25 Ways to Say 'I Love You' to Teens

25 Ways to Say 'I Love You' to Teens - Often in the hustle and bustle of life, people go day-to-day working on tasks and forgetting to tell those around them how they feel. Parents of teens - myself included - find this problem sneaks up and surprises them. It happens because teens are independent and don't really need us to perform their daily tasks in the way they did when they were little children, so they slip under the radar.

Therefore, it is important for us to make a point of remembering to connect with our teens. Whether you have to mark your planner or just make it a good habit, the effort will be worth it. To get you started, here is a list of twenty-five ways to say 'I Love You' to teens, try one tonight.

Express your love for your teen by saying:

• 1. I love you.
• 2. You are precious to me.
• 3. I'm blessed to have you in my life.
• 4. You simply amaze me.
• 5. You are priceless.
• 6. You bring joy to my life.
• 7. I appreciate you.
• 8. You are important to me.
• 9. I'm thankful for you.
• 10. You're one in a million.

Or do something for your teen:

• 11. Write a poem.
• 12. Send an email.
• 13. Post one of the above expressions on Facebook or MySpace.
• 14. Send your teen a text message.
• 15. Make their favorite snack.
• 16. Make their favorite meal.
• 17. Make a Valentine’s Day recipe.
• 18. Spend time with your teen.
• 19. Clean your teen's room.
• 20. Do one of their chores.
• 21. Give your teen a hug and kiss.
• 22. Listen to them.
• 23. Hide candy hearts under their pillow.
• 24. Go to their sporting, club or youth group events.
• 25. Surprise your teen with something they've wanted. ( about.com )
  

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The Most Dangerous Man in China

The Most Dangerous Man in China - When filmmaker Alison Klayman was shooting the documentary "Never Sorry" about Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei, she was struck by the irony that Chinese authorities would go through the trouble to install surveillance cameras in the home a man who lives his life so openly on his blog and Twitter.

"I kind of felt that actually in some ways, the openness was almost a protection" she said. The best way to prevent the government from using his secrets against him, was to have no secrets.

Klayman was on hand at this year's Sundance film festival in Park City, Utah to debut her documentary, "Never Sorry". She spoke with Christiane Amanpour to discuss the film and what she's taken away from one of China's most influential artists and activists.

"He sort of has this mass appeal and ability to really engage all different kinds of audiences," she says, "whether they're sort of tech savvy or into design or architecture or art."

"I was really won over by how genuine his, sort of, believe in the individual, sort of, value of life, the dignity of life, how everyone in China and around the world deserves that, and I think that's really a big motivator for what he's doing." ( abc news )

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Chinese New Year for Parents and Kids

Chinese New Year for Parents and Kids - Chinese New Year begins today. The Chinese zodiac is distinguished by 12 animals. 2012 is the Year of the Dragon. Here are activities and ideas for parents to explore Chinese tradition.

• Visit a local Chinese New Year festival or Asian market. WLOX 13 New York lists festivals in several large cities. Many metropolitan areas have a Chinese neighborhood with ethnic markets, events and festival activities. Child Book lists places to visit in each state and Oriental Shopping lists Asian markets. OCA National, the parent site of local Association of Chinese Americans branches, lists some festival events by region.

• Celebrate a lantern festival. Paper globe lanterns are a popular decoration during Chinese New Year, which ends with a lantern festival, says Chinese Fortune Calendar. Lantern Festival lists how-tos for parents to make festive lights with children.

• Make ceremonial foods. The themes of the Lunar New Year -- fertility, prosperity and good fortune -- are reflected in the foods eaten during the holiday. The Chicago Tribune lists general foods and easy ways for parents to enjoy them with children. Dumplings, whole fish, oranges, teriyaki or sweet and sour chicken, spring egg rolls, and stir-fried lettuce symbolize wealth and good luck. Eggs and long noodles mean fertility and longevity.

• Enjoy "dragon" foods. According to Holiday Spot, the dragon is the only mythological beast in the zodiac and the luckiest. The Detroit Free Press recommends eating long dragon beans (string beans will work) and shrimp for the Year of the Dragon.

