A long-term American study shows the importance of early education for poor children. The study is known as the Abecedarian Project. It involved more than one-hundred young children from poor families in North Carolina.

    Half of the children attended an all-day program at a high-quality child-care center. The center offered educational, health and social programs. Children took part in games and activities to increase their thinking and language skills and social and emotional development. The program also included health foods for the children.

    The children attended the program from when they were a few weeks old until the age of five years. The other group of children did not attend the child-care center. After the age of five, both groups attended public school.

    Researchers compared the two groups of children. When they were babies, both groups had similar results in tests for mental and physical skills. However, from the age of eighteen months, the children in the educational child-care program did much better in tests.

    The researchers tested the children again when they were twelve and fifteen years old. The tests found that the children who had been in the child-care center continued to have higher average test results. These children did much better on tests of reading and mathematics.

    A few years ago, organizers of the Abecedarian Project tested the students again. At the time, each student was twenty-one years old. They were tested for thinking and educational ability, employment, parenting and social skills. The researchers found that the young adults who had the early education still did better in reading and mathematics tests. They were more than two times as likely to be attending college or to have completed college. In addition, the children who received early education were older on average, when their first child was born.

    The study offers more evidence that learning during the first months and years of life is important for all later development.

    The researchers of the Abecedarian Project believe their study shows a need for lawmakers to spend money on public early education. They believe these kinds of programs could reduce the number of children who do not complete school and are unemployed.

    Even if trees cannot walk, they are still on the move.

    In parts of the Arctic, entire forests are moving northward. Across the Arctic, temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else in the world. As that happens, the tree line that marks where forests stop and the treeless tundra (冻原) starts has been shifting northward. Trees growing along the tree line must protect themselves from the cold wind. To dothis, plants tend to grow horizontal (水平的) branches low to the ground. The energy it takes for trees to grow this way means they don't have enough energy to make seeds.

    But as Earth's climate has been warming, trees no longer have to just grow horizontally. Many can instead grow up toward the sky. This takes less energy. And with all that leftover energy, these trees have started producing more seeds. This happens especially in places where white spruce (白云杉) grows.

    White spruce, which is a North American tree, is quite able to produce a lot of seeds, which can move long distances in the wind. When wind­blown seeds end up on the tundra beyond the tree line, they eventually can sprout(发芽) new trees. This explains how a forest can move. Of course, the process would work only if the tundra were warm enough. But in recent years, the whole planet has been warming.

    New trees will provide shelters for some snow. Keeping the sun's rays from making the white surface disappear. Instead, the trees absorb the sun's heat. This warms the surrounding air. The extra warmth encourages even more trees to produce seeds. That further boosts a forest's ability to expand. In addition, more trees will trap more snow, preventing much of it from being blown away. Snow can trap heat in the soil below, which encourages trees to grow. The recent rise of temperatures has helped more trees grow past the tree line. People worry about impacts on the animals that depend on frozen conditions for food and shelter.

    In the movie Alice in Wonderland, Alice comes across a Cheshire cat and asks the cat which road she should take. The cat responds, “Well, that depends on where you're trying to get to.” Alice replies, “I don't know.” The cat responds, “Then any road will do.”

    You see, knowing where you're going increases your chances dramatically of getting there, and there is no better way of “GETTING THERE” than setting your goals for the upcoming year. Think of your goals as destinations and the action steps as your GPS guiding and directing you. If you are like many other people, for years you have resisted the need to set goals and even laughed at the thought that setting goals and，even more importantly, committing them to writing have positive effects on your life. However, a closer look might convince you that setting goals is a sensible thing to do.

    In 1979, a class of Harvard MBA students was asked: Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made an action plan to accomplish them? The following will astonish you. Only 3 percent of the class had written goals and a plan in place, 13% just had goals, and an amazing 84% had no specific goals at all.

    Ten years later the numbers of the class were interviewed once again and the following results will no doubt give the reason for our setting goals. The findings were that the 13% who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84% who had no goals at all. And the 3 percent who had clear, written goals with a plan to achieve them were achieving ten times as much as the entire 97% combined.

