I like my close friends a lot, and yet, on an almost daily basis, they shocked me. I have a friend who thinks voting is a waste of time; I have another friend who never takes any arrangement to meet at a given time and place seriously.

It’s generally held that friends are people with whom we choose to develop relationships because we find their personalities agreeable, or similar to our own, but experience regularly is opposite to this. What is a friend, really? All that one can safely say is that a friend is someone one likes and wishes to see again.

The truth is that we don’t know our friends. Many studies show that we tend to think our friends agree with us more than they really do. The striking part is that the problem doesn’t appear to lessen as a friendship deepens. When the researchers Michael Gill and Bill Swann questioned students sharing rooms, they found that, as time passed, people became even more confident in the accuracy of their judgments about the other, and yet, in reality, the judgments grew no more accurate. Two people might become dear friends, yet possibly know little about many areas of each other’s inner lives.

This seems strange, until you consider, that many of the benefits that friendship provides don’t necessarily depend on perfect familiarity; they come from something closer to trust. Friendship may be less about being drawn to someone’s personality than about finding someone willing to keep you company, or lend an ear. A friend provides the “social-identity support” we desire. You needn’t be a close match with someone, nor deeply familiar with their mind. We don’t base friendships on what we learn about people; we decide what to learn about people, and what to ignore, based on having decided to be friends.

Perhaps there’s something moving about viewing friendship as an agreement to keep each other company, ignore each other’s faults and not probe (刨根问底) too deeply in ways that might weaken the friendship. Perhaps a true friend is someone who doesn’t ask many awkward questions.

It seems hard to watch someone yawn（打哈欠） and not to yawn ourselves. Even reading about yawning can make you do it. Now, a new study has found why yawning has such a powerful force.

    Yawning when others yawn, the study suggests, is a sign of pity and a form of social connection. Kids don’t develop this deeply rooted behavior until around age four, the study found. Kids with autism (自闭症) are less likely to catch yawns. In the most serious cases, they never do. Yawning might help doctors to see whether the children are developing rightly. The work could also lead to a better understanding of the ways that people communicate and connect.

   "Emotional infection seems to be a born thing that connects us together," said Molly Helt, a graduate student in psychology at the University of Connecticut. "Yawning may be part of that." Inspiration for her study came when she tried to get her own autistic son to clear his ears on an airplane. She repeatedly yawned at him, hoping he would yawn back. He never did.

     "The fact that autistic kids don’t do it might mean they’re really missing out on that emotional connection with people around them," she said. "The biggest thing people try to figure out after birth is how we become humans and understand that humans have minds that are different from others’," she added. "Autistic people never seem to understand that."

    Like infectious （有感染力的）laughter and crying, scientists have found that yawning is a shared experience that promotes social connection. Helt said it could fight stress after a period of being nervous and spread a feeling of calm through a group.

D

An advance in electronic publishing could make the book you are reading seem as out-of-date as a silent film. Publishers hope to exploit the growing success of e-books by releasing versions with added soundtracks (配音) and musical accompaniment.

The noise in the first multimedia books — released in Britain — include rain hitting a window in a Sherlock Holmes tale. Works by Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling are also available. When the plot of a book reaches a climax, background music will create tension.

Caroline Michel, chief executive of the literary agency PFD, said the new generation of computer-literate readers was used to multiple sensory input (多感官输入). She said: “Concentration now is such that people have split computer screens where they may be watching television and replying to an email at the same time.”

Book-track’s sound effects work by estimating the user’s reading speed. Each time you “turn” a page, the software reassesses where you have reached in the text and times the sounds to switch on accordingly. If the soundtrack becomes out of synch (同步), a click on any word will re-set it.

Some authors fear a soundtrack could destroy the peace of libraries and ruin the pleasure of reading. David Nicholls said: “This sounds like the opposite of reading. It would be a distraction. I have enough trouble reading an e-book because I’m constantly disturbed by emails and so I’ve given up on it for the time being.” Stuart MacBride, a crime writer, said: “If I’m reading, I will do the noises in my head. I don’t need someone to tell me what a crash sounds like. That would annoy me.”

