Parents who help their children with homework may actually be bringing down their school grades. Other forms of prenatal involvement, including volunteering at school and observing a child's class, also fail to help, according to the most recent study on the topic.
The findings challenge a key principle of modern parenting(养育子女) where schools except them to act as partners in their children's education. Previous generations concentrated on getting children to 
school on time, fed, dressed and ready to learn.
       Kaith Robinson, the author of the study, said, "I really don't know if the public is ready for this but there are some ways parents can be 
involved in their kids' education that leads to declines in their academic performance. One of the things that was consistently negative was
 parents' help with homework." Robinson suggested that may be because parents themselves struggle to understand the task." They may 
either not remember the material their kids are studying now, or in some cases never learnt it themselves, but they're still offering advice."
       Robinson assessed parental involvement performance and found one of the most damaging things a parent could do was to punish their children for poor marks. In general, about 20% of parental involvement was positive, about 45% negative and the rest statistically
 insignificant.
      Common sense suggests it was a good thing for parents to get involved because "children with good academic success do have involved
 parents ", admitted Robinson. But he argued that this did not prove parental involvement was the root cause of that success." A big 
surprise was that Asian-American parents whose kids are doing so well in school hardly involved. They took a more reasonable approach, conveying to their children how success at school could improve their lives."

    Almost every night for more than 10 years, Kirk Alexander, 48, ordered a late dinner from his local restaurant Domino's Pizza. But for the past two weeks, he hasn't called for even once.

    “A few of my staff mentioned that we hadn't seen his order in a while. Then I found that it had been 12 days since he last ordered, which is not like him,” Domino's general manager Sarah Fuller said, feeling she could no longer ignore Kirk's recent absence.

    Sarah has known Kirk since 2009, when she started working at the Domino's Pizza as a deliver driver and often made the short trip to Kirk's home about six minutes away. She knew Kirk worked from home, and neighbors said he seldom left. She also knew that he had some health problems in the past. Something, Sarah worried, was wrong.

    Around 1 a.m. on May 8, Sarah sent delivery driver Sean Hamblen to visit Kirk's home. Sean arrived at Kirk's home and knocked on the front door several times. There was no answer. He later noticed that the lights and the TV in the home were on. When he called Kirk's phone, it went straight to voice mail.

    Sean drove back to the restaurant to tell Sarah and they decided to call 911. Soon, officers arrived at Kirk's home. So did Sarah and Sean. They heard a man calling for help from inside. Officers broke down the door and found Kirk on the floor in need of medical attention at once after suffering from a heart attack. One day later, they might have been too late.

    So is keeping an eye on regular customers part of Domino's business plan? Not really. “Kirk is part of our family here and we feel like we need to do something.” Sarah said.

    If English means endless new words, difficult grammar and sometimes strange pronunciation, you are wrong. Haven't you noticed that you have become smarter since you started to learn a language?

    According to a new study by a British university, learning a second language can lead to an increase in your brain power. Researchers found that learning other languages changes grey matter. This is the area of the brain which processes(处理) information. It is similar to the way that exercise builds muscles(肌肉).

    The study also found the effect is greater when the younger people learn a second language. A team led by Dr. Andrea Mechelli, from University College London, took a group of Britons who only spoke English. They were compared with a group of “early bilinguals(双语使用者) ” who had learnt a second language before the age of five, as well as a number of later learners. Scans(扫描) showed that grey matter density(密度) in the brain was greater in bilinguals who learnt a second language at an early age. But the longer a person waited before mastering a new language, the smaller the difference. “Our findings suggest that the structure of the brain is changed by the experience of learning a second language,” said the scientists.

    It means that the change itself increases the ability to learn. Professor Dylan Vaughan Jones of the University of Wales, has researched the link between bilingualism and maths skills. “Having two languages gives you two windows on the world and makes the brain more flexible(灵活的),” he said. “You are actually going beyond language and have a better understanding of different ideas.”

    The findings had the same result in a study of native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between the ages of two and thirty-four. Reading, wiring, and comprehension were all tested. The results showed that the younger they stared to learn, the better. “Studying a language means you get entrance to another world,” explained the scientists.

    Artificial intelligence (AI) technology may soon be a useful tool for doctors. It may help them better understand and treat diseases like breast cancer in ways that were never before possible.

    Rishi Rawat teaches AI at the University of Southern California's (USC) Clinical Science Center in Los Angeles. He is part of a team of scientists who are researching how AI and machine learning can more easily recognize cancerous growths in the breast. Rawat provides information about cancer cells to a computer. He says this data helps the machine learn. “…You can put the data into them and they will learn the patterns and the pattern recognition that's important to making decisions.”