    Goal setting will increase your chances of arriving successfully at your destination. Remember, always set SMART goals. Goals should be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound!

    No one is sure how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids near Cairo. But a new study suggests they used a little rock 'n' roll. Long ago builders could have attached wooden poles to the stones and rolled them across the sand, the scientists say.

    "Technically, I think what they're proposing is possible." physicist Daniel Bonn said.

    People have long puzzled over how the Egyptians moved such huge rocks. And there's no obvious answer. On average, each of the two million big stones weighed about as much as a large pickup truck. The Egyptians somehow moved the stone blocks to the pyramid site from about one kilometer away.

    The most popular view is that Egyptian workers slid the blocks along smooth paths. Many scientists suspect workers first would have put the blocks on sleds. Then they would have dragged them along paths. To make the work easier, workers may have lubricated the paths either with wet clay or with the fat from cattle. Bonn has now tested this idea by building small sleds and dragging heavy objects over sand.

    Evidence from the sand supports this idea. Researchers found small amounts of fat, as well as a large amount of stone and the remains of paths.

    However, phyficmt Josepn West thought there might have been a simpler way, who led the new study. West said, "I was inspired while watching a television program showing how sleds might have helped with pyramid construction. I thought, "Why don't they just try rolling the things?" A square could be turned into a rough sort of wheel by attaching wooden poles to its sides, he realized. That, he noted, should make a block of stone "a lot easier to roll than a square".

    So he tried it.

    He and his students tied some poles to each of four sides of a 30-kilogram stone block. That action turned the block into somewhat a wheel. Then they placed the block on the ground.

    They wrapped one end of a rope around the block and pulled. The researchers found they could easily roll the block along different kinds of paths. They calculated that rolling the block required about as much force as moving it along a slippery path.

    West hasn't tested his idea on larger blocks, but he thinks rolling has clear advantages over sliding. At least, workers wouldn't have needed to carry cattle fat or water to smooth the paths.

    Knowing a little first aid could be life-saving if you see someone lying unconscious.

    Too often people don't do anything because they think they will kill the patient, but by learning simple rules you could make the difference between life and death.

    First, you need to find out if they're unconscious, asleep or drunk, by squeezing the skin between their neck and shoulder and shouting. If there is no response at all, you need to establish if they are dead or just unconscious—sometimes it's very difficult to tell the difference.

    Open the airway by placing one hand on their forehead and gently tilting the head back while lifting the chin.

    If there are no signs of life—no obvious pulse and their chest is not going up and down—call an ambulance and then start cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) (心脏复苏) to maintain (获得) a flow of oxygenated blood to the brain and heart.

    Do this by pushing up and down on the centre of the chest, with your hands interlocked together, constantly until an ambulance arrives.

    Push at a rate of 100 beats a minute. You can't harm them doing this and might just save a life.

A Japanese start-up called Ashirase is stepping into the global market with a new navigation (导航) assistance product intended to help people with low vision.

Its new product will feature flexible vibrating (震动) bases around each foot and are put into each shoe, and a small pack that can be removed for charging (充电). Once fitted, the vibrating parts are set along the sensitive nerves on the foot and can send coded walking instructions to the user.

Its present form navigates a route that comes from a smartphone app. It can help clear up distractions by freeing up the attention that is normally needed to either listen to voice directions or check the phone. Visual-damaged users can use their hearing to listen to traffic sounds and signals, like warning beeps at crossings or sidewalks, and use their hands to carry walking sticks or other belongings.

The device is paired with an app through a Bluetooth connection. The app uses information from Google Maps or similar vendors to draw up a walking route to the destination. Based on the destination and how the user is walking, it will send signals to the device that will cause a vibration on the foot.

The device will vibrate at a regular frequency at the front of the foot to let the users know they're on the right track and should keep going straight. It will speed up the vibrations once the user is approaching a turn and needs to stop, and it will vibrate in either the left or right shoe to signal the direction the user needs to turn.

Ashirase's new tech is waterproof and washable. It can be charged at the end of the week to power through seven days of walking, accounting for three active hours each day. And it can be fitted in two types of shoes: sneakers and leather lace-up shoes.