Dieting to lose weight has become very popular in recent years. People have become more health conscious and try to take better care of their bodies by eating more healthily and exercising more regularly to lose any unnecessary fat that they may have.

    Not only are people being more careful about what they eat, they are also concerned with how they eat and how their meals are prepared. People are taking more time for each meal. Many avoid the so-called "plastic" fast-food hamburgers and choose to eat a salad or a sandwich of more healthful ingredients(营养成分) in a quiet restaurant with a more leisurely atmosphere. At home, they also try to take enough time to eat a relaxed dinner without phone or TV interruptions.

    While dieting may be viewed as beneficial, it has also become a serious problem for Americans, particularly for young women. Dieting for them has actually become a psychological addiction. They eat so little that they can lose as much as fifty percent of their total body weight, and although they look like skeletons, they still insist that they are fat.

    The current wave of exercising, dieting and the problems produced have caused many organizations to begin educating the public. Many schools, hospitals, health organizations, newspapers and magazines, for example, are offering classed, printing booklet articles and so on, to inform the public of the way to exercise and diet, of the dangers of dieting too rapidly, and of the places people can go for medical help if they find themselves on the road to "diet addiction".

    March, April and May are months full of festivals and events all over the world. Here are some wonderful festivals around the world that happen in spring.

    SongKran--Thailand

    Dates: 13th-15th, April

    In Thailand, it's time to celebrate the coming monsoon season, which will bring the rain many people have been looking forward to. They celebrate it with a festival called Songkran，when people head out to the streets with water guns to spray(喷，洒）everyone who walks past. If you walk on the streets where the festival is celebrated, prepare to get soaked!

    Naghol--Vanuatu

    Dates: Every Saturday from April to May

Every year, villagers come together to celebrate the harvest of yams, an important part in the people's diet in Vanuatu. The festival is most famous for its “land diving ceremony”. During the ceremony men and boys dive to the ground from high wooden towers with only two thin vines(藤条) attached to their ankles(脚踝). The divers' heads have to lightly touch the ground when they jump—something very dangerous if the vines are not measured properly.

Cherry Blossom Viewing —Japan

    Dates: The cherry blossom season is different from year to year depending on the weather forecast.

    The cherry blossom season has huge importance to the people of Japan, who celebrate the days when the flowers finally blossom. Only a few days later, the petals(花瓣）fall to the ground, like pink snowflakes. This is one of the most beautiful things to see. In Japan, almost everyone has picnics in the parks to view the flowers.

    Sixteen years ago, I learned an important life lesson in the back of a New York City taxi.

    I was on my way to Grand Central Station, and we were driving in the right lane when a black car suddenly sped out of a parking space right in front of us.

    My driver fit the brakes hard, skidded, and missed the other car by a few inches. The driver of the other car, the man who had just nearly caused a huge accident, started shouting at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at him. He was really friendly!

    “Why did you just do that?” I asked him. “This guy almost destroyed your car and could have sent us to the hospital!”

    This was when my taxi driver told me what I now call “the Law of Garbage Trucks”.

    “Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of anger, and full of disappointment,” he said. “As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it, and if you let them do, they'll dump it on you. So when someone wants to dump on you, just smile, wave, wish them will, and move on. You'll be happier because of what you have done.”

    I started thinking, how often do I let Garbage Trucks run right over me? And how often do I take their garbage and dump it on other people—at work, at home, or on the street? It was on that day that I said, “I'm not going to dump anymore.”

    Airbags, now found in almost every vehicle, have saved countless lives and largely reduced the severity of injuries in crashes. Similar technology could greatly reduce broken hips (髋部) resulting from a fall, something most seniors fear.

    Dr. Robert Buckman and his start-up company, Active Protective in Allentown, Pennsylvania, has developed a promising solution, a wearable airbag that can protect hip bones in the event of a fall. The idea was the result of Dr. Buckman's years as a doctor at Temple University. He noticed how many elderly people were being brought into hospitals with broken hip due to falls, and how they often never completely recovered from the injuries. He started to ask what he could do for these people, and that was when he started trying to figure out whether there was a way of helping people who were at the highest risk of falling and suffering these kinds of injuries.

    The device is worn much like a regular belt, but on the outside of the clothing, and it includes sensors that monitor the movement of hips. If the device detects that the person, is falling, an airbag opens before the person hits the ground, cushioning the fall. When the wearer hits the ground, the bag reduces the force to the hip bones by 90 percent, enough to avoid the majority of hip injuries.

    With one out of every three people aged 65 and older suffering serious falls each year, Active Protective has a big market for its wearable device. It also has the potential to sizably reduce hip - related health care expenses: Hip injuries among the elderly cost the US health care system in 2012 $30 billion, which doesn't include the long-term care expenses associated with the high percentage of patients that can no longer live independently.

    Researchers found that compared with young people who spent much of their free time in front of TV sets, those who were physically active often had higher self-respect, better grades and were less likely to have risky behavior like taking drugs, smoking, or drinking. The findings, based on a national survey of nearly 12, 000 middle and high school students, were published in a journal（期刊）.

    “Across the board, children who engaged in any kind of activity were better off than kids who watched a lot of TV,” said study co-author(合著者) professor Penny Gordon Larsen of the University of North Carolina.

    Other studies have linked certain content of television programs, such as violence and sex, to children's behavior. But beyond this issue, Gordon Larsen said that kids who spend hours watching TV” miss opportunities” to develop skills, learn teamwork and have other experiences that their more active peers(同辈) benefit(受益) from

    That doesn't mean, however, that kids have to be on the football team. The study found that some activities like skating and skateboard(滑板)——which adults sometimes frown upon——were also related to better self-respect and less risk-taking.

    That skaters were better behaved than TV-watchers might come as a surprise to some adults who consider these teens to be bad, according to Gordon Larsen. Skateboarding is forbidden in many public areas, and some communities(社区) disagree to build skating parks. But if kids who like to skate have nowhere to do it, “ it's a shame,” said Gordon Larsen.

    Not only should parents encourage their kids to engage（参与） in the physical activities they enjoy, she said, but schools and communities should also do more to create opportunities for children to be active.