As children begin to head back to school, there are several things that you can do to make sure that your child stays healthy and performs at their peak potential during the school year.

    1). Make sure your child is up to date on their immunizations(免疫). The summer is a good time to schedule visits to the doctor's as your child is not in school, and the visit won't require that your child miss school days.

    2).Encourage proper nutrition. America faces childhood obesity(肥胖). This means that the percentage of overweight children is increasing each year, and this will place your child at risk of developing a variety of diseases when they are middle age or even young adults. You can start helping your child to become healthier by offering fruits and vegetables at home instead of calorie heavy potato chips and candy.

    3). Get your child involved in sports activities. Activities in high school such as track and cross-country are important for socialization for your child, as well as helping to improve their health. You can get your child interested in wholesome activities by discussing with them how you enjoyed similar activities in high school.

    4). Have the birds and the bees conversation with your child. Many children become sexually active in junior school and senior high school, and the sooner you discuss sex with your child the sooner they will be prepared. Tell your child that there is always the possibility of infecting a sexual disease when two people have sex; and discuss with your child the use of condoms. The sooner you start having this embarrassing situation the better.

    5). Know your child's friends. You can do this by inviting your child to bring their friends over to your house for a pizza night, or by chatting with them when they stop by your house. If you find your child's friend has a bad reputation, then you could consider introducing your child to a different network of people, such as through the girl/boy scouts. Forbidding your child from seeing a certain person may only lead them to rebel and become closer to that person.

    6). Discuss with your child the seriousness of drug use and abuse. Your child may not realize that using drugs can have serious consequences. Your child may get the false impression that drug use is his right. Explain to a child that saying no to drugs is their right, and that anybody offering them drugs is not their friend.

    7). Help your child to avoid a life long smoking addiction by discussing with them the consequences of smoking. The sad fact is that most smokers became addicted when they were in their teenage years, and are unable to quit for long periods of time and often die many years earlier due to their smoking habit which increases the risk of lung cancer, heart disease, and a variety of medical conditions. Even if you are a smoker yourself, you can discuss with your child about how damaging smoking can be on a person's health.

    8). Impress upon your child the importance of traffic rules. Tell them that it is OK to wear a seat belt in anyone's car, because it may save their life one day. If your child rides a bicycle or a skateboard, then discuss with them the importance of always wearing a helmet. As you child becomes qualified for driver's permit, you should discuss with them the importance of prevention from drinking and driving.

    9). Be cautious about signs of depression in childhood. A surprisingly large number of children may become depressed, and a small number of teenagers and children commit suicide(自杀) each year. Realize that any signs of unusual depressed mood, angry outbursts, suicidal comments, feelings of hopelessness, and loss of enjoyment of activities with friends may be signs of depression.

Note：

* All under 18's must be accompanied by an adult

* Pets allowed: No

* Cost: Free

* Phone: 01674­830736

* Location: SNH Visitor Centre, St Cyrus National Nature Reserve

    The decisions that we make shape us throughout our lives. No matter what decisions we make, good or bad, each one puts us on a new road in the future. Make a bad decision? No problem. Learn from the decision and make another decision to get on a different path. This is advice that I got from Tony Robbins in his book Awaken the Giant Within. This is a book that I recommend(推荐) to anyone wanting to develop a fire to make changes in their life. It helped me to understand how fear of making poor choices was hindering me from becoming the great man who I am today. Now I am not saying I am a well-known person in any particular circle. But I am the king of my castle working hard and trying to make good decisions in regard to the paths that I have chosen. I am a great man in the eyes of my wife and my children. And that is all the recognition that I need in my lifetime. And I know that my past failures have been the building block that I continue to use to build my career and self-image in my community that I live in.

    Ben Lerer, cofounder of the CEO of Thrillist Media Group, is a good example of this. In an article on the Fast Company website, Lerer talks about this very subject. He says, “I've had to make some really tough decisions but finally, I think the best companies are those that can recognize when something isn't going right, and fix it, instead of just turning a blind eye because it's easier.” Great people make decisions. When a decision does not have the desired result, make a different decision. It does not get any simpler than that.

    Writer Liu fang's first novel, about the life of a teacher at a rural school in the mountainous province of Guizhou in the 1990s , is greatly similar to her own early years-before she lost her sight and struggled to find a full life in the darkness.

    Liu, 44 , was a Chinese language teacher at No 3 Middle School in the Baiyun district of Guiyang until 2006 , when she could no longer see the characters printed in the textbooks .

