More than a decade ago, cognitive scientists John Bransfgord and Daniel Schwartz, both then at Vanderbilt University, found that knowledge was not the ability to retain facts or apply previous knowledge to a new situation but a quality they called "preparation for future learning." The researches asked fifth graders and college students to create a recovery plan to protect bald eagles from extinction. Shockingly, the two groups came up with plans of similar quality (though the college students had better spelling skills). From the standpoint of a traditional educator, this outcome indicated that schooling had failed to help students think about ecosystems and extinction, major scientific ideas.

    The researches decided to go deeper, however. They asked both groups to generate questions about important issues needed to create recovery plans. On this task, they found large differences. College students focused on critical issues. The college students had cultivated the ability to ask questions, the foundation of critical thinking. They had learned how to learn.

    Museums and other institutions of informal learning may be more suitable to teach this skill than elementary and secondly schools. At the Exploratorium in San Francisco, we recently studied how learning to ask good questions can affect the quality of people's scientific inquiry. We found that when we taught participants to ask "What if?" and "How can?" questions that nobody present would know the answer to and that would spark exploration, they engaged in better inquiry at the next exhibit—asking more questions, performing more experiments and making better interpretations of their results. Specially, their questions became more comprehensive at the new exhibit.

    This type of learning is not limited to museums of institutional settings. Informal learning environment tolerate failure better than schools. Perhaps many teachers have too little time to allow students to form and pursue their own questions and too much ground to cover in the curriculum. But people must acquire this skill somewhere. Our society depend on them being able to make critical decisions about their own medical treatment, says, or what we must do about global energy needs and demands. For that, we have a robust informal system that gives no grades, takes all comers, and is available even on holidays and weekends.

    Arriving in Sydney on his own from India, my husband, Rashid, stayed in a hotel for a short time while looking for a house for me and our children.

    During the first week of his stay, he went out one day to do some shopping. He came back in the late afternoon to discover that his suitcase was gone. He was extremely worried as the suitcase had all his important papers, including his passport（护照）.

    He reported the case to the police and then sat there, lost and lonely in strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a distant country while trying to settle down in a new one.

    Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a stranger. He was trying to pronounce my husband's name and was asking him a lot of questions. Then he said they had found a pile of papers in their trash can（垃圾桶） that had been left out on the footpath.

    My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents（文件）. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly foreign addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend.

    That family not only restored the important documents to us that day but also restored our faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.

    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."

    In the latest romance-drama, Descendants of the Sun (《太阳的后裔》), a handsome soldier Yoo Shi-jin(柳时镇) (Song Joong-ki)(宋仲基) meets the pretty doctor Kang Mo-yeon(姜暮烟) (Song Hye-kyo)(宋慧乔) in a hospital, and he doesn't hesitate to hit on her.

    The dialogue, which takes place early in the first episode(集), immediately indicates that this is no ordinary South Korean drama. There's no family feud (不睦), or love tangles, or guesses and misunderstandings. The 16-episode show is set in the fictional war-torn country of Uruk(乌鲁克). Song Joong-ki is the leader of a special warfare command unit, while Song Hye-kyo plays a doctor who works for a humanitarian medical organization. Both are sent in the midst of disaster and disease as part of their work with UN peacekeeping troops. Both know and show clearly what they want and what they hate.

    But what stands out the most are Song's skills as a pick-up artist(撩妹技能).

    Boldness and creativity are the key weapons in his arsenal. When Kang invites Yoo to drink wine with her, Yoo, who is not allowed to drink alcohol as a soldier, says, ＂There is a way.＂ before kissing her. Forget about the ＂eighth-episode rule＂ . This kiss happens in the fourth.

    Humor also does the trick. On their first date in a cinema, Yoo says, ＂This is the most exciting moment of my life. The moment I am with a beautiful woman before the theater lights go out.＂ When Kang tries to give Yoo a hard time, Yoo jokes, ＂I mistook you for a beautiful woman because it's dark.＂

    And actor Song Joong-ki, who just came back from two years of military service last May, makes sure he delivers his pick-up lines just right.

    ＂In Deep Rooted Tree (《树大根深》) and The Innocent Man (《善良的男人》), he [Song Joong-ki] showed he had the steel to play fearless and heartless men — that he could be taken seriously as an actor, despite his pretty face. In Descendants, he hits the emotional core of every scene, whether he has to be bold and amorous, guarded and mysterious, or sad,＂said critic Foong Woei Wan in The Straits Times.

    With beautiful canals, top art museums, and cycling culture I Amsterdam is one of the most popular travel destinations in the world. As the capital and most populous city in the Netherlands, it's often referred to as the “Venice of the North” because of its wide system of bridges and canals. Here are some key points for you to keep in mind while planning a trip there.

    Must-See Attractions

    Most visitors begin their Amsterdam adventure in the Old Centre, which is full of traditional architecture, shopping centers, and coffee shops. The top museums to visit are the Rijks museum, the Ann Frank House, and the Van Gogh Museum. As a World Heritage Site, the Canal Ring was originally built to attract wealthy home owners and an area for celebrity spotting and nightlife today.

    Transportation

    Travelers should be aware that Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is one of the busiest airports in the world. This airport is located about 15 kilometers southwest of the city center. You can catch a train from Schiphol to Amsterdam Central Station, which has many connecting routes. It's not a good idea to drive a car to the city center. Cycling is popular here, and it's easy to rent a cheap bike around the town. Amsterdam has a flat terrain (地形) and it's a good choice to explore the city on foot.

    Money-saving Tips

    Look for accommodations in Amsterdam's South District where rates are generally cheaper than in the city center.

    Buy train tickets at the machine instead of the counter to save a bit of money.

    Instead of hiring a tour guide, jump onto a canal boat. They're inexpensive and will give you a unique point of view of the city.

    An international team of researchers from the University of Oxford have found that the way people use the Internet is closely tied to the seasonal movements in the natural world. Their online species searches follow the patterns of seasonal animal migrations (迁徙).

    Migratory birds (候鸟) flood back to where they reproduce every spring. That migratory behavior is accompanied by some human behavior. "In English-language Wikipedia (维基百科), the online searches for migratory species tend to increase in spring when those birds arrive in the United States," said the lead author John Mittermeier.

    And not just birds. Mittermeier and his team surveyed nearly 2.5 billion Wikipedia search records, for 32,000 species, across 245 languages. They also saw variable search rates for insects, horsetails and flowering plants. Seasonal trends seemed to be widespread in Wikipedia behavior for many species of plants and animals.

    This finding suggests new ways to monitor changes in the world's biological diversity. It also shows new ways to see how much people care about nature, and which species and areas might be the most effective targets for conservation.

    Mittermeier is encouraged by the search results. He commented, "I think there's a concern among conservationists (生态环境保护者) that people are losing touch with the natural world and that they're not interacting with native species anymore. And so in that sense, it was really exciting and quite unexpected for me to see people's Wikipedia interest closely related to changes in nature."

    Richard Grenyer, Associate Professor from the University of Oxford, says search data is useful to conservation biologists, "By using these big data approaches, we can direct our attention towards the difficult questions in modern conservation: which species and areas are changing, and where are the people who care the most and can do the most to help."