Boys’ schools are the perfect place to teach young men to express their emotions and involve them in activities such as art, dance and music．

Far from the traditional image of a culture of aggressive masculinity(男子气概)，the absence of girls gives boys the chance to develop without pressure to be consistent to a stereotype(传统观念)，a US study says．

Boys at single-sex schools were said to be more likely to get involved in cultural and artistic activities that helped develop their abilities to express their emotions，rather than feeling they had to obey the“boy code”of hiding their emotions to be a “real man”．

The findings of the study are against the received wisdom that boys do better when taught alongside girls．

Tony Little，headmaster of Eton，warned that boys were being ignored by the British education system because it had become too focused on girls．He criticized teachers for failing to recognize that boys are actually more emotional than girls．

The research argued that boys often perform badly in mixed schools because they become discouraged when their female peers do better earlier in speaking and reading skills．

But in single-sex schools teachers can adjust lessons to boys’ learning style，letting them move around the classroom and getting them to compete in teams to prevent boredom，wrote the study’s author, Abigail James of the University of Virginia．

Teachers could encourage boys to enjoy reading and writing with “boy-focused” approaches such as themes and characters that appeal to them．Because boys generally have sharper vision，learn best through touch, and are physically more active，they need to be given “hands-on”lessons where they are allowed to walk around．“ Boys in mixed schools view classical music as feminine(女性的)and prefer the modern type in which violence and sexism are major themes.” James wrote．

Single-sex education also made it less likely that boys would feel they had to give in to a stereotype that men should be “masterful and in charge” in relationships．“ In mixed schools boys feel pressed to act like men before they understand themselves well enough to know what that means.” the study reported.

The newspaper must provide for the reader the facts, pure, unprejudiced, objectively selected facts. But in these days of complex news it must provide more; it must supply interpretation, the meaning of the facts. This is the most important assignment facing American journalists—to make clear to the reader the problems of the day, to make international news understandable as community news, to recognize that there is no longer any such thing as“local”news, because any event in the international area has a local reaction in the financial market, political circles, in terms, indeed, of our very way of life.

There is in journalism a widespread view that when you start an interpretation, you are entering dangerous waters, the rushing tides of opinion. This is nonsense.

The opponents of interpretation insist that the writer and the editor shall limit himself to the “facts”. This insistence raises two questions. What are the facts? And: Are the bare facts enough?

As for the first question, consider how a so­called“factual”story comes about. The reporter collects, say, fifty facts; out of these fifty, his space being necessarily restricted, he selects the ten which he considers most important. This is Judgment Number One. Then he or his editor decides which of these ten facts shall hold the lead of the piece. This is Judgment Number Two. Then the night editor determines whether the article shall be presented on page one, where it has a large influence, or on page twenty­four, where it has little. Judgment Number Three.

Thus in the presentation of a so­called“factual”or“objective” story, at least three judgments are involved. And they are judgments not at all unlike those involved in interpretation, in which reporter and editor, calling upon their research resources, their general background, and their“news neutralism(中立)”，arrive at a conclusion as to the significance of the news.

The two areas of judgment, presentation of the news and its interpretation, are both objective rather than subjective processes—as objective, that is, as any human being can be. If an editor is determined to give a prejudiced view of the news, he can do it in other ways and more effectively than by interpretation. He can do it by the selection of those facts that support his particular viewpoint. Or he can do it by the place he gives a story—promoting it to page one or dragging it to page thirty.

Hunter Bliss, like more and more American students, left the United States to go to college. In the 2011-2012 school year, 46,571 U.S. students registered for degree programs in 14 countries. The top destination countries were the U.K. and Canada, followed by France, Germany, Italy and some other European countries. Germany, in particular, has attracted many more American students in recent years, like Hunter Bliss.