    Diagnosed with incurable eye disease , in 1996 , Liu was told she would gradually lose her eyesight over 10 years.That it took her 20 years to walk into darkness makes her have the ability to tell you the difference between the two worlds .She spent the first 10 years gradually accepting the reality , and the second facing it with smiles.

    Fortunately , Liu had many people on her side.Her family and friends helped her overcome the most difficult period of her life. And her own kindness served her well . Liu praised the school's headmaster , who gave her a new post as a psychological consultant(心理咨询师) for students, and planned for professional training for her new role.

    Liu's office is a comfortable place decorated with hand-drawn student pictures , one where children can thoughtfully talk about their problems . Liu takes her job seriously.She donated 5,000 yuan (＄760) from her income to five poor students.After she became famous, all she wanted to do was help for the “left-behind”children.

    Yang Hui , a student who often quarrelled with her parents , said Liu feels like a mother to the student. Yang said She would listen to me patiently , and Liu helped her find the reason she couldn't get along well with her parents .

Liu said , her blindness is an asset . “I guess they trust me because I cannot see them , and they feel I am more concentrated and careful than others while listening to them.”

    It is one of the oldest magic tricks in the book—a magician locks a woman in a box, with her head and feet sticking out from either end, and saws (锯) it in half. But when she finally jumps out of the box, the woman is unharmed.

    This trick was introduced nearly a century ago. It has been around for some time, but it never goes wrong. Why is it so successful? The answer is simple: the human mind is easily fooled.

    Our brain processes the world around us based on information that sensory organs, including the eyes, pick up. For instance, when we see a cow or a horse standing behind a tree, we automatically “fill in” the part of the animal's body that is hidden from our sight. “So the brain is taking this kind of very sparse (匮乏的) information about the world and it's generating this rich world by filling in information,” Stephen Macknik, a scientist at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona, US, told Science magazine.

    But since our brains are filling in the gaps, sometimes they get it wrong. They tend to be driven by our previous experiences and we expect things to go as they have in the past even if sometimes they do not.

    This tendency explains magicians' success in fooling people with well-known coin tricks. For example, when you see a magician throw a coin up and down in one hand and then fake a coin thrown to the other hand, you would naturally believe that the coin is in the other hand.

Apart from the information gaps, magicians also use the “blind spots” theory when doing their shows.

    The most well-known experiment demonstrating this theory is called the “invisible gorilla (大猩猩)”, in which volunteers watch a video of two basketball teams. They are asked to count how many times the teams wearing white shirts pass the ball. In the meantime, a person dressed as a gorilla walks onto the court. But shockingly, half of the viewers don't notice the gorilla, even when they appear to be looking directly at it.

    Magicians employ this tactic (招数), what they call “misdirection”, in almost every one of their acts. They direct our attention somewhere else using comedy and music, which can make us miss stuff during the performance.

About 50 feet from shore, two brothers were fighting for their lives, their mouths barely able to stay above the water. Thick fog made it difficult for beach goers to see the guys, but the screams were unmistakable and every second counted. The brothers, aged 15 and 20, were wearing shorts and T-shirts, unsuitable for a November day, let alone the 50-degree water. Keven Harder, a supervising ranger, told the North Coast Journal that swimming in such a temperature "will take the fight right out of you."

Luckily, four surfers in wet suits were nearby. Narayan Weibel, Spenser Stratton, and Adrian York, all 16, along with Taj Ortiz-beck, 15, were on their surf boards riding on waves when they heard the cries. They turned and saw two bobbing heads and four flailing arms. "We looked at each other and knew they were about to drown, " Weibel said.

Weibel, Stratton, and Ortiz-beck paddled toward the distressed swimmers while York headed to shore to call 911. As the surfers drew close, the brothers were struggling. "It was pretty stressful, but there wasn't any time to think about it," Ortiz-beck said. He pulled up alongside the younger brother. Grabbing him under his arms, he raised him up onto the board. Stratton and Weibel, meanwhile, were straining(竭力)to help the elder brother. He was large, about 250 pounds, and panicked. Fortunately, York arrived in time to help get the elder brother atop the second board. The surfers then paddled several minutes through rough water to the medical help waiting onshore. The brothers were scared but fine.

"When we get a call like this one, it's usually too late by the time we get there, " said Dillon Ceavenger, the first responder. "I can't say enough about what these boys did. They were willing and prepared to risk their lives."