The Consumer Electronics Show has always been geared to appeal to the little kid in us. Oooh, new toys. Drool. I want. But at this year's CES, 14 companies as well as children's groups are gathering for the first annual "Sandbox Summit." The goal: to figure out how kids—as young as 3—play with technology and what gadgets they're going to gravitate toward as they get older.
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YjI Any parent with a child between the ages of 3 and 11 can tell you: technology has crept into nearly all aspects of playtime, nearly every type of toy. Look no further than venerable toymaker Fisher-Price, which is selling its Easy Link Internet Launch Pad—for "safe" browsing—to the preschool set. And LeapFrog's ClickStart My First Computer gives children ages 3 and up a keyboard to help them learn computer basics, using a TV screen as a monitor. "There's a lot more quality stuff out there," says educational psychologist Warren Buckleitner, the editor of Children's Technology Review.
tvT4S 6Hl < ,(vn As an example of the "quality stuff," he points to a product by WildPlanet called Hyper Dash that came out just in time for this past holiday season. Armed with a talking joystick-shaped tagger, children are told to seek out various disc-shaped targets, identified either by numbers or colors. The tagger is embedded with a Radio Frequency Identification chip that identifies the discs and a timer that clocks how quickly the kid has hit all his targets. It's the perfect blend of technology, learning and exercise, says Buckleitner. Wild Planet is unveiling a younger version of Hyper Dash for kids 3 to 5 at CES this week called Animal Scramble, due in stores in September. The company will also put out Hyper Jump, which is a cross between Simon Says and Dance Dance Revolution: the child must tag the correct number (or color) with her hand or foot depending on the questions, some of which involve basic math.
T5q-" W6\ FR["e1<0 Those items are exactly the kind of techy, educational, fun toys that children's groups like Parents’ Choice Foundation—the nonprofit that spearheaded the Sandbox Summit—want to see more of. "We see how play and technology are merging," says the foundation's Claire Green. "There's no putting the genie back in the bottle." Now, Green adds, it's a matter of getting toy manufacturers to keep enhancing their product lines.
sJv`fjf%8 ,(;5%+#n To help make its case, Parent's Choice invited Carly Shuler of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop to deliver a 50-page study at the summit that analyzes the current interactive media environment for preschool and elementary-age children. Shuler's conclusion? "There's a ton of products for kids, but not a lot based on research," she says. "We need to bridge the gap between academic researchers and what's going on in the industry." Shuler and her team studied more than 300 products sold to kids and found that "most" do not take advantage of available research regarding children's educational needs. Among the findings, the survey yielded only two educational videogames (in an industry that, according to Shuler, generated $500 million in 2006 for the top 20 titles alone) based on explicit educational curriculum design available in the market.
>j:|3 atb 5QOZ%9E&M Such numbers have not escaped the attention of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which takes a less sanguine view of wiring kids too early; the academy advises against screen time for children age 2 or younger, and it recommends no more than one to two hours a day of quality programming on televisions or computers for older children. "Manufacturers have found a new demographic to target and they're targeting it with, shall we say, innovative methods," says the AAP's communications chairman Don Schifrin. One example of such "innovative" marketing on display is Mattel's virtual Barbie Girls world. Girls can guide their avatars through an online world, interacting with friends and earning points they can use to decorate their rooms. And how do they earn points? By watching commercials for Barbie products.
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~xX iJ4 <f->t #fN/LO A longtime aide to President Bush who wrote occasional guest columns for his hometown newspaper resigned on Friday evening after admitting that he had repeatedly plagiarized from other writers.
1@@y]s_.a Rf?%Tv0\ Skip to next paragraph
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w Carol T. Powers for The New York Times
CC>($k" Tim Goeglein in his office at the Executive Office Building in 2004. He was a liaison to social and religious conservatives.
?uig04@3 The White House called his actions unacceptable.
ET3 ,9+Gj 0 JyqCb l The aide, Tim Goeglein, had worked for Mr. Bush since 2001, as a liaison to social and religious conservatives, an important component of the president’s political base. Mr. Goeglein was influential in decisions on a range of questions important to that constituency, including stem cell research, abortion and faith-based initiatives.
5!8-)J-H W#V fX!~ A blogger and former columnist for The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Ind. — the paper in which Mr. Goeglein's columns were published — found the plagiarism.
