Do you want to get home from work knowing you have made a real difference in someone's life?

    If yes, don't care about sex or age! Come and join us, then you'll make it!

Position: Volunteer Social Care Assistant

(No Pay with Free Meals)

Place: Manchester

Hours: Part Time

    We are now looking for volunteers to support people with learning disabilities to live active lives! Only 4 days left. Don't miss the chance of lending your warm hands to help others!

Role:

    You will provide people with learning disabilities with all aspects of their daily lives. You will help them to develop new skills. You will help them to protect their rights and their safety. But your primary concern is to let them know they are valued.

Skills and Experience Required:

    You will have the right values and great listening skills. You will be honest and patient. You will have the ability to drive a car and to communicate in fluent written and spoken English since you'll have to help those people with different learning disabilities. Previous care-related experience will be a great advantage for you.

    Have you ever thought of quitting your job when you feel exhausted? Maybe most of you would say "yes". After a particularly busy period at work, I decided to get away from it all by going on a hike in the mountains in southern France.

    Before I left, I read an interesting story in a magazine. It read, "Once, while I was riding on a crowded bus, the man sitting next to me threw his cell phone out of the window when his phone rang. I was surprised. He looked at me, shrugged (耸耸肩) and looked away. I had no idea whether it was his or stolen or whether he even knew what a cell phone was or not, but he clearly wanted to be free of it, because it clearly troubled him."

    Billions of people across the world use cell phones. Though cell phones are a wonderful way for communication, they often do the exact opposite. Using cell phones can increase stress within families and friends.

    So when I recently returned home, I got rid of my cell phone. Now I go outside without taking my phone with me. I've noticed things in my neighborhood I never noticed before, such as gardens. I've met new people, started conversations with neighbors I didn't speak to before and talked with some of my friends face to face instead of chatting over the phone.

    Instead of keeping me off from the world, stopping using my cell phone has helped me get even closer to my family and friends.

    You're out to dinner. The food is delicious and the service is fine. You decide to leave a big fat tip. Why? The answer may not be as simple as you think.

    Tipping, psychologists have found, is not just about service. Instead, studies have shown that tipping can be affected by psychological reactions to a series of different factors from the waiter's choice of words, to how they carry themselves while taking orders, to the billl's total.

Even how much waiters remind customers of themselves can determine how much change they pocket by the end of the night.

    "Studies before have shown that mimicry (模仿)brings into positive feelings for the mimicker, "wrote Rick van Baaren, a social psychology professor. "These studies show that people who are being mimicked become more generous toward the person who mimicks.

    So Rick van Baaren divided 59 waiters into two groups. He requested that half serve with a phrase such as, "Coming up!" Those in the other half were instructed to repeat the orders and preferences back to the customers. Rick van Baaren then compared their takehome pay. The results were clear-it pays to mimic your customer. The copycat (模仿者)waiters earned almost double the amount of tips to the other group.

    Leonard Green and Joel Myerson, psychologists at Washington University in St Louis, found the generosity of a tipper may be limited by his bill. After research on the 1,000 tips left for waiters, cabdrivers, hair stylists, they found tip percentages in these three areas dropped as customers' bills went up. In fact, tip percentages appear to plateau (稳定期)when bills topped $100 and a bill for $200 made the worker gain no bigger percentage tip than a bill for $100.

    "That's also a point of tipping," Green says. "You have to give a little extra to the cabdriver for being there to pick you up and something to the waiter for being there to serve you. If they weren't there, you'd never get any service. So part of the idea of a tip is for just being there."

    Raccoons are smaller relatives of bears. They are native to North America, but they can also be found in Asia and Europe. Raccoons live in wooded areas close to water, but they can be often found near urban areas. There are about 7 different species of raccoons. Pygmy raccoon is the only endangered species.

    Raccoons usually reach 40 to 70cm in length and weigh between 5­26kg. Raccoons that live in colder climates are larger and heavier. They have grayish fur, black masks around eyes and long tails covered with black and brown bands. Because of their tails, they are also called "ringtail".

    Raccoons are omnivores. They like to eat insects, eggs, small mammals, fruit, berries, garbage, and so on. Raccoon's hands look like human's. They each have five fingers and are used to collect food, open shells, door or trash cans. Raccoons often place food in water before they start to eat it. They have highly sensitive sense of touch and water increases their sensitivity even more. By touching the food, they get better insight about things they will eat.

    They are easily adaptable (适应的) to various environments. They can live in hollow (中空的) trees equally happily like they can in useless cars. Raccoons live on their own and hunt at night. They don't hibernate (冬眠), but they spend the coldest days of winters in their holes.

    Mating (交配) season takes place from January to mid March. Two months later, female will give birth to 3­4 babies. Their tails don't have bands, and the mask around eyes is still missing. Mother is very protective and she will teach them how to survive and what to eat as they become­ready to leave the hole. Raccoons usually can live only 1.8 to 3.1 years in the wild, but they can live up to 20 years at a zoo.

    Raccoons can pass rabies, a kind of disease, to home­raised animals and people, which is very dangerous. What's more, their waste often has roundworms.

    We are deep into January, and winter is in full swing. The days are short, grey, and cold, and many of us are fighting the annoying u Winter Blues". Yes, lack of sunlight can cause a type of depression called seasonal affective disorder (or SAD). Sunlight causes an increase in serotonin­a "happy hormone" ­in your body, and with a long winter ahead of us we must look for other choices to improve our moods.

    One of the best ways to fight off SAD is with light treatment. This treatment is safe, accessible, and easy and there is a wide range of different light lamps available on the market. After about 3 weeks of using the lamp for about 30 minutes a day, users report that their symptoms greatly improve. Most of these lamps are small and simple, and can easily slip into your home's decoration­just switch it on and carry on with your normal day.

    When buying your light treatment device(设备), keep a few things in mind. Make sure that the light you are buying gives off at least 10, 000 lux of light. Less than that and the light might not be effective. There are many reviews online, and it will be easy to find the best lamp for you.

    Try to find one whose bulb is easy to find and replace. You don't want to be stuck trying to figure out how to put the lamp back together.

    Finally, do your full research. There are so many different types and styles of lamp. Do you miss exercising outside? There is even one that you can put to your treadmill（跑步机）in order to copy running outdoors.

    There are larger lamps which are considered to be the most effective. There are small, nice lamps that don't take up too much space. There are modern designs such as vintage­style light­bulbs. There are even happy lamp alarm clocks, which are like sunrise, giving their users a gentle, natural wake­up.

    So, no need to go on a trip to Jamaica to get some sun and shake out the winter blues­instead, invest in a happy light which will keep your home sunny and happy all winter long!

    Feel nervous on the first day of school? You are not alone! Here is some advice on how to make you feel comfortable.

    Get ready the night before. Plan out what you're going to wear and what you will need for class. Then get a nice, long sleep. There's nothing worse than looking terrible on the first day of school. If you don't want to oversleep, set an alarm on your phone, or alarm clock to wake you up on time.

    Eat a good breakfast. You'd be surprised at how much happier and more focused you'll be after eating a good breakfast. Have a healthy breakfast. A rich breakfast may make you feel lazy and sugar rich foods may affect your ability to stay focused.

    Decide whether to take the bus, walk, or have a ride from your parents. It's your call. If you want something familiar, take a bus ride and sit next to someone you already know. However, if you are really nervous, you can ask your mom or dad to drive you to school, but expect that there will be heavy traffic.

    Smile and be friendly! You want to seem easy to get along with and that you had the best summer. Smile and be friendly. Instead of coming up as a boring person, compliment people. Everyone needs a little confidence and is happy when praised on the first day of school.