C

    Terrafugia Inc .said Monday that its new flying car has completed its first flight,bringing the company closer to its goal of selling the flying car within the next year.The vehicle-named the Transition – has two seats，four wheels and wings that fold up so it can be driven like a car.The Transition,which flew at 1,400 feet for eight minutes last month, can reach around 70 miles per hour on the road and 115 in the flies using a 23-gallon tank of gas and burns 5 gallons per hour in the air. On the ground, it gets 35 miles per gallon.

    Around 100 people have already put down a $10,000 deposit to get a Transition when they go on sale, and those numbers will likely rise after Terrafugia introduces the Transition to the public later this week at the New York Auto Show. But don't  expect it to show up in too many driveways. It's expected to cost $279,000.And it won't  help if you're stuck in traffic. The car needs a runway.

    Inventors have been trying to make flying cars since the 1930s, according to Robert Mann, an airline industry expert. But Mann thinks Terrafugia has come closer than anyone to making the flying car a reality. The govemment has already permitted the company to use special materials to make it easier for the vehicle to fly. The Transition  is now going through crash tests to make sure it meets federal safety standards.

    Mann said Terrafugia was helped by the Federal Aviation Administration's decision five years ago to create a separate set of standards for light sport aircraft, which are lower than those for pilots of larger planes. Terrafugia says an owner would need to pass a test and complete 20 hours of flying time to be able to fly the Transition,a requirement pilots would find relatively easy to meet.

    In colleges around the country, most students are also workers.

    The reality of college can be pretty different from the images presented in movies and television. Instead of the students who wake up late, party all the time, and study only before exams, many colleges are full of students with pressing schedules of not just classes and activities, but real jobs, too.

This isn't a temporary phenomenon. The share of working students has been on the rise since the 1970s, and one-fifth of students work all year round. About one-quarter of those who work while attending school have both a full-course load and a full-time job. The arrangement can help pay for tuition (学费) and living costs, obviously. And there's value in it beyond the direct cause: such jobs can also be critical for developing important professional and social skills that make it easier to land a job after graduation. With many employers looking for students with already-developed skill sets, on-the-job training while in college can be the best way to ensure a job later on.

But it's not all upside. Even full-time work may not completely cover the cost of tuition and living expenses. The study notes that if a student worked a full-time job at the federal minimum wage, they would earn just over $15,000 each year, certainly not enough to pay for tuition, room, and board at many colleges without some serious financial aid. That means that though they're sacrificing time away from the classroom, many working students will still graduate with at least some debt. And working full time can reduce the chance that students will graduate at all, by cutting into the time available for studying and attending classes.

There is little reward for attending but not finishing college. Students who wind up leaving school because of difficulty in managing work and class are likely to find themselves stuck in some of the same jobs they might have gotten if they hadn't gone at all. The difficulty of working too much while in school can create a cycle that pushes students further into debt without receiving any of the financial or career benefits.

    When I was 12, all I wanted was a signet (图章) ring. They were the "in" thing and it seemed every girl except me had one. On my 13th birthday, my Mum gave me a signet ring with my initials(姓名首字母) carved into it. I was in heaven.

    What made it even more special was that it was about the only thing that wasn't being "replaced". We'd been burnt out in fires that swept through our area earlier that year and had lost everything—so most of the " new" stuff (东西) we got was really just to replace what we'd lost. But not my ring. My ring was new.

    Then, only one month later, I lost it. I took it off before bed and it was missing in the morning. I was sad and searched everywhere for it. But it seemed to have disappeared. Eventually, I gave up and stopped looking for it. And two years later, we sold the house and moved away.

    Years passed, and a couple of moves later, I was visiting my parents' when Mum told me that she had something for me. It wasn't my birthday, nor was it Easter or Christmas or any other gift-giving occasion. Mum noticed my questioning look. " You'll recognize this one," she said, smiling.

    Then she handed me a small ring box. I took it from her and opened it to find my beautiful signet ring inside. The family who had bought our house 13 years earlier had recently decided to do some redecorations, which included replacing the carpets. When they pulled the carpet up in my old bedroom, they found the ring. As it had my initials carved into it, they realized who owned the ring. They'd had it professionally cleaned up by a jeweler before sending it to my mother. And it still fits me.

