With its wonderful coastline and many historic sites, Croatia is the ideal destination for the family wishing to combine beach with a bit of culture.

BEST TIME TO GO

High season for Croatia is from July to August but the Croatian coast is wonderful from spring on. Swimming is generally possible from May to September when the sea is still around 23°C. But if you arrive in April, you may enjoy Carnival in Rijeka.

COST

Croatia is still reasonably inexpensive as a Mediterranean destination, but prices go up in July and August. Privately-run rooms are also often a better bet than hotels, which tend to be unfriendly. If you haven’t made a reservation, the local tourist offices or travel agencies will be able to help. There is usually a 30% discount for stays longer than three nights. The agencies offer a very reasonable deal on a flight plus car hire.

GETTING AROUND

Croatia is a small country; it only takes a few hours at most to travel from one region to another. It might be worth staying in one place for the whole holiday and doing day trips. The buses, rather than the trains, reach the places of great distance.

John B. Goodenough, an engineering professor from the University of Texas at Austin(UT-Austin), won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on developing lithium-ion batteries (锂电池). He was the oldest person to win a Nobel Prize.

Goodenough, who was born in 1922, identified and developed the key materials that can power portable electronics, leading to the wireless revolution. Today, batteries using Goodenough’s inventions are used worldwide for mobile phones, power tools, laptops, tablets and other wireless devices, as well as electric vehicles.

Goodenough received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Yale University at 21 and a doctor’s degree in physics from the University of Chicago when he was 30. He beat the odds against him, first overcoming dyslexia (阅读困难症) as a child, and then the claim of a teacher who told him in his 20s that he had started too late to be successful in physics.

He began his career in 1952 at Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he laid the groundwork for the development of random-access memory (RAM) for the digital computer.

After MIT, Goodenough became a professor and head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Oxford, where in 1979 he discovered it would be possible to store energy in rechargeable batteries through lithium cobalt oxide (锂钴氧化物). That discovery helped develop the lithium-ion battery.

Goodenough joined UT-Austin in 1986, where his groundbreaking work continued.

At 98 years old, he still continues to push the boundaries of materials science. In spite of the lithium-ion battery being well-developed and available as a commercial product, it has its limitations. It can’t be charged too fast or overcharged. Goodenough still wants to see some new developments.

“I hope UT-Austin still keeps me employed,” Goodenough once joked.

Every Thursday morning, a snake-like queue forms outside streetwear brand Supreme’s store in Soho as fans line up in the hope of walking away with bags filled with limited edition clothing “dropped” that day. Among them are teenagers. They’ve come for the purpose of buying items to resell on Depop, a youth-targeted auction(竞拍) app.

And it’s not just Supreme. Generation Z—those born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s—are buying from streetwear brands such as Yeezy, and Nike to resell on platforms such as Depop, and eBay.

Forget delivering newspapers or working in the local supermarket. Instead, these teens are devoting hours every week to reselling limited edition goods, a job that’s earning them up to several thousand pounds a month.

Reuben Wall was just 14 when he became hooked on selling items online after he bought one extra Rubik’s Cube by accident. “I sold it for double the price that I got it for,” says Wall, now 18. He then spent the money buying two more and sold those on eBay, before purchasing more. From there he moved on to reselling other items. He says he will read comments and polls(投票) on Twitter to evaluate the popularity of a certain product. But sometimes items will “brick”, so sometimes he takes a loss.

Depop founder Simon Beckerman says the app has “opened the doors” to a new generation using a marketplace for the first time. He says Generation Z aren’t afraid of building businesses from their bedrooms. “There’s very little risk in trying,” he adds. “There’s so much uncertainty around us nowadays that being your own boss is a very appealing idea.”

An National Health Service (NHS) study shows that after a five-day training course, nurses and psychology (心理学) graduates can treat depression as well as expert therapists (治疗专家). A cheap talking therapy, known as behavioural activation (BA), was just as effective as the gold-standard treatment, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) (认知行为疗法), in easing even serious depression.

David Richards, professor of mental health services research at the University of Exeter, who led the study, said, “Our findings challenge the advantage of CBT, the leading evidence-based psychological therapy for depression. BA should be a frontline treatment for depression in the UK.”

The NHS is attempting to offer talking therapy to 600,000 more people a year by 2020 under a plan to improve mental health care, and bosses are likely to welcome cheaper choices at a time when finances are tight.

BA aims to help people with depression by changing how they act, encouraging them to deal with problems through more positive activities and avoiding ones that make the problem worse. CBT encourages people to challenge their thoughts to avoid negative beliefs.

The study offered 440 patients either CBT or BA, and a year later two thirds of both groups said that symptoms were less than half as bad as they had been.

In the NHS, BA is likely to be offered by either nurses or psychology graduates with some mental health experience.

Liz England, of the Royal College of GPs, said, “Anything that makes it easier for our patients to get psychological therapies is something to be welcomed.”