Speedy eaters are three times more likely to be too fat, a problem which is made even worse by the popularity of fast food and the decrease of regular dining habits, some Japanese researchers said on Wednesday.

    The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, pay special attention to how eating styles, and not just what or how much is eaten, can affect an obesity epidemic(肥胖流行病) that is becoming more and more severe because of the speed of the Western-style diet in many parts of the world.

    The World Health Organization considers around 400 million people in the world as too fat, 20 million of whom are under the age of five. The researchers are concerned that the condition raises the risk of diseases like type 2 diabetes (糖尿病) and heart problems.

    For their study, Hiroyasu Iso and the team at Osaka University asked more than 3000 Japanese volunteers (志愿者) who are 30 to 69 years old about their eating. About half of the men and a little more than half of the women said they ate until full. About 45 percent of the men and 36 percent of the women said they ate quickly.

    Those who said they ate until full and ate quickly were three times more likely to be fat than people in the “not eating until full and not eating quickly” group, the researchers found.

    They believe that the main causes are both the popularity of eating cheap fast food and bad habits such as watching television while eating.

    To fight against the bad effect of eating quickly and being too full that can lead to obesity, parents should encourage children to eat slowly and in calm environments, the study suggested.

    Currently offered by some famous universities, MOOCs are attractive to people who do not have the financial resources to meet the growing costs of university education, or who do not have formal qualifications. They also allow participants to study at their own pace.

    The potential for MOOCs to deliver education is obviously vast—they could be considered as a huge step forwards in widening participation. They also have the potential to provide a unique window on universities that offer popular and valuable courses, they may attract some participants to register for formal fee-paying programmes at the same or other universities and are likely to promote new ways of on-line education.

    However, it is still very early days for MOOCs. The quality of the education provision is highly variable, with many courses offering only recordings of lectures, and delivery is particularly difficult in some special fields that require practical classes, research projects or extensive library access. Besides, wider engagement with participants requires very considerable resource. Even limited feedback or examination becomes a major task if there are several thousand students in the class.

Considering the challenges, some people argue MOOCs will soon evaporate (蒸发). But they certainly provide good opportunity for widening higher education, are a means of raising awareness of universities to audiences of tens or hundreds of thousands, and are well worthy of serious consideration.

    When was the last time you read a book or a magazine article? Do your everyday reading habits centre around updates on the Internet? In case you are one of countless individuals who don't make a habit of reading you may be passing up a great chance: Reading has a number of advantages and only a couple of advantages of reading are recorded below.

    Everything you read fills your head with new bits of information and you never know when it might be useful to you. The more knowledge you have, the better-equipped you are to overcome any challenge you'll ever face. Besides, here's a bit of food for thought：Should you ever find yourself in a terrible situation, remember that although you might lose everything else — your job, your possessions, your money, even your health — knowledge can never be taken from you.

    At the same time, the more you read, the more words you gain, and they'll surely make their way into your everyday vocabulary. Being able to express your ideas clearly in words is of great help and knowing that you can speak to higher-ranking people with self-confidence can be a great encouragement to your self-esteem（自尊）. Reading books is also important for learning new languages, as non-native speakers gain exposure to words used in context, which will improve their own speaking and writing fluency.

    When you read a book, you have to remember a lot of characters, their backgrounds, ambitions, history as well as the various plots(各种各样的情节) through every story. That's a fair bit to remember, but brains are wonderful things and can remember these things with ease. Amazingly enough, whenever you remember something new, new synapses(神经元的突触) are formed and existing ones are strengthened. How cool that is!

    No matter how much stress you have at work, in your personal relationships, or countless other issues faced in daily life, it all just slips away when you lose yourself in a great story. A well-written novel can transport you to other fields while an interesting article will distract(使分心） you and keep you in the present moment, letting stress away and allowing you to relax.

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Indeed, there are many things in life which we alone cannot perform.

    We need friends' help. Friends are people who willingly and readily help us when we are in trouble, and show sympathy for us when we are in misery.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#}For example, when we have passed the graduation examination and are looking for a job, we need experienced and reliable friends to guide us and help us on our way. A good friend is also an adviser, because our own points of view towards things may not be always right. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    Of course, we can make friends everywhere. However, I think the best place is school, where we are among a big number of boys and girls our own age, so it is easy to get to know one another in a short time. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    In order to make friends, we ourselves must be honest, noble-minded and kind-hearted whereby to leave a favorable impression on others since other people observe us the same way as we do.

