A new study shows students who write notes by hand during lectures perform better on exams than those who use laptops(笔记本电脑)．

    Students are increasingly using laptops for note­taking because of speed and legibility(清晰度)．But the research has found laptop users are less able to remember and apply the concepts they have been taught.

    Researchers performed experiments that aimed to find out whether using a laptop increased the tendency to make notes “mindlessly” by taking down word for word what the professors said.

    In the first experiment，students were given either a laptop or pen and paper. They listened to the same lectures and were told to use their usual note­taking skills. Thirty minutes after the talk，they were examined on their ability to remember facts and on how well they understood concepts.

    The researchers found that laptop users took twice as many notes as those who wrote by hand. However，the typists performed worse at remembering and applying the concepts. Both groups scored similarly when it came to memorizing facts.

    The researchers' report said，“While more notes are beneficial，if the notes are taken mindlessly，as is more likely the case on a laptop，the benefit disappears.”

    In another experiment aimed at testing long­term memory，students took notes as before but were tested a week after the lecture. This time，the students who wrote notes by hand performed significantly better on the exam.

    These two experiments suggest that handwritten notes are not only better for immediate learning and understanding，but that they also lead to superior revision in the future.

    Sweet or salty? What kind of tastes do you like? If like me, you have a sweet tooth and you probably can't resist eating cakes, biscuits or chocolate and will sweeten your tea or coffee with spoonfuls of sugar-delicious! But the taste makes it very easy to ignore the warnings that too much of the white stuff（东西）is bad for our health.

    Consuming sugar is an addiction-the more we eat, the more we want. Today's processed food, like ready meals, is related to the stuff and many fizzy（起泡的）drinks contain seven teaspoons of sugar in just one can. In the UK, statistics show that sugar consumption is at its highest level in history and the government is trying to get the food industry to cut the amount of sugar in popular products like chocolate bars by 20% by 2020.

    Of course, sugary food tastes nice, it can help lift our mood, and a part in it can refresh us. But there are dangers too :a high-sugar diet is linked to putting on weight, and being overweight can increase the risk of getting type 2 diabetes（糖尿病）. With these warning signs, I have considered changing my diet by replacing sugary snacks with fruit and salty biscuits-but that's boring!

I'm not alone. BBC journalist Radhika Shanghani, has gone one step further. Encouraged by some well-knowns and nutritionists promoting a 'zero tolerance' approach to sugar, she gave it up altogether, thinking it would make her healthier. Initially she says, “My first fortnight involves mood swings. I have disturbing headaches and feel permanently hung-over.” These symptoms disappeared but she still found food shopping hard as she was stressing about buying the right things.

    Her experiment wasn't a success. She eventually sought advice from Susan Jebb, professor of diet and population health at Oxford University who said: “Lots of people enjoy sugar and gain pleasure from it, so one has to find a balance between enjoyment and eating the right amount.”

    Four of the World's Best Futurists(未来学家)

    Kevin Kelly

    Kevin Kelly is an author. His 1994 publication, Out of Control, discusses a future where machines and systems are so complex as to be indistinguished(难区分的) from living things.

    His latest book What Technology Wants suggests that technology is not just a mixture of wires and metals but a living thing that has its own need. The book looks out through the eyes of this global technological system to discover what it wants.

    Dr Michio Kaku

    Dr Michio Kaku is a professor of theoretical physics at the City of New York and author of The Future of the Mind and Physics of the Future.

    In The Future of the Mind , he explores the frontier of neuroscience. He predicts that one day we will be able to upload the human brain into a computer. In Physics of the Future, he predicts that glasses and contact lenses will be connected to the Internet and cars will become driverless with the power of the GPS system.

    David Brin

    Science fiction author and scientist, David Brin has received awards. In 1998, he won the Freedom of Speech Award for The Transparence Society. The book concerns threats to personal affairs and openness in the information age. In a world where the police monitor public places 24 hours a day with cameras and some credit companies can sell people's financial details to anyone willing to pay, Brin warns that surveillance(监控) technology will be used by too few people in the future. He argues that the tables should be turned and the public should have access to information like who is buying financial details from credit companies.

    Dr Ray Kurzweil

    Dr Ray Kurzweil is the main inventor of the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind. He is the director of artificial intelligence development at Google.

    Over the past 25 years, a number of his predictions have come true. In 1990, he predicted a computer would defeat a human at chess by 1998.He predicts that by the 2020s, most diseases will go away and self-driving cars begin to take over the roads.

