Tom was one of the brightest boys in the year,with supportive parents.But when he was 15 he suddenly stopped trying.He left school at 16 with only two scores for secondary school subjects.One of the reasons that made it cool for him not to care was the power of his peer（同龄人）group.

    The lack of right male role models in many of their lives—at home and particularly in the school environment—means that their peers are the only people they have to judge themselves against.

    They don't see men succeeding in society so it doesn't occur to them that they could make something of themselves.Without male teachers as a role model,the effect of peer actions and street culture is all-powerful.Boys want to be part of a club.However,schools can provide the environment for change,and provide the right role models for them.Teachers need to be trained to stop that but not in front of a child's peers.You have to do it one to one, because that is when you see the real child.

    It's pointless sending a child home if he or she has done wrong.They see it as a welcome day off to watch television or play computer games.Instead,schools should have a special unit where a child who has done wrong goes for the day and gets advice about his problems—somewhere he can work away from his peers and go home after the other children.

    You may think that sailing is a difficult sport, but it is really not hard to learn. You do not need to be strong. But you need to be quick. And you need to understand a few basic rules about the wind.

    First, you must ask yourself, “Where is the wind coming from? Is it coming from ahead or behind or from the side?” You must think about this all the time on the boat. The wind direction tells you what to do with the sail.

    Let's start with the wind blowing from the behind. This means the wind and the boat are going in the same direction. Then you must always keep the sail outside the boat. It should be at a 90° angle to the boat. Then it will catch the wind best.

    If the wind is blowing from the side, it is blowing across the boat. In this case, you must keep the sail half way outside the boat. It should be at a 45°angle to the boat. It needs to be out far enough to catch the wind, but it shouldn't flap(摆动). It shouldn't look like on a flagpole. If it is flapping, it is probably out too far, and the boat will slow down.

    Sailing into the wind is not possible. If you try, the sail will flap and the boat will stop. You may want to go in that direction. It is possible, but you can't go in a straight line. You must go first in one direction and then in another. This is called tacking. When you're tacking, you must always keep the sail inside the boat.

    Teachers in some secondary schools in Britain are worried that their job may become impossible shortly unless something can be done to restore discipline in the classrooms. In the problem schools, mostly in large cities, a small minority of teenage pupils disturb lesson to such an extent that the teacher can no longer teach their classes effectively.

    Some people consider that the permissive (随意) nature of modern society is responsible for such kind of behavior. Small children who are continuously encouraged to express themselves without reservation are naturally unwilling to accept school discipline when they grow older. Furthermore, modern teaching techniques) which appear to stress personal enjoyment at the expense of serious study work, might be teaching the child to put his own interests before his duties to the community in which he lives.

    Perhaps the problem can be solved by improving facilities for the moral guidance of these difficult children or by better cooperation between the schools and the parents—for the parents may be mainly responsible for the bad behavior of their youngsters. Violence at home, violence and crime on TV make some children turn violence themselves.

    But some of the teachers believe that there ought to be a return to more “old fashioned” methods. At present, in some school teachers are even not allowed to punish a child who does something bad and wrong. Physical punishment is not permitted now. People are too soft on children these days. It seems that children can do whatever they like at school while the teachers can't do anything to punish them. I don't know why the schools authority abandoned some of the effective punishments that worked well. Things like that didn't happen when we were at school because the teachers kept those problem students under control by using a stick.

    Dyeing eggs has long been an Easter tradition, but it's the dyeing of baby chicks that is upsetting in some states.

    The dye, which is often ordinary food coloring, is either injected into eggs being hatched or sprayed onto newly hatched chicks. Although hatchery owners say the practice is harmless, critics argue that spraying the birds with color is stressful and that dyeing the animals transforms them into something attractive that can be thrown away when their colorful feathers disappear.

    “These are living creature and dyeing them sends out a message saying that they are more of a new and unusual object than a living animal,” said Dr. Marc Copper, senior scientific manager for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Dyed chicks — and sometimes rabbits — have been a traditional part of the Easter holiday in some parts of the world, but the practice has gone largely underground in the U.S. because many people view it as cruel.