In 2012, there were more than 4,000 American students completing bachelorˈs, masterˈs and doctorˈs degrees in Germany. The Institute of International Education (IIE) says that the number of U.S. students completing college degrees in Western Europe increased by about 5 percent from 2010 to 2012. American students choose to study in another country for two main reasons. First, international experience is becoming more important in the modern job market. Second, the cost of higher education has continued to rise in the United States. Rising tuition (学费) costs make education abroad—particularly in countries that charge no tuition-attractive to American students, says the IIE.

Many American students choose Germany because of the low cost of education there. German public universities do not charge tuition fees. And many universities in Germany offer courses in English, too. College education in the US is seen as a privilege and expected to cost money but in Germany it is seen as an extension of a free high school education where one expects it to be provided.

The German government has been eager to encourage students to come to Germany for another reason. Like many countries in Western Europe, Germanˈs population is becoming older, and fewer young people are entering college and the job market. The German government hopes to attract skilled foreign students who will stay in Germany.

If California were not already so famous for Silicon Valley(硅谷) and Hollywood, it might be well-known for the groups of water-technology firms in its San Diego County. The reverse-osmosis (RO) spiral module, the technique that supports turning seawater and waste-water into drinkable stuff, began in San Diego in 1964. Today dozens of firms in the area supply many of the world's approximately 13,000 RO plants in places from the Persian Gulf andIsraeltoAustraliaand China.

Southern Californiaitself, however, has not so far been a big user of its own technology. This is surprising, given that the whole American south-west faces a water problem. But now as the climate gets warmer and the population increases, there is more agreement that the existing infrastructure, consisting of vast pipes that carry water from the Sacramento Delta in the north and theColorado Riverin the east, will not be enough. In places such as San Diego, which has inadequate and salty groundwater and currently imports 90% of its water, the answers must be greater conservation, reusing as much water as possible, and getting most of the rest from the sea.

The first part, conservation, has been widely accepted by the public. San Diego today uses less water with a larger population than it did in 1989, the year water consumption peaked. The second part, water recycling has been a hard sell, because of an unpleasant factor. Americans still use the term “toilet-to-tap” for recycling, even though properly treated waste-water is nowadays completely clean. Singapore made its programme acceptable in part by renaming it as NEWater.

This is where desalination comes in, which means taking the salt out of salt water. A firm called Poseidon Resources is now close to building the biggest desalination plant inAmericabehind a power station by the beach in Carlsbad. The power plant sucks in304mgallons of seawater a day for cooling, so Poseidon plans to change104mgallons a day by using the RO spiral module.

Lots of people like the idea. Once fully running in 2015, the plant could produce 10% of the region's water. And there are plans for more desalination plants. Many places would need to take much less water from the endangeredColorado River. But a few people hate it a lot. Joe Geever, an expert in biology, says desalination uses too much energy and that Poseidon plant would kill too much sea life. He understands that there is a role for desalination, he says, but would rather not have it right there, right now, and on this scale.

Scientists have exactly discovered the set of brain cells involved in making risky decisions, and have been able to control them in rats using targeted light. By changing the activity of the cells they were able to change the behaviour of risk-taking rats to avoid risk, hinting the approach could in future be used to treat people with impulse (冲动) control problems.

Risk-taking is a key part of survival, knowing when to take a chance could pay off—such as moving to a new area to look for food when pickings are slim.

While all animals need an element of risk, the preference towards it varies between individuals. Researchers found this variation, which determines how risk-averse an individual is, is regulated by brain cells in a region of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. This cluster of neurons releases the neurotransmitter dopamine, which regulates the brain’s reward and pleasure centres.

Previous studies have shown that in patients with Parkinson’s disease, taking medication which blocks specific dopamine receptors (DR2) (受体) leads to increased gambling (赌博) behaviour and risk taking behaviour. In studies with rats, researchers were able to use a technique called optogenetics (光遗传学)—which uses light sensitive proteins to change the activity of cells—to modify cells with DR 2 in the nucleus accumbens.