A Lesson Plan from Life Planning Education: A Youth Development Program

    Purpose: To learn about body language and how to use body language.

    Materials (材料): Cards; container

    Time: 25-35 minutes

    Planning Notes:

    ·Write the words below on cards:

    angry disappointed shy afraid sad happy nervous excited bored

    ·Place the cards in the container so volunteers can draw them out one at a time.

    Steps:

    First make sure that all volunteers know what body language means (expressing feelings through body movement and facial expressions). Go over the following instructions:

    ·I'll need at least 9 volunteers to play a game similar to charades (猜词游戏).

    ·The first volunteer will draw a card with a feeling written on it and act out the feeling without using words.

    ·The rest of the group will guess what feeling is being communicated. Once someone correctly guesses the feeling, the next person in line will draw a card and act out what is written on it, again without words.

    ·The game will continue until there are no more cards or until time is up.

    At last, end the activity using the discussion points below:

    ·Can you give examples of when someone's body language communicated a different message from what he/she actually skid?

    ·Sometimes one person is offended (冒犯) by another's body language. How can you work to keep that from happening? Answers may include: be honest and direct; match your nonverbal messages to your verbal ones; be aware of (清楚) cultural attitudes toward different kinds of body language.

    Branksome Hall

    Class Size: 12 to 22

    Grades: JK to Gr. 12

    Gender(性别): All girls

    Living: day, Boarding(提供住宿的）

    Founded in 1903, Branksome Hall is Toronto's only all-girls, all-years International Baccalaureate (IB）World School. From the earliest grades, students learn to become leaders and to understand the value of serving the community. Discover Branksome hall's programs at www.brunksome.on.ca.

    Stanstead College

    Class Size: 13

    Grades: Gr. 7 to Gr.12

    Gender: Open to both sexes

    Living: Boarding

    Stanstead College is a private boarding school for boys and girls in Grades 7 through 12. It is an English school that embraces (包含) French in and out of the classroom. It is also uniquely placed to open doors to top universities and colleges in the United States, Canada and around the world.

    Oakwood Academy

    Class Size: 1 to 4

    Grades: JK to Gr. 12.

    Gender: Open to both sexes

    Living: Day

    Oakwood Academy is a private school for students who require an individualized education plan and small class size to meet their unique learning styles. Direct Instruction is used to teach academics in small groups and a meaningful curriculum (课程) allows students to truly learn.

    TEAM School

    Class Size: 8 to 12

    Grades: Gr. 1 to Gr.12

    Gender: Open to both sexes

    Living: Day

    TEAM School provides an academic program for students in Grades 1 through 12. Students from ages 6 to 14 benefit from small class sizes (8 students) and an individualized academic program to provide an educational upgrading.

Ramirez Castañeda, a Colombian biologist, spends her time in the Amazon studying how snakes eat poisonous frogs without getting ill. Although her findings come in many shapes and sizes, she and her colleagues have struggled to get their biological discoveries out to the wider scientific community. With Spanish as her mother tongue, her research had to be translated into English to be published. That wasn't always possible because of budget or time- and it means that some of her findings were never published.

" It's not that I'm a bad scientist," she says." It's just because of the language."

Castañeda is not alone. There is plenty of research in non- English- language papers that gets lost in translation, or is never translated. A research looked through more than 400, 000 peer- reviewed papers in 16 different languages and found 1,234 studies providing evidence on biodiversity conservation which, because they weren't in English, may have been overlooked. These included Japanese- language findings on the effectiveness of relocating the endangered Blakiston's fish owl, the largest owl species.

Some experts argue that for the sake of the bigger picture, scientific knowledge should converge(转换) into one common language. Science is very globalised and becoming more so, so the use of a global language is enormous for that.

Of course, scientists can work with an English partner, or use a translator- but this ultimately strengthens the cycle of dependency on the global north, leading to inequality in international influence. The specific meanings of words can also pose a problem in translation. For example, it is difficult to find in English one single word to describe forest snakes and frogs in the work Castafieda does with indigenous(土著的) communities in the Amazon.

" So we' re losing observations for science, too," says Castañeda." For me, it's not possible to just have everything translated into English. We need multilingual(多语种的) science, and we need people that feel comfortable doing science in their own languages. It could be possible to switch to a world where, say, Chinese, English and Spanish are the three languages of science, just as English, French and German were the languages of science in the 19th century."