Easy Ways to Keep Your Brain Sharp

    Everyone is forgetful, but as we age, we start to feel like our brains are slowing down a bit—and that can be a very annoying thing.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}Read on for some techniques worth trying.

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    People who regularly made plans and looked forward to upcoming events had a 50 percent reduced chance of Alzheimer's disease (早老性痴呆症), according to a recent study.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}Something as simple as setting a goal to have a weekly coffee date with a friend will do. There's evidence that people who have a purpose in life or who are working on long or short-term goals appear to do better. In other words, keep your brain looking forward.

    ⒉ Go for a walk

    Mildly raised glucose (葡萄糖) levels can harm the area of the brain that helps you form memories and physical activity can help get blood glucose down to normal levels. In fact, exercise produces chemicals that are good for your brain.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    ⒊ Learn something new

    Take a Spanish class online, join a drawing club, or learn to play cards. A study found that mental stimulation (刺激) limits the weakening effects of aging on memory and the mind. But the best thing for your brain is when you learn something new and are physically active at the same time.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}or go dancing with your friends.

A. Focus on the future.

B. This can be especially harmful to the aged.

C. It should be something like learning gardening.

D. So take a few minutes each day to do some reading.

E. But don't worry if your schedule isn't filled with life-changing events.

F. Luckily, research shows there is a lot you can do to avoid those moments.

G. In other words, when you take care of your body, you take care of your brain.

How to Survive Exam Stress

    Exam time is one of the most stressful in school, whether it is high school, college or graduate school. Even the best students feel the pressure. The first sign of a problem while preparing for an exam is worry{#blank#}1{#/blank#} If we can get rid of worries, or at least control them, then we're in a much better position to do well on our tests. Take the following steps to survive exam stress and increase your overall performance as a result.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#}What causes you anxiety when you are studying? Too much noise? Then move to a quieter place. Delayed work? Catch up with your studies a couple nights before. That way you can save the final night before the exam to review and get a good night of sleep.

    The second way to deal with worry is to displace thoughts. Suppose you wake up at three in the morning and you're worried about an exam. What do you do?{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Doing something productive might allow you to sleep better when you finally do go back to bed.

    Another way to displace negative thoughts is to do something physically active. Work out. Take a quick walk or a nice run{#blank#}4{#/blank#}For example, I might worry about the exam having surprise questions that I'm not prepared to answer. But I can shove those thoughts aside by reminding myself that I've taken many exams and I've handled surprise questions before.

    The third option is to treat the symptoms. Keep things in perspective. Think of one final exam that causes you the most anxiety. Now think of the worst thing that could happen. If you've prepared, then likely the worst grade you could get is a C. And, if you've been applying what we've been talking about, then you'll likely to do no worse than a B. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. How bad is that really?

B. The first is to delete the causes.

C. Another idea is to think positive thoughts.

D. Worry robs us of energy, focus and motivation.

E. How about getting up and studying for an hour?

F. What we should do is to think positively and get rid of it.

G. So just face the result bravely and make an effort to improve your grade.

    Winter is a really fun time of the year—it's great to have snowball fights and build snowmen{#blank#}1{#/blank#} When it's cold outside and you're not prepared, you can feel uncomfortable. Lucky for you, learning how to stay safe is not difficult.

    ●{#blank#}2{#/blank#} Wearing thick clothes is the best way to stay warm in the cold. Depending on where you live and how cold it is, some kids may need more clothes, some less.

    ●Take that hat. You maybe wear a large overcoat and ready to go, but are you forgetting something?{#blank#}3{#/blank#} You'll stay much warmer with a hat than without one—tons of body heat escapes right from your head.

    ●Drink up. Sounds like advice for hot weather, not cold weather, right?{#blank#}4{#/blank#} When you're outside in the cold and breathing hard, your body loses a lot of water through your breath. And the best way to get that water back is to drink up!

    ●Take it easy. Sometimes if you're out having fun, it's easy to forget to pay attention to your body. But if your body temperature drops even 4 or 5 degrees while you're out side, it can make you feel terrible{#blank#}5{#/blank#} And if you ever feel weak, those are signs that you have to take it easy indoors for a while.

A.Love those clothes.

B.Have a snowball fight.

