Adding math talk to story time at home is a winning factor forchildren's math achievement, according to a new research from the University ofChicago. The study from psychologists Sian Beilock and Susan Levine shows amarked increase in math achievement among children whose families used Bedtime Math, an iPad app that delivers engaging math story problems for parents and children to solve together.

    Even children who used the app with their parents as little as once a week saw gains in math achievement by the end of the school year. The app's effect was especially strong for children whose parents tend to beanxious or uncomfortable with math.

    Previous research from this group has demonstrated the importance of adults' attitudes about math for children's math success. For example, a recent study found that math-anxious parents who help their children with math homework actually weaken their children's math achievement.

    The new findings demonstrate that structured, positive interactions around math at home can cut the link between parents' uneasiness about math and children's low math achievement.

  “Many Americans experience high levels of anxiety when they haveto solve a math problem, with a majority of adults feeling at least some worries about math,” said Beilock, professor in Psychology andauthor of Choke, a book about stress and performance. “These math-anxiousparents are probably less likely to talk about math at home, which affects how competent their children are in math. Bedtime Math encourages a dialogue between parents and kids about math, and offers a way to engage in high-quality math interactions in a low-effort, high-impact way.”

    Study participants included 587 first-grade students and their parents. Families were given an iPad installed with a version of the Bedtime Math app, with which parents and their children read stories and answer questions involving math, including topics like counting, shapes and problem-solving. A control group received a reading app that had similar stories without the math content and questions related to reading comprehension instead. Children's math achievement was assessed at the beginning and end of the school year. Parents completed a questionnaire about their nervousness with math.

    The more times parents and children in the math group used the app, the higher children's achievement on a math assessment at the end of the school year. Indeed, children who frequently used the math app with their parents outperformed similar studentsin the reading group by almost three months in math achievement at year's end.

    Online shopping has become more and more popular these years. Women have jumped ahead of men for the first time in using the Internet to do their holiday shopping, according to a study published last week in the US.

    For years men have been more likely to shop on the Internet than women, but during the 2013 holiday season 58 percent of those shopping online were women.

    “It shows how popular the Internet is becoming,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project group, which carried out the study. Rainie said it was only a matter of time before women shoppers caught up with men. This is because women traditionally make decisions about spending.

    Users were more likely to shop online to save time. Internet users between the ages 18 and 29 were responsible for some of the surprising increase in the online gift-buying population this time around.

    However, three-quarters of the US Internet users did not buy holiday gifts online in 2013. They worried about credit card security(信用卡安全), or just compared online prices with off-line prices, then dashed off to the shops to get the best deals.

    “But even if shoppers don't buy online, websites are becoming promotion(促销) tools for stores,” said Dan Hess' vice president of Com Score Network Inc. Hess said that actually most stores, websites can make customers fully believe the security of their credit card numbers. And most are able to ensure that gifts arrive on time.

    “It's all about making the shopping experience more efficient(效率高的), more reliable and more comfortable.” Hess said.

    One of the best-loved American writers was William Sydney Porter, or O. Henry. From 1893 he lived with his family in a house in Austin, Texas, which is now a museum. Visitors to Austin can see the house. It was saved from destruction (破坏) and turned into a museum in1934. The museum is a good way to learn about the interesting life of the American writer.

    William Porter rented this house in Austin and lived there with his wife Athol and daughter Margaret for about two years. Many objects in the museum came from the Porters. Others did not. An important piece in the room is the original photo over here. It was taken there in the house about 1895. The piano there goes back to the 1860s. His wife took lessons on it when she first moved to Austin.

Porter wasn't a successful writer in the beginning. He worked at a farm, land office and bank. He also loved words and writing. The museum has a special proof (证明) of Porter's love of language — his dictionary. It is said that he had read every word in that dictionary.

    Later William Porter was forced to leave Austin because he was charged (指控) with wrongdoing at the bank and lost his job. Because he was afraid of a trial (审判), he left the country secretly. But he returned because his wife was dying. After her death, he faced the trial and served three and a half years in a prison in Ohio.

