Do you love holidays but hate the increase weight that follows? You are not alone.

    Holidays are happy days with pleasure and delicious foods. Many people, however, are worried about the weight that comes along with these delicious foods.

    With proper planning, though, it is possible to control your weight. The idea is to enjoy the holidays but not to eat too much. You don't have to turn away from the foods that you enjoy. The following suggestions may be of some help to you.

    Do not miss meals. Before you leave home for a feast(宴会),have a small, low-fat snack(小吃). This may help to keep you from getting too excited before delicious foods. Begin with clear soup and fruit or vegetables. A large glass of water before you eat may help you feel full. Use a small plate; a large plate will encourage you to have more than enough.

    Better not have high-fat foods. Dishes that look oily or creamy have much fat in them.

    Choose lean meat(瘦肉 ).Fill your plate with salad and green vegetables.

    If you have a sweet tooth, try mints (薄荷) and fruits. They don't have fat content as cream and chocolate. Don't let exercise take a break during the holidays. A 20-minute walk after a meal can help burn off excess(过多的) calories.

    Reducing plastic waste isn't easy because the cheap material is found in almost every household item. Now, a delicious and nutritious solution has come up to help reduce our dependence on this environmental hazard.

    David Christian, the co-founder of Evoware, says the idea of creating the biodegradable (生物降解的) products came from concern at the country's high pollution rate. Indonesia is home to four of the world's worst polluted rivers. Since single-use packaging is a large contributor to the problem, Evoware decided to deal with that first.

    After investigating various materials, the company settled on seaweed. Unlike com, commonly used for biodegradable containers, seaweed does not require resources like water or large amounts of space. Since Indonesian farmers already harvest more seaweed than they can sell, it's easy for the company to find the material.

    Though they will not reveal their production process, Evoware says the seaweed packaging contains no chemicals and is safe to consume. The company has also invented single-use cups, which can break down 30 days after they're thrown away.

    While replacing plastic with the seaweed products may seem appealing to most of us, it is a hard-sell in Indonesia. According to Christian, “The awareness to reduce single-use plastic is still very low. This makes our bioplastic unnecessary.” Also a factor is the cost, which is higher than using plastic. Hopefully, Evoware will succeed in convincing Indonesians and people worldwide that switching to their products will be helpful to protecting our beautiful planet.

    Mark felt that it was time for him to take part in his community，so he went to the neighborhood meeting after work. The area city council(委员会)woman was leading a discussion about how the quality of life was on the decline. The neighborhood faced many problems. Mark looked at the charts taped to the walls. There were charts for parking problems, crime, and for problems in vacant buildings. Mark read from the charts, “Police patrols(巡逻)cut back, illegal parking up 20%.” People were supposed to suggest solutions to the council woman. It was too much for Mark. “The problems are too big,” he thought. He turned to the man next to him and said, “I think this is a waste of my time. Nothing I can do would make a difference here.”

    As he neared the bus stop on his way home, Mark saw a woman carrying a grocery bag, and a baby. As Mark got closer, her other child，a little boy, suddenly dashed into the street. The woman tried to reach for him, but as she moved, her bag shifted(滑落), and groceries started to fall out.Mark ran to take the boy's arm and led him back to his mother. “You gotta stay with Mom,” he said. Then he picked up the fallen groceries while the woman smiled in relief. “Thanks,” she said. “You've got great timing.” “Just being neighborly,” Mark said. As he rode home, he glanced at the poster near his seat in the bus. Small acts of kindness add up.Mark smiled and thought, “Maybe that's a good place to start.”

    If you're a fan of smart technology, you may have had some sleepless nights lately.

    That's because Alexa, the artificial intelligence (AI) behind US company Amazon's Echo smart speakers, has been "letting out an automatic, creepy (令人毛骨悚然的) cackle," for no apparent reason, according to BBC News.

    Many social media users shared their stories of Alexa scaring them with the seemingly unprompted laugh.

    "Every time Alexa laughs, an angel dies," Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk joked on social media.

    On March 7, Amazon released an update that fixed the problem, saying that the laugh was triggered (引发) by Echo devices mistakenly thinking that users had said the command "Alexa, laugh".

    However, what should have been a funny story raised the ongoing topic of man versus machine.

