A vendor selling watermelons naps as he waits for customers at a market in Taiyuan, in China’s Shanxi Province on July 17. 一位小販七月十七日在中國山西省太原市一處市場等待顧客上門時，小歇片刻。
Photo: Reuters 照片：路透
Getting young children to take an hour-long nap after lunch could help them with their learning by boosting brain power, a small study suggests.
A nap appeared to help three-to-five-year-olds better remember pre-school lessons, US researchers said.
University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers studied 40 youngsters and reported their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The benefit persisted in the afternoon after a nap and into the next day.
The study authors say their results suggest naps are critical for memory consolidation and early learning. When the children were allowed a siesta after lunch they performed significantly better on a visual-spatial tasks in the afternoon and the next day than when they were denied a midday snooze.
(Liberty Times)
TODAY’S WORDS 今日單字
1. nap n.
午睡 (wu3 shui4)
例: Grandpa usually takes a nap after lunch.
(阿公吃過午飯後通常會睡個午覺。)
2. persist v.
持續 (chi2 xu4)
例: The cold weather is set to persist throughout the week.
(這一週都將是寒冷的天氣。)
3. deny n.
拒絕 (ju4 jue2)
例: I was denied the opportunity of learning French at school.
Motorists make their way out of downtown Los Angeles, California on Aug. 30 last year. 駕駛們去年八月三十日在加州洛杉磯驅車駛離市區。
Photo: AFP 照片：法新社
A warming planet is likely to bring more hot days, more sweaty people and more dehydration — a key risk factor for a surge in kidney stones, researchers said on July 10.
The study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found a link between hot days and kidney stones in 60,000 patients whose medical records were studied in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
“We found that as daily temperatures rise, there is a rapid increase in the probability of patients presenting over the next 20 days with kidney stones,” said lead author Gregory Tasian, a pediatric urologist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
As average daily temperatures climbed above 50 degrees Fahrenheit, or 10 degrees Celsius, the risk of kidney stone presentation increased in all the cities except Los Angeles.
(Liberty Times)
TODAY’S WORDS
今日單字
1. sweaty adj.
流汗的 (liu2 han4 de5)
例: We spent the evening in a sweaty pub.
(我們晚上都待在熱得讓人冒汗的酒吧裡。)
2. surge n.
驟升 (zou4 sheng1)
例: An unexpected surge in electrical power caused the computer to crash.
(電壓突然遽增導致電腦當機。)
3. probability n.
可能性 (ke3 neng2 xing4)
例: There’s a strong probability that she’ll be here.
Regarding whether parents can truly comprehend what their children are thinking, psychiatrists say that with kids nowadays so enthralled with IT products, there is very little interaction and communication going on between parents and children, causing many things to remain bottled up and left unsaid. Can parents actually gain any insight by observing what video games their kids like to play? Which TV shows they enjoy watching? Which characters they like? If you want to understand a child’s inner world, there is no harm in talking and playing with them while they play with the IT products.
Lam Pok, an attending physician at Miaoli Wei Gong Memorial Hospital’s psychiatry department, says that back before 3C (computer, communications and consumer electronics) products existed, children and parents had more opportunities to talk with each other. Children used to vent their emotions by playing outdoor sports and also talked to their parents more about their feelings. With the proliferation of electronic products, video games have become the main way that children express their feelings. Characters in television dramas have also become objects for children to obtain emotional sustenance, making them less fond of talking to their parents about personal matters.
Lam says the theory of psychological projection explains why adolescents and young people often enjoy playing video games — the opponent that they are fighting is not actually the enemy in the game, but rather more likely to be someone in real life who makes them feel incredible pressure. It could be a classmate, a teacher or possibly parents. The same principle applies to watching the plots on TV or in films. Children who lack true love from their parents will easily be moved to tears when they see an alien savior come on the screen, Lam says.
When parents see their child playing video games or watching TV, it is best to get closer to them to make observations and show more concern for the child. Lam suggests that parents find an appropriate time to ask the following three questions. The first should be about which character they like the most. Liking a particular character is usually because that character has similar personality traits or has suffered in similar ways as the child. The second question should be about which character they wish they could be. This will be the person that possesses something that the child is lacking but aspires to be. The third question asks the child which character they loathe the most, which can represent someone who has probably hurt the child or gives them stress, Lam says.