C. Pull a hat onto your head.

D. That's why you need to be careful with your body s signals.

E. Well, the truth is that it's good advice for both kinds of weather.

F. but you have to know how to be safe while you're out having fun.

G. You can stay outside as long as possible to fully enjoy your snow days.

    There is an English saying: “{#blank#}1{#/blank#} Until recently, few people took the saying seriously. Now, however, doctors have begun to look into laughter and the effects it has on the human body{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    Tests were carried out to study the effects of laughter on the body. People watched funny films while doctors checked their hearts, blood pressure, breathing and muscles. It was found that laughter has similar effects to physical exercise{#blank#}3{#/blank#}If laughter exercises the body, it must be beneficial.

    Other tests have shown that laughter appears to be able to reduce the effect of pain on the body. In one experiment doctors produced pain in groups of students who listened to different radio programs. The group that tolerated the pain for the longest time was the group which listened to a funny program.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}They have found that even if their patients do not really feel like laughing, making them smile is enough to produce beneficial effects similar to those caused by laughter.

A. Laughter can change one's life.

B. As a result of these discoveries, some doctors in the United States now hold laughter clinics in which they help to improve their patients' condition by encouraging them to laugh.

C. The reason why laughter can reduce pain seems to be that it helps to produce a kind of chemicals in the brain which diminish both stress and pain.

D. It increases blood pressure, the heart beating and breathing; it also works several groups of muscles in the face, the stomach and even the feet.

E. Although laughter helps cure the disease, doctors still can not put this theory into clinic practice.

F. Laughter is the best medicine.

G. They have found that laughter really can improve people's health.

    China is expected to see a record high number of college graduates in 2018 as around 8.2 million students will obtain their degree this year, according to the latest statistics from Ministry of Education. The number of college graduates in China has been rising since 2001, which leads to a more competitive employment market.

    However, besides fierce competition, many graduates admit that they face another big problem-employment discrimination. A research in 2017 shows that around 75.7 percent of new graduates said they were, to some extent, discriminated or suffered from injustice when finding jobs.

    Female college graduates still face great wall of discrimination in the employment market. “Males only”, “Married with children preferred”: These are some of the conditions commonly found in recruitment (招募) advertisements. According to a research by Renmin University of China in 2015, male college graduates do have more interview opportunities than female college graduates despite the similar academic background and work experience.

    Regional discrimination also becomes a barrier for job seekers. Some companies dismiss job seekers from specific regions due to the regional stereotypes (成见), like “Central China's Henan Province is the cradle of liars” and “people from Northeast region are usually rude.”

    Recruitment advertisements sometimes also show favor for local applicants. Non-locals had been denied jobs because their registered residence origin was not the same as the city where they were hunting for a job.

    Apart from “invisible thresholds (门槛)” like gender and region, college graduates in recent years were disappointed to find that personal details like superstitions (迷信) about blood type, zodiac, and facial structure were all part of the decision-making process by some potential employers.

    An applicant's surname can also help or hamper (妨碍) job prospects. A family name that suggests prosperity, like Jin, which means “gold”; while a last name like Pei, which can mean “to lose money”, would likely be negative. Besides, job seekers also found that some employers paid much attention to their appearance rather than the working performance.

    To fight against employment discrimination, both the government and society have made great efforts. In 2007, Employment Promotion Law was passed with the purpose of apposing employment discrimination and promoting justice in job recruitment.

    The Ministry of Education in 2017 issued regulations to ban work discrimination in on-campus job fairs. This year, several cities, bureau of human resources required job fair organizers to set special reception desks so as to deal with job seekers, complaints about discrimination.

    Non-profit organizations were established to oppose work discrimination, while legal aids were also provided to job seekers through social media platforms like Weibo and WeChat.

Who's in control of your life? Who's pulling your strings? {#blank#}1{#/blank#}We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. As Oscar Wilde puts it, most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry (模仿), their passions a quotation.”

So when people tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We long for this good feeling like a drug一we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live worsened lives to keep getting their fix (成瘾物), we worsen our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.

But just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom-the freedom to be ourselves. The truth is that we cannot control what other people think. People have their own schedule and they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they're more interested in themselves than in you. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}Everyone has different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probably pleasing no one in the process.

So how can we take back control? {#blank#}4{#/blank#}We should guide ourselves by means of a set of values-not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life.

A. I's the inner self born in our mind that is keeping us under control.

B. Furthermore, if we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand.

C. As a matter of fact, people sometimes fail to understand who they are and where they are going.

D. For the most of us, it's other people-society, colleagues, friends, family or our community.

E.I think there's only one way-make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think.

F. Therefore, we are so eager for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, failing to do the things we really want to.