【推荐2】What would happen if you replace all drinks with water?

We all know what harmful drinks can cause： obesity, heart problems, stomach pain, skin diseases, caries. This list sounds so scary.     1    What would happen with our bodies then?

Chris Bailey, a popular blogger and lecturer, carried out a month-long research about this topic. His conclusion is really impressive and surprising!

You lose weight faster.

Yes, you do! No special diet is required! You replace all drinks with water for 9 days, and you'll lose as equal amount of calories as when jogging for eight kilometers a day!     2    

You speed up your metabolism.

Drinking just 17 fluid ounces (盎司) of water in the morning increases your metabolism (新陈代谢) by 24 percent.     3    And you'll see the impressive result very soon.

Your brain works better.

Did you know your brain is 75 to 85 percent water? Nothing else, just water! So by drinking, you feel it, which helps you concentrate. Drink water to work more efficiently, cope with all daily tasks quickly, and stay energized even late in the evening! Doesn't this sound like a dream?

You eat less.

Sometimes we confuse hunger with thirst.     4    Try it out to drink some water next time you feel hungry. It really works.

Your body releases toxins faster.

Water washes out harmful substances, clearing, moistening your skin and preventing aging. Want to look young and fresh as long as possible? Drink a glass of water right now.

    5    

Five glasses of water a day lower the risk of a heart attack by 41 percent! And there are similar effects on other diseases like bladder conditions, bowel cancer…Want to avoid wasting money on doctors? Just drink more water!

You save a lot of money

How much money do you spend on coffee and juices per week? Well. I don't want to say how much I do because my spending is massive. The price of water is much lower than that of other drinks Think about it!

【推荐2】It’s not usual for your municipality (市政当局) to give you money — actually more like a voucher (代金券) — but Miami-Dade County in Florida is switching things up a bit and doing just that for residents who leave their cars home.

The county is troubled with big traffic jams and was looking for a way to reduce traffic and improve the quality of life for the residents. That’s why county leaders decided to team up with a new mobility app Veloci a that believes in rewarding people every time they commute (通勤) via public transportation.

Miami’s mayor Carlos Gimenez announced, “Veloci a is a revolutionary mobility app that offers rewards for smart decisions that help people break the habit of traveling alone in cars. The ultimate goal of the program is to reduce traffic and ear bone missions.”

The idea came from a Fastrack Institute — nonprofit foundation. It’s easy to use, just download the app on your iPhone and then leave your car at home and the mobility app tracks what transportation you use. Residents that use trains or buses, or even use bicycles, or their feet to get to work will earn points. The points, according to Veloci a will translate into a virtual currency in your iPhone.

The case of Miami Dade County is not alone. Municipalities worldwide are working on ways to reduce car use to cut back on greenhouse emissions and to make cities more livable. Places like Amsterdam, Netherlands and Hamburg, Germany are committed to making walking and biking the dominant form of transportation in their city-centers. Other cities are providing free public transportation to cut down on car use.

David Winterstein, Velocia CEO said, “If more US municipalities adopt programs like the Velocia app, it could go a long way to reduce smog, greenhouse gasses, and wasted time sitting in jammed streets. It really would be a win-win for city residents.”

【推荐3】2500 years ago, Socrates (苏格拉底) complained that writing would harm students.

Today a different heated debate is ongoing about the dangers of another technology —computers — and the typing people do on them. As primary-school pupils and PhD hopefuls return for a new school year in the northern hemisphere, many will do so with a greater-than-ever reliance on computers to take notes and write papers. Some parents of younger students are frustrated that their children are not just encouraged but required to carry laptops to class. Lot s of teachers complain of uncontrolled distraction in classrooms, with students reading and messaging instead of listening to lectures.

A line of research shows the benefits of an “innovation” prior to computers: hand-writing. Studies have found that writing on paper can improve everything from recalling a random series of words to facilitating a better conceptual grasp of complicated ideas. For learning material by rote, from the shapes of letters to the quirks of English spelling, the benefits of using a pen or pencil lie in how the motor and sensory memory of putting words on paper reinforces that material. The arrangement of squiggles (不规则的曲线) on a page feeds into visual memory: people might remember a word they wrote down in French class as being at the bottom-left on a page, for example.

Another one of the best-demonstrated advantages of writing by hand seems to be in superior note-taking. In a study from 2014 by Pam Mueller and Danny Oppenheimer, students typing wrote down almost twice as many words and more passages word for word from lectures, suggesting they were not understanding so much as rapidly copying the material. Hand-writing, which takes longer for nearly all university-level students, forces note-takers to synthesize ideas into their own words. This aids conceptual understanding at the moment of writing. Besides, those taking notes by hand also perform better on tests when students are later able to study from their notes.

Socrates may or may not have had a point about the downsides of writing. But no one would remember, or much less care, if his student Plato had not noted his teachings down for the benefit of later generations.