• Make crafts. Family Fun offers printable crafts like dragon kites and puppets, ribbon dragons, good luck gold fish and paper lanterns for parents. Craft Jr. has a paper dragon activity and Animal Jr. has a dragon mask craft as well as printable masks of all the animals of the zodiac. First-School has several dragon coloring pages and paper lantern crafts.

• Light fireworks. Fireworks were invented in China and form an important part of the Chinese New Year celebration. Be sure to check local ordinances and supervise kids around the fireworks.

• Read stories from modern and ancient China. Apples for the Teacher lists Chinese New Year books for kids with a special emphasis on Year of the Dragon stories. The New York Public Library has a list of recommended reading on Asian history for kids and teens. ( yahoo.com )

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Chinese New Year Primer

Chinese New Year Primer - The Chinese New Year 2012 begins on January 23. This is the year of the Dragon, so believers are looking forward to a year of excitement, unpredictability, exhilaration, and intensity.

Chinese New Year Tradition and Meaning

Chinese (or Lunar) New Year is the Spring Festival and the most important Chinese holiday. It has been celebrated since the Shang Dynasty (1600 to 1100 B.C.).

Like many other cultures, the Chinese symbolically sweep away the troubles of the past year and prepare for a new year of prosperity. Housecleaning, clothing choices, special menus, and celebrations are all calculated to bring happiness, wealth and opportunity to the celebrants, China.com notes.

According to history.com, Chinese New Year tradition arose out of superstition that the wild beast Nien arrived at each year's end to maul and kill villagers. The firecrackers and lights that dominate the celebrations originated as tools for scaring away this monster.

Performers take part in a dragon dance in a night parade in Hong Kong Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, celebrating the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year. According to the Chinese zodiac, the year 2012 is called the Year of the Dragon. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)

Identifying the Arrival of Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year begins when the new moon is visible in the sky. That's why the date changes each year. The 15-day celebration ends when the full moon rises.

Chinese Zodiac Explained

Things Asian describes the Chinese zodiac as consisting of repeating, 12-year cycles with animal signs representing each year. Beginning with the Rat, the years following are known as the year of the Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Boar. Each animal's characteristics are believed to influence the events of the year, ChineseNewYear2012 notes.

According to Chinese legend, the choice of zodiac animals stemmed from a race hosted by an ancient emperor. The tale describes how each animal's personal attributes determined its place crossing the finish line.

Traditional Asian families will consult the zodiac in making important life decisions, believing the sign under which a person is born influences his personal relationships and fortune.

Here's a brief description of each sign, courtesy of Taiwanese Secrets.

• Rat: Charming, hard-working, timid, reserved and honest.
• Ox: Calm, trustworthy, ill-tempered, eloquent, stubborn, and distant.
• Tiger: Courageous, powerful, dreamers, sensitive, and anti-authoritarian.
• Rabbit: Talented, tasteful, honest, lucky, tender with family, distant with strangers, sometimes moody and arrogant.
• Dragon: Energetic, robust, stubborn, honest, trustworthy, and courageous, yet fears rejection.
• Snake: Serious, introverted, wise, egotistical, charitable, and keep their own counsel.
• Horse: Optimistic, intuitive, sociable, attractive, intelligent, free, and good at managing money.
• Sheep: Honest, generous, sympathetic, artistic, compassionate, and distractible.
• Monkey: Inventive, intelligent, narcissistic, and good at attracting money.
• Rooster: Sociable, brave, overly-ambitious, eccentric, nonconformist and proud.
• Dog: Giving, compassionate, loyal, honest, just, demanding, and trustworthy.
• Boar: Fun, honest, thoughtful, loyal, outspoken, extroverted, lazy, financially wasteful. ( yahoo.com )

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Berkeley scientists convert seaweed into ethanol using E. coli

Berkeley scientists convert seaweed into ethanol using E. coli - Your sushi wrap could be soon powering your car. Berkeley-based Bio Architecture Lab's scientists have figured out how to break down seaweed and make ethanol and other chemicals.

