1 . Pickleball, which combines elements of badminton, Ping-Pang, and tennis, has two characteristics that make it a good choice for older adults. It’s slower than other racket (球拍) sports, and it’s easier to learn.

With a play area about a quarter the size of a tennis court and a plastic ball that doesn’t bounce as high or as fast as a tennis ball, you don’t have to run as much or as quickly. The bats are lighter and shorter than tennis rackets, making them easier to swing and control. There are fewer rules than tennis.

Plus, pickleball is more social than many types of exercise and it’s fun. In one study, participants rated pickleball 150 percent higher for enjoyment than walking. “People are finding it’s not boring,” says Cedric Bryant, PhD, chief science officer at the American Council on Exercise, who has played pickleball for more than 20 years. “It’s not something they’re doing just because they should, but because they enjoy it and want to do it.”

Pickleball is an effective workout, and like walking, you can adjust the intensity to your preferences. A friendly doubles match can qualify as proper exercise. A competitive singles match is likely to be tighter.

And pickleball offers plenty of health pluses. After six weeks of playing an hour of pickleball three times a week, older adults improved their cardiorespiratory (心肺的) fitness and blood pressure, according to a study published in 2018 in the International Journal of Research in Exercise Physiology. Another study found that the activity may keep you mentally sharp. “You’re making a lot of quick decisions while engaged in a physical task,” says study author David Bolton, PhD, assistant professor at Utah State University in Logan. “It is effectively training cognitive (认知的) ability.”

But it is not without risks of getting injured. Don’t just hit the court and go right into having a game. A warm-up is the best defense against injury, so take at least 5 minutes to prepare your body.

2 . How to Make Exercise a Habit

The new year is a time when it seems like everyone makes goals to work out and get fit. But by the third week of January, that all seems to go out the window. I’ve seen this happen almost every year: my workout classes are packed with fresh faces.     1     So I will share some tips on how to make exercise a habit, helping you stay healthier in the long run.

Focus on the routine and not the results

These days it feels like everyone is looking for a quick fix or fast results, particularly when it comes to health and fitness.     2     Focus on creating and enjoying the habit. Try scheduling your works alongside one of the other routines you already have in place.

    3    

Everyone seems to want to set big goals of working out 4 times a week with 60-minute sessions. But realistically, if you’re not used to this, it will just be overwhelming and lead you to quit. Given this, doing workouts even as small as5-10 minutes is a good place to start.

Forget the “all or nothing” view

When it comes to exercise, the all or nothing approach does not serve you. Say you plan a workout for today, but say things get crazy at work and you miss your scheduled time. Well that doesn’t mean you’ve failed.     4     Even if you miss your workout, that doesn’t mean you’ve given up. Just remember your results are from your every effort, not matter how small.

Find joy in your workouts

    5     Don’t let yourself be boxed into a certain type of workout just because it’s trendy or everyone is doing them. A workout that suits you will promote your drive and enjoyment.

4 . Best Poetry Writing Contests in 2024

Poetry. com offers monthly contests for poets worldwide to build passion and enjoyment for the creative poem writing process! Poems remain anonymous (匿名) before applicants vote on what they believe should be the winning entry.

Top Prize: $500

Additional prizes: personalized Poetry. com gifts for runners-up

Entry fee: $25

Deadline: December 31, 2024

Welcome to the 4th annual Wine Country Writers’ Festival (WCWF) writing contest. Three categories and over$1,800 total value in cash and prizes are to be awarded. Enter your short fiction or nonfiction (2,000 words max) or up to 48 lines of poetry. Judged blindly by professional writers. No previously published works.

Top Prize: $200

Additional prizes: free registration package to the Wine Country Writers’ Festival

Entry fee: $11

Deadline: June 02, 2024

Welcome to the 20th annual Tom Howard Poetry Contest. Submit your published or unpublished work, a poem in any style, whether it rhymes or not.