    With the rise of artificial and robotic technology, "Digital machines have started to demonstrate (展示) broad abilities in pattern recognition, complex communication, and other fields that used to only belong to human," wrote Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in their book The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. They believe that AI will "do more and more, and our lives will get better".

    However, ever since the earliest days of AI, there have been concerns that some day, software will take over the world, leaving the fate of humans unknown.

    "With artificial intelligence we are summoning (召唤) the demon ," Musk told students during a meeting at MIT in 2014. "If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that. So we need to be very careful."

    Many scientists have shared the same concern. The late British physicist Stephen Hawking said at a technology conference in Portugal in November that "computers can, in theory, imitate human intelligence, and exceed it… AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilization." If creators are to safely control AI, however, Hawking suggested that they "employ best practice and effective management".

    "I am an optimist and I believe that we can create AI for the good of the world," he said at the conference. "We simply need to be aware of the dangers, identify them, employ the best possible practice and management, and prepare for its consequences well in advance."

    Many years ago, people relied on the sun, the moon and stars to find their way around. Later, the compass was introduced. And now, we have satnav（卫星导航）systems to guide us. A satnav system uses groups of satellites to show the user's location. They send information to a receiver, such as a smartphone, to show us where we are.

    The earliest built satnav system is the Global Positioning Satellite System, which belongs to the US. Then there is Russia's Global Navigation Satellite system，the European Union's Galileo and China's own satellite navigation system, Beidou.

On October 18, 2017, an ARJ21-700 plane, which was the first domestically（国内地） produced jet equipped with the Beidou navigation system, successfully completed a test flight. The results showed the performance of the system developed by China matches that of similar systems produced abroad, according to the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China.

    Since its introduction in 2000, the Beidou navigation system has been increasing numbers of applications linked to everyday life, from shared bikes to farming.

When it comes to shared bikes, smart locks that support Beidou chips offer more accurate positioning than others, making it easier to find a bike.

    Farmers can use Beidou-enabled tractors to plow（犁）the soil and use unmanned aircraft with Beidou to sow seeds, which can improve efficiency and make better use of resources. Beidou's farming applications have spread from Heilongjiang Province to Beijing, Liaoning, Shanxi, Hubei and other regions across China.

    With its many uses, the Beidou navigation system is even playing a big role in the Belt and Road Initiative（一带一路）. “To date, the Beidou system has covered most parts of the Asia-Pacific region, as well as countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21^st Century Maritime Silk Road,” said Yang Changfeng, chief designer of the Beidou system.

    Today, there are more than 20 Beidou satellites above our heads, and China plans to launch even more this year to expand the Beidou network to better serve the Belt and Road Initiative.

    “As Beidou expands its overseas reach, it will be increasingly popular in the logistics（物流） industry,” said Miao Qianjun, Secretary General of the navigation services association. “Ships, for example, can use it to position themselves while sailing across oceans to European countries, no longer limited to Southeast Asian regions in the near future.

    History is full of tales of great ideas taking shape in sleeping minds; Paul McCartney said that he awoke with the tune of Yesterday in his head, and Robert Louis Stevenson said that the idea for The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde came to him in a dream.

    Scientists believe that the mind at night puts together bits of information in creative ways. Throughout the day your brain rarely gets a chance to stop and think. It constantly responds to a stream of challenges, from writing a report for a work deadline to remembering where you left your car keys and figuring out what to buy for dinner.

    "Think of your brain like a web," says Russell Foster, Professor of Neuroscience at Oxford University. "During the day the web is very tight, so you can only put information in a certain number of places. During sleep the web expands, and with the luxury of time, those bits of information can be put into lots of different places and make new associations."

    He adds that this process may help to foster the formation of new ideas. "This bringing together of seemingly unrelated bits of information is vital to helping the brain think itself out of problems," says Russell Foster.

    "Sleep seems to allow your mind to make non-obvious connections. It puts all the information from the day into a big biological theatre and forces the mind to speak to people at the back of the theatre, who you may not think you have any connection with. This is the basis of creativity connecting ideas, events and memories that wouldn't normally fit together.

    By placing volunteers into brain scanners and sending them to sleep, scientists have seen that the areas associated with emotion go into overdrive, especially while dreaming, while the areas that are responsible for logic (逻辑)are switched off. This not only explains why dreams are unbelievably random-you can be talking to a colleague one minute and the next minute sitting in your old school classroom dressed in your nightclothes­but also explains how the brain can put together different information.