Today's demands for measuring childhood success have chased household chores from the to-do lists of many young people. In a survey of 1,001 US adults released by Braun Research, 82% reported having regular chores growing up, but only 28% said that they require their own children to do them. “Parents today want their kids spending time on things that can bring them success, but ironically, we've stopped doing one thing that's actually been a proven predictor of success—and that's household chores.” says Richard Rende, a developmental psychologist.

    Giving children household chores at an early age helps to build a lasting sense of mastery, responsibility and independence, according to research by Marty Rossmann, professor at the University of Minnesota. In 2002, Dr. Rossman analyzed data from a longitudinal(纵向的) study that followed 84 children across four periods. She found that young adults who began chores at ages 3 and 4 were more likely to have good relationships with family and friends and to achieve academic and early career success, as compared with those who didn't have chores or who started them as teens.

    Chores also teach children how to be empathetic(感同身受的) and responsive to others' needs, notes psychologist Richard Weissbourd. In research, his team surveyed 10,000 high-school students and asked them to rank what they treasured more: achievement, happiness or caring for others. Almost 80% chose either achievement or happiness over caring for others. As he points out, however, research suggests that personal happiness comes most reliably not from high achievement but from strong relationships. “We're out of balance,” says Dr. Weissbourd. A good way to start re-adjusting priorities(优先事项), he suggests, is by learning to be kind and helpful at home.

    The next time that your child asks to skip chores to do homework, resist the urge to let him or her off the hook. Being slack(懈怠的) about chores when they compete with school sends your child the message that grades and achievement are more important than caring about others. What may seem like small messages in the moment but add up to big ones over time.

Do you like spicy food?

    What's your opinion on spicy food? Some people cannot handle even the smallest amount of chili-red pepper-in their dinner while others can't get enough of it.

    Scientists have long been puzzled by why some people love chili while others loathe it. Plenty of research has been done on the subject, dating as far back as the 1970s. Previous results showed that a love of chili is related to childhood experiences, and cultural influences affect our taste buds too. But the latest study has found that a person's love of spicy food may be linked to his or her personality more than anything else, CBC News reported.

    'We have always assumed that liking drives intake-we eat what we like and we like what we eat. But no one has actually directly bothered to connect these personality traits with intake of chili peppers,' said Professor John Hayes from Pennsylvania State University, who led the study.

    But before you look at the study, you should first know that “spicy” is not a taste, unlike sour, sweet, bitter and salty. It is, in fact, a burning sensation that you feel on the surface of your tongue. This got scientists thinking that maybe a love of spicy food is brought about by people's longing for thrill, something they usually get from watching action movies or riding a roller coaster.

    In the study, 97 participants, both male and female, were asked to fill out questionnaires about certain traits of their personality, for example, whether they like new experiences or tend to avoid risks. They were then given a glass of water with capsaicin, the plant chemical that makes a chili burn, mixed into it.

    By comparing the answers to the questionnaire and what participants said they felt about the spicy water, researchers found that those who tended to enjoy action movies or take risks were about six times more likely to enjoy the spicy water.

    Interestingly, we used to believe that the reason some people can withstand spicy food is that their tongues have become less sensitive to it. However, this latest study has found otherwise. “It's not that it doesn't burn as badly, it's that you actually learn to like the burn,” Hayes explained.

    Young people frequently say that they want to exercise, but they just can't find the time.

    The solution just might be in-office interval training.

    Recent studies show that very short but intense exercise rapidly builds and maintains fitness and health, even when the workout is only a few minutes long.

    Work the stairs

    You can complete an excellent, effective — and very brief — workout in an office stairwell, says Martin Gibala, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Canada and an expert on interval training.

    For a study that he and his colleagues presented earlier this year, they asked 12 out-of-shape women in their 20s to warm up for two minutes by slowly walking up and down stairs in a campus office building.

    They completed three of these abbreviated stair workouts per week for six weeks.

    By the end, their aerobic fitness had improved substantially, the researchers reported, by about as much as if they had been running or cycling each week for hours.

    Fidget your way to fitness.

    Parents and teachers may once have urged you to sit still, but wiggling, tapping your toes, standing briefly, and otherwise fidgeting as much as possible at your desk is in fact good for your body.

    In one recent study, college students showed healthier blood flow in their lower legs if they fidgeted than if they did not.

    Even better, a 2008 study found that among office workers, those who frequently fidgeted burned as many as 300 calories more each day than those who resolutely stayed still.

