Easy Ways to Improve Your Mood

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Taking an extra moment for yourself will make your day brighter and give you a healthier outlook on life. Here are some simple ways you can bring a little happiness into your life right now:

    Go for a walk.

    Grab your dog, best friend, or your significant other and head out on a brisk(轻快的) walk. Just a little bit of exercise can improve your mood and give you a fresh perspective on problems that have been bothering you. Think walks are boring? {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Take a trip to the mall, or even walk to get some frozen yogurt. Make it a fun trip and you'll surely make it part of your routine.

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    After all, laughter is the best medicine. Pick up something that makes you laugh like a funny picture, book, magazine, or a DVD of your favorite comedy. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Giving yourself time to laugh increases feel-good endorphins(胺多酚).

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    Take a photo of yourself doing something you enjoy, like roller skating, skiing, swimming, playing an instrument, or being with friends and family. Place the picture on your desk to remind yourself that you lead an amazing life and have lots to be happy about.

A. Model behavior.

B. Buy something silly.

C. Ten minutes of relaxation can do wonders.

D. Try walking to a place that seems exciting to you.

E. You could even plan a date night out to a comedy club.

F. Tell someone that you're guaranteed to brighten their day.

G. Even the most optimistic people can use a mood boost every once in a while.

    It is not easy getting the attention of tourists away from the well-known white sandy beaches of Byron Bay. But in this relying Australian surf town, a solar (太阳能的)-powered train might just do a good job.

    Opening to the public in December 2017 along a 1.9-mile-long stretch (一段) of track that sat abandoned for more than a decade, the Byron Bay Rail Company has breathed new life into a pair of disused railcars dating back to the 1940s. They're now used to transport passengers between Byron Bay's central business district and the North Beach area. After remaining in service as part of a regional passenger rail network until the early 1990s, the aging railcars were out of service and sat uncared for — almost destroyed by time and unpleasant Aussie climate — in a railyard for more than 20 years. You'd never know it by looking at these nearly 70-year-old workhorses today, though: they've been decorated, equipped, topped with custom-made photovoltaic panels (定制的光电池板) and rearranged to accommodate up to 100 seated beach goers.

    It's those train-top PV panels that truly set the Byron Bay Rail Company's flagship train apart from other heritage rail restoration projects.

    Drawing additional power from a 30-kilowatt solar array (阵列) located atop the train's storage building, the tain is said to be the first in the world to be completely powered by the sun. Solar energy caught by the 6.5-kilowatt train-top solar panels is stored directly in an onboard battery system that powers motors, lighting and the like. When stopped at its home platform, the train pushes into chargers for quick battery top-offs with electricity produced by the storage building's rooftop solar array. The 77 kilowatt-hour battery can hold enough juice for 12 to 15 runs on a single charge. During long periods of cloudiness when the solar arrays don't get enough sun, the train uses the main electric network, supply using renewable energy sold by community-based service Enova Energy.

    The Byron Bay Rail Company's first-in-the-world folly solar-powered train is a good example of historic rail preservation with a 21^st century development. Operating as a not-for-profit company, the Byron Bay Rail Company also expected the AU$4 million line to be a way to relieve traffic jam between downtown Byron Bay and the rapidly growing North Beach area. Really, there's no bigger unpleasant thing than sitting in bad traffic for 40 minutes trying to get to the beach.

    The University of Waikato is a good choice for those who want to be a success. The university is internationally recognized for its excellence and achievements. It will help you develop advanced research skills. As a university student you can get first-class research facilities (设施) with trained teachers to help, support and advise you in your study. We pride ourselves on our high standards, our research success and our international recognition. For further information: inf@waikato.ac.nz.