Sugar cane and corn may soon be sharing the biofuel spotlight with a new contender: seaweed. A new breakthrough to break down sugars in seaweed may make the abundant marine algae central to replacing fossil fuels.

The breakthrough is credited to scientists from the Berkeley-based Bio Architecture Lab, Inc (BAL). According to the Scientific American, the BAL researchers used a genetically modified version of Escherichia colito (E. coli) to digest and convert seaweed into fuel and chemical compounds. Their findings have been reported in the January 20 issue of the Science journal.

The reason for the engineered microbe is that industrial microbes cannot digest alginate, the main sugar in brown seaweed. As BAL co-founder and synthetic biologist Yasuo Yoshikuni said, “the form of the sugar inside the seaweed is very exotic.”

So, Yoshikuni and the BAL researchers decided to look into a microbe that could digest the alginate called Vibrio splendidus. They then isolated the genes carrying the desired traits and placed the DNA into the E.coli. To test the new version of the stomach bacteria, the researchers mixed it up with some ground seaweed and a little water and let it stew for two days. The scientists found that the solution yielded 5 percent ethanol and water in temperatures between 25 and 30 degrees Celsius. Yoshinkuni believes that ethanol is just the start and that the microbe could also be used to turn seaweed into a variety of molecules; isobutanol, for example.

Seaweed could be an ideal for biofuel as it seems to be low maintenance; it requires no watering or fertilizer, and nutrients are drawn from the ocean. Jonathan Burbaum, program director at the US Department of Energy’s ARPA-e, points out that seaweed could address land concerns as well, since the algae grows naturally in the “two thirds of the planet that we don’t use for agriculture.” Burbaum says a portion of the agency’s funding will be used to test out the viability of seaweed with a small aquafarm experiment. ( digitaltrends.com )

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Who's mummy's little darling? How bond with mother in first 18 months can shape our love life

Who's mummy's little darling? How bond with mother in first 18 months can shape our love life - A baby’s relationship with their mother during the first 18 months of life affects their behaviour in future romances, a study has shown.

The ability to trust, love and work through arguments is defined early on in childhood.

A mistreated infant becomes a defensive arguer while the baby whose mother was attentive and supportive is able to work through problems with their partner.

Researchers found those children with a secure bond with their mothers were likely to have more successful relationships later on in life

And while attitudes can change with new relationships, old patterns rear up during times of stress.

A team studied 75 children of low-income mothers whom they had been assessing from birth into their early 30s, including their close friends and romantic partners.

The children - now adults - returned regularly for assessments of their emotional and social development.

The researchers focused on their skills and resilience in working through conflicts with school peers, teenage best friends and love partners.

For those without a happy childhood, the survey also found those who were unloved could learn to love later on in life

Professor Jeffry Simpson at the University of Minnesota said: 'It is the first real attachment that people have with another person and because of that it serves as a template for what will happen later in their life span.

'When children are young and their brains are developing they learn a great deal very rapidly so they are more likely to take in a lot of information.

'If you have a secure bond with your mother you are more likely to have a well emotionally regulated and satisfied relationship later on.

'But there are also a number of intervening factors that can affect that and change the way you think about the world.

'Your interpersonal experiences with your mother during the first 12 to 18 months of life predict your behaviour in romantic relationships 20 years later.

'Before you can remember, before you have language to describe it, and in ways you aren’t aware of, implicit attitudes get encoded into the mind about how you’ll be treated or how worthy you are of love and affection.

'There is an organisational view of human social development. People find a coherent, adaptive way, as best as they can, to respond to their current environments based on what’s happened to them in the past. What happens to you as a baby affects the adult you become.'

He added: 'Psychologists started off thinking there was a lot of continuity in a person’s traits and behaviour over time.

The ability to trust, love and work through arguments is developed early on, researchers now say

'We find a weak but important thread between the infant in the mother’s arms and the 20-year-old in his lover’s.