Top Prize: $3,000

Additional prizes: $200 for 10 honorable mentions

Entry fee: $20

Deadline: October 01, 2024

One Page Poetry focuses on the art of expressing a poetic theme on a single page, whether your poem is four lines or forty, whether yours is a love poem, inspirational poem, or just one that is fun. We welcome all poetic forms, as long as they fit on a single page.

Top Prize: $2,000

Additional prizes: 2nd: 1,000; 3rd: 500

Entry fee: $25

Deadline: September 30, 2024

5 . Reader’s Digest has launched its 2024 Beautiful Britain competition to celebrate the nature, landscapes and urban sides of Britain. The competition is running until the 12th of May and anyone can send in an original photo for consideration.

The aim of the competition is to view Britain from interesting, unique and unusual viewpoints and to focus on its diversity (多样性). Entrants (参赛者) are required to send in a high resolution photo via an entry form or directly by email to photocomps@readersdigest.co.uk for consideration.

Entrants for the competition will also need to include a full name, their location and a contact number, sending in a previously unpublished photo to be considered. Photos sent in will be judged by award winning photographer James Eckersley, who specializes in portraiture.

The winning entry will be featured on the back cover of Reader’s Digest’s July 2024 issue, with the winner also receiving a £400 Amazon voucher and a Royal photographic society membership for a year. The second-place entrant will win a £250 camera world voucher and the third-place will receive either an experience or a workshop course voucher from Jessops. For full details and ways to enter, click here.

About Reader’s Digest:

Launched in 1922, Reader’s Digest has built 100 years of trust with a loyal audience and has become one of the largest circulating magazines in the world. The first UK edition of Reader’s Digest hit the shelves in March 1938 and Reader’s Digest has produced an edition for eager readers every month since then.

6 . Tai chi, a traditional, slow-moving form of Chinese martial art, is known to increase flexibility and improve balance. Now, new research suggests it’s better than more energetic aerobic exercises (有氧运动) for lowering blood pressure in people with prehypertension (高血压前期). Prehypertension is considered a warning sign that heart disease may be ahead, and it raises the risk of having a heart attack.

The new findings, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, add to a large body of research pointing to health benefits from tai chi.

In the study, researchers in China randomly assigned 342 adults with prehypertension to one of two interventions. The average age of participants was 49. Roughly half the people participated in aerobic exercises, 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. What’s more, 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. And fewer patients in the tai chi group went on to develop hypertension than in the aerobic exercise group.

How does tai chi help lower blood pressure? The practice tends to cause more of a response from the parasympathetic nervous system (副交感神经系统), says Ruth Taylor-Piliae, a professor at the University of Arizona’s College of Nursing, who was not involved in the study. The parasympathetic nervous system is the network of nerves that relaxes your body after periods of stress or danger.

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

7 . When it comes to lowering blood pressure, studies have typically shown that aerobic (有氧的) exercises are best. Recent research suggests another type of physical activity is worth including as an effective tool to prevent and treat high blood pressure.

Exercises that engage muscles without movement, such as wall squats and planks, may be best for lowering blood pressure, according to a large study published in July, 2023 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

This type of training is known as isometric exercise, according to the Mayo Clinic. Isometric muscle action happens when muscles contract but do not visibly change length, and the joints involved don’t move, facilitating stability of the body. Isometric exercises can be done with weights or without, just relying on the body’s own weight.

“These findings provide a comprehensive data-driven framework to support the development of new exercise guideline recommendations for the prevention and treatment of high blood pressure,” said study coauthor Dr. Jamie O’Driscoll in a news release.

The researchers looked into randomized controlled trials that had reported the effects of exercise interventions, lasting two or more weeks, on blood pressure between 1990 and February 2023. From a review of 270 trials with 15,827 participants, the researchers found that among HIIT (high intensity interval training), isometric exercise, aerobic exercise, dynamic resistance training and a combination of the latter two, isometric exercise led to the greatest reductions in blood pressure.

It’s also important to note that there are other lifestyle changes as well as exercise that can benefit your blood pressure. These include keeping to a healthy weight, eating a balanced diet, cutting down on salt, not drinking too much alcohol and ensuring that you continue to take any prescribed medication.

