On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted that 42% of Americans could be overweight by 2030. Our expanding waistlines lead to not only a medical problem, but according to a recent article In The New York Times, it could also endanger personal safety in some situations—in an airplane crash, for example.

    The New York Times' Christen Negroni reports that engineers and scientists are questioning whether airplane seats are adequately constructed to protect overweight travelers. Government standards for airplane seat strength（强度）— first set moe than 60 years ago — require that the seats be made for a passenger weighing 170 pounds (77kg). Today, the average American man weighs nearly 194 pounds (88kg) and the average woman 165 pounds (75kg). Negroni reports:

    “If a heavier person completely fills seat, the seat is not likely to behave as intended during a crash,” said Robert Salazar, the leading scientist at the Center for Applied Biomechanics at the University of Virginia. “The energy absorption that is built into the aircraft seat is likely to be overpowered and the passengers will not be protected properly.”

    “Nor would the injury be limited to that passenger only,” Dr. Salzar said. “If a seat or a seat belt fails,” he said, “those people who are seated nearby could be endangered from 'the uncontrolled movements of the passenger'.”

    Most complaints about airplane seats focus on their lack of comfort and high ticket price, and whether overweight passengers should be made to buy two seats. But The New York Times' article brings up another reason to feel anxious about flying. Investigators of the issue got in touch with the airplane seat and seat belt makers, but they refused to comment on the problem. Experts agreed that crash testing should be done with overweight dummies （人体模型）. Both airplane seats and seat belts should be tested, they said.

    Fortunately, however, according to Nora Marshall, a senior adviser at the National Transportation Safety Board, the board's investigators have never seen an accident involving a commercial plane in which the weight of a passenger was a problem.

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Dear Reader,

    Today I am going to ask you to support Wikipedia with a donation.

    Wikipedia is built differently from almost every other top 50 websites. We have a small number of paid staff，just twenty­three. Wikipedia content is free to use by anyone for any purpose. Our annual expenses are less than six million dollars. Wikipedia is run by the non­profit Wikimedia Foundation, which I founded in 2003.

    Wikipedia is driven by a global community of more than 150,000 volunteers — all devoted to sharing knowledge freely. Over almost eight years, these volunteers have contributed more than 11 million articles in 265 languages. More than 275 million people come to our website every month to access information,free of charge and free of advertising.

    But Wikipedia is more than a website. We share a common cause: Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's our commitment.

    Your donation helps us in several ways. Most importantly, you will help us cover the increasing cost of managing global traffic to one of the most popular websites on the Internet. Funds also help us improve the software that runs Wikipedia — making it easier to search, easier to read, and easier to write for. We are committed to increasing the free knowledge movement worldwide, by taking on new volunteers, and building strategic partnerships with institutions of culture and learning.

    Wikipedia is different. It's the largest encyclopedia (百科全书) in history, written by volunteers. Like a national park or a school, we don't believe advertising should have a place in Wikipedia. We want to keep it free and strong, but we need the support of thousands of people like you.

    Thank you,

Jimmy Wales

    Many people tend to complain about not having good friends in their lives. Sadly, they seem to think that their own company is not enough to make them happy. Nothing could be further from the truth though. In order to get along with others, the first thing you need to do is learn to get along with yourself. Only in this way will you succeed in developing healthy, solid relationships with others.

    Listen to your inner voice. Remember that inner voice that keeps whispering to you what you really want and need as well as what you do not really want and need. It is about time you started listening to it. In order to get to know yourself in depth, it is important to learn and accept what you want and what you do not want.

    Learn to enjoy your own company. You will be surprised to find out how many things you can do by yourself and actually have fun in the process. Reading romantic novels, poetry or science fiction is only a few of the things that you can do by yourself, which not only can offer you hours of enjoyment, but also the chance to get to know yourself better.

    Satisfy yourself. Pay special attention to your personal hygiene(卫生). Do your hair and nails often and experiment with new styles. Follow a healthy diet and exercise regularly to stay in good shape. No matter how busy your daily schedule is, always find at least an hour per day for yourself, when you can either relax doing absolutely nothing, or doing something that you enjoy most.