'If you can figure out what those old models are and verbalise them and if you get involved with a committed, trustworthy partner, you may be able to revise your models and calibrate your behaviour differently.

'Old patterns can be overcome. A betrayed baby can become loyal. An unloved infant can learn to love.'

And he said the theory of attachment was far removed from the Oedipus Complex, adding: 'The theory of attachment focuses on how you are treated as supposed to any fantasy. It is focusing on experience.'

The study is published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. ( dailymail.co.uk )

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Are insects the answer to global malnutrition?

Are insects the answer to global malnutrition? – Serge Verniau is a man with a mission: to persuade the world to swap the chicken wings and steaks on their plates for crickets, palm weevils and other insects rich in protein and vitamins.

Verniau, the Laos representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), is only half-joking when he says his dream is "to feed the big metropolises from Tokyo to Los Angeles, via Paris" with the small arthropods.

He plans to present the lessons drawn from a pilot project to the world at a conference on edible insects, probably in 2012.

"Most of the world's population will live in urban areas. Trying to feed the whole planet enough protein from cows won't work," Verniau told AFP.

It is not by chance that the dream was born in landlocked Laos, one of the world's poorest countries.

Almost one quarter of its population of six million people, and nearly 40 percent of children below the age of five years old, suffer from malnutrition, according to figures from the Laos government.

The typical rice-based diet provides insufficient nutrients for development -- a shortfall that could be filled by insects, highly rich in protein and vitamins.

Plates of fried insects,, are seen - Plates of fried insects ready to eat, including crikets and grasshopers, are seen here at a local market in Vientiane. Raising crikets for foods is seen as a solution to the malnutrition in the poor landlock country where a great number of people, especially children, suffer from it.

Eaten as snacks, grilled or fried, they are already part of Laos cuisine, but most people do not know how to breed them, said Oudom Phonekhampheng, dean of the faculty of agriculture at the National University of Laos.

"They just take them in the wild and eat them, and then it is finished and destroyed. They have to think about the future," he said.

In a modest building in the suburbs of the capital, his department's laboratory collects scientific data on this new area of breeding.

Along with house crickets -- which are already widely farmed in neighbouring Thailand -- there are experiments in breeding mealworms, palm weevils and weaver ants, which are appreciated for their larvae.

The students are trying out different foods for the insects in an attempt to reduce costs while maintaining quality, explains Yupa Hanboonsong, a Thai entomologist supervising the project for the FAO.

Up to now, the roughly 20 cricket farms operating in Laos have used chicken feed, like thousands of Thai farms, but it is expensive and must be imported.

Vegetables or waste left over from the production of the national beer, BeerLao, could be one solution, said Yupa, who hopes to "train the whole country."

Beyond the fight against malnutrition, this new economic activity can also generate revenue for farmers, added Yupa.

Phouthone Sinthiphanya, 61, seized the opportunity in 2007 to supplement his meager pension after a career in the tobacco industry.

The 27 cylindrical concrete vats, about 50 centimetres (20 inches) tall, installed in the garden of his house in Vientiane produce 67 kilos (148 pounds) of crickets every two months, he explains.

One kilo of live insects fetches 60,000 kips (7.5 dollars). The same quantity crushed sells for 50,000 kips.

"I worked for a tobacco company and then retired. My pension was not enough so I started farming insects," he said.

"Our customers are restaurants, villagers, markets," he said, adding that breeding the small creatures was "easy".

It requires little space or natural resources and only their singing might annoy the neighbours.

"Insect farming creates less damage to the environment. It is a green protein," said Yupa.

Proponents believe such nutritional and environmental advantages could be beneficial beyond Laos, particularly in other developing countries where people are used to eating cicadas and grasshoppers.

"You can make powder from crickets that is very rich in protein. It's low in fat and it can be added to biscuits in problem areas where food rations are distributed," said Verniau.

Nor has he given up hope of persuading sceptics in the West.

"When you look closely, a grey shrimp or a cricket, it has the same appeal," he joked. ( Agence France Presse )

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