It's a nightly puzzle in many families: A student hits a wall doing homework，and parents are too tired or too busy to help．

    Ordering a tutor is becoming as easy for kids as grabbing a late-night snack． With the rapid growth of companies offering online tutoring,students can use a credit card to connect．sometimes

in less than a minute,a live tutor such services can be especially helpful for students with tight budgets or tight time frames or those in remote areas．Prices，ranging from about $24 to $45 an hour，are lower than what many skilled tutors charge in a student's home And parents and students say the quick homework aid can ease stress and make evening at home more peaceful．

    “The quality of online learning support can be unequal，and online tutors may not be the best for struggling students who need sustained(持久的)help．Courses can break down due to technical problems．and language barriers can cause problems on sites that rely on tutors from abroad，”says Michael Horn，executive director of education for the Clayton Christensen Institute．

    Most sites get the support from part-time nr retired teachers，college professors or professionals with tutoring experience；most offer scheduled tutoring in addition to on-demand courses．The most common users are middle school students，and college students taking basic

    Yamini Naidu，president of the National School Public Relations Association，says，”Students who come to courses with a list of question or assignments to work on-and who spare time to concentrate-benefit most．Online tutors fill a huge gap that can never be filled by parents．”

If you want to keep a good mood, what should you do?

As soon as the alarm rings –

Spend your first 15 seconds awake planning something nice to do for yourself today. “This can really set you up in a good mood – even if it’s just going by the farmers’ market and getting fresh strawberries,” says Alice Domar.

Get up.

The longer you lie there, the more you think, and the darker your outlook is likely to become. So make a cup of coffee, take a shower, feed the cat, drink--- Make sure to drink two glasses of water upon awakening, the time when our bodies are dehydrated. Dehydration causes tiredness, which affects your mood.

Move it.

You already know the number one way of chasing away a bad mood: exercise. A workout at the gym sure helps. But even just a few minutes of movement – a fast walk, for example, -- raises energy and reduces tension, says mood expert Robert Thayer.

Be kind and thankful.

This isn’t exactly news, but generosity and gratitude are both big contributors to happiness, according to Todd B. Kashdan, PhD, who directs the Laboratory for the Study of Social Anxiety, Character Strengths, and Related Phenomena at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Do something nice for a stranger or friend and see whether you can feel better about yourself. Also, jot down three things that you are grateful for. It seems so simple, but counting your blessings just has a way of making you remember the sun is shining.

Many studies have shown that students learn in different ways and that good results can be achieved if they are taught by a teaching method that suits them best. Similarly, studentsˈ performance varies in what types of test they are given. Therefore, it may seem reasonable to give students the chance to choose how they wish to be tested. However, this would mean teachers would be forced to prepare many different methods of assessment for the exact same material. Teachers are already very busy, creating tests, grading, coming up with interesting lesson plans, teaching classes, not to mention holding parent teacher conferences, and creating new tests would only add to their burden.

    Another strain teachers would have to face is how to grade fairly and objectively if students were tested on the same material in a variety of ways. For instance, how do you compare a student who wrote an essay on one small topic of a book to another who answered every multiple choice question correctly over the entire book? Maybe the student who wrote the essay only read a small part of it in depth enough so that they could write the essay. But perhaps the student taking the multiple choice test only had a base understanding of the book and couldnˈt write a critical essay about something in it.

    This is not to say, however, that students should be graded in the same manner every time. This would be equally unfair as again, different students test better when assessed by different methods. Therefore, teachers need to be sure to give essay tests, multiple choice tests, as well as other multi-media (多媒体) projects to assess their students, just not over the same material. This gives students the opportunity to show off their abilities and make up for tasks that theyˈre not good at. For instance, a student that is a bad test taker could make up for their grade with a well-performed project. Another option is to provide students with extra credit opportunities. As such, students could be allowed to choose the method in which they wish to complete their extra credit. If a student is a strong essay writer, they could write an extra essay to make up for their poor test grade. This would allow students to compensate for poor grades in areas in which they arenˈt as accomplished.

Making a good speech in public is a big challenge for most people, but there are some basic rules you can follow.

First of all, you need to know what kind of audience you have. Maybe they are a friendly audience who knows you already, or maybe they are strangers you need to get acquainted with.

Next, the topic of your speech needs to be something you know a lot about. If you are a fashion designer, for example, you should not give medical advice. You had better talk about what styles are best for what kinds of body shapes.

Also, in your speech you will want to give your audience strong images that will linger in their minds after the speech is over.

