Have you ever noticed what happens to an idea once you express it?Just talking about it or writing it down causes you to make it clear in your own mind.How can you use this to increase your brain power?Start writing.

    By putting thoughts into words,you are telling yourself the logic behind what you think,feel,or only partly understand.Often,explaining a thought is the process of understanding.In other words,you increase your brain power by exercising your “explain power”.

    Another benefit of writing is that it helps you remember.Many,if not most,highly productive people are always taking notes.You can try keeping it all in your head,but if you keep a journal of your ideas,the next time you're working on a big project,you'll probably have more success.

    Want to understand a topic?Write a book about it.That's an extreme example,but if you are learning something new,write a letter to a friend about it,and you will understand it better.Want to invent something?Write an explanation of the problem—why you want to solve it,and why it is worth solving,and you're halfway there.

    Writers don't always write because they clearly understand something beforehand.Often,they write about something because they want to understand it.You can do the same.Writing will help bring you to an understanding. Give it a try.

    Have you ever had the following experience? You have been given the task of organizing a conference, which includes a must-do list about a mile long. There is the conference site, the guest list, the materials, the technology and even the food and drink to think about and plan. If you are beginning to feel the stress, slow down and take a breath. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}.

    Write down your goals. You will need to clearly define what you hope to accomplish with this conference because this will shape the rest of your decisions.  {#blank#}2{#/blank#}.

    Develop your budget.  {#blank#}3{#/blank#}. Then break that budget into different parts such as conference site, materials and speakers' fees. Stick to your budget, and make sure your assistants are keeping their monetary limits as well.

     {#blank#}4{#/blank#}. When searching for locations, keep in mind the number of participants, the convenience of the location, parking and closeness to public transportation, airports and hotels. Your goal in finding a place to hold the conference should be making it as easy as possible for participants to attend.

    Seek help from the staff of the conference site. If you have chosen a site that is known for holding conferences, you can seek help from the staff there as organizing meeting is what they do every day.  {#blank#}5{#/blank#}. They should be able to answer any questions or concern and provide advice when needed.

    Of course, full preparations also include a walk-through. Go to the site and meet with the staff the day before to be certain that everything is in place and to take care of any small details.

  A. Decide on a schedule for the meeting

  B. Choose your conference site

  C. Read the following skills to figure out how to organize a conference

  D. Knowing what you want to achieve eases the stress of moving forward

  E. Make full use of this important resource

  F. You can do nothing without knowing how much money you have to spend

  G. Seek help from your colleagues to support every aspect of the meeting

    It is said that if you want to stay young, sit down and have a good think. This is the research finding of a team of Japanese doctors, who say that most of our brains are not getting enough exercise — and as a result, we are growing old unnecessarily soon.

    Professor Taiju Matsuzawa wanted to find out why otherwise healthy farmers in northern Japan appeared to be losing their ability to think and reason at a relatively early age, and how the process of aging could be slowed down. With a team of colleagues at Tokyo National University, he set about measuring brain volumes of a thousand people of different ages and varying occupations. Computer technology enabled the researchers to obtain precise measurements of the volume of the front and side parts of the brain, which controls functions like eating and breathing, does not contract with age, and one can continue living without intellectual on economical faculties. Contraction of front and side parts — as cells die off — was observed in some subjects in their thirties, but it was still not evident in some sixty-and seventy-year-olds. Matsuzawa concluded from his tests that there is a simple way to the contraction normally connected with age — using the head.

    The findings show in general terms that contraction of the brain begins sooner in people in the country than in the town. Those least at risk, says Matsuzawa, are lawyers, followed by university professors and doctors. White collar workers doing routine work in government offices are, however, as likely to have shrinking (萎缩) brains as the farm worker, bus driver and shop assistant.

    Matsuzawa's findings show that thinking can prevent the brain from shrinking. Blood must circulate properly in the head to supply the fresh oxygen the brain cells need. “The best way to maintain, good blood circulation is through using the brain.” he says. “Think hard and engage in conversation. Don't rely on pocket calculators.”

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    Blind people usually possess one advantage over other people who can see. Their sense of hearing is far more acute. Bats, whose sight is poor, use a sound location system to help them avoid blocks in the dark. They send out pulses of sound waves, pitched at 50,000 cycles per second, far above the limits of the human ear, which can hear sounds up to frequencies of about 20,000 cycles per second. As the echoes bounce back off obstacles such as trees and walls, the bats are able to take proper action.

