Sleep is often the first thing busy students sacrifice, yet science suggests this is a costly (1)___. During sleep, the brain does not simply rest; it remains highly (2)___, replaying the day's experiences and moving important information into long-term memory. In one experiment, students who slept for eight hours after learning a list of words could (3)___ far more of them the next day than those who stayed awake all night. Lack of sleep also affects attention. Sleep-deprived people find it difficult to (4)___ on a single task, and they make more errors even in simple tests. Moreover, tired brains tend to make risky decisions, because the regions that control judgment are (5)___ weakened. The effects go beyond the classroom. Doctors warn that people who regularly sleep less than six hours face a higher (6)___ of heart disease and weight gain. Despite such warnings, surveys show that nearly half of college students fail to get (7)___ sleep on weekdays. Experts recommend several simple habits: keep a (8)___ bedtime, avoid bright screens for an hour before going to bed, and get plenty of daylight in the morning. Coffee may seem helpful, but drinking it late in the day can (9)___ the natural sleep cycle. In short, students who treat sleep as an (10)___ part of learning, rather than wasted time, are likely to perform better in every subject.

The Quiet Comeback of City Cycling A) Fifty years ago, the bicycle seemed destined to disappear from big cities. As incomes rose, families bought cars, roads were widened, and planners treated cycling as an outdated habit of the poor. In many cities, bicycle lanes were removed to make room for parking spaces, and the number of daily riders fell year after year. B) Today the picture looks very different. From Paris to Bogota, city governments are spending heavily on cycling. They are painting new bike lanes, building bicycle parking garages, and launching public bike-sharing programs. Officials who once measured progress by the speed of car traffic now compete to be named the most bicycle-friendly city in their region. C) Several forces lie behind this change. The most obvious one is traffic congestion. In many large cities, the average car now moves more slowly during rush hour than a bicycle does. When a fifteen-kilometer drive takes an hour, pedaling stops looking like a sacrifice and starts looking like a shortcut. D) Health concerns have also played an important role. Doctors have long warned that modern city dwellers sit too much and move too little. Studies tracking thousands of commuters found that people who cycle to work have a significantly lower risk of heart disease and report better moods than those who drive. For governments facing rising medical costs, every new cyclist represents a small saving. E) Environmental pressure adds further weight. Transport is among the largest sources of carbon emissions in urban areas, and replacing short car trips with bicycle trips is one of the cheapest ways to cut them. Since nearly half of all car journeys in cities are shorter than five kilometers, the potential for substitution is enormous. F) Technology has removed one of cycling's oldest barriers: sweat and effort. Electric bicycles allow older riders and people with long commutes to travel at a steady twenty-five kilometers per hour without arriving exhausted. In several European countries, e-bikes now outsell ordinary bicycles, bringing groups into cycling that traditional bikes never reached. G) The bike-sharing model has changed behavior as well. Because shared bicycles can be picked up and dropped off almost anywhere, people no longer worry about theft, storage or maintenance. A commuter can ride to a meeting, leave the bike, and take the subway home if it rains. This flexibility persuaded many people to try cycling for the first time in decades. H) The comeback, however, is far from smooth. Safety remains the biggest worry that keeps potential riders away. Surveys repeatedly show that the fear of riding next to fast car traffic, rather than laziness, is the main reason people give for not cycling. Cities that only paint a white line on a busy road see little growth in ridership. I) The experience of the Dutch city of Utrecht offers a lesson. Instead of scattered painted lanes, it built a connected network of paths physically separated from cars, along with the world's largest bicycle parking garage at its railway station. Cycling now accounts for about half of all trips in the city center, and shops along the new routes report more customers, not fewer. J) Critics argue that bicycle investment mainly serves young professionals and ignores suburban families who have no choice but to drive. Supporters respond that good cycling networks actually free up road space for those who genuinely need to drive, and that e-bikes are extending the practical range of cycling far into the suburbs. K) Whatever the debate, the direction of change seems clear. The bicycle, once dismissed as a relic of the past, is being redesigned, subsidized and celebrated as a serious answer to some of the hardest problems modern cities face. The question is no longer whether cycling will return, but how fast cities can rebuild themselves to welcome it.

When Riverside High School announced that students would have to lock their smartphones in special pouches during the school day, the reaction was immediate and loud. Students complained that the rule treated them like children, and some parents worried that they could not reach their kids in an emergency. Two years later, however, the school has become a case that researchers across the country are studying with great interest. According to a report released last month, average test scores at the school have risen by eight percent since the ban took effect, with the biggest gains among students who had previously performed worst. Teachers say the change in classrooms is even more striking than the numbers suggest. Discussions last longer, more hands go up, and students no longer rush to check their screens the moment a lesson slows down. The findings match a growing body of research on what psychologists call continuous partial attention, a state in which the mind constantly monitors a device for new messages even when the device is out of sight. In laboratory studies, students who simply placed their phones face down on the desk performed worse on memory tasks than those whose phones were in another room. The mere presence of the device, researchers argue, quietly drains mental energy that could be used for learning. Not everyone is convinced that bans are the answer. Some educators point out that smartphones can be powerful learning tools when used properly, and that forbidding them teaches students nothing about self-control. They argue that schools should train students to manage their attention rather than simply remove the temptation. Supporters of the ban respond that expecting teenagers to resist apps designed by teams of engineers to capture attention is unrealistic, just as we do not expect them to resist junk food placed on every desk. What both sides share is a recognition that attention has become one of the scarcest resources in education. However schools choose to protect it, ignoring the problem no longer seems to be an option.

When the screen of Maria Lopez's washing machine went dark last spring, a repair shop told her that fixing it would cost almost as much as a new machine. The manufacturer no longer supplied the needed part, and the machine's software was locked so that independent technicians could not test it. Like millions of consumers every year, she gave up and bought a replacement, sending a machine that was ninety percent functional to a scrap yard. Stories like hers explain the rise of the right-to-repair movement, which demands that manufacturers make spare parts, tools and repair information available to consumers and independent shops. Supporters argue that the current system is wasteful by design. Many modern products are built with glued-in batteries and special screws, making even simple repairs difficult. Some companies also void the warranty if a device has been opened by anyone outside their official service network. The economic argument for repair is straightforward. Independent studies estimate that households could save hundreds of dollars a year if repairing small appliances and electronics were practical. Repair also creates local jobs: fixing devices requires skilled workers in every town, while manufacturing is concentrated in a few distant factories. The environmental case may be even stronger, since producing a single new smartphone generates far more carbon emissions than years of using an old one. Manufacturers reply that repair restrictions protect consumers, not profits. Untrained repairers, they say, may damage batteries and cause fires, and opening a device can expose personal data. Critics find these claims exaggerated, noting that the same companies happily sell repair services themselves at high prices. Lawmakers have started to act. Several countries and states have passed laws requiring manufacturers to supply parts and manuals for common household products, and some now require a repairability score on the package, telling buyers how easy a product is to fix before they pay. Early evidence suggests the scores are changing behavior: products with poor ratings have begun losing market share, and several major brands have quietly redesigned their goods to be easier to open.