Chinese students aren't the only ones who have a sleep loss problem. In Australia, teenagers are also missing, on average, one hour's sleep every night during the school week.

    Organized activities and homework push bedtimes later, the first large-scale Australian study of children's sleeping habits has shown. Their sleep deprivation (剥夺) is enough to cause “serious drop-offs in school performance, attention and memory”, and governments should consider later or flexible school start times, said the study's leader, Tim Olds.

    His survey, of more than 4,000 children aged 9 to 18, found those who slept least did not watch more television but spent their time socializing (相处) with family or friends or listening to music.

    “Almost all children get up at 7 or 7:15 — they have to get to school on time,” said Olds. He favors a later start over an earlier finish because he believes organized sports and activities would still consume the latter end of the day.

    Olds' research also establishes lack of sleep as a cause of weight gain in children, and a possible source of future problems with depression, anxiety and increased susceptibility (易感性) to illness.

    It was already known that overweight children sleep less, but Professor Olds found sleep duration(时长) was strongly linked to weight across the full range of body sizes. The thinnest children sleep 20 minutes more than the obese. This showed being overweight had no specific effect on sleep patterns, and it was more likely that shorter sleep times stimulate (刺激) appetite and make kids hungry.

    The US National Sleep Foundation says teenagers aged 13 to 18 need eight to nine hours' sleep a night. Younger school-aged kids need 9 to 11 hours.

    On that basis, Professor Olds said, half of Australian children are under-sleeping on weekdays and a quarter on weekends.

    Having a clean and organized workspace takes time and effort—especially if we want to keep it that way. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} According to recent statistics, the average office employee spends one and a half hours a day looking for things. That's an hour and a half that is wasted every day because of disorganization. Keeping things organized can give you more time each day. Having a clean workspace can have a number of additional surprising benefits. Let's look at some of those now.

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    Untidiness can be a distraction that interferes with your thought process and prevents you from being as effective as you can be. When your workspace is clean and organized, you can spend more time focused on your tasks, without the unorganized chaos to attend to.

Attain More Success

    It's hard to be productive when you're disorganized. Organization can make it easier to concentrate, and allows you to get things done faster. Whether you're an employee or self­employed, organization is a crucial component for success. If clients see that you're well­ organized, they'll be more willing to trust you.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

Make a Better Impression

    In addition to making it easier to focus and work, having a clean workspace also helps to convey a professional image. Your workspace says more about you than you may think. When someone walks past your space, they instantly form an opinion about you based on what your space looks like.{#blank#}4{#/blank#} However, to the outsider, you may look overwhelmed and incapable of taking on extra projects.

Have a Happier Work Experience

    If you're surrounded by a clean environment you'll have space to think, will be able to get more done and will feel better working in that space.

Fortunately, keeping your space clean and organized is easier than you might think.{#blank#}5{#/blank#} You'll be amazed at the difference a clean workspace can make to your mindset and how much more you'll be able to accomplish during the day.

A. Improve Focus

B. Regain Tidiness

C. But the results are more than worth it

D. Maybe you feel productive with papers scattered around

E. It shows that you know what you're doing and that you are capable

F. Clearly being disorganized can have a negative effect on your performance

G. Try to get rid of or throw away everything that you don't need to maximize your productivity

    When Joshua Blue, a head teacher at the Kennedy, hosts a lecture for his students, he wears a light violet-colored tie. "You don't want so many bright colors that the kids will get distracted," said Blue. Colors give off very specific signals, and different tie colors stand for very different impacts. Wondering what color tie to wear to your next meeting? Here's how to choose the perfect color tie for every occasion:

    All powerful reds

    It's not a coincidence（巧合） that many politicians wear red-colored ties with light shirts and darker suits. "Red is the powerful color," said Mark Woodman, a trend analyst who studies color in Laurel, Maryland. "There's something about red that always comes back to strength and passion." But the tone of your reds matters, too. Darker reds can help build trust, while lighter red and pink ties can be more of a statement about your personal style and be associated with creativity. When you want to convey a sense of ambition, consider a shiny red.

    Royal purples

    Ross Znavor, an executive in financial services in New York, wears purple ties rather than red to business meetings because the color shows a bit of self-confidence and helps him create lasting first impressions. Purple, traditionally a sign of royalty and wealth is becoming more acceptable in the workplace.

    Black affairs

    "While you might not wear them to meetings on a regular basis, wearing black ties to a cocktail party or even a dinner is unique and attractive," said Zyla. But remember: the formal black color can feel aggressive in many situations. "Avoid it if you are a green-hand at work," Zyla said.

    Right blues

    Afraid of sending the wrong message with your tie color? Consider blue as the all-purpose tie. Blue ties are a good investment because the color reminds people of the sky and ocean. "Blue is the safest color to wear," Lindsay said.

    For the first time in the history of the Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou marathons, fourteen blind runners competed in the Nov 6 Hangzhou Marathon this year with the assistance of personal guides. Each runner was supported by 4 or 5 volunteers. Among them was Yan Wei, from a running group called “Running in the Dark”, which specially provides training for blind runners.

    During trainings, blind runners are each accompanied by three volunteers. One volunteer is responsible for removing any obstacles（障碍物）on the road and controlling the pace. The second volunteer acts as a lookout for other runners or vehicles on the path while the third, who is attached to the blind runner by a safety rope, takes note of the trainee's running gait and pace.

    Zhu Peihua, the leader of the group's Shanghai branch, first developed a passion for running last year when he took part in a guided running activity. Zhu said that he was so fascinated with the sport that he even bought a treadmill（跑步机）so that he could train at home. “Running gives me the chance to be outside and take in the fresh air. The activity has also made me more willing to talk to people. It's simply good for health, ” said Zhu.

