【推荐1】Ways to Reduce College Stress

At any given point in time, most college students are stressed about something.     1     While having stress in your life is normal and often unavoidable, being stressed is something you can control. Follow these tips to learn how to keep your stress in check and how to relax when it gets to be too much.

•     2    This may seem ridiculous at first, but it is listed first for a reason: when you’re feeling stressed, you feel like you’re on edge and everything is barely being held together. Don’t beat yourself up too badly about it! It’s all normal, and the best way to handle stress is to not get more stressed about being stressed.

• Get some sleep.     3       Getting more sleep can help your mind refocus, recharge, and re-balance. This can mean a quick nap, a night when you go to bed early, or a promise to yourself to stick with a regular sleep schedule. Sometimes, one good night’s sleep can be all you need to hit the ground running among a stressful time.

• Get some healthy food. Similar to your sleep habits, your eating habits may have gone by the wayside when you start school. Think about what and when you’ve eaten over the past few days. You may think your stress is psychological.     4     Go to eat something balanced and healthy: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and protein.

• Get some exercise. You may think that if you don’t have the time to sleep and eat properly, you definitely don^’t have the time to exercise. Fair enough, but if you’re feeling stressed, it may be that you need to squeeze it in somehow. Exercise doesn’t necessarily have to involve a 2-hour, exhausting workout at the campus gym.     5    

【推荐2】In an adult’s opinion, sleep is a precious commodity. Usually we don’t feel as if we get enough sleep, which is something we are always longing for.    1     For some reason, kids never acknowledge the feeling of “tiredness” as meaning “I need sleep”. What’s more, for many children, sleep represents an unwanted separation from the important people in their lives.    2    

How do parents make the problem worse? I hear so many parents complain that they can’t get their children to go to sleep. Let’s take a close look at this concept. We cannot make a child go to sleep, but we can make them go to bed.    3     If you even try to control a child’s ability to go to sleep, you are losing the battle before you begin. Even our children themselves cannot really control when they go to sleep. The most we as parents can do is to make the environment helpful to sleep.    4    

It’s time that you decided what your own feelings are about bedtime and analyzed your feelings and needs, and your child’s feelings and needs.     5     The most important guideline is that you decide what you are going to do, and then stick with it. Parents usually create their own problems by dancing around and between all the different bedtime methods until they get themselves angry and their kids confused. So, the first step is to decide exactly how you will handle bedtime. The second step is to communicate your rules to your child. The third step is to carry out the plan.

【推荐1】Holiday in Sydney is a good choice for people trying to get away from cold winter days. You can spend Christmas, New Year, and Chinese New Year in Sydney. All hotels in Sydney are also prepared for business activities. The Christmas spirit is more wonderful when evening falls. Nightlife in Sydney is full of energy, but during holidays it owns a special taste.

White sandy beaches are located only within a short walk from hotels. You will find beach barbecues (烧烤), surfing, and diving under the sea very enjoyable. There are also public street festivals such as Chinese New Year between January and February. You need to book hotels in advance because they are often filled fast.

Running from Christmas to the New Year, numerous musical events are held in different places, from hotel restaurants to the Royal Botanical Gardens. Christmas carol (欢歌) performances are free for visitors to enjoy when the Sydney Youth Orchestra plays at the Royal Botanical Gardens.

Chinese New Year is one of Sydney’s annual (每年的) attractions. 500,000 people will gather in the city, so if you are traveling to Sydney, this is a reason to extend your vacations. Hotels near Belmore Park offer food events during Chinese New Year, and Darling Harbor runs traditional Dragon Boat Races. Others offer tours to the Sze Yup Temple, a Taoist (道教) Church located in Evergreen.

Seasonal food is also offered at the restaurants, cafes, and room service. In addition, New Year brings the opportunity to celebrate dining with other guests at your hotel.

【推荐2】A new APP uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to tell you what your pet is thinking. It’s called Happy Pets and it analyses an animal’s facial features, tells you what breed(血统) it is and indicates which of the five most common animal emotions—happy, angry, neutral, sad and scared.

The Happy Pets app uses AI, or machine learning. It’s a technology that’s used for vision in robotics and self-driving cars and it works by taking in images and assigning importance to them. One common use for AI is in facial recognition technology. Many of us can unlock our mobile phones with an image of our face and it’s important part of security processes in, for instance, airports.

