1 . Scientists are now digging into precisely why exercise holds so many benefits for our mental health and memory. The answer, studies say, lies in our brain chemistry.

Each time you work up a sweat, your body releases feel-good happy hormones (荷尔蒙), including endorphins, dopamine and endocannabinoids, the latter being responsible for the so-called runner’s high. Now researchers are also pointing to myokines (肌肉因子) as an important contributor to the mental health benefits of exercise. When our muscles contract, myokines are released into the bloodstream, helping your muscles and organs communicate. They think this communication increases resilience to stress, reduces symptoms of mental suffering and anxiety and has a direct effect on depression.

A 2021 scientific report published in Neuropharmacology showed evidence that myokines boost brain function, like improving memory and mood. “Myokines reduce systemic inflammation (炎症), which is especially beneficial for people with drug-resistant depression whose low mood is linked to high inflammation,” explains Dr Jennifer Heisz, an expert in brain health and associate professor in the department of kinesiology at McMaster University in Canada.

A recent study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine showed that treatment for depression can be much more effective when physical activity is added to the usual care. Participants found benefits after 12 weeks of exercising for 30 to 60 minutes a day. “While exercise is not a replacement for professional mental health treatment, physical activity can complement and enhance the effects of the treatment,” says lead researcher Ben Singh, a research fellow at the University of South Australia.

“It is amazing to consider how moving our bodies can heal our minds,” says Heisz. Whether you’re cycling, walking around your neighbourhood or doing yoga, getting sweaty is good for your body and mind. To get the biggest overall health boost, the key is to zero in on sports and activities you enjoy, so you’ll keep going back to them.

4 . Fourteen-year-old Harini Logan won the Scripps National Spelling Bee last Thursday, defeating 12-year-old Vikram Raju in a tiebreaker. It’s the first time that the contest has ever been decided by a tie-breaking round of spelling.

A spelling bee is a contest where players take turns spelling words. Though the bee is mainly about spelling, it also focuses on the meaning of the words. During parts of the contest, students were asked to choose the correct meaning of a word.

That caused trouble for Harini. She was asked about the meaning of the word “pullulation”. She said the word described the nesting of birds. The contest organizers had expected the answer to be the “swarming of bees”. Harini was removed from the contest. But soon she was back in- the judges double-checked and learned that Harini’s definition was also correct. One by one, the other students spelled a word wrong and got out. Finally, only Harini and Vikram were left.

To make ties much less likely, a “spell-off” was added to the contest in recent years. In the spell-off, Vikram and Harini each took turns trying to spell the words they were asked, but both made blunders. At one point, Harini could have won by spelling the word “drimys” (a kind of plant) correctly. But she missed it.

That put the two into a super tie-breaking event, where they were each given 90 seconds to correctly spell as many words as they could. The New York Times reports that the two spelled so quickly that the judges needed to review the video to see who had won. In 90 seconds, Vikram had spelled 15 words correctly, Harini had 21 correct spellings, making her the new winner.

This was Harini’s fourth at the Bee and it’s the first time she’s made it to the finals. Describing her win, she said, “This is just such a dream!”

Happy the Year of the Tiger! I can't wait to express my heart-felt appreciation of the new Olympic motto to you.

Yours,

Li Hua

With just one month to go to the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, the excitement is growing among winter sports athletes and    1    (fan) from around the world．

Thousands    2    the world’s best winter sports athletes will gather in Beijing as well as Zhangjiakou    3    (compete) for 109 gold medals to fulfill their Olympic dreams．

The Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games is    4    event of great significance for China. For all people in China, a strong sense of responsibility, mission(使命) and urgency(紧迫)    5    (need) during the preparation work.

Organizers of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games have showed a menu of 678 dishes during the Games to athletes from different    6    (culture) backgrounds. As the 2022 Winter Olympics meet with China’s Spring Festival, it will be    7    (interest) for the global athletes to     8    (full) enjoy Chinese food.

A giant panda named Bing Dwen Dwen(冰墩墩) is the official mascot of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games. “Bing”    9    (mean) ice and also symbolize(象征) purity and strength, and “Dwen Dwen” represents children. The mascot contains the strength and willpower(意志力) of athletes,    10    will help to promote the Olympic spirit.

9 . One of the reasons why so many people listen to music during exercise is that it has a number of benefits. The research around the positive influences of music during exercise was reviewed in a paper in the February 2020 issue of Psychological Bulletin.

Probably the biggest influence of music on exercise, based on these findings, is that listening to music during exercise can make you feel better about what you have done. Experiments find that people feel more positive about the exercise when they have listened to music than when they have not. The impact of music didn’t depend on the intensity of the exercise, and the effect appeared for both trained and untrained athletes.

Music also seems to reduce people’s feeling of how much they are exerting themselves. That is, at the same level of intensity of activity, listening to music can make you feel like you are exerting less effort than you would feel without music. Some studies have also shown that when athletes are free to set their own exertion level, they are willing to exercise more intensely with music than without. For some people (particularly when they are early in their training), music helps them focus on the music rather than on pain.

Music also appears to have a small effect on performance overall. Athletes perform better both during exercise and while engaging in their sport when there is music. In the studies analyzed, fast music, with a tempo greater than 120 beats-per-minute, was more effective than slow music. Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to matter whether the athlete chooses the music or whether it is chosen by someone else. So, the playlists selected by the teachers of an exercise class you’re taking may work even if you don’t love all of the songs.

The one place where music doesn’t seem to have much of an impact is on physiological functioning. The heart rate of an athlete is not consistently affected by music.

10 . Tai chi, a traditional, slow-moving form of Chinese physical exercise, is known to increase flexibility and improve balance. New research has been conducted to determine whether tai chi has an influence on lowering blood pressure in people with prehypertension (高血压前期).

In the study, Chinese scientists put 342 adults with prehypertension into two groups. The average age of people taking part in the study was 49. About half the participants (参与者) took part in aerobic exercise, including jogging, climbing stairs and cycling. The other half was trained to practice tai chi. Both groups got hour-long exercises four times a week.

Nearly 22% of the people who practiced tai chi saw their blood pressure fall to be normal, compared with nearly 16% of people in the aerobic exercise group. And fewer patients in the tai chi group went on to develop high blood pressure than patients in the aerobic exercise group.

So what is it about tai chi that helps lower blood pressure? “The practice tends to get more of a response from the parasympathetic (副交感的) nervous system, which is the network of nerves that relaxes your body after periods of stress or danger,” says Ruth Taylor-Piliae, a professor at the University of Arizona’s College of Nursing.

“I think the beauty of tai chi is that you don’t have to have a special gym membership, you don’t have to have special clothing,” Taylor-Piliae says. “Once you learn tai chi, you can do it anytime and anyplace. And it does provide a calming and relaxing effect.”

Evidence suggests it can also help protect against cognitive fall and even improve memory. But you have to practice it continually to get the most benefit.