Volunteering at a nursing home is an often overlooked volunteer area and yet one of the most needed. Statistics show that only 50 percent of nursing home residents have no close relatives and 46 percent have no living children. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}However, the self gratification and relationships you will receive is too unusual to be replaced.

    Make a list of nursing homes you are able to volunteer at on a regular basis. When doing this, use any resources from family members, friends, or even use an online search engine to find nursing homes. When choosing your home, also keep in mind your schedule; make sure that you can be fully committed to any obligations that the nursing home may give you. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#}Before calling, choose your times wisely, anytime between 9am-11am and 2pm-5pm would be a good option. By avoiding meal times or later at night, you'll have a better chance for getting information and finding people who are free to talk with you.

    Ask for an application form. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}This step is also where your applicant process begins. They will hand you all necessary applicant information. Most nursing homes will conduct interviews, do background checks, and may even have you receive vaccines and take drug tests.

    Become a "volunteer in training" at the nursing home. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}Because of the wide variety of possible areas, you may experience variations in your training length and the content may vary.

A. Expect to attend training if your application is approved.

B. Call or visit the top three of your chosen nursing home options.

C. Volunteering at a nursing home can be a really wonderful experience.

D. From your list, choose the top three that cater to what you are looking for.

E. You will be taken into training depending on the area you are assigned to train in.

F. The process of becoming a volunteer at a nursing home can often be a little too long.

G. The activity director or volunteer coordinator will handle all of your information from here.

    India has many festivals, with some celebrations that last for weeks. However, none of them come even close to Holi, India's most colorful and fun festival. Celebrated on the day following the full moon, this year's festival happens to be on March 19th.

    As with most Indian festivals, this one also has many different folk stories. Most of them center around the success of good over evil. The most popular one is about a king, who hates his son Prahlada for loving the creator of the Universe－Lord Vishnu. When every attempt to stop him fails, his sister, Holika believed to be immune (免疫的) to fire, joins in the effort by inviting the young boy to sit with her inside a huge fire. Helped by the power of Lord Vishnu, Prahlada escapes safely, while the evil Holika is burned to death. To remember this event, huge outdoor fires are lit in the night before Holi in order to clean the air of evil spirits and to celebrate the death of the evil.

    So what's so great about this day? While there are some fun parades (游行) and folk songs and dance performances, the most fun of all is walking to the streets and splashing (泼洒) people with water guns and dry colors and even covering them with entire buckets of colored water. On this day, everybody is fair game, no matter how old or how young.

    At about midday, the splashing comes to an end and people living close to oceans or rivers usually take a bath in the water to clean themselves before going home to a delicious home­made big dinner and a well­deserved short sleep, following this full day of fun and activities.

    The TED speaker series features “ideas worth spreading.” With over 1,400 to choose from, we've selected a few that are perfect for students.

    Larry Smith: Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career

    We humans have an excellent ability to make excuses for ourselves. Larry Smith, a professor of economics at the University of Waterloo in Canada, tells us why most of us will fail to have a great career. But there is a way out— if you try to pursue your passion.  

    Andy Puddicombe: All It takes Is 10 Mindful Minutes

    Between dance team, volunteering and—oh, right—lectures, your life's crazy factor is about to go way up. In this entertaining and informative talk, mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe teaches us how to be “healthier, more mindful and less distracted” by taking just 10 minutes out of the day to be more present.

    Shane Koyczan: To This DAY for the Bullied and Beautiful

    This talk is sure to stay with you. Shane Koyczan's “To this DAY” is an affecting spoken-word poem about bullying and being different that gained over 10 million views on YouTube. In this talk, Koyczan gives a live reading of the poem, along with some stories about his background.

    Susan Cain: The power of Introverts (性格内向者)

    Does a cup of tea and a good book sound like a perfect Friday night? In this personal talk, Susan Cain argues that introverts have important talents and abilities. Our culture may value being social and outgoing, but the world needs all kinds.