    Learn to respect your own boundaries. Find out what your boundaries are and learn to respect them. You are the only one who knows what you can accept and what you cannot.

    We spend a lot of time studying what we eat, but it turns out that when we choose to eat the very last meal of the day may also matter.

    Recent studies found that food was processed by the body in different ways depending on what time of day it's consumed. This might be because of physical activity, changes in body temperature, biochemical reactions and absorption and digestion of food.

    The best time to eat dinner depends on when you get up and go to bed, as well as if and when you eat your other meals. "Breakfast sets you up for success," Planells, a nutritionist, says. "If you don't eat breakfast, by lunchtime you're starving, and by dinner any healthy eating plans are out the window."

    Researchers also found that meal timing had an influence on human metabolism(新陈代谢). They studied a small group of people carrying extra weight and found that those who ate their last meal by mid­afternoon had increased fat burning at night.

    Eating early also seems to be the perfect time for blood sugar control. "Starting around 3 pm, blood sugar control is worse than it is in the morning, meaning that if you ate the same meal at 3 pm as you did for breakfast, your blood sugar levels would rise higher, despite the fact that you ate the same amount of food," Planells says.

    A 10­week study of "time­restricted feeding" looked at what happens to body fat when people limited their meals to a shorter window of time. Researchers found that people who ate breakfast 90 minutes later than usual and ate dinner 90 minutes earlier than usual lost more than twice as much body fat on average as those in the control group, who ate their meals as they normally would.

    Feelings often run high where insects are concerned, with many people even sick when seeing them, let alone touch or swallow them. And yet insects present a huge nutritional opportunity as an increasing global population seeks more sources of food and feed.

    Insects have generally high levels of animal protein and key micronutrients with lower environmental footprints than traditional alternatives, and they can be raised on leftovers. But cultural, social and economic problems remain, reports an article published today in Nutrition Bulletin.

    “Insects present a nutritional opportunity, but it is unclear how their nutritional quality is influenced by what they are fed, "says Darja Dobermann, a researcher at the University of Nottingham.“In ideal conditions, insects have a smaller environmental impact than most traditional western forms of animal protein; less known is how to raise insect production while maintaining these environmental benefits.”

    “Studies overall show that insects could make valuable economic and nutritional contributions to the food or feed sys tems, but there are no clear regulations in place to bring insects into such supply systems without them turning into a more expensive version of poultry（家禽）for food,” says Dobermann.

    The article highlights how insects have been a source of food for hundreds of years in more than 100countries with over 2,000 species that can be eaten; in central Africa, up to 50% of dietary protein has come from insects, with their market value higher than many alternative sources of animal protein.

    Insects need to be large enough to make the effort of catching them worthwhile and easy to locate, preferably in predictably large quantities. They are consumed at various life stages, as raw, fried, boiled, roasted or ground food.

    Perhaps you have heard a lot about the Internet, but what is it, do you know? The Internet is a network. It uses the telephone to join millions of computers together around the world.

    Maybe that doesn't sound very interesting. But when you've joined to the Internet, there are lots of things you can do. You can send e-mails to your friends, and they can get them in a few seconds. You can also do with all kinds of information on the World Wide Web (WWW).

    There are many different kinds of computers now. They all can be joined to the Internet. Most of them are small machines sitting on people's desks at home, but there are still many others in schools, offices or large companies. These computers are owned by people and companies, but no one really owns the Internet itself.

    There are lots of places for you to go into the Internet. For example, your school may have the Internet, you can use it during lessons or free time. Libraries often have computers joined to the Internet, you are welcome to use it at any time.

    Thanks to the Internet, the world is becoming smaller and smaller. It is possible for you to work at home with a computer in front, getting and sending the information you need. You can buy or sell whatever you want by the Internet. But do you know 98% of the information on the Internet is in English? So what will English be like tomorrow?