Rats were trained to choose one of two levers, offering them a choice between a “safe” or “risky” choice. The safe option resulted in a small, but consistent amount of a sugar water treat. But the risky choice consistently delivered smaller amounts of sugar water, with the occasional large pay off—essentially encouraging the animals to gamble for a bigger prize. Around two-thirds of the animals weren’t keen on risk, opting for the safe option, but the remaining third were risk-seekers. Brain scans of the animals showed that those with low levels of DR2 consistently went for the gamble.

But using pulses of light to stimulate (刺激) the DR2 cells and improve their activity could cause the risk-takers to play it safe and opt for the guaranteed but less rewarding option. Once the light-pulses stopped, the risk-takers returned to their gambling strategy.

In the risk-averse animals, stimulating the same cells had little to no effect.

Professor Karl Deisseroth, of Stanford University in California, said: “Humans and rats have similar brain structures involved.”And we found a drug known to increase risk preference in people had the same effect on the rats. So every indication is that these findings are relevant to humans. “Risky behavior has its moments where it’s valuable. As a species, we wouldn’t have come as far as we have without it.”

THE idea came to Ralph Liedert while he was sweating in the Californian sunshine, having been standing with his daughter for over an hour in a queue for a ride at Disneyland. What, he thought, if his T-shirt had a cooling system he could turn on, at the tap of a smart phone app, when he needed it. Luckily, Mr Liedert does have the means to make the dream reality, for he works at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, as one of a team there studying the rapidly growing field of microfluidics (微流控技术).

Cooling vests already exist (used by racing drivers, motorcyclists and people who work in hot conditions). But the tubes through which the cooling water is being pumped, and the vests’ need to be connected to outside units that cool this water, make them huge and clumsy. Mr Liedert thought VTT’s microfluidics department could do things better.

As its name suggests, microfluidics is the art of building devices that handle tiny amounts of liquid. Inkjet-printer cartridges (喷墨打印机墨盒) are a familiar example. Less familiar, but also important, are “labs-on-a-chip” (芯片实验室). These are tiny analytical devices that transport fluids such as blood through channels half a millimetre or less in diameter (直径), in order to carry them into what holds analytical reagents (试剂). Sensors, then detect the resulting reactions and provide an instant analysis of a sample (样本). Designing labs-on-a-chip is the VTT microfluidics department’s day job. One of its chips, for example, can tell whether water is affected by the bacteria that cause Legionnaires’ disease.

    The department’s biggest contribution to the field, though, is to have developed a way of printing microfluidic channels onto large rolls of thin, flexible plastic. It works by passing the plastic between two heated rollers, one of which contains raised outlines of the required channels. As the rollers squeeze the plastic they create a pattern of channels into one surface. A second plastic film is then melted over the top as a cover. This process might, thought Mr Liedert, be suitable for printing a microfluidic cloth that was thin enough and pleasant enough to wear as a cooling vest.

    The group’s first model showed that such a material could indeed be made and used to circulate cooled water. They are also looking at ways the water being circulated through the microchannels might be cooled. They have identified two. One uses a small heat-exchanger, the details of which they are keeping secret at this stage. The other employs evaporation (蒸发). It thus works in the same way that heat from circulating blood is removed by the evaporation of sweat.

Whichever cooling system is applied, the electronics needed to power and control it would be shrunk into a small package contained on the back of the vest. This could be operated by hand or, as Mr Liedert originally envisaged in his Californian queue, by a wireless link to a smart phone. Moreover, what can cool down can also, if run in an opposite way, warm up. In Finland, where winter temperatures fall as far as -50°C, that might be the technology’s killer app.  

C

      Every week in China, millions of people will sit in front of their TVs watching teenagers compete for the title Character Hero, which is a Chinese-style spelling bee(拼写大赛). In this challenge, young competitors must write Chinese characters by hand. To prepare for the competition, the competitors usually spend months studying dictionaries.