    In the rush to get to school, you drop a piece of toast on the floor. Do you throw it away or decide it's still OK to eat? If you're like most people, you eat it. Maybe you follow the “5-second rule”, which says foods are safe to eat if you pick them up within 5 seconds after dropping them. But you might want to think again. Scientists now say that 5 seconds is all it takes for foods to become polluted with enough bacteria to make you sick.

    Bacteria can cause many kinds of illnesses. Some kinds of bacteria can grow on food. If you eat foods on which these bacteria are growing, you can become sick.

    One of these food-borne bacteria is Salmonella. It makes 1.4 million people sick every year. Salmonella is often found in raw eggs and chicken. Cooking kills these bacteria, which is why it is so important to cook eggs, chicken, and other foods thoroughly.

    But how long does it take these bacteria to pollute food? A team of scientists in South Carolina did an experiment. First, they placed an amount of Salmonella on three surfaces: wood, tile, and carpet. They placed a piece of bread and a piece of sausage on each surface for 5, 30, or 60 seconds. After just 5 seconds, both the bread and the sausage picked up enough bacteria to make you sick.

    So, forget the 5-second rule. If your toast drops on the floor, throw it away and get another piece of clean toast. And next time, be careful not to drop it!

    Half an hour into a cooking competition at Green Street Academy, Tyana Givens, 15, dipped a plastic spoon into a pot with tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, garlic and mushrooms over a burner in a science classroom. She and the two other students, Kalimah Ball and Maya Smith, were making meat sauce.

    The girls had spent the past five weeks learning how to grow their own produce using food computers-tabletop greenhouses controlled by computer programs-at Green Street Academy, a charter school in Baltimore. The course, which weaved together lessons on programming, food systems and agriculture, ended with an “Iron Chef”-style cooking contest.

    With the help of instructor Melanie Shimano, the girls finished their contest successfully using the food they planted in tabletop greenhouses. The tabletop greenhouses can control temperature, light and water inside using the computer code that the students wrote by themselves. Shimano, a 26-year-old entrepreneur, piloted(试行)the course as part of Green Street Academy's junior biotechnology class in the spring and will expand the program to other schools in the fall.

    “Technology is not something that a lot of teachers have a lot of resources for all the time, but it's something that's not difficult to do with a relatively low amount of funding,” Shimano said. “Baltimore is a center for startups and food, so kind of fostering that culture of being into technology and into design and seeing all the pieces fit together is really cool.”

    While her course is unique to Baltimore, it's part of a broader program born at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab called the Open Agriculture Initiative, or OpenAg, which aims to create inventive, sustainable food systems through open-source technology. In addition to 10 full-time staff and researchers, OpenAg is primarily an online community of about 1,400 educators, growers, chefs and retailers in 47 countries, according to Hildreth England, OpenAg's assistant director.

    “The interest level across the board generally comes from folks who are concerned about food systems and concerned about the environment, and it's usually a combination of the two,” England said.

    There is such a group of singers in the western musical circle at present, who enter the business as online celebrities(名人)and then become top idols and giant stars globally. They become popular for their videos online and then they are discovered by talent agents and gradually cause huge storms in the musical circle. For example, Troye Sivan, a singer who is nicknamed "chuoye", became popular on You tube from an early age.

    As a popular video sharing website, You Tube has given rise to plenty of stars, creating a new celebrity culture. Providing a platform where anyone can post videos. You tube presents the opportunity for anyone to achieve fame by simply uploading a short video. Sivan has been making you tube videos since he was 12 to show his singing talent. In the digital age, Sivan has already developed large devoted audience online and his sensitive video blogs have earned him extreme popularity.

    A. survey has showed that US teenagers are more attracted with You Tube stars, which is a surprising result. You Tube stars are judged to be more attractive, outstanding and related than traditional stars. Looking at the survey comments and feedback, teens enjoy a close and real experience with You Tube celebrities, who aren't carefully directed by design. Teens also say they appreciate YouTube stars sense of humor and risk-taking spirit, which are often limited by Hollywood stars. As a result, singers who make their first show in the traditional way no longer have a complete advantage in front of the audience. Online platforms open up a lot of doors for people. They become the best place to be discovered.