter is Serious Business Workshop

St. Albans, Hertfordshire, UK

A workshop for those who have completed Laughter Leader/Skills courses and want to get ideas and real advice on how to promote(提升) themselves. 10 am-3 pm with lunch break. Costs:￡100 (includes a￡25 DVD)

+44(0)1727-741-050, Jotte@unitedmind.co.uk Oct. 7-9, Laguna Laughter Club Mountain Retreat(静修)

Angelus Oaks, California, USA

Everyone is welcome on this three-day retreat in the pine forest of Redlands. Daily laughter yoga sessions, music, dancing, hiking, and vision-sharing. Costs:$150 (includes meals).

▪ (949)376-1241, Anne@LaughingAnne.com

Oct. 29-Nov. 5, Laughter Cruise in the Caribbean

The tour departs from Miami, Florida, USA. Daily laughter sessions, onboard programs, easy yoga classes, creating new exercises, fun and friendship! Holland America Lines. Costs: $719.

▪ (941) 349-6069, amy.ferrell@verizon.net

    Studying the DNA of 300 mice has flagged up genes which have been linked to hereditary (遗传的) sight loss for the first time. Researchers say because mice's genes are so similar to humans', their findings could lead to the treatment of more genetic diseases.

    Scientists at the University of California, Davis studied information from a data bank of mice's genetic material. They found 347 genes linked to eye problems, with just 86 of them having been studied in the past.

    Only around 50 to 75 percent of hereditary eye diseases in human can be explained with present science. The researchers believe these hundreds of new genes found in mice could be a key to explaining-and therefore being able to treat the other 25-50 percent.

    "This is extremely valuable for people with hereditary eye disease," said researcher Professor Ala Moshiri. "All researchers are going to start using these data. In the past, we knew the problem was there but we didn't know where to look. Now eye centers can call back patients and screen them for these new genes. We expected that more and more of these genetic diseases will be treatable." Also, the fact is that more than 60 percent of eye problems at birth are ones resulting from the baby's parents!

    Thanks to data from the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC), which is trying to work out what every single gene in a mouse is responsible for, with the aim of translating it to humans, scientists are moving closer to figuring out all genetic causes of blindness. To do this, scientists separate a single gene from other ones at a time and then observe what effect it has on the mouse for a long time. This has so far been done more than 7,000 times and has achieved great success. Researchers are now working alongside eye care centers in Texas and Iowa in order to compare the mice's genes to those of patients.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) announced on November 23 for the first time that it has chosen not to name one single word of the year, but many words for the "special" year 2020. Describing 2020 as "a year which cannot be neatly summarized in one single word". OED said on Monday that there were too many words to sum up the events of 2020. From more than 11 billion words found in web-based news, blogs and other text sources, its lexicographers(词典编纂者)revealed what the dictionary described as "great shifts in language data and frequency rises in new words" over the past 12 months.

Most words of the year are coronavirus-related, including coronavirus, lockdown, circuit-breaker, keyworkers and face masks. The report said the word "coronavirus" dates back to the 1960s and was previously "mainly used by scientific and medical specialists". But by April this year it had become one of the most frequently used nouns in the English language, beyond even the usage of the word "time". It said use of the word "pandemic" has increased by more than 57,000 percent this year.

The revolution in working habits during the pandemic has also affected language, with both "remote" and "remotely" seeing more than 300 percent growth in use since March. "On mute(静音)"and "unmute" have seen 500 percent rises since March, while the words "workation" and "staycation" also increased drastically.

Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Dictionaries, said. "I've never witnessed a year in language like the one we've just had. The Oxford team was identifying hundreds of significant new words and usages as the year unfolded." "2020 has been filled with new words unlike any other," Grathwohl added.

The OED's announcement mirrored the huge influence of the COVID-19 on the people from all walks of life. To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the United States are racing against time to develop coronavirus vaccines.