A few things to do during weekends to improve your life

    Weekend at last! Something you're so looking forward to after a tiring week at work. Here are several tips on how to make the most of your weekends.

    Spend time with loved ones. Reconnect with family members or friends you neglected(疏忽) lately. Don't do it out of guilt or because you have to. Do it because you want to. Reach out to them to see how they are doing. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Return their calls if you were busy when they last tried to reach you. Talk to them. Listen to them. Be there for them.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Stay away from TV, iPad, iPhone and any other electronic devices. Unplug! Your brain needs to clear up from all the stress you've put on yourself during the week. Why not read a book instead? A paper one. Seriously, when was the last time you did that?

    Laugh, laugh and laugh again. You can never have enough of it. Laugh is the best medicine ever. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} For example, it helps you manage stress, strengthen your immune system and you are 40 percent less likely to suffer a heart attack.

    Express appreciation. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Be grateful for your family, friends, health, the food you put on the table, the clothes you wear and the air that you breathe.

    There you are. Doing a few things during weekends will have a positive long-term effect on your life. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}.

A. Apply the “no technology” rule.

B. Pause and pay attention to your thoughts.

C. Friendship is the best source of happiness.

D. Don't call them only when you need them.

E. Put them into practice and you'll beat the Monday Blues.

F. It benefits your mental and physical health in so many ways.

G. This is something you should be doing every day, not only on weekends.

    My color television has given me nothing but a headache. I was able to buy it a little over a year ago because I had my relatives give me money for my birthday instead of a lot of clothes that wouldn't fit. I let a salesclerk fool me into buying a discontinued model. I realized this a day late, when I saw newspaper advertisements for the set at seventy-five dollars less than I had paid. The set worked so beautifully when I first got it home that I would keep it on until stations signed off for the night. Fortunately, I didn't got any channels showing all-night movies or I would never have gotten to bed.

    Then I started developing a problem with the set that involved static (静电) noise. For some reason, when certain shows switched into a commercial, a loud noise would sound for a few seconds. Gradually, this noise began to appear during a show, and to get rid of it, I had to change to another channel and then change it back. Sometimes this technique would not work, and I had to pick up the set and shake it to remove the sound. I actually began to build up my arm muscles(肌肉) shaking my set.

    When neither of these methods removed the static noise, I would sit helplessly and wait for the noise to go away. At last I ended up hitting the set with my fist, and it stopped working altogether .My trip to the repair shop cost me $62, and the set is working well now, but I keep expecting more trouble.

    Every year gray whales swim a 10,000 miles round-trip, from the cold waters near Alaska, down the coast of North America to the warm waters near Mexico, and back again. It is one of the longest migrations (迁徙) of any mammal (哺乳动物).

    All day, all summer long, in the cold waters near Alaska, gray whales eat and eat.

    Instead of teeth, gray whales have baleen (鲸须) they use to get food from ocean water. They get big mouthfuls of muck (淤泥) from the ocean floor, then push that muck right back out through their baleen. The mucky water flows through, but tiny animals get trapped in the baleen and licked up.

    When the water starts to freeze, the whales begin their long trip south. They swim night and day, without stopping to eat or rest. During the long journey, migrating whales may push their heads out of the water to see where they are.

    Two months later, the whales reach Mexico. Babies are born here in warm, shallow (浅的) waters called lagoons (濒海湖). Ocean lagoons have no food for the adults, but the babies are safer here than in the open seas. All winter the babies grow big and strong.

    In spring first the dads and teenagers leave the lagoons, then the moms with babies. Migrating gray whales swim close to shore, especially moms with babies. The ice is melting up (融化) north, and it's time for the hungry whales to make the long journey back to their summer feeding grounds.

    As free as they make us, mobile phones still need to stay close to a power source. Soon that may change with "green" power.

    Three Chilean students got the idea for a plant-powered device(装置) to charge their cellphones, while sitting in their school's outdoor courtyard during a break from exams, with dead mobile phones. Then, one of them had an "aha" moment.

    “It occurred to Camila to say about plants,” said inventor Evelyn Aravena. “'Why don't you have a socket, if there are so many plants? 'After that, we thought, 'why don't they have a charging outlet? Because there are so many plants and living things that have the potential to produce energy, why not?'”

    Their invention—a small biological circuit called E-Kaia—uses the energy plants to produce during photosynthesis(光合作用). A plant uses only a small part of that energy and the rest goes into the soil, and that's where the E-Kaia collects it. The device plugs into the ground and then into your phone.

    "It's the most amazing project I've ever seen in my life, plain and simple. They brought this original model, and it worked — and that's when it all changed, at least from my personal point of view and I began to support them." said Mauricio Cifuentes.

    The device solved two problems for the engineering students — they needed an idea for a class project, and an outlet to plug in their phones.

    "Looking for a place to charge the notebook, which had no power, and the mobile phones, we weren't able to find anything because all the other students were in the same state of madness trying to find a place to charge their devices," said Aravena.

    But plants are everywhere, and the bio－circuit makes the best of their excess(过多的) power.

    The E-Kaia doesn't carry much charge but it's powerful enough to completely recharge a mobile phone in less than two hours.

    The student inventors have applied for patents on their technology, and expect the E-Kaia to go on sale in December 2016.

    Some of the world's biggest companies—Apple, Amazon, Facebook—didn't exist 30 years ago. So what firms are we working for in 2050? That's a question put forward by historian Yuval Noah Harari in his new book "21 Lessons for the 21st Century".

    He argues that because technology is changing so fast, it's one of the first times in human history when we don't know what jobs will look like in the coming three decades." So the best bet is to focus on emotional intelligence（EQ）," he said. "Information is the last thing the kids need. They have too much of it."

    In this book, he focuses on the various challenges facing us today. As he writes in the book's introduction: "What are today's greatest challenges? What should we pay attention to? What should we teach our kids?" One area where these questions crop up is artificial intelligence（AI）Harari believes that AI will completely affect the job market for the next generation of workers.

    His first two books—"Sapiens" and "Homo Deus"—became international bestsellers, selling more than 12 million copies worldwide. They were praised by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama and Bill Gates. Harari's books, about the past and future of humanity, attract a great number of fans. Fellow Israeli, actress Natalie Portman, is a fan. So is American R&B star Janelle Monae.

    As for Bill Gates, he might be Harari's biggest fan. So when the New York Times asked him to review Harari's latest books, he jumped at the opportunity. "All the three books wrestle with some version of the same question: What will give our lives meaning in the decades and centuries ahead?" Gates wrote in his review. "So far, human history has been driven by a desire to live longer, healthier, happier lives. If science is eventually able to give that dream to most people, and large numbers of people no longer need to work, what reason will we have to get up in the morning?"

Nuclear(核心的) Family

53.7% of Canadians live in nuclear families.A nuclear family usually has parents and children.It is also called the traditional family.This kind of family was the most popular in the 1950s and 1960s.Now the traditional family is choosing to have fewer children than in the past.

Single-Parent Family

In this kind of family,there is only one parent caring for one or more children.The number of single-parent families is becoming larger.The environment of the single-parent family is not very good for the mental and physical health of children.

Extended(几代同堂的) Family

There are grandparents,aunts,uncles and cousins in this kind of family.Members of the extended family live together for many reasons,such as helping to raise the children,caring for each other and dealing with money problems.The number of this kind of family has increased by 40 percent in the past ten years.

Childless Family

A childless family is the one that choose not to have children.The couple has never had children because of some reasons.Most have thought carefully about whether to be parents but finally give up because they think it isn't really right for them.To replace children,childless families usually have pets instead.