【推荐1】We all know about the health benefits of swimming. It offers a great workout for the body—it builds endurance, muscle strength and cardiovascular fitness. If you don’t mind getting wet, it can be fun too.     1     Well, many people are fond of it, based on evidence that it can actually be good for us.

Cold-water swimming—sometimes called wild swimming—involves swimming in natural areas including ponds, rivers and the sea. Jumping in gives a short sharp shock to the body,     2     A cold dip might wake you up, but research has found it can have much bigger benefits than that for your body and mind. As well as being good exercise, spending time outdoors and by water improves wellbeing.

    3     One man who suffered constant pain after surgery claimed he was cured by taking a plunge in cold open water. And another swimmer, Sandria Simons, told the BBC “the immersion4 of your body in cold, salt water, just feeling like you’re at one with nature if you like, just feels amazing.”

But what is it that people are gaining from this chilly experience? Doctors say getting into cold water arouses a stress response, but the more you do it, your reaction to stress is reduced. It’s also thought to have a strong anti-inflammatory effect. But there are bigger benefits to this stress-reducing exercise. Some experts believe cold-water swimming helps ‘cross-adaptation’, where one form of stress prepares the body for another.     4    

So, if you’ re convinced that this is for you, take advice: approach it with caution, swim with a friend, and maybe start in the summer,     5    

【推荐2】Whenever we see a button, we are eager to press it because we know something will happen. This is true in most cases, for example on a doorbell and on the “on/off” button on the TV. But some buttons are actually fake, like the “close” button on a lift.

Many people are in the habit of pressing the “close” button because they don’t have the patience to wait for the lift doors to shut. But lifts’ “close” buttons are a complete scam, at least in the US—the doors will not close any faster no matter how hard you press.

It started in the 1990s when the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in the US, making sure that all lifts stayed open long enough so that people with disabilities could enter. Only US firefighters and repairmen can use the buttons to speed up the door-closing process if they have a code or special keys.

But to normal lift riders, the buttons aren’t completely useless. According to psychologists, fake buttons can actually make you feel better by offering you a sense of control.

“Perceived (能够感知的) control is very important. It reduces stress and increases well-being,” Ellen J. Langer, a psychology professor, said, “Having a lack of control is associated with depression.”

Experts have revealed that a lot of buttons that don’t do anything exist in our lives for this same purpose. For example, many offices in the US have fake thermostats (温度调节器) because people tend to feel better when they think they can control the temperature in their workspace.

But psychologists found it interesting that even when people are aware of these little “white lies”, they still continue to push fake buttons because as long as the doors eventually close, it is considered to be worth the effort.

“That habit is here to stay,” John Kounios, a psychology professor, said, ‘‘Even though I have real doubts about the traffic light buttons, I always press them. After all, I’ve got nothing else to do while waiting. So why not press the button in the hope that this one will work?”

【推荐1】In the world today, all of the people need recreation. We cannot work all the time if we are going to keep healthy and enjoy life.

Everyone has his own way of relaxing. Perhaps the most popular form is to take part in sports. There are team sports, such as basketball and football. There are also individual sports, such as swimming and running. Skating and mountain climbing are the most popular recreation for people who like to be outdoor. Not everyone who enjoys sports likes to take part in them. Many people like watching them on TV or listening to them on the radio. So many people like some forms of recreation, such as watching TV, singing and dancing. It doesn’t matter whether we like indoor recreation or take part in outdoor sports. It is important for everyone to relax from time to time and enjoy some forms of recreation.

【推荐2】The art of paper cutting in China has a long history, which originated from the 6th century. As paper became more affordable, paper cutting has become one of the most important types of Chinese folk art. Later, this art form spread to other parts of the world, with different areas adopting their own cultural styles. Because the paper cuts are often used to decorate doors and windows, they are sometimes referred to as “window flowers”.

Scissors and knives are the basic tools to make a paper cut, and the subjects are different in figures, such as flowers, bird, characters, familiar folk stories and fairy tales. It’s also common to see some Chinese characters on paper cuts. The most famous paper cutting characters in Chinese are words meaning “lucky” and “double happiness”. Even these days, Chinese people love to hang paper cutting of these two characters at their doors.

Chinese paper cuts were used for religious and ceremonial purposes in the past. They have been buried with the dead and burned at funerals. At the same time, paper cuts have special significance on festivals and holidays.

Paper cuts are made in many areas through the country; in general, the northern style is bold and free while the southern is delicate (精致的) and smooth.