O /$ v69: a}w&dE$!- “This is not acceptable, and we are disappointed in Tim’s actions,” a White House spokeswoman, Emily Lawrimore, said Friday morning, hours before Mr. Goeglein resigned. “He is offering no excuses, and he agrees it was wrong.”
5c) w Z RW)k_#%= Mr. Goeglein, 44, is little known outside Washington. He is a familiar figure to conservatives and evangelical Christians, who knew him as a spokesman for Gary L. Bauer, the conservative who ran for president in 2000.
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Kk%# PK8V2Ttv When Mr. Bauer dropped out of the race, Mr. Goeglein signed on with Mr. Bush, eventually becoming a top aide to Karl Rove, the chief political strategist. He was the eyes and ears of the White House in the world of religious conservatives and an emissary to that world for Mr. Rove and the president.
tpE3|5dZF -: C[P Mr. Goeglein was often credited with turning out the evangelical vote that helped re-elect Mr. Bush in 2004.
;2B PPZ kHZKj!!R With Mr. Bush traveling to his ranch in Crawford, Tex., for the weekend, the White House issued a statement late Friday saying that the president was disappointed and saddened for Mr. Goeglein and his family.
9 #:ue@) S`4e@Z$ “He has long appreciated Tim’s service,” the statement said. “And he knows him to be a good person who is committed to his country.”
u>1v~3,r# |]I# CdO Mr. Goeglein had been publishing guest columns on the opinion page of The News-Sentinel for more than a decade, according to the paper’s editor, Kerry Hubartt.
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{<"[D([ Nancy Nall, a former columnist for the paper, often used her Web site,
www.nancynall.com, to poke fun at his writings, which she called “drippy and awful.”
=w t-YM 1/!nV Ms. Nall said she was struck by Mr. Goeglein’s most recent column, on Thursday, which included a reference to a “notable professor of philosophy at Dartmouth,” Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey. Curious, she searched the Internet, and found that Mr. Goeglein had lifted major chunks of the column from an article published 10 years ago in The Dartmouth Review.
V` U/'N-ay dfnX!C~6 \ “It is true,” Mr. Goeglein wrote in an e-mail message to another Fort Wayne newspaper, The Journal-Gazette. “I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses.”
omr:C8T> XPrY`,kN He said he had apologized to the author of The Dartmouth Review article.
PVS\, v!iWzN By day’s end, more examples of plagiarism had turned up, including a column about John Wayne copied in part from an article in The New York Sun and passages from a column that tracked, almost verbatim, an article by Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post.
3KbUHSx 4D0( Fl A review by The News-Sentinel found that of the 38 columns Mr. Goeglein published since 2000, 19 included plagiarized material, according to Mr. Hubartt. He said the paper would no longer publish work by Mr. Goeglein, whom he described as “well respected here by a lot of people.”
Id; mn}+~ `;R |V “There was no reason for it that I can see,” Mr. Hubartt said, noting that Mr. Goeglein had submitted columns voluntarily and had no deadlines to meet. “He was not under any pressure.”
, 80jMs 34HFrMi "bL P3 Feeling tired lately? Has the doctor said he cannot find anything wrong with you? Perhaps he sent you to a hospital, but all the advanced equipment there shows that there is nothing wrong. Then consider this, you might be in a state of subhealth.
9(V=Ubj Subhealth, also called the third state or grey state, is explained as a border line state between health and disease. According to an investigation by the National Health Organization, over 45 percent of subhealthy people are middle-aged or elderly. The percentage is even higher among people who work in management positions as well as students around exam time.
H rM)jC<~ Symptoms(症状) include a lack of energy, depression, slow reactions, insomnia(失眠), agitation(焦虑), and poor memory. Other symptoms include shortness of breath, sweating and aching in the waist and legs.
DX7Ou%P,mg The key to preventing and recovering from subhealth, according to some medical experts, is to form good living habits, alternate work with rest, exercise regularly, and take part in open-air activities.
&:IfhS As for meals, people are advised to eat less salt and sugar. They should also eat more fresh vegetables, fruits, fish because they are rich in nutritional elements——vitamins and trace elements——that are important to the body.
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A5 Nutrition experts point out that it is not good to eat too much at one meal because it may cause unhealthy changes in the digestive tract(消化道). They also say that a balanced diet is very helpful in avoiding subhealth