Finally, don’t make your speech too long. Nobody wants to go hungry or go to bed late because of a long speech.

I have been watching my daughters play sports since theywere four, and have been shocked at how some parents in thecrowd behave.

At soccer games, when my girls were very young, parentswould be screaming at their children to get their heads into thegame, to charge, to“get”an opposing player, or to“kill it.”Iunderstand parents want to encourage their children and theirteam—but at some point it becomes too much.

My daughter Grace is a high school and AAU (Associationof American Universities) basketball player and a very good oneat that. During a recent game, a parent sitting near me wasshouting loudly to her daughter, standing up, expressingdispleasure about the way her team was playing and, duringhalftime, speaking loudly about her personal life. After having herin my ear for more than half of the game, I was so put off that Ihad to move.

Admittedly, I am the quiet parent at games. I clap for theschoolgirls when they make wonderful plays. For the most part,however, I remain silent. Shouting out makes them nervous.

I asked Grace to weigh in on this, and she tells me:“Someparents become extremely emotionally invested in sports games,which can become a problem for the players. The worst thing iswhen people point out that‘crazy parent,’and they donˈt knowthatˈs your parent.”

I am all for parentspectators(观众) cheering on theirchildren and the rest of the team. But I hope you can cheer yourchildren on in a positive way. Shouting things like,“Whereˈsyour head?”“Goafter her!”is not, in my view, the way to cheer

on high school students or younger children.

If you have nothing positive to say, hold your tongue. If youfind yourself struggling to keep it together, get some fresh airduring halftime.

Emoji(表情符号) are being adopted at a faster rate than any other "language" -- and eight in ten of us now use the colourful symbols to communicate.

To plot this popularity, a linguistics professor has conducted the first "Emoji IQ" study looking at how the pictures are used and by whom.

And she has created an online test to determine how well you know your "confused" face from your "angry" face to determine if you're an emoji master. The test contains 10 questions that ask users to identify the meaning of certain symbols, and how they would write sentences using emoji. At the end of the test they are given a percentage score rather than an IQ score as the test's name suggests —and the aim is to be an Emoji Master with a perfect score.

According to the study, four in ten people send messages made up entirely of emoji and 18 to 25-year-olds find it easier to express emotions using the symbols. More than half of this group admitted emoji has improved their ability to communicate with others. But for the over 40s the language is lost in translation. More than half (54 per cent) admitted to being confused about what the symbols mean, while a third claimed to have avoided using emoji in text, instant messaging and apps because they lacked the confidence to use them appropriately.

Talk Talk Mobile teamed up with Vyv Evans, linguistics professor at Bangor University to launch the study and improve understanding of emoji with the "Emoji IQ" tutorial.

"Emoji is the fastest growing form of language ever based on its incredible adoption rate and speed of evolution," said Professor Evans. "As a visual language emoji has already far eclipsed (使黯然失色) hieroglyphics(象形文字), its ancient Egyptian precursor（先驱）which took centuries to develop."

The term“helicopter parents”refers to“a style of parents who are over focused on their children”．

Helicopter parents are always making a big push to provide children with every opportunity to succeed，from baby steps at age 1，homework at age 8，college application at age 18，employment issues at age 25 to family problems at age 30，40 or even older．They constantly shadow the child，always directing his behavior，allowing him zero alone time．

Helicopter parenting can develop for a number of reasons．Worries about the economy，the job market，and the world in general can push parents toward taking more control over their child’s life in an attempt to protect them．Adults who felt unloved or ignored as children can overcompensate with their own children．When parents see other overinvolved parents，it can cause a similar response．They feel that if they don’t involve themselves in their children’s lives，they are bad parents．

The main problem with helicopter parenting is that it can backfire．To give an example，the house where Mary lived with roommates was broken into and things were stolen．Mary called the landlord(房东)to install an alarm system，but before she could finish the negotiations(协商)，her mother rushed in and demanded action．“I felt like my mother ruined my communication with our landlord．We could have gotten it done ourselves．She was well intended but only made me feel annoyed and defeated，”says Mary．

Obviously，overparenting is motivated with the idea of doing good things but it does the exact opposite．In the long run parents are actually damaging their child’s basic skills to deal with matters independently．It makes the child feel lacking in confidence，less competent in dealing with the stresses of life on their own．They’re winning the battle，but actually losing the war．