【推荐1】Benefits of sport

Every sport has its own specific health benefits. Swimming, for example, is an excellent physical activity as nearly all muscles are used when you swim. As a result, it provides a terrific full-body workout, improving coordination, flexibility, balance and muscle strength.     1    

Sport, as well as being a physical activity, has a mental aspect too. It can help define who you are and who you can become. Sport builds character and promotes the development of a number of qualities that are essential for a successful and fulfilling life.     2    

Sport requires self-discipline, without which there will always be the temptation to simply give up. In order to excel in sport, you will have to set goals, make plans and persevere with thoughts and actions, even without immediate rewards.

    3     Everyone has their ups and downs, their triumphs and their tragedies and, therefore, a big part of life means having to deal with success and failure. Engaging in competitive sport will help you understand that winning a competition does not make you superior to everyone else and that losing is only a temporary setback, from which you can learn and progress.

Sport will help you understand the importance of teamwork. It will show you that you often need to rely on others for your success.     4    

The world of sport is a fairground of exciting opportunities where you can discover who you really are.     5    

【推荐3】Tai chi, a traditional form of Chinese martial art that combines slow, gentle movements and postures with mindfulness, is known to increase flexibility and improve balance. Now, a new research suggests it’s better than aerobic (有氧的) exercises for lowering blood pressure in people with prehypertension (高血压前期).

In the study, researchers in China employed 342 adults whose average age was 49. Roughly half the people participated in the supervised aerobic exercise, including jogging, climbing stairs, brisk walking and cycling. The other half was trained to practice tai chi. Both groups got hour-long sessions four times a week.

After 12 months, those in the tai chi group saw bigger drops in their blood pressure than those in the aerobic exercise group. Besides, nearly 22% of the people who practiced tai chi saw their blood pressure fall to within normal range, compared with nearly 16% of people in the aerobic exercise group. Fewer patients in the tai chi group went on to develop hypertension than in the aerobic exercise group.

So what’s it about tai chi that helps lower blood pressure? The practice tends to cause more of a response from the parasympathetic (副交感) nervous system, says Ruth Taylor-Piliae, a professor at the University of Arizona’s College of Nursing, who wasn’t involved in the study. The parasympathetic nervous system is the network of nerves that relaxes your body after periods of stress or danger.

Tai chi is appealing as it requires little space or equipment. “I think the beauty of tai chi is that you don’t have to have a special gym membership,” Taylor-Piliae says. “Once you learn tai chi, you can do it anytime, anyplace and anywhere. It does provide that calming and relaxing effect.”

Studies have also shown practicing tai chi can help reduce the risk of falls, improve balance and walking speed in older adults, and reduce depression and anxiety. “But you have to have enough ‘dose’ of tai chi,” Taylor-Piliae says. “You can’t just do it one hour, one time.”

【推荐1】Not too long ago, 41-year-old Garrett Fisher flew a small airplane close to the surface of the largest glacier in Norway. In that environment, the plane carrying a man who pursues glaciers seemed almost like a toy. Fisher is trying to photograph every glacier on Earth before some of them disappear.

Scientists say many glaciers are getting smaller because Earth’s average temperature is increasing. Information from the European Environment Agency, or EEA, says glaciers in the Alps have lost about half of their volume since 1900 and that by 2100, the size of European glaciers could decrease by between 22 percent and 84 percent. Historical records of the size of glaciers in Europe also show that glaciers are now shrinking faster. This has pushed Fisher to combine his love of flying and photography to photograph Earth’s remaining glaciers before it’s too late.

Fisher believes his photographs can be of great value to future generations. So, he has launched the Global Glacier Initiative, a non-profit group to support and show his work. He plans to open his photos to the public for research.

Fisher flew a small plane that has a smell of oil and feels like an old car. It was his choice to have the dangerous flying. “The weather is bad and the flying is technically challenging, ”Fisher said. Some people would ask, “Why risk flying over glaciers when satellites have already given pictures of them?” Fisher said that satellite images don’t catch the beauty of glaciers the way his photos can. His photos show the colors, shapes, and shadows as the light from the sun hits the glaciers.

Fisher has paid for his glacier photography with his own money. But it is costly. Money is running out and Fisher is looking for people who will help support his work. He hopes his photos will be a reminder to people. He is trying to obtain the perfect image, which is so beautiful that it can make people and policymakers act.

【推荐2】Today, we are told children don’t spend enough time in the fresh air. Many of them are addicted to a screen either on a computer or a TV—they seem to be living in a virtual world. They have lost touch with nature.

But now 400 organizations in the UK, from playgroups to the National Health Service, are encouraging children to have some “wild time”. They want kids to swap at least 30 minutes of watching TV or playing computer games for time playing outside. Activities such as building dens, climbing trees, rummaging for conkers and playing hide-and-seek are just some of the things kids can do. Even if they live in a city, they can go on adventures in the garden or the park.

Children often need a helping hand from their mums and dads. They need to be shown what to do and where to go. Andy Simpson from the National Health Service says, “We want parents to see what this magical wonder product does for their kids’ development, independence and creativity, by giving wild time a go.”

So despite the complicated world that young people grow up in now, it seems that going back to basics and experiencing “nature’s playground” is what modern children need. David Bond from Project Wild Thing says, “We need to make more space for wild time in children’s daily routine, freeing this generation of kids to have the sort of experiences that many of us took for granted.”

This might sound a bit old-fashioned to you but there’s no age limit on enjoying yourself!

【推荐3】Some wonderfully creative uses of X­rays have been in the world of art. But the most impressive one is to uncover what has been covered up. Details unfolded by an X­ray of a painting can't be seen any other way. For example, in the past, paintings were often repaired if small pieces of paint fell off the canvas(帆布). These repairs cannot be seen just by looking at the painting. It takes an X­ray to discover where the repairs have been made.

An X­ray of a painting is one of the best ways to tell if it was created by a famous painter or if it is a forgery(伪造). If there is a question as to whether an old master has painted a certain painting or not, X­rays are made and compared to those of paintings that are known to be original. If the brushstrokes(笔迹), for example, are shown to be totally different from those in other works done by a certain artist, then the painting is proved to be a fake copy.

Since modern paints are usually made from different materials than paints of hundreds of years ago, the image they leave on an X­ray film looks different. This is another way X­rays can be used to spot a forgery. A modern artist will try to make a forgery look hundreds of years old by painting dirty varnish on it or by using artificial means to get the varnish to look cracked. To the naked eye the forgery may look old, but when a careful study of the X­ray image is made, the deception is obvious.

It was common many years ago for an artist to finish a painting, decide it wasn't any good, and paint a completely different picture on top of it. Or artists would paint over others' work – it was their version of recycling. Taking an X­ray is the only way to find out if there is a picture underneath the picture you see with your eyes. Sometimes museums will be more interested in the painting beneath than the one on top, and will restore the older one by having the top layer painstakingly removed.