But this is the first time this kind of technology has been used for animals. It then had to learn to recognize facial features. This is sophisticated because photos can be taken in so many different ways: from the side, above, below, in bright light. And different animals can have such different facial features. Think about how different the noses of a border collie(边境牧羊犬) and bulldog are, for instance. Once the AI behind Happy Pets had learned all this, it then had to be able to detect emotions based on specific facial features that are associated with each emotion, which it has learned from thousands of examples. For instance, if a dog tightens its eyes and mouth while changing the position of its ears in a particular way, it’s a sign of being scared.

In an online article for Melbourne University’s Pursuit, the researchers write they’re happy with how the app performs. The researchers would love feedback about how they could develop the app further.

【推荐3】Tina Brigham, a 50 - year - old store owner from a suburb of Washington, DC, rose to the puzzles while waiting for customers. “If it’s a 30 - minute puzzle, I try to figure it out in 12, ” she said. After several years, she found she could easily put together employee work schedules in her head. “I think my brain seems sharper and more focused because of the game. ”, she said.

The games do seem to work. In one 2020 study, Gary Small, chair of psychiatry at Hackensack University Medical Center, found that 1, 091 women and men who often played cards, bingo, or did crossword puzzles had sharper thinking and memory skills… equal to an IQ up to 5. 6 points higher … than those who hardly did. The study doesn’t prove that the puzzles directly led to the higher IQs, but it does show that even people who increased their game - playing in their 70s seemed to get brain benefits within a few years.

Exactly how games sharpen memory and cognitive(认知的) function is still mysterious. But researchers has found how the brain reacts to all sorts of outside stimulation(刺激). Small later included 60 women and men finishing Latin squares. As the puzzles grew more difficult with fewer clues, players slowed down and made more mistakes. That’s when he discovered something surprising: More regions of the brain got involved, especially in the area involved with problem - solving, judgment, and memory.

Small suggests that if you find yourself debating whether to spend the next 20 minutes taking a walk or playing a brain game, you should choose the walk. Physical activity can help carry oxygen and fuel to your brain cells. “f you do one thing to help your brain, I’d say its exercise. ” he says. “Getting good steep and keep a balanced diet are also important. Brain games work best as part of a whole package of brain - healthy strategies(策略). And remember: A little fun never hurts.

【推荐1】Learning a Second Language

Some people learn a second language easily. Others have trouble learning a new language. How can you help yourself learn a new language, such as English? There are several ways to make learning English a little easier and more interesting.

The first step is to feel positive about learning English. If you believe that you can learn, you will learn. Be patient. You do not have to understand everything all at once. It is natural to make mistakes when you learn something new. We can learn from our mistakes.In other words, do not worry about taking risks.

The second step is to practice your English. For example, write a diary every day. You will get used to writing it in English, and you will feel comfortable expressing your ideas in English. Several weeks later, you will see that your writing is improving. In addition, you must speak English every day. You can practice with your classmates outside class. You will all make mistakes, but gradually you will be able to communicate in English.

The third step is to keep a record of your language learning. You can write this in your   journal. After each class, think about what you did. Did you answer a question correctly? Did you understand something the teacher explained? Perhaps the lesson was difficult, but you tried to understand it.

You must be positive about learning English and believe that you can do it.It is important to practice every day and make a record of your achievements. You will enjoy learning English, and you will feel more confident in yourself.

【推荐3】If medical workers are at the center of the fight against COVID-19, media professionals are the ones right behind them.

“For the first time in my career, I felt it could cost my life,” said Liao Jun, a reporter of Xinhua News Agency, at a media briefing (简报) in Wuhan on March 8, according to China Daily. Liao has been reporting the disease by visiting hospitals and local communities for months. “My colleagues call me ‘the iron lady’,” she said. “For reporters, regardless of gender, it’s our responsibility and duty to go to the core infection zones and listen to people’s stories.”

That sense of mission can’t be stopped. Zhan Song, a Changjiang Daily reporter, has been reporting in Wuhan. “If I do get infected someday, I think I’ll start livestreaming (直播) interviews at whichever hospital I may land in and report about patients’ lives there,” he said.

Reporters outside Wuhan may not face the same level of risk, but they are also doing whatever they can to get to the center of the news. Li Xueqing, for example, is a China Daily reporter, based in New York. She wrote a story about a group of Wuhan University schoolmates in New York who volunteered to donate medical equipment to hospitals in Wuhan. She thought about doing the interview over the phone, but she changed her mind.

“Anyone from inside China can do a phone interview,” said Li. “That’s not why I’m here.”

So she started to tag along with the volunteers, watching them do everything – from staying up late contacting the suppliers to dealing with piles of shipping paperwork. “After the story was published online, I saw a comment below that said, ‘Thank you for letting me see all the details behind the scenes.’ I knew it was all worth it,” said Li.