    William Porter would keep his time in prison a secret. But there was one good thing about it. It provided him with time to write. By the time he was freed, he had published 14 stories and became well known as O. Henry. Porter later moved to New York City and found great success there. He published over 180 stories in the last eight years of his life.

    Most painters discover a style of painting that is fit for them and stick to that, especially if people admire their pictures. But Picasso, the great Spanish painter, was like a man who had not yet found his own particular style of painting. He kept on struggling to find the perfect expression till his death in 1973.

    Some of Picasso's paintings are rich, soft colored and beautiful. Others are ugly and cruel and strange. But such paintings allow us to imagine things for ourselves. They force us to say to ourselves, “What does he see that makes him paint like that?” And we begin to look under the surface of the things we see.

    Picasso painted thousands of pictures in different styles. Sometimes he painted the natural look of things. Sometimes he seemed to break them apart and throw the pieces in our faces. He showed us what the mind knows as well as what the eyes see. At the age of 90,he remained as curious about the world as he had been when he was young. That is why people have called him “the youngest painter in the world.”

    There is more of a connection between food and culture than you may think. On an individual level, we grow up eating the food of our culture. It becomes a part of who we are. Many associate food from our childhood with warm feelings and good memories and it ties us to our families, holding a special and personal value for us. Food from our family often becomes the comfort food we seek as adults in times of frustration and stress.

    On a large scale, traditional food is an important part of culture. It also operates as an expression of culture identity. Immigrants bring it wherever they go, and it is a symbol of pride for their culture and means of coping with homesickness.

    Many immigrants open their own restaurants and serve traditional dishes. However, the food does not remain exactly the same. Some materials needed to make traditional dishes may not be readily available, so the taste and flavor can be different from what they would prepare in their home countries. Additionally, immigrants do not only sell dishes to people from the same countries as them, but to people from different countries. Therefore, they have to make small changes about the original dishes to cater to a wider range of customers. Those changes can create new flavors that still keep the cultural significance of the dishes.

    We should embrace our heritage（传统）through our culture's food but also become more informed about other cultures by trying their food. It is important to remember that each dish has a special place in the culture to which it belongs, and is special to those who prepare it. Food is a window into culture, and it should be treated as such.

    For 63 percent of Americans, coffee is one of their daily essentials. This number has been this high since 2017, according to the National Coffee Association. The rise of coffee is due to its numerous benefits like preventing DNA damage, but it works best if you do this simple thing first: Eat.

    "Drinking coffee on an empty stomach, or early in the morning before you've had breakfast, can raise the level of cortisol (皮质醇) in your body. From the moment you open your eyes in the morning, your body starts releasing cortisol. It's a hormone (激素) that's responsible for ruling your immune response, metabolism (新陈代谢), and stress response," says Dr. Nikola Djordjevic, MD.

    "If you pump your body with caffeine(咖啡因) when your cortisol is at its peak," Djordjevic says, "you'll be forcing your body to bear even more stress." In a study that evaluated preference for caffeinated drinks among medical students, it's shown that 25 percent of students drank coffee in the morning on an empty stomach.

    These students are at an increased risk of mood changes and possible long-term effects on their health, as explained in the study. "Drinking coffee on an empty stomach can greatly encourage the acid in your stomach, producing a more acidic environment," says Dr. Jamie Long, a licensed clinical psychologist. Thus, a full stomach is important to control the amount of stomach acid produced.

    Since coffee increases your stomach acid, you're highly likely to experience heartburn and even develop gastric ulcers (胃溃疡), Djordjevic says. Clearly, drinking coffee on an empty stomach affects physical health. But it does harm to mental health, too. The overproduction of acid in the stomach can cause mood swings, nervousness, shaking and other withdrawal symptoms (症状). "And if you've already had the sign of experiencing anxiety, you're even more possible to be attacked by the effects of coffee," says Long.

    Base line: Know your limits so you can fully experience what coffee can offer, because here's exactly what happens to your body when you drink coffee daily.