    Growing up in the mountainous Sierra de Penamayor, in Asturias, northern Spain, Aladino Montes had been shooting deer ever since he was a child, but his life as a hunter came to an abrupt end 10 years ago, when he met Bambi, an adorable deer that has remained by his side ever since. Aladino has never shot an animal since.

    53-year-old Aladino recalls driving through the mountains in his little jeep, ten years ago, when he saw a couple of cows being followed by a skinny little deer. Deer don't usually hang out with cows, so he approached the animals for a closer look. That's when he noticed that the deer had several wounds and would have probably died without proper medical care. He put the injured animal in his car and drove back to his house where he nursed it back to health. But instead of running back towards the forests, the deer stayed by Aladino's side. They've been best friends ever since.

    He always loved animals, but his father had taught him to hunt deer as a child. He did it for food, not sport, but ever since he adopted Bambi, he hasn't shot a single animal.

    Aladino's cabin sits at 1,140 meters above sea level, offering tourists a beautiful view of the surrounding mountainside. On clear days, one can see all of central Asturias all the way to Gijon, but most people don't travel to Les Praeres for the view, they come to see Bambi, the friendly deer.

    Sometimes, Bambi will walk straight into the bar in search of Aladino and leave everyone with their mouth open, or even let people pet her. But she's always most comfortable at the side of her rescuer. She's so relaxed around him that she makes other deer feel safe as well.

OSCAR THEATRE

    BOOKING­ in person. The Box Office is open Monday to Saturday, 10 am­8 pm.­ by post Stating the performance and choice of seats, enclosing a cheque, postal order, or your credit card details to Oscar Theatre Box Office, PO Box 220, Main street. All cheques should be made payable to Oscar Theatre. ­ by telephone

Ring 0844 847 2484 to reserve your tickets or to pay by credit card (Visa, MasterCard accepted). ­ on­line

    Complete the on­line booking form at www.oscartheatre.com.

    DISCOUNTS

    Saver: $2 off any seat booked any time in advance for performances from Monday to Thursday inclusive, and for all matinees(下午场). Savers are available for children up to 16 years old, over 60s and full­time students.

    Supersaver: half­price seats are available for people with disabilities and one companion. It is advisable to book in advance. There is a maximum of eight wheelchair spaces available and one wheelchair space will be held until one hour before the show (subject to availability).

    Standby: best available seats are on sale for $6 from one hour before the performance for people eligible(有资格的) for Saver and Supersaver discounts and thirty minutes before for all other customers.

    Group Bookings: there is a ten per cent discount for parties of twelve or more.

    Schools: school parties of ten or more can book $9 tickets in advance and will get every tenth ticket free.

    Please note: we are unable to exchange tickets or refund money unless a performance is cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.

You've probably heard it a dozen times by now. But here it goes again: Sleep is important. Your mental health and immune (免疫时)system are connected to your sleeping habits. So are your grades, a new study finds. Sleep accounts for nearly one-fourth of the difference among students' grades in a class. So even if you spend hours studying for a test but get too little sleep, you might still do poorly.

Typically, people's sleep schedules are messy and can not be known in advance. Professor Jeffrey Grossman of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge wanted to see if sleep links to people's learning performance even when a study was done with people who kept such true-to-life schedules at home. So he turned to Fitbits, which can check how long people sleep and how frequently they wake up. And the researchers looked for 100 students. They focused on these students' sleep patterns in the days and weeks before exams and then compared them to these students' test scores.

"How much time a person sleeps the night. before an exam doesn't affect that person's grade," Grossman says. "A student who sleeps 7 hours every night will do better than a student who sleeps 7.5 hours one night and 6.5 hours another night."

"It's important for people to know that if their Fitbits tell them that they have terrible sleep, that may not actually be so," Michael Scullin, a sleep scientist at Baylor University says. Grossman also raises this point. Fitbit, Inc. makes this advanced tool. But it doesn't share how its tool works. This leaves a question about whether the tool is really correct when checking a student's sleep. Even so, Scullin emphasizes that there are enough data supporting ties between sleep and how well someone performs.

"Students need more sleep and less late evening use of phones and other screens. Even with after-school activities and schoolwork, they need to get enough sleep," Grossman says.