More research is needed to determine exactly why isometric exercises might be better for lowering blood pressure than other types of training, the authors said.

8 . A team of three students won $700,000 this week for using artificial intelligence (AI) to read passages from an ancient papyrus scroll (纸草卷轴). The document is one of the more than 800 scrolls known as the Herculaneum papyri that were carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Researchers discovered the passages in the 18th century, but attempts to read them proved in vain: Unfolding them by hand only caused them to fall apart.

That’s where the Vesuvius Challenge comes in. Brent Seales, a computer scientist, and two businessmen, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, launched the Vesuvius Challenge in March 2023, offering more than $1 million in prize money for reaching a series of milestones using “computer vision, machine learning and hard work”. For the biggest prize, the organizers released high-resolution CT scans of the scrolls and explained the contest’s rules: Participants would need to decipher (破译) at least 85 percent of four passages. A series of smaller prizes were also awarded throughout the year.

The winning team consists of Nader (an Egyptian PhD student in Germany), Julian Schilliger (a robotics student in Switzerland) and Luke Farritor (a computer science student in Nebraska). Their submission was “met with widespread amazement” by the review team of papyrologists. Farritor also won the challenge’s $40,000 “First Letters” prize in October, when he deciphered the scroll’s first word “porphyras”, which means “purple” in ancient Greek. Nader and Farritor began working together the following month and were joined by Schilliger shortly before the December 31 deadline.

The team ultimately trained machine-learning algorithms (算法) to decipher more than 2,000 characters—more than what was needed to win the Grand Prize. These passages appear to be a philosophical discussion of life’s pleasures, including music and food, though the papyrology team is still studying the results. “It seems familiar to us, and we can’t escape the feeling that the first text we’ve uncovered is a 2,000-year-old blog post about how to enjoy life,” write the organizers.

9 . The holidays can be a difficult time to stay on track with your fitness goals.     1    . Even the most disciplined people can find it difficult to stick to their fitness routines during the holiday season. Here are some expert-recommended tips that can help you stay on track.

    2    .

Planning is the best way to make sure you don’t lose track of your goals. Plan your workouts for the week and mark them in your schedule to assure they are a part of your day.

Exercise early.

    3    . Make sure workouts are in the morning and you’ll set yourself up for a productive day. Then you can enjoy holiday activities and time with family without worrying about when you’ll have time to exercise.

Keep moving.

Research shows that getting up for just five minutes every 30 to 60 minutes and performing light activities reduces the risk of heart disease risk factors. Small efforts to get moving can help your overall health during the holidays. In addition to staying active, try to avoid sitting for long periods of time, such as when watching football games or eating.     4    .

Think out of the box.

The holidays are busy, but do your best to avoid the “all or nothing” mentality when it comes to physical activity.     5     — like taking a family walk around the neighborhood before opening Christmas presents.

10 . Here are four writing contests available for high school students.

Skipping Stones Youth Honor Awards

Skipping Stones magazine recognizes high school students that are working to promote multicultural and environmental awareness. The written submissions can include short stories, poems, and essays. Winners will receive an honor award certificate, and a year-long subscription to the magazine.

Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Noteworthy former winners include John Updike, Truman Capote, and Joyce Carol Oates. Each submission is judged on technical skill, originality, and the presence of a clear vision and voice. Regional and national award winners are qualified for a variety of different monetary awards in addition to publication in the National Catalog.

Bennington Young Writers Awards

Submissions are accepted in the fiction category. Students in 10th through 12th grade can submit a one-act play or a short story, recommended by a high school teacher. The first-place fiction winner receives $500 and the second-place winner receives $ 250.

The Claremont Review Writing Contest

The Claremont Review holds an annual contest in fiction and poetry writing. Submissions are welcome from writers aged 13 to 18 and must be previously unpublished. Winners and those receiving honorable mentions will be published in the autumn issue of The Claremont Review and will receive a year-long subscription to the magazine.