People express wishes and hopes with paper cutting. As a national non-material culture heritage (遗产), paper cutting is really precious.

【推荐1】Getting good at a sport is difficult enough. Mastering one and then reinventing yourself after moving halfway across the world is another story, but Abigail Fernandes is doing just that. The 17-year-old student was a good shooter while studying in Britain. But when she moved back to Hong Kong, China, life suddenly felt a little empty without the eight hours a week of shooting training she’d become used to.

“I decided to go for a sport that might help me get fitter and allow me to protect myself in the future,” she explains. With its high intensity exercise, and chances to build strength, boxing fit the bill perfectly.

“Boxing teaches you patience, but best of all, a hunger to learn,” she said. “The values and lessons the sport teaches you can all be used in both your day-to-day life and education.”

Now, she has been boxing for just a little more than three years and loves the challenges that this sport offers. She trains 10 hours a week with her coach Jim, who has helped her to grow as an athlete (运动员) and a person.

Though she has made great progress, she thinks being able to deal with hits in the ring is her biggest challenge. “When you get hit in the ring, it’s so easy to burst into tears and give up, but this gets you nowhere,” she says. “I want to be able to take hits and accept them. These are skills that can only be learned through countless sessions of sparring (轻拳出击). The first time I sparred I cried, so I’m proud of myself for never turning down a sparring session,” she says.

Abigail says that though her training is pretty boring, she’ll keep practicing as she looks for a competition where she can put her skills to the test. “I have a long way to go,” she says, “but I want to learn everything this sport has to offer!”

【推荐2】The American Heart Association（AHA）says that too many people are spending far too much time on chairs and couches. “Based on existing evidence，we found that U.S. adults are sedentary for about six to eight hours a day，"said Deborah Rohm Young，chair of AHA panel that wrote the new advisory.

According to the AHA，growing evidence shows that，on its own，exercise isn't enough to cancel out the unhealthy effects of sitting for a long time. "Regardless of how much physical activity someone gets，long sedentary time could negatively influence the health of your heart and blood vessels，"Young explained.

The exact mechanisms behind the effect aren't yet clear. "There are many important factors we don't understand about sedentary time yet，"Young said. She stressed that，“the types of studies available identify trends but don't prove cause and effect. ”

"We don't have information about how much sedentary behavior is bad for health-the best advice at this time is to ‘sit less and move more'" she added.

How much more？According to the AHA，people should try to get at least 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous（剧烈的）exercise a day to reach the recommended 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week. That's healthier than trying to cram their weekly exercise into one or two days，according to the statement.

"The real risk simply comes down to the amount we sit，without there being a true medicine or method to control the harmful effects，"said Steinbaum，a preventive specialist in heart disease.

Still，society has evolved to encourage sitting，she added.

“Our lives have become focused around activities requiring us to be still-whether it be transportation，our computers，or the television or computer in our leisure time，"Steinbaum said. “Sociologically，instead of being active to be productive or to have enjoyment，our productivity and fun often requires minimal physical activities. ”

【推荐3】Singapore researchers say they have developed a form of electronic skin that can create a sense of touch. They hope their invention will give people with prosthetic hands (假肢手) the ability to identify different objects.

The skin device measures 1 square centimeter. The system contains 100 small sensors that attempt to recreate things like texture (质地), temperature and even pain. The researchers call the device Asynchronous Coded Electronic Skin, or ACES, which can process information faster than humans' nervous system. Machine learning methods trained the device to recognize 20 to 30 different textures. It can even correctly read Braille letters most of the time, the researchers say.

The system does not require the users' movement to work. Humans need to slide to feel texture. But in this case the skin, with just a single touch, is able to detect textures of different roughness.

A demonstration showed that the device could identify the difference between a soft ball and a solid plastic one. “When you lose your sense of touch, you essentially become numb and prosthetic users face that problem,” said Benjamin Tee, leader of the research team. “So by recreating an artificial version of the skin, for their prosthetic devices, they can hold a hand and feel the warmth and feel that it is soft.”

Tee said his idea for the device came from the movie Star Wars, when character Luke Skywalker loses his right hand and it is replaced with a robotic one. In the film, the new hand is able to experience touch sensations just like the real one.

The artificial skin technology is still going through experiments and development. But Tee said there had already been a lot of interest in the system, especially from the medical community. Tee said similar inventions that his team has developed include see-through skin that can repair itself when torn and a material for wearable electronic devices that gives off light.

