Why I've taken a break from holidays

    It is now close to four years since I last took a holiday. This is because I have come to the conclusion, over the course of my adult life, that I am not very good at it. You might think this sounds like saying you're not very good at drinking tea or listening to music. What could possibly be difficult about the natural act of putting your working life on hold for a couple of weeks and going somewhere warm to do nothing?

    I was a model holidaymaker as a kid. However, the problems started during my twenties. A trip to the south of France was ended after just two days, mainly because I had an urge to check my e-mails. Similarly, my honeymoon was cut short by 48 hours—not because my wife and I weren't enjoying ourselves, but because we were missing our cats.

    So what is my problem? On the surface, I'm probably a bit of a homebody. And I just find the pressure of being on holiday too severe: it always feels like having a gun held to my head and being forced to have fun. Somehow, packing a list of possessions and meeting a scheduled flight has none of the excitement of suddenly deciding to take a day off and driving somewhere for the fun of it.

    Thankfully, I'm not alone. This summer, most of my friends have decided not to have a break. And a recent survey (调查) proved the downside of holidays, with the results showing that nearly two thirds of people found that the calming effects of a holiday wore off within 24 hours, as stress levels returned to normal. And this year The Idler magazine published its Book of Awful Holidays. Here you will find a list of the five most ecologically-damaging vacations it's possible to take, along with 50 painful holiday experiences voted for on The Idler website.

    What interests me is what the concept of a “holiday” says about our lives. For me, the point of living is to have a life you enjoy for 52 weeks a year. The more I like my life and the better I structure it, the less I want to go away. Maybe I'm an unusual person for not liking holidays, but I just feel the time when I'm not working is too valuable to waste on them.

    How fit are your teeth? Are you lazy about brushing them? Never fear: An inventor is on the case. An electric toothbrush senses how long and how well you brush, and it lets you track your performance on your phone.

    The Kolibree toothbrush was exhibited at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. It senses how it is moved and can send the information to an Android phone or iPhone via a Bluetooth wireless connection.

    The toothbrush will be able to teach you to brush right (don't forget the insides of the teeth!) and make sure you're brushing long enough. “It's kind of like having a dentist actually watch your brushing on a day-to-day basis,” says Thomas Serval, the French inventor.

    The toothbrush will also be able to talk to other applications on your phone, so developers could, for instance, create a game controlled by your toothbrush. You could score points for beating monsters among your teeth. “We try to make it smart but also  fun,” Several says.

    Serval says he was inspired by his experience as a father. He would come home from work and ask his kids if they had brushed their teeth. They said “yes,” but Serval would find their toothbrush heads dry. He decided he needed a brush that really told him how well his children brushed.

    The company says the Kolibree will go on sale this summer, for $99 to $199, developing on features. The U.S. is the first target market.

    Serval says that one day, it'll be possible to replace the brush on the handle with a brushing unit that also has a camera. The camera can even examine holes in your teeth while you brush.

    It's true that many dads in the wild aren't interested in parenting, but there are some that work pretty hard to give their little ones a good start. Maybe one of these dads will make you remember your own dad!

    The male giant water bug doesn't seem to mind a heavy load on his back for his kids. The female puts about 100 to 150 eggs on the back of the male, and then she leaves. Once the female is gone, the male has to look after the eggs. It usually takes one to two weeks for the eggs to hatch. The father giant water bug jumps around to make sure the growing eggs get enough air and water. All this time he can't fly because of the weight of the eggs growing rapidly on his back.

    Now let's turn to the male stickleback fish. When the mother leaves after laying her eggs, the father tends his young. If the young fish go too far away, their father helps with their safe return by carrying them back in his mouth. The male stickleback looks after all his young — as many as 100 — until they can live on their own.

    A similar example can be found in emperor penguins living in cold areas. The male emperor penguin goes without food while looking after his egg until it hatches. For about 62 to 67 days, the egg stays on top of the father's feet, in very cold temperatures that drop down to -39° C. As a result, the father may lose nearly 50 percent of his body weight while waiting for his baby penguin to be born!

    Music icon Bob Dylan will not attend the Nobel ceremony in December because he has other commitments(承诺), the Swedish Academy said on Wednesday.

