【推荐2】It’s the holiday season, and you are on a long break from school and athletics. How do you make sure you stay fit during the holidays? Follow the five tips to keep yourself moving during the holidays.

Have a plan. Create a plan for your training sessions. This can make sure you “complete X amount of workouts a week” and have workouts scheduled into your day.     1    

Move.     2     This means getting up every 30-60 minutes to take a lap around the house, do a few push-ups or do anything to move your body. The worst thing you can do during this time off is to become sedentary (久坐的).

    3     Instead of completing training sessions alone, invite your family and friends to help. Bring a friend to the gym with you so you can spend quality time while also getting in some movement. Go for a family walk after breakfast.

Get enough sleep and rest. Enough rest will reduce the risk of injury. What’s more, it will provide a necessary mental reset. During the school year, you maintain a very busy schedule and sometimes sleep is not high on your priority list. While you have the time to rest, you should!    4    

Be realistic. This is the holiday season, after all!     5     You should expect to miss a session or two to sleep in a bit. Participating in the festivities and spending time with your friends and family will not affect your sport performance!

【推荐3】How to write tip-top articles

Articles, like all pieces of writing, can be divided into three sections, a beginning, a middle and an end.

The middle is the biggest part, and from the reader’s point of view it’s the most important — it is where the content lies.     1     It tends to be just a straightforward list of facts or events in time order.

    2     From the writer’s point of view, they need the most thought. Your opening paragraph has to grab the reader’s attention and pull them into piece that follows. It must be consistent with article as a whole and flow seamlessly (连贯流畅地) into it. Beginning give you a chance to shine as a writer.     3    

Endings are as important as introduction, and for the same reason. They are your last chance to impress readers and editors.     4     This can be done by summarizing what’s gone before or looking towards the future. It can work particularly well stylistically (文体上) if the end mirrors the beginning in some way.

The best way to get good at intros and endings is to read a lot of them in a wide variety of magazines and newspapers.     5     Your version will be different because the subject matter will be different.

All the above considered, you are bound to write excellent and impressive articles.

【推荐1】Some Asian children are becoming increasingly fat, a new report says. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) joint report was released on Monday. The two agencies call for better regulation of junk food and a limit on sugary drinks for children. They also call for action against malnutrition (营养不良), because a lack of food has prevented children who live in poverty growing normally and healthily-or rather, hurts their development.

Dorothy Foote is a UNICEF regional nutritional specialist. She says the lack of food affects children’s height and development inside their bodies. But at the same time, the area is facing high levels of overweight children.

The main reason for the food problems, the report says, is that there is more junk food available, which does not provide nutrition. Another problem is drinks with high sugar or high trans-fat, but low nutritional value. Lack of physical activity is also part of the problem, the report adds.

Foote says this is seen in nutrition across the area. She says people lack knowledge about what is needed and normal for healthy children’s development.

The economic growth in the area has brought unhealthy products to rural areas. Poor and middle-class families buy them and do not make the right choices to use healthier foods instead. Poor feeding practices, especially for children younger than two, mean ongoing high levels of malnutrition.

The report says governments need to regulate the marketing of junk food and sugary drinks to children. It also calls for better feeding practices for infants and young children, and treatment for severely malnourished children. And it says the countries should work to reduce poverty and make sure that children stay in school.

【推荐2】Overly technical language in science articles doesn’t just muddy the waters for non-experts—it can alienate readers, potentially shutting them out from scientific discussion and knowledge. That’s the conclusion of a study published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology, and it applies to general-interest articles just as much as to scientific papers.

“When we have a hard time conceptualizing information, we become really scared of it,” says lead author Hillary Shulman, a communication researcher. Scientists can create “unnecessary barriers” with words, she says. The study involved 650 members of the general public who read paragraphs on three cutting-edge topics: self-driving cars, robotic surgery and 3D bio-printing. The members are divided into two groups: for the experimental group, the paragraphs were loaded with jargon terms (行业术语), such as “remote ergonomic console”; for the control group, the paragraphs were written with words that are familiar to most readers, such as “separate control panel”.

After reading the passages, the study participants rated their experience in a series of questionnaires. Those who read jargon-filled paragraphs were more likely to say that they had difficulty understanding the language and the information. They were also significantly more likely to say that they weren’t good at science, and less likely to say that they would seek out information on the topic in the future. Some of the participants who read the jargon- heavy text received links to definitions of technical terms, but that didn’t reduce their frustrations or enhance their feelings of understanding.

Scientists can learn to cut back on their use of technical language when talking to people who are not researchers, says Ayelet Baram-Tsabari, a science-communication researcher. She co-authored a January study showing that scientists with media training can write articles that are just as engaging as pieces written by professional journalists. “Avoiding jargon is a fundamental part of that, but it’s not the whole story,” she says. To really connect with the public, she recommends that scientists tell a story that’s relevant to the audience. Members of the public aren’t the only ones who can be turned off by jargon, Shulman says. Students can be, too. “I teach a class with 400 undergrads,” she says. “When you’re training people, you can introduce jargon with a little more sensitivity. You’re trying to invite them into the environment.”

Of course, technical words still have an important function in science. Shulman’s paper is itself heavily loaded with terms such as “metacognition” and “self-schema”. “The irony of that is not lost on me,” she says. “When it comes to scientific literature, you can’t get anything published unless it’s full of jargon. Scientists want to speak to other scientists in the most precise way possible.”