        Perhaps the show’s popularity should not be a surprise. Along with gunpowder(火药) and paper, many Chinese people consider the creation of Chinese calligraphy(书法)to be one of their primary contributions to civilization（文明）. Unfortunately, all over the country, Chinese people are forgetting how to write their own language without computerized help. Software on smart phones and computers allows users to type in the basic sound of the word using the Latin alphabet（拉丁字母表）. The correct character is chosen from a list. The result? It’s possible to recognize characters without remembering how to write them.

       But there’s still hope for the paint brush. China’s Education Ministry wants children to spend more time learning how to write.

        In one Beijing primary school we visited, students practice calligraphy every day inside a specially decorated classroom with traditional Chinese paintings hanging on the walls. Soft music plays as a group of six-year-olds dip brush pens into black ink. They look up at the blackboard often to study their teacher’s examples before carefully attempting to reproduce those characters on thin rice paper. “If adults can survive without using handwriting, why bother to teach it now?” we ask the calligraphy teacher, Shen Bin. “The ability to write characters is part of Chinese tradition and culture,” she reasons. “Students must learn now so they don’t forget when they grow up.” says the teacher.

Some parents of elementary school students in America are receiving letters about their children’s weight. If a child is found to have a weight problem, his parents will get a letter from the school informing them that their child could be overweight.

And what do students call these notes? “Fat letters.”

Kids already have to put up with being frightened or hurt by other kids at school. Now they also have to protect themselves from insults from the adults who work in those schools?

     Don’t they think that parents know whether their children are overweight? Do we really want to encourage a trend we already see: children going on diets? According to a study by Duke University, more than 40% of 9-and 10-year-old girls have gone on a diet.

     In Massachusetts, state lawmakers are considering a bill that bans schools from collecting students’ weight information:

     Many public school educators actually consider themselves to be more enlightened (开明的)than the rest of us. That’s why they have spent so much time insisting that we must not label children over their academic performance. They had a point. Schools have been putting labels on students since before the invention of blackboards. Students who might have once been labeled “lazy” simply became “uninterested.” Immigrant students who were once considered “limited English proficient(熟练的)”became “English learners.”

     My wife is a former teacher. She works with students who have difficulty in reading and spelling. The kinds of students she helps were once said to have a “learning disability.” We don’t say that anymore. Today, acknowledging that human beings process information in a variety of ways, we say that these kids have a “learning difference.”

There you go. Academically, the enlightened view nowadays is that all students are different, that their brains are all wired in unique ways, and that is it’s wrong to try to assess them with a one-size-fits-all standard to determine who is intelligent and who isn’t. it is agreed that children’s brains come in all shapes and sizes.

So why not be really enlightened and learn to think the same way about children’s bodies?

C

A scientist turns out to be able to see the future by offering each of some four-year-olds a piece of candy and watching how he or she deals with it. Some children reach eagerly for the treat they see. Some last a few minutes before they give in. But others are determined to wait until the last moment.

By the time the children reach high school, something remarkable has happened. A survey found that those who as four-year-olds had enough self-control to hold out generally grew up to be more popular, adventurous, confident and dependable. The children who gave in to temptation(诱惑)early were more likely to be lonely, easily frustrated and inflexible(固守己见的).

Actually, the ability to delay reward is a sign of emotional intelligence which doesn’t show up on an IQ test.

The hardware of the brain and the software of the mind have long been scientists’ concerns. But brain theory can’t explain what we wonder about most, like the question why some people remain upbeat in the face of troubles that would sink a less resistant soul.   

Here comes the theory of Daniel Goleman, writer of Emotional Intelligence: when it comes to predicting people’s success, brain ability as measured by IQ may actually matter less than the qualities of mind once thought of as “character”.

EQ is not the opposite of IQ. What researchers have been trying to understand is how they work together; how one’s ability to handle stress, for instance, affects the ability to concentrate and put intelligence to use. Among the elements for success, researchers now generally agree that IQ counts for about 20%; the rest depends on everything from social class to luck.

While many researchers in this relatively new field are glad to see emotional issues finally taken seriously, some few fear EQ invites misuse.