A Lifesaving At-Home Checkup

    More importance is attached to physical fitness nowadays. However, staying fit can be expensive when going to professional agencies for medical checkups. Here we show you three ways to do medical checkup at home, try them for a rough idea about your health condition.

    1 Balance On One Leg

    Hold for up to 60 seconds. If you fall down early, you may be at higher risk for brain decline. In a Japanese study, 30 percent of older adults who could balance for only 20 seconds or fewer had microbleeds in the brain, an early sign of risk for stroke or dementia(痴呆). These microbleeds can affect balance, memory, and decision making.

    2 Touch Your Toes

    Sit with your back straight, then lean forward and try to touch your toes. Not even close? You might be at risk for heart problems. By using this test, University of North Texas researchers found that some old inflexible folks have to have the heart work harder to provide enough blood, raising the risk of heart attack or stroke.

    3 Sitting To Standing

    Time how long it takes to lift and lower yourself from a chair ten times as fast as you can. Senior adults who did ten repetitions in 21 seconds or fewer were less likely to die over the next 13 years than those who took longer. The test requires muscle strength, balance, and heart fitness; being slow could mean underlying disease before symptoms arise.

    The above are home tests everyone could do to keep you fit and they don't require much time or money. Learn what possible dangers are hiding inside you and how to deal with them.

    Getting rid of dirt, in the opinion of most people, is a good thing. However, there is nothing fixed about attitudes to dirt.

    In the early 16th century, people thought that dirt on the skin was a way to block out disease, as medical opinion had it that washing off dirt with hot water could open up the skin and let illnesses in. A particular danger was thought to lie in public baths. By 1538, the French king had closed the bath houses in his kingdom. So did the king of England in 1546. Thus it began a long time when the rich and the poor in Europe lived with dirt in a friendly way. Henry IV, King of France, was famously dirty. Upon learning that a nobleman had taken bath, the king ordered that, to avoid the attack of disease, the nobleman should not go out.

    Though the belief in the merit of dirt was long-lived, dirt has no longer been regarded as a nice neighbor ever since the 18th century. Scientifically speaking, cleaning away dirt is good to health. Clean water supply and hand washing are practical means of preventing disease. Yet, it seems that standards of cleanliness have moved beyond science since World War Ⅱ. Advertisements repeatedly sell the idea: clothes need to be whiter than white, cloths ever softer, surfaces to shine. Has the hate for dirt, however, gone too far?

    Attitudes to dirt still differ hugely nowadays. Many first-time parents nervously try to warn their children of touching dirt, which might be responsible for the spread of disease. On the contrary, Mary Ruebush, an American immunologist(免疫学家), encourages children to play in the dirt to build up a strong immune system. And the latter position is gaining some ground.

    Tyler Skiuzacek's father，Patrick，could not sleep through the night．It was 2007，and Patrick had just returned from a year in Iraq，where he served in the U．S．Army．Patrick Skluzacek was energetic and happy when he left for Iraq，Tyler says．But when he returned，he was unhappy and drinking alcohol too much．It turned out Patrick was suffering from sleep panic attacks．Patrick would wake up every night．His heart would beat too fast．He would sweat．The nighttime panic attacks prevented Patrick from feeling good the next day，because he was so tired．

    Almost 10 years later，Tyler was in a position to help his father．He thought he could make a computer program that might help his father．So he entered a competition in Washington，D．C，trying to solve the problem Tyler's father and other U．S．war veterans(老兵)，were having．People called them “night terrors.”The students had 36 hours to come up with a program．They called it myBivy．That name comes from bivouac，a military term for a safe place to sleep．

    The application uses a smart watch and a smart phone together．The watch tracks the wearer's heartbeat．It sends the data to the program on the smart phone．Research shows that a person's heart rate will increase right before a night terror．So if the wearer's heartbeat started to rise，my B ivy would respond．The smart watch would vibrate(振动)and gently wake up the sleeping person．That was enough to prevent a night terror from happening．

    Patrick wore the watch for two weeks to get used to it．Then，Tyler turned on the application．On the first night，the vibrations from the watch prevented 10 nightmares．Patrick said he had not slept that well in many years．Tyler and his team won the contest in Washington，D．C．The prize was $1，500．Then the group tried to raise more money from investors，and they were surprised when they took in over$25，000．By the spring of 2016，Tyler and his team were testing the app with volunteers，and hoped to make it availab1e to the public soon．

    If you want to get the most out of the study of a language, you must also read for pleasure: novels, plays, travel books, and so on. And in reading books of this kind the important thing is to get on with reading; to try to grasp what the writer is going to tell you in the book as a whole. This is impossible if you stop and think over the meaning of every single word which happens to be unfamiliar. You can not enjoy a story if you stop half a dozen times on every page in order to look up words in the dictionary. You may even prevent yourself from understanding the story as a whole by doing this.

    When you are reading books of this kind, therefore, you will usually have to rely mainly on the context to help you. If you meet an unfamiliar word, do not let it take too much of your attention from the main thread(主线) of the story. In all probability you will meet the same word again a few pages later on in a slightly different context, and each time you see it that your understanding of it will become more exact.

Internet time tied to teen depression(抑郁) symptoms

    Spending time online is normal behaviour for teenagers. But too much Internet use by teens —or too little, for that matter —might be related to depression, a new study finds.

    The findings, reported in the journal of Pediatrics, do not mean that the Internet is to blame. For one, teens in the study who spent no time online were also at increased risk of depression symptoms. Instead, the researchers say that both heavy Internet use, and non-use, could serve as signals that a teenager is having a hard time.

    For the study, Dr. Pierre-Andre Michaud and his colleagues at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, surveyed 7,200 individuals aged 16 to 20 about their Internet use.

    Those who were online more than two hours per day were considered "heavy" Internet users, while those online anywhere from several times per week to two hours per day were considered "regular" users.

    The teenagers also answered a number of health-related questions, including some standard questions about "depressive tendencies" that gauge(判定) how often a person feels sad or hopeless. Compared with regular Internet users, the study found, kids who were heavy users or non-users were more likely to be depressed or very depressed.

    Among male teens, heavy users and non-users were both around one-third more likely to have a high depression score, compared to "regular" users. Among girls, heavy Internet users had an 86 percent greater chance of depression, while non-users had a 46 percent greater likelihood compared to regular users.

    That was with factors like family income and any chronic health problems taken into account.

    Since teenagers typically go online to contact with friends, the researchers speculate(推测) that those who are never online may be more socially isolated.

    The Great Depression that followed the stock market crash of 1929 saw hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work. In the years of great fear and depression, a lot of American citizens looked desperately to the federal government for assistance. Of all the programs designed by President Roosevelt when he took office in 1932, few were more criticized - or had more lasting impact - than the Work Projects Administration, better known as the WPA.

    The intention of the WPA, which functioned from 1935 to 1943, was to design and administer public works projects to help relieve unemployment. The majority of these projects involved historic or artistic attempts. The WPA's Writers Project, for example, was responsible not only for such practical works as state guidebooks but also for the collection of historically valuable oral histories. Over 2,900 of these records were collected in 24 states. They provide an irreplaceable firsthand account of people's diets, customs, celebrations, and political and religious beliefs at the time.

    The artworks created through the Federal Arts Project are one of the WPA's most lasting achievements. Out - of - work painters, both famous and unknown, created paintings that beautified schools, libraries, and government buildings, WPA photographers traveled across the country recording the hardships of life on small rural farms. When the United States entered World War Ⅱ in 1941, WPA artists were enlisted to produce posters supporting the war effort. Many WPA artworks, including hundreds of small drawings picturing scenes of everyday life, still exist today.