    Today, about half of U.S. states ban the dyeing of animals, but last month the Florida Legislature passed a bill to remove the state's 45-year-old ban. The drive to end the law wasn't related to Easter chicks; it was done at the request of a dog groomer(美容师) who wanted to enter pet beauty contests.

    Florida governor Rick Scott must agree to remove the ban, which would be lifted July 1, but the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida(ARFF) has asked him not to remove the ban. In addition to allowing animals dyeing, the law would also lift a ban on selling baby animals as pets, and the organization fears that next year the state could see hundreds of dyed baby chicks on the market.

As long as the dye is not poisonous, experts say the birds' health isn't affected, and there are scientific reasons to dye animals. Wildlife researchers often inject eggs with dye to track birds in the wild, and teachers have dyed chicks for educational purposes. However, animal advocates are quick to point out that dyeing baby chicks for Easter isn't educational — it's done simply to earn profits.

Deep below the ground, radioactive elements break up water molecules(分子), producing substances that can fuel subsurface life. This process, known as radiolysis(辐射分解),has supported bacteria in tiny cracks filled with water on Earth for millions to billions of years. Now a study published in Astrobiology shows that radiolysis may have supported life in the Martian subsurface. 

Dust storms, rays in the universe and solar winds ruin the Red Planet's surface. But below, some life might find shelter. "The best survival habitat on Mars is the subsurface," said Jesse Tarnas, a planetary scientist at NASA, Examining the Martian underground could help scientists learn whether life existed there. And the best subsurface samples available today are Martian meteorites(陨石) that have crash-landed on Earth.

Tarnas and his colleague looked at the minerals on the Martian surface and how many radioactive elements there were, using satellite and rover data, They used computers to simulate(模拟) radiolysis to see how efficiently the process would have generated life-supporting hydrogen gas and other chemical substances. They reported that if water was present, radiolysis could have supported life for billions of years and perhaps still could today. 

Scientists had previously studied Mars radiolysis, but this marked the first estimate using Martian rocks to see how habitable Mars underground might be. Tarnas and his colleagues also evaluated the potential richness of life in Martian underground.They found that up to a million bacteria could exist.in just one kilogram of rock, The most habitable seemed to be the southern highlands of Mars, which is the most ancient area on Mars, according to Tarnas.

"Underground life would require water and it remains unknown if groundwater exists on the planet," says Lujendra Ojha, a planetary scientist at Rutgers University. Determining whether the Martian, subsurface contains water. will be an important next step, but this investigation helps to motivate that search, Ojha says, "Where there is groundwater, there could be life."

Bruce, a parrot missing part of his beak （喙）,  creatively uses stones to clean feathers （羽毛）,  highlighting advanced intelligence in parrots. 

Bruce lost the upper part of his beak in 2012 and was sent to live at a reserve in New Zealand. The defect made Bruce unable to search for food on his own, let alone keep his feathers clean with his beak. But in 2021, when comparative psychologist Bastos arrived at the reserve with colleagues to study parrots, zookeepers reported something strange：Bruce had seemingly figured out how to select and use small stones to clean his own feathers with his beak. 

Over nine days, the team kept a close eye on Bruce, quickly taking, videos if he started cleaning his feathers. It turned out that Bruce had indeed invented his own way to do so, the researchers reported in Scientific Reports. 

"It's crazy because the behavior was not from the wild, " Bastos says. When Bruce arrived at the reserve, he was too young to learn how to clean his feathers. And no other bird in the reserve uses stones in this way. "It seems like he just invented this tool use for himself, " she says. 

Tool use is just one of parrots' many talents. They're famous for copying and even understanding human speech. Some species can also solve complex puzzles, like how to enter a covered rubbish bin or practice self-control. 

For a concept as abstract （抽象的） as intelligence, it's challenging to develop a definition that applies across animals. Researchers often point to features once thought to make humans special—enhanced learning, memory, attention and movement control—as signs of advanced skills. However, many of these abilities can also be seen in parrots, as well as other animals like chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants. 

"Parrots are our evolutionary （进化的） mirror image. These brilliant birds may teach us about how humanlike intelligence can appear, " behavioral ecologist Antone wrote in his 2022 book The Parrot in the Mirror. With powerful brains and a preference for words, these birds are "the very best example, " he writes,  "of nature's 'other try' at humanlike intelligence. "