    The first steps to help blind people to see with sound are based on exactly the same principle. The sound is given off by an ultrasonic (超声的) torch, whose shape is different from a normal electric torch. It is double-barreled. It works in a similar way to a sonar (声呐) unit on a warship or submarine. The unit's transmitter sends out pulses of ultrasonic waves at the same frequency as the bat and the receiver picks up the returning echoes. Because these are still above the frequency at which the human ear can pick them up. The echoes are filtered (过滤) through circuits that turn them into “bleeps” which can be clearly heard before passing them into headphones.

    This means that a person holding the torch can point it ahead of him and scan the area for obstacles over a range of about 25 feet. If there are no return echoes coming through the headphones, then there is nothing in the way. If echoes do come back, then the closer the obstruction the faster the succession of bleeps and the deeper the pitch of each bleep. With practice, the torch could help a blind person to lead a more normal life.

    At present, the experimental ultrasonic torch requires a shoulder bag to carry the batteries, cables for the power supplies and earphones, as well as the torch itself. Fortunately, reducing the size of the electronic equipment is progressing and it should not be long before the whole set-up can be reproduced in a form small enough to fit into a pair of glasses. The wearer would face in the direction he wanted to check, and lift or lower his head just as a sighted person would.

    There's nothing like a good night's sleep — but what does that really mean? It turns out that the answer depends not only on your age, but also on your lifestyle. Some people are productive and happy with fewer hours of sleep, while others need more. Still, experts can determine guidelines that work for most people. The National Sleep Foundation researched the topic and gave new recommendations this week. The foundation acknowledges that sleep needs will vary — lifestyle and stress should be taken into consideration — but their recommendations offer a general guideline. For example, teenagers (14 —17 years old) need 8—10 hours, sleep every day.

    To create the recommendations, some sleep and medical experts reviewed 312 articles from journals published during the last decade. This is the first time that any professional organization has developed age-specific recommended sleep durations based on a systematic review of the world scientific literature.

    A lack of sleep can be linked to weight gain, because that causes an increase in appetite, according to the foundation. It can also have serious consequences on the brain. People who do not get enough sleep are at increased risk for depression, and can endanger others. Those that become sleepy while driving, for example, risk both their lives and the lives of those around them.

    Researchers also have found in the past that too much sleep can have negative effects. Low socioeconomic status and depression reportedly are significantly associated with longer sleep. However, experts nowadays find that research on oversleeping is still unconvincing and needs more attention. Currently, there is no strong evidence that sleeping too much has health consequences. There is, however, laboratory evidence that short sleep durations of four to five hours have negative consequences. We need similar laboratory studies to determine whether long sleep durations result in physiological changes that could lead to disease before we make any recommendations against sleep extension.

A clever technologist took steamboat inventions and turned them into the first commercial steamboat service.

Although Robert Fulton did not invent the steamboat, as is commonly believed, he played an important role in making steamboat travel a reality. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1765. As a young man, he set out to make his name as a portrait painter. His career took him to Europe and into the orbit of people with the power to support him politically and financially.

Fulton entered London society after he painted Benjamin Franklin's portrait. While abroad, Fulton left the arts for a career in shipbuilding. He was interested in the recently-invented steam engine, and thought it could be used to power ships. Fulton's vision was not original; many others had entered the field, and the unfortunate inventor John Fitch had built a working steamship already. But like Henry Ford, Fulton's talent lay not in the invention but in the product's application in the marketplace.

Fulton didn't focus entirely on the steamboat. In 1804, he tested the first submarine successfully, which he had built for the British Royal Navy. His invention would make him a celebrity upon his return to the United States two years later. Fulton's partner Robert Livingston obtained an exclusive license for steamboat services on New York's Hudson River. It was time for Fulton to deliver.

To build an efficient, reliable steamboat, Fulton used a special English steam engine. The ship's bottom was flat and its stern was square. The steamboat Clermont made its debut (首次亮相) on August 17, 1807, steaming up the river from New York to Albany, and it soon entered commercial services. The hilly terrain of New York made water transport faster than land transport, and Fulton's boat — formerly known as the "North River Steamboat" — was a hit. Within five years, Fulton would be running services on six major rivers plus the Chesapeake Bay, and bring in great profits.