    “The Swedish Academy received a personal letter from Bob Dylan yesterday where he explained that he could not make himself available in December …,” it said in a statement.

    “He wishes that he could accept the award personally, but other commitments make it unfortunately impossible. He said that he felt very honored by the Nobel Prize,” it added. The Swedish Academy said it respected Dylan's decision, but that it was “unusual” for a Nobel laureate(获得者) not to come to Stockholm to accept the award in person. Nobel laureates are honored every year on December 10 ─ the death anniversary of the prize's founder Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist，inventor and philanthropist.

Several other literature prize winners have skipped the Nobel ceremony in the past for various reasons —- British writer Doris Lessing because of ill health, British playwright Harold Pinter because he was under treatment in the hospital and Austrian p laywright and novelist Elfriede Jelinek due to social phobia(社交恐惧症).

“We look forward to Bob Dylan's Nobel lecture, which he must carry out — it is the only requirement — within six months starting from December 10,2016,” the academy said.

    We're surrounded by chemistry in everyday life. Sometimes it is easy to see, like when your science teacher conducts a big experiment in class. At other times, it can be extremely hard to see everyday chemistry at work, but nearly everything you touch or use has some element of chemistry in it.

    Something as simple as toothpaste contains at least three chemicals, if not more. It is the mixture of them and its chemical reaction that keeps your teeth clean. Other things you use every day are created by chemistry, such as hair products, shampoo and soap. Adding detergent (洗涤剂) to water involves chemistry. Without chemistry, we would never have realized that we need soap to get the oil out of clothes or skin.

    Chemistry not only helps us make products for use, but it also helps us understand the world around us. Chemistry helps us understand what the ozone layer (臭氧层) is and how it protects us. Chemistry also gives us sunscreen to protect us from the sun. Thanks to chemistry, we know bleach (漂白剂) can't be mixed with vinegar, because it can produce poisonous gas. Without chemistry, we wouldn't have had fireworks displays on important days like the Spring Festival.

    Chemistry plays a big role in food preparation. Cooking food causes it to go through a chemical change. That is why cooked food often tastes different from raw (生的) food. Baking is a great example of chemistry. Too much or too little of any ingredient makes a difference to the result of baking, for example, the dough (面团) won't rise or the cake will be flat.

    Chemistry isn't something that just lives in a lab; it's something that you come across hundreds of times every day. If you know how chemistry works, you will get a greater comprehension of the science behind some of the simplest looking things.

    Summer's here and it won't be long before school-aged kids across America start complaining that they're tired of riding their bikes, playing at the park, swimming in the pool...and all the other awesome activities their parents hoped would keep them pleasant for the next 10 weeks. Well, if it's any comfort, such rapid boredom could suggest that the kids have amazing powers of memory. A new study shows that the better your short-term memory is, the faster you fed sated (过饱的）and decide you've had enough.

    "Though satiation can be physical, like when you feel full after eating too much, we were interested in the psychological (心理学的）side of satiation. Like when you're just tired of something," Noelle Nelson, assistant professor of marketing and consumer behavior. She and her colleague Joseph Redden at the University of Minnesota tried to think outside the lunch box." Something that was interesting to me is that some people get tired of same things at very different speeds. So if you think about pop songs on the radio, some people must still be enjoying them and requesting them even after hearing them a lot. But a lot of other people are really sick of those same songs."

    The difference, the researchers thought, might have to do with memories of past experiences. For example, studies show that people push away from the dinner table sooner when they're asked to describe in detail what they ate earlier for lunch.

    So the researchers tested the memory capacity (能力） of college students, The students then viewed a repeating series of three classic paintings…like The Starry Night, American Gothic, and The Scream...or listened and re-listened to a series of three pop songs...or three pieces of classical music. Throughout the test, the students were asked to rate （定等级） their experience from zero to tan. And the better a participant scored in the memory test, the faster they got bored." We found that people with larger capacities remembered more about the music or art, which led to them getting tired of the music or art more quickly. So remembering more details actually made the students feel like they'd experienced the music or art more often."

    The findings suggest that marketers could control our desire for their products by figuring out ways to keep us from fully remembering our experiences. We could also trick ourselves into eating less junk food by putting ourselves in the memory of a previous (之前的) snack. As for kids easily bored, just tell them to forget about it—it might help them have more fun.