    Recently, the TV show “Where are we going, Dad?” produced by Hunan SatelliteTelevision is a big hit across nation. Many famous stars brought their children to a strange village alone, and they had to spend 72 hours with their children there. The program fully showed us a modern version of the “how to be a good father”. As the young parents today are too busy to take care of their children, this new form of “Lost on the way” played by nanny Daddy and cute kids triggered（触发）a lot of people's emotional resonance（共鸣）. Both the kids and their parents will find that their hearts are being drawn closer. But this kind of feeling has just proved that there is a big spiritual barrier between the modern parents and children.The TV shows like “Children are hard to support!”, “Where are we going, Dad?”, “hot mom” and “cute kids” are becoming more and more popular. All of these show the new parents' confusion in children's education and the appeal for the balance between career and family.

    In the real life, on the one hand, the young parents feel helpless because they are too busy to accompany their children under the pressures of work and life; on the other hand, they continue to do so. The data collected by HNTV shows that nearly two-thirds of their audience are female, among whom 36% are aged from 25 to 34.We can imagine such a scene that one evening a young mother is watching the show with her young children, while her husband is still at work or trapped in socializing, or maybe is just playing computer games in the bedroom. The story of a child without the company of father is still going on. In fact, it is sometimes the same to mothers. In a modern family, it is often the old who take the responsibility of raising a child. The participation of mother in the children's education is also very low.

    It is just this kind of confusion where the parents have gone in the modern family education, and where the parents will guide their children to go that “Where are we going, Dad?” shows us. If a child wants to grow up healthily and safely into a modern citizen with independent personality and free spirit, it is very important for him or her to follow the parents who serve as their first teacher. Maybe this is the real reason why such kind of TV programs could get hot. The truth is that children will go where their parents go; and society will go where the children go.

    Antarctica(南极洲)'s melting ice, which has caused global sea levels to rise by at least 13.8 millimeters over the past 40 years, was thought to primarily come from the unstable West Antarctic Ice Sheet(WAIS). Now, scientists have found that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS)—considered largely unaffected by climate change—may also be melting at an unexpectedly rapid speed.

    The WAIS, whose base is below sea level, has long been considered the most likely to break down. Besides gravity, a deep current of warm water slips beneath the sheet, melting it from below until it becomes a floating shelf at risk of breaking away. In contrast, extreme cold and a base mostly above sea level are thought to keep the EAIS relatively safe from warm waters.

    But as greenhouse gases warm much of the planet, driving stronger polar winds, some scientists think warm water carried by a circular current will start to invade East Antarctica's once unassailable ice. A cooperation of more than 60 scientists last year, published in Nature, estimated that the EAIS actually added about 5 billion tons of ice each year from 1992 to 2017.

    Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues combined 40 years of satellite imagery and climate modeling and found that overall Antarctica now sends six times more ice into the sea each year than it did in 1979, with the majority coming from West Antarctica. But East Antarctica was responsible for more than 30% of Antarctica's contribution to the 13.8-millimeter sea level rise over the past 40 years. “The more we look at this system the more we realize this is fragile,” Rignot says. “Once these glaciers become unstable there is no red button to press to stop it.”

    Rignot hopes the study brings greater attention to a part of Antarctica that has traditionally been understudied. Helen Fricker, a glaciologist (冰川学家) in California, agrees. “We need to monitor the entire Antarctica and we just can't do that without international cooperation.”

    It was only -28℃ when we landed in Siberia. That was cold enough to make breathing difficult. Five minutes later, I asked for a second pair of gloves and pulled my scarf tight over my nose and mouth. Clearly, I was a complete beginner to this. At the bus station, Mikhail laughed when we asked him why he wasn't freezing. He had spent the whole day outside only with his fur hat and a sheepskin coat for warmth. It was mid-afternoon and icicles（冰柱）were hanging from his beard.

    In Siberia, there's a belief that enough vodka（伏特加酒）will save you from the cold. However, it's wrong. The local hospital is crowded. Even here, icicles are hanging down on the inside of the windows, though the heating is at full power. The doctors are too busy to talk to us.

    The winter here is cruel —and this one is especially so. After her work as a teacher, Natasha Fillipova comes home. It is a freezing house. She shows us the bedroom — where ice has built up on the inside walls. One night, Natasha washed her hair before going to bed. When she woke up, it was frozen hard to the wall. Now the children are doing their homework in the bathroom — the only room warm enough to sit in. Natasha doesn't want to complain. But she is angry with the government and the architects for building terrible houses.

    The houses here are supposed to stand up to -40℃, but they don't. And her children are ill with coughs and colds. Of course, Natasha's anger is brief, and she seems embarrassed about it. According to her, Siberians are used to the cold weather. People here prefer to depend on themselves and the knowledge that spring will come in the end.