    The popularity of guided running activities for blind people has been growing since last year. Cheng Yi, a volunteer at Running in the Dark's Hangzhou branch, said that both the numbers of blind runners and volunteers to become assistants to them are rising continually. However, he added that volunteers face a more physically demanding task compared to a regular runner. Some of the other challenges involve being aware of the verbal(口头的) instructions one gives.

     “At the beginning, I kept saying ‘here' and ‘there' instead of ‘left' or 'right' which is much more specific and relevant to the runner. A blind runner once collided with another runner because of my mistake. Luckily, no one was hurt,” said Cheng. Through everything, according to Cheng, he and many of the blind runners he has guided become close friends with shared topics and increased understandings.

    British children used to play conkers (板栗游戏) in the autumn when the horse-chestnut trees started to drop their shiny brown nuts. They would select a suitable chestnut, drill a hole in it and thread it onto a string, then swing their conker at that of an opponent until one of them broke. But the game has fallen out of favour. Children spend less time outdoors and rarely have access to chestnut trees. Besides, many schools have banned conkers games, worried that they might cause injuries or nut allergies.

    That sort of risk-averseness(规避风险) now spreads through every aspect of childhood. Playgrounds have all the excitement designed out of them to make them safe. Many governments, particularly in societies such as America, have tightened up their rules, requiring parents to supervise(监管) young children far more closely than in the past. Frank Furedi of the University of Kent, a critic on modern parenting, argues that allowing children to play unsupervised or leaving them at home alone is increasingly described as a symptom of irresponsible parenting.

    In part, such increased caution is a response to the huge wave of changes. Large-scale urbanization, smaller and more mobile families, the move of women into the labor market and the digitization of many aspects of life have unavoidably changed the way that people bring up their children. There is little chance that any of these trends will be changed, so today's more intensive(精细化 ) parenting style is likely to go on.

    Such parenting practices now embraced by wealthy parents in many parts of the rich world, particularly in America, go far beyond an adjustment to changes in external conditions. They mean a strong bid to ensure that the advantages enjoyed by the parents' generation are passed on to their children. Since success in life now turns mainly on education, such parents will do their best to provide their children with the schooling, the character training and the social skills that will secure access to the best universities and later the most attractive jobs.

    To some extent that has always been the case. But there are more such parents now, and they are competing with each other for what economists call positional goods. This competition starts even before the children are born. The wealthy classes will take their time to select a suitable spouse and get married, and will start a family only when they feel ready for it.

    Children from less advantaged backgrounds, by contrast, often appear before their parents are ready for them. In America 60% of births to single women under 30 are unplanned, and over 40% of children are born outside marriage. The result, certainly in America, has been to widen already massive social inequalities yet further.

    All the evidence suggests that children from poorer backgrounds are at a disadvantage almost as soon as they are born. By the age of five or six they are far less "school-ready" than their better-off peers, so any attempts to help them catch up have to start long before they get to school. America has had some success with various schemes involving regular home visits by nurses or social workers to low-income families with new babies. It also has long experience with programmes for young children from poor families that combine support for parents with good-quality child care. Such programmes do seem to make a difference. Without extra effort, children from low-income families in most countries are much less likely than their better-off peers to attend preschool education, even though they are more likely to benefit from it. And data from the OECD's PISA programme suggest that children need at least two years of preschool education to perform at their best when they are 15.

    So the most promising way to ensure greater equality may be to make early-years education and care for more widely available and more affordable, as it is in the Nordics. Some governments are already rethinking their educational priorities, shifting some of their spending to the early years.

    Most rich countries decided more than a century ago that free, compulsory education for all children was a worthwhile investment for society. There is now an argument for starting preschool education earlier, as some countries have already done. In the face of crushing new inequalities, a modern version of that approach is worth trying.

    My college experience included this life-skill lesson: Drink alcohol on a full stomach. Or you will get inebriated too quickly. Of course, most college students shouldn't be drinking at all, but we know from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism that close to 60 percent of college students aged 18 to 22 do consume alcohol, which makes harm-reducing approaches important.

    Unfortunately, campus authorities and researchers are reporting a practice that turns the full-stomach drinking strategy on its head: rather than filling up before a night of partying, significant numbers of students refuse to eat all day before consuming alcohol.

    This is a high-risk behavior called "drunkorexia," which is one part eating disorder, one part alcoholism—a very dangerous combination for college-age students. The term drunkorexia, which can also include excessive exercise or purging before consuming alcohol, was coined about 10 years ago, and it started showing up in medical research around 2012. Drunkorexia addresses the need to be the life of the party while staying extremely thin, pointing to a flawed mind-set about body image and alcoholism among college students, mostly women.

    Imagine this scenario: A female college freshman doesn't eat anything all day, exercises on an empty stomach, then downs five shots of tequila in less than two hours. Because there's no food in her system to help slow the absorption of alcohol, those shots affect her rapidly, leading to inebriation and possibly passing out, vomiting or suffering alcohol poisoning. That's drunkorexia.

    Tavis Glassman, professor of health education and public health at the University of Toledo in Ohio, researches drunkorexia and worries about scenarios such as the one described above: "With nothing in her system, alcohol hits quickly, and that brings up the same issues as with any high-risk drinking: getting home safely, sexual assault, unintentional injury, fights, hangovers that affect class attendance and grades, and possibly ending up in emergency because the alcohol hits so hard," he says.

    "Alcohol can negatively affect the liver or gastrointestinal system, it can interfere with sleep, lower the immune system and is linked to several types of cancers," Hultin says.