    David Agus is another USC researcher. He believes that “machines are not going to take the place of doctors.” He adds, “Computers will not treat patients, but they will help make certain decisions and look for things that the human brain can't recognize these patterns by itself.”

    Once a confirmed cancerous growth is removed, doctors still have to treat the patient to reduce the risk of cancer returning. The form of treatment depends on the kind of cancer. Currently, researchers take a thin piece of tissue, put it on a small piece of glass and add color to better see the cells. This process could take days or even longer. Scientists say artificial intelligence can do something better than just count cells. Through machine learning, it can recognize complex patterns, or structures, and learn how the cells are organized. The hope is that machines will soon be able to make a quick diagnosis（诊断）of cancer that is free of human mistakes.

    “All of a sudden, we have the computing power to really do it in real time...We couldn't have done this, we didn't have the computing power to do this several years ago, but now it's all changed.” Agus adds that the process could be done “for almost no cost in the developing world.” He says that having a large amount of information about patients is important for a machine to effectively do its job in medicine.

    A doctor faces a series of critical decisions every day. The best a doctor can do is to make those decisions as informed as possible. Some of them are still hard to make. A doctor can ask people of whom he values their opinions and that's it. Imagine discussing these with an AI system that is even more rational（理性的）than anyone else.

    The University of Southern California researchers are now only studying breast cancer. But doctors predict artificial intelligence will one day make a difference in all forms of cancer.

    Scientists think that growing garden grass could be the secret to solving our energy needs, and we may soon be able to replace our gasoline with "grassoline".

    The team, including experts from Cardiff University in Wales, has shown that hydrogen can be taken from grass in useful amounts with the help of sunlight and a cheap catalyst(催化剂) —something that speeds up a chemical reaction without being used up.

    It is the first time that this has been shown and it could lead to a sustainable(可持续的) way of making hydrogen, reported Asian News International. This could be an important kind of renewable energy because it is high in energy and it does not give out harmful gases when it is burned.

    Study co-author Michael Bowker said, "This is really a green source of energy. Hydrogen is seen as an important future energy carrier as the world moves from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and our research has shown that even garden grass could be a good way of getting it."

    Cellulose(纤维素), which is a key part of plants and the biopolymer(生物聚合物) found in the largest numbers on the earth, could be a great source of hydrogen.

In its study, the team looked at the possibility of getting hydrogen from cellulose using sunlight and a simple catalyst.

    This is called photocatalysis(光催化作用) and in it, the sunlight starts the catalyst, which then makes cellulose and water into hydrogen. The researchers studied the effectiveness of three metal-based catalysts, of which nickel(镍) especially interested the researchers, as it is a much more common metal than gold and palladium(钯) and it saves more money.

    According to Bowker, producing hydrogen from cellulose using photocatalysis has not been studied in detail. The team's research shows that large amounts of hydrogen can be produced using this method with the help of a bit of sunlight and a cheap catalyst.

    The study shows that it is effective to use real grass taken from a garden. "This is important as it avoids the need to separate and clean up cellulose, which can be both difficult and costly," said Bowker.

    Almost every night for more than 10 years, Kirk Alexander, 48, ordered a late dinner from his local restaurant Domino's Pizza. But for the past two weeks, he hasn't called for even once.

    "A few of my staff mentioned that we hadn't seen his order in a while. Then I found that it had been 12 days since he last ordered, which is not like him," Domino's general manager Sarah Fuller said, feeling she could no longer ignore Kirk's recent absence.

    Sarah has known Kirk since 2009 when she started working at the Domino's Pizza as a delivery driver (送餐员) and often made the short trip to Kirk's home about six minutes away. She knew Kirk worked from home, and neighbors said he seldom left. She also knew that he suffered some health problems in the past. Something, Sarah worried, was wrong.

    Around 1 a. m. on May 8, Sarah sent delivery driver Sean Hamblen to visit Kirk's home. Sean arrived at Kirk's home and knocked on the front door several times. There was no answer. He later noticed that the lights and the TV in the home were on. When he called Kirk's phone, it went straight to voice mail.

    Sean drove back to the restaurant to tell Sarah and they decided to call 911. Soon, officers arrived at Kirk's home. So did Sarah and Sean. They heard a man calling for help from inside. Officers broke down the door and found Kirk on the floor in need of medical attention at once after suffering from a heart attack (心脏病发作). One day later, they might have been too late.

    So is keeping an eye on regular customers (老顾客) part of Domino's business plan? Not really. "Kirk is part of our family here and we feel like we need to do something." Sarah said.