    At the same time, we should avoid bad friends, because they always do harm to us and moreover, they are dangerous to the people around. Worse still, they destroy our friendship with good friends.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. Indeed, seeking acquaintance with bad friends would be a serious mistake

B. A faithful friend is hard to find.

C. Therefore, it is necessary for us to seek advice from friends.

D. A friend in need is a friend indeed.

E. Besides, we can also make friends among the people who work with us in the community.

F. A proverb says “One man is not good enough to live alone in the world.”

G. The benefits of friendship are boundless and sometimes invisible.

    A psychotherapist once taught me a little trick that helped me feel less angry at my partner and less sad about the failings of our relationship.

    She said, "Look at him and imagine him as a very little boy; that way, you separate yourself somewhat from the adult, and you are likely to understand and forgive him."

    It actually helped. I couldn't be as mad at or disappointed by a child as I could be with a grown man. So, at least on some occasions, we were both spared the heartache of an uncomfortable silence or a not-so-silent argument. And I sometimes still use versions of that trick whenever I feel frustrated or angry in other relationships or personal exchanges.

    But what if you could mentally change the form of the emotion itself? According to scientists at the University of Texas, maybe you can.

    Focusing specifically on sadness, the researchers asked two groups of study participants to write about a time in their lives when they felt very sad. They then asked one group to imagine sadness as a person, and write down a description of the person they imagined would be sadness. Not surprisingly, the participants described sadness in such ways as an older person with gray hair and sunken eyes or a young girl holding her head down as she slowly walked along.

    The researchers asked the other group of participants to write down a description of sadness with respect to its impact on their moods. When asked to rate their levels of sadness after completing their descriptions, the participants who wrote about the emotion itself and how it affects them reported higher levels of sadness than the group that anthropomorphized (人格化)sadness into a specific type of person with familiar human characteristics. The researchers suggest that by giving life to the emotion, participants can view sadness as something (or someone) separate and somewhat distant from themselves, helping them relieve their negative feelings.

    While it's okay to feel sad, many people behave in unconscious and sometimes self-destructive ways to distract or "save" themselves when they are consumed by negative emotions. So in the study authors wanted to know whether or not the group that reported feeling less sad would make smarter shopping decisions.

    They tested this by asking participants in both groups to first choose between a salad or a cheesecake dessert to go with the main dish they were having for lunch. The researchers also asked participants to choose between a computer loaded with features for productivity or a computer loaded with features for entertainment. Those study participants who had anthropomorphized their emotions were more likely to choose the salad and the productive computer than those who had simply written about their feelings.

    For obvious reasons, then, they say this technique is best for reduce negative emotions.

When I was at school, our teacher used to tell the class: "You are what you eat." Actually, he was trying to show us the importance of eating the right food to stay healthy. And there are clear proofs that you become what you eat.

Japanese people are considered to be the healthiest in the world because of the food they eat. Most of them eat rice and fish and vegetables every day. They drink green tea or water when they're thirsty, and snack on dried fish, fruit or ginkgo nuts. This tradition diet helps them live a longer and healthier life.

Food has great effect on our physical and emotional health. Have you ever heard any of the following advice?

·Lettuce(生菜)or milk can make you sleepy.

·To stop feeling sleepy, you should eat dried fish.

·To keep your teeth clean, you should eat apples often.

·Garlic helps you not to catch cold.

But some advice may be contradictory to each other. While some people say "eating chocolate makes you fat and gives you spots", some others say “chocolate contains the essential minerals like iron and magnesium(镁)." In this case, what you need to do is to figure out what type of chocolate and how much of it to eat.

Some restaurants have already had their menus list the nutritional content and the benefits of their dishes and drinks. Let's take the restaurant "Winners" as an example. Its dishes are specifically designed to help people win sports competitions. There is a typical Night before dish, a vegetable lasagne(宽面条)with rich tomato sauce full of vitamin and soft, easy-to-digest vegetables, which is lopped with a little fresh cheese—just enough to help you get a good night's sleep. Or you can choose the Go-faster salad, which is a large bowl of mixed raw vegetables in a light salad dressing. The vegetables are carefully chosen to include plenty of natural vitamins and minerals. It gives you energy without making you gain weight.

The concept of eating food only because it's tasty is going out of fashion. And food producers are changing. Cola companies are making sugar-free and caffeine-free drinks. Food companies are making cookies with dried fruit because it is healthier. So in the future you might be able to eat your way to your idea of perfection.