Crossing your legs is an extremely common habit; most people don’t even notice that they’re doing it when they sit down. While you may find it comfortable to sit with one knee crossed over the other, it might be causing health problems that you are not aware of.

A study published in Blood Pressure Monitoring stated that sitting with your legs crossed can increase your blood pressure. The reason this happens is because the blood in your legs has to work against gravity to be pumped back to your heart, crossing one leg over the other increases resistance, making it even harder for the blood to circulate. This causes your body to increase your blood pressure to push the blood back to the heart. You won’t feel any immediate effects, but if you sit for long periods of time it’s important that you take note of how long you have your legs crossed for. You shouldn’t have your legs crossed for more than 15 minutes, and it’s important that you get up and walk around at least once every hour.

Crossing your legs can also lead to neck and back pain. Ideally, it’s best for our bodies to sit with our feet planted flat, hip width apart, on the floor, but it’s not easy to maintain perfect posture all day at the office. When you sit with your legs crossed your hips are in a twisted position, which can cause one of your pelvic bones to rotate. Since your pelvic bone supports your neck and spine, this can cause pressure on your lower and middle back and neck.

You also might notice that when you sit with your legs crossed for long periods of time your feet and legs get tingly or have the feeling of being asleep. This is because when one leg sits on top of the other it causes pressure on the veins and nerves in your legs and feet. It can cause numbness and/or temporary paralysis in the legs, ankles, or feet. While the feeling of discomfort may only last a minute or two, repeatedly crossing your legs until they feel numb can cause permanent nerve damage.

So next time you sit down, try to get yourself in the habit of sitting with both of your feet on the floor. Not only will it help your posture and stability, but it will also save your health in the long run.

Microsoft has developed a new smartphone app that interprets eye signals and translates them into letters, allowing people with motor neurone disease to communicate with others from a phone.

The GazeSpeak app combines a smartphone’s camera with artificial intelligence to recognize eye movements in real time and convert them into letters, words and sentences.

For people suffering from ALS（渐冻症）, also known as motor neurone disease, eye movement can be the only way they are able to communicate.

“Current eye-tracking input systems for people with ALS or other motor impairments are expensive, not robust under sunlight, and require frequent re-calibration and substantial, relatively immobile setups,” said Xiaoyi Zhang, a researcher at Microsoft who developed the technology.

“To mitigate the drawbacks…we created GazeSpeak, an eye-gesture communication system that runs on a smartphone, and is designed to be low-cost, robust, portable and easy to learn.”

The app is used by the listener by pointing their smartphone at the speaker. A chart that can be stuck to the back of the smartphone is then used by the speaker to determine which eye movements to make in order to communicate.

The sticker shows four grids of letters, which each correspond to a different eye movement. By looking up, down, left or right, the speaker selects which grids the letters they want belong to. The artificial intelligence algorithm is then able to predict the word or sentence they are trying to say.

Zhang’s research, Smartphone-Based Gaze Gesture Communication for People with Motor Disabilities, is set to be presented at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in May.(269)

We found out a tornado was coming. Seconds later, it blew away our house. The tornado last 4 minutes, to us, it felt like a lifetime.

On the day the tornado hit, there was no indication severe weather was on its way—the sky was blue and the sun had been out. The first alert my husband and I got came from some scrolling text on the TV. He ran upstairs to find me in our third floor bedroom and we changed the channel to our local one.

No sooner had we found coverage of the tornado than it was on top of us. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard. The house shook, and the power went out. The wind began to roar through the house. We had stairs to guide us to the relative safety of the first floor. Because the closet down there is underneath a brick staircase, it seemed like the strongest place in our town house.

I didn’t know how or if we would make it down the steps. I tried to move forward, but the intense pressure held me in place. In those seconds of   stillness, I could notice everything around me moving. As we reached the last few steps, our front door blew out. Pieces of glass that looked like crushed ice flew everywhere.

By the time I reached the closet, the tornado had been over us for about a minute. Jimmy pushed me down to the closet floor, but he couldn’t get inside himself. If I had let go, Jimmy would have flown right out the back of the house.

“Hold on! Hold on!” he yelled. But there was nothing in this closet to hold on to.

All of a sudden, Jimmy lifted off his feet like people in tornadoes do in the movies. I thought he was gone. And then everything stopped. He landed on his feet. In those first quiet moments, I couldn’t believe it was over.

Our neighbor says the storm lasted four minutes. In that time, four of the twelve town houses in our unit were completely destroyed. Of the houses left standing, ours suffered the most damage. Amazingly, none of us were severely injured.

The “best years of your life”? Maybe not, but you can learn to make the most of your high school days.

Learn to appreciate small things. Whether it's having a computer, having friends, having a good supply of food, a bed to sleep on, family that loves you, having a good education or simply being born in this world.    11       Be happy, and life will reward you. Remember that these are the last few years you will be able to enjoy yourself without having to worry about the responsibility of an adult, but make sure you prepare yourself for when you do become one.

    12       Unlike what many articles state, you don't have to be popular and have many friends to be happy.     13     Try to have friends that like you who you are, not just because you are wearing a certain brand of shoes or something like that. These are people who shop at the same store as you; not someone who will sympathize with you when your dog dies.

Be sociable.    14       While you only need 4 or 5 close friends, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to meet new people. Participating gives you something to do instead of sitting bored at home .

    15       Video games, for example, are good if you're the type who can get into that kind of thing. You should also find a hobby that is meaningful or practical. Use your “hobby time” to either volunteer (to gain practical skills for college apps, job resumes, and scholarships) or learn an instrument, or get into something else in the creative field like painting or dance.