As medical workers continue to fight on the front line, we must remember the ones who also risk their lives to deliver our daily news: the media.

【推荐1】Tiny microbes(微生物)are at the heart of a new agricultural technique to manage harmful greenhouse gas. Scientists have discovered how microbes can be used to turn carbon dioxide into soil-enriching limestone(石灰石), with the help of a type of tree that grows in tropical areas, such as West Africa.

Researchers have found that when the Iroko tree is grown in dry, acidic soil and treated with a combination of natural fungi(霉菌)and other bacteria, not only does the tree grow well, it also produces the mineral limestone in the soil around its root.

The Iroko tree makes a mineral by combining Ca from the earth with CO2 from the atmosphere. The bacteria then create the conditions under which this mineral turns into limestone. The discovery offers a new way to lock carbon into the soil, keeping it out of the atmosphere. In addition to storing carbon in the trees leaves and in the form of limestone. the mineral in the soil makes it more suitable for agriculture.

The discovery could lead to reforestation(重新造林) projects in tropical countries, and help reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the developing world. It has already been used in West Africa and is being tested in Bolivia, Haiti and India.

The findings were made in a three-year project involving researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Granada, Lausanne and Delft University of Technology. The project examined several microbiological methods of locking CO2 as limestone, and the Iroko-bacteria way showed best results. Work was funded by the European Commission under the Future&Emerging Technologies(FET)scheme.

Dr Bryne Ngwenya of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, who led the research, said:“By taking advantage of this natural limestone-producing process, we have a low-tech,safe, readily employed and easily operating way to lock carbon out of the atmosphere, while improving farming conditions in tropical countries.”

【推荐2】My mother used to ask me what is the most important part of the body. Through the years I would guess at what I thought was the correct answer.

When I was younger, I thought sound was very important to us as humans, so I said, “My ears, Mommy.” She said, “No. Many people are deaf. But you keep thinking about it and I will ask you again soon.”

Several years passed before she asked me again. Since making my first attempt, I had contemplated (仔细考虑) the correct answer. So this time I told her, “Mommy, sight is very important to everybody, so it must be our eyes.” She looked at me and told me, “You are learning fast, but the answer is not correct because there are many people who are blind.”

Over the years, Mother asked me a couple more times and always her answer was, “No, but you are getting smarter every year, my child.”

Then last year, my Grandpa died. Everybody was hurt. Everybody was crying. My Mom looked at me when it was our turn to say our final good-bye to Grandpa. She asked me, “Do you know the most important body part yet, my dear?”

I was shocked when she asked me this now. I always thought this was a game between her and me. She saw the confusion on my face and told me, “This question is very important. It shows that you have really lived your life.” I saw her eyes well up with tears. She said, “My dear, the most important body part is your shoulder.”

I asked, “Is it because it holds up your head?”

She replied, “No, it is because it can hold the head of a friend or loved one when they cry. Everybody needs a shoulder to cry on sometimes in life, my dear. I only hope that you have enough love and friends that you will have a shoulder to cry on when you need it.”

Then and there I knew the most important body part is not a selfish one. It is sympathetic to the pain of others.

【推荐3】Entering the already crowded festival site, I was a little uneasy. I'd heard discouraging tales of muddy fields, shocking toilet facilities and not being able to find your tent among so many others exactly the same as yours. I had, of course, tried to prepare for every possibility.

The five-day Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is the largest open-air music festival in the world. But it's not just music at the festival. As I wandered about the site, I realized that this was, indeed, a festival of performing arts. There were theatre tents, dance performances, and mime artists all over the site. You certainly wouldn't starve in this place, either. I'd never seen so many food stands (摊位) in my life.

The famous Pyramid Stage had its usual lineup of great bands and there were plenty of big names playing on the Other Stage, too. In fact, there were so many stages, with so many different types of music and things going on, that it was really difficult to see and do everything you wanted to. I found myself running from one stage to the next, trying to catch at least part of my favourite acts, and still missed a few altogether.

Then it was all over, and I had to pack up my possessions and head back to the real world again. It had been a pleasant surprise to discover that 100,000 people filled into muddy fields could still manage to have the time of their lives. Tickets aren't cheap, but since over £1 million in profits from the festival goes to charity, it would be childish to complain. I left holding the souvenirs bought from various stalls, and with a warm, happy feeling that I'm sure is shared by anyone who has experienced the magic of the Glastonbury Festival.