【推荐1】As energy costs rise across Europe, some people are taking an opportunity to head off to warmer climates in order to cut down on bills. Greece is one of a number of countries trying to draw visitors in for the winter-with a $20 million advertising campaign.

Famous for its sun, golden beaches and medieval city, the island of Rhodes in the south Aegean Sea is a magnet(磁铁)for northern Europeans. More than three million flock to the island every summer, but some also come in the winter.

In order to capitalize on the energy crisis, the Greek government launched a series of winter tourism campaigns aimed at attracting European visitors seeking an alternative to the bitter cold and high energy bills. Places like Santorini, Crete and Rhodes were high on the list, as temperatures there remain in the high teens.

However, the campaign to advertise Greece abroad hasn’t attracted as many visitors as expected. “The campaign from the ministry is in the right direction-I think they’re doing things right,”says Dionissis Tsiligiris, tourism marketing director for the Rodos Palace hotel and convention center in Rhodes. “But when it comes to winter tourism, Spain will always be the first choice,”Tsiligiris continues. Hotels and tour operators there just have more exposure. So competing for winter tourism is very difficult, as it’s a smaller market.

While it’s true that fewer people travel abroad than in the summer,entering the winter market could seem quite easy when you have the two key ingredients-almost guaranteed sun and well-established tourist facilities. But what’s making it difficult, according to Ashley Quint, senior holiday designer at a UK travel agency, is the message the government is sending. “Tourist boards and local governments can overcomplicate things sometimes and the message doesn’t necessarily come across. In this case, there needs to be a simple and clear message. In addition, broadening it out a little bit may be better, because we see very little here. ”

It seems that making Greece a winter destination for travelers to enjoy and save might need more than just the attraction of warmer weather.

【推荐2】How Taking Short Vacations Can Improve Your Well-Being at Work

Without doubt, the nonstop demands of work and life can be bad for your well-being, exhausting your physical resources and cognitive capacities-and possibly resulting in adverse health and performance results.

    1     Research emphatically shows that vacations improve our physical and mental health while also boosting our performance at work. Perhaps surprisingly, they can even increase the likelihood of receiving a pay raise or promotion.

    2     In fact, nearly half of U.S. workers take less time off than their job allows, leaving an average of 9.5 days of paid time off (PTO) on the table, according to a 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center. And for 30 percent of employees, this unused vacation time doesn’t roll over to the next year.     3     taking mini-vacations throughout the year can improve their overall well-being. That means you can just use a long weekend to explore a new small town in your state, go camping in a national park, or do a biking tour of your local wineries.

We know that being on vacation feels good and that it’s good for us.     4     Naturally, there is the expense, and the bill involved in long trips-room, board, airfare, rail, sightseeing, everything-can be daunting.     5     The Pew survey of over 5,900 U.S. workers found that 49 percent of participants indicated they worried they might fall behind at work if they take more vacation time.

No wonder, then, that most people don’t use all their vacation time. And over half (52 percent) of U.S. employees work while on vacation.

【推荐1】Human activity emits far less methane(甲烷) than carbon dioxide, but methane has a bigger impact on the earth. Over the course of 20 years, a ton of the gas will warm the atmosphere about 86 times more than a ton of CO₂. As a result, methane has been responsible for 23% of the rise in temperatures since pre-industrial times. Carbon dioxide gets most of the attention, but unless methane emissions are limited, there is little hope of stabilizing the climate.

Unfortunately, methane emissions have been anything but stable. After briefly pausing in the early 2000s, atmospheric concentrations of the gas started rising again in 2007. A global inventory (清单) concluded last year, found that humans were largely to blame. Chief among the reasons for the rise are the gassy output of livestock farming, rice cultivation and the fossil-fuel industry. Agriculture and energy each make up roughly one-third of annual methane emissions.

By how much do methane emissions need to fall? Carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for centuries, making it hard to reduce its atmospheric concentrations. By contrast, methane has a half-life of roughly ten years, which means that it degrades quickly. If new emissions can be cut to below the rate at which old emissions reduce, the concentration of methane lingering in the atmosphere will soon fall, slowing global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that, to keep temperatures between 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial levels, human methane emissions must drop to 35% below where they stood in 2010 by mid-century.

Politicians and the public tend to worry about carbon-dioxide emissions but neglect the effects of cutting methane. But dealing with the gas would have a large effect rapidly and at relatively low cost. Governments are supposed to firm up their commitments to cut emissions under the Paris agreement. It should go further and include a specific target for methane.

【推荐2】A large body of evidence shows that exercise strengthens our brains. In studies, active people generally have more gray matter. Gray matter is made up of the brain’s essential, working neurons(神经元). Fit people also tend to have healthier white matter, which supports and connects neurons. Partly as a consequence of these, exercise is strongly linked with lower risks of dementia(痴呆) and other memory problems with age.

But exercise may increase exposure to air pollution and previous studies have shown the opposite effects of air pollution on the brain. So, what happens then?

Some researchers looked at thousands of middle-aged adults from the UK Bio-bank. The researchers characterized their physical activity patterns depending on the amount of physical activity collected from the devices researchers asked them to wear. They then evaluated air pollution levels where the people lived, asked the participants to complete brain scans, and finally, compared them. Researchers found that exercise was linked to excellent brain health for people in areas with little air pollution. But the beneficial associations almost disappeared for exercisers living in areas with even moderate(中度的) air pollution. They had less gray matter and more unhealthy white matter than people living and exercising away from pollution, even if their workouts were similar.

Extending these findings in a follow-up study, the same scientists found that the more people exercised, the less likely they were to develop dementia over time—provided their local air was clear. When it was moderately polluted, though, they had an increased long-term risk of dementia, whether they exercised or not.

These studies increase the urgency for developing more-effective regulations related to air quality. Public policy could be used to address people’s exposure to air pollution during exercise. For example, since a great amount of air pollution comes from traffic, promoting running or bicycling along paths far from heavy traffic may be more beneficial.

【推荐3】By 2050, 68% of the global population will live in cities. That’s 2.5 billion more people than today. In Europe, three out of four of us already live in urban areas, and the consequences of that are becoming clear. Researchers estimate that nine million people die every year as a direct result of air pollution. As our cities grow and more people move into already crowded spaces, what do we need to do to transform our urban areas into healthy places to live? An increasing body of research tells us that we should be letting nature back in.

Green spaces in cities mitigate the effects of pollution and can reduce a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect, which refers to heat trapped in built-up areas. The effect appears in towns and cities where the heat generated by people, transport and industry is trapped in the narrow roads and concrete structures, unable to escape to the atmosphere. This can bring the temperature in urban areas up 3 — 4°C higher than the surrounding countryside, and with that comes a severe cycle. Increased temperatures in summer lead to an increased demand for cooling. This expands our energy consumption, which in turn build up fossil fuel consumption, increasing pollutants in the air and harmful smog on our streets.

Planning cities to include green spaces wherever possible is the first step in making our urban areas healthier. For example, adding a layer of vegetation to rooftops and creating green roofs has proven to reduce the urban heat island effect. Trees in our streets also play their part, and a variety of tree species can have a profound effect. Simply having access to green spaces in cities can do wonders for our stress levels and concentration at work. “People need to interact with nature whenever the opportunity arises. Something as simple as a five-to-ten-minute break during the workday can improve well-being and boost productivity,” Cecil, an expert studying nature in cities says.