【推荐1】It would be nice if eating a particular food could magically protect you against all the boring illnesses. It’s not that simple, of course. Hand washing remains your best defense against picking up illnesses, and sleep is a strong defense too. But what you eat does play an important part. Though it isn’t because of just one or two foods, what you eat in your daily diet have an effect on how weak or strong your immunity is.

We’d better eat fruits and vegetables every day. They contain key vitamins needed in the immune system. For example, Vitamin C and Ain foods help immune system work well to keep us healthy. Remember that eating the actual fruit or veggie is better than eating single-vitamin supplements.

Getting too little protein can weaken your immune system. Protein-rich foods supply the amino acids(氨基酸) you need to build important proteins in the body. Animal foods like beef and pork also contain zinc(锌), which your body uses to make t-cells.

Fermented foods are foods that are naturally protected by bacteria, and they’re good for the micro biome. That’s the name for the bacteria that live in your stomach, where a lot of cells in immunity actually live. Fermented foods like yogurt help beneficial bacteria develop fast in the stomach, leaving less room for harmful bacteria.

【推荐2】Louise Elisabeth Glück is an American poet. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in literature.

Louise Glück was born in New York City. She grew up on Long Island. Her father, Daniel, an immigrant from Hungary, helped invent and market the X-Acto Knife. Glück graduated in 1961 from George W. Hewlett High School. She went on to attend Sarah Lawrence College and later Columbia University; however, she did not graduate from either of them.

Glück won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993 for her collection The Wild Iris. Glück is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Academy of American Poet’s Prize, as well as numerous Guggenheim fellowships. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was previously a Senior Lecturer in English at Williams College in Williamstown, MA. Glück currently teaches at Yale University. She has also been a member of the faculty of the University of lowa and taught at Goddard College in Vermont.

Glück is the author of twelve books of poetry, including: A Village Li fe (2009), Averno(2006), The Seven Ages (2001), Vita Nova (1999), Meadowlands (1996), The Wild Iris(1992), Ararat (1990), and The Triumph o fAchilles (1985). The First Four Books collects her early poetry.

Glück has also published a collection of essays, Proofs and Theories : Essays on Poetry(1994). In 2001 Yale University awarded Louise Glück its Bollingen Prize in Poetry. Her other honors include the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Sara Teasdale Memorial Prize(Wellesley, 1986), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Anniversary Medal (2000), and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations and from the National Endowment for the Arts. A Village Life (2009) has been nominated(提名)for the Griffin Poetry Prize. The latest collection, Faith ful and Virtuous Night, was published in September 2014 and won the National Book Award for Poetry.

She is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1999 was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2003 she was named as judge for the Yale Series of Younger Poets and served in that position through 2010. Glück was appointed the US Poet Laureate from 2003-2004, succeeding Billy Collins.

【推荐3】Every year, thousands of new high school graduates pack their bags, move to new cities, and sign papers accepting loans, the money borrowed from a bank or lenders etc., which they might not be able to pay back. Without proper education on personal finance, especially as it relates to paying for college, young adults are guided into improper loan plans that result in years of debt after graduation. In order to set students up to succeed financially, it is important to educate students and parents on their financial options before school in the fall. The best way to support families heading for college is to require that every high school student take a personal finance class before graduation. This will help smooth the transition into adulthood.

The average student takes out at least one loan to cover the costs of their education each year. In 2014 the average student graduating from college carried a negative balance of about $20,000 in debt, which often spread over multiple lenders. Upon graduation, students rarely know exactly how much money they owe, and even though they are in the state of being unable to pay their debts, they cannot wipe out student loans. These students spend much of their adult lives paying off the gradual increasing debts.

A personal finance course would teach students how to manage their income and expenses, while helping to significantly reduce the amount of debt students carry into adulthood. By teaching students how to save money and live within their means, this course will provide the next generation with a foundation to progress financially. Students choosing to get a job straight out of high school would also benefit from finance education for these very reasons. With education on how to manage their finances, all young people will have the knowledge to make healthy decisions, leading them to improve good credit and purchase needed items like cars and homes with skill and confidence.

While not every young person makes financial mistakes, those who do can face years of difficulty trying to get their finances back under control. Rather than help them through these hard times when they happen, we should try to prevent them from happening at all. Making the completion of personal finance coursework a requirement for graduation would ensure that young people are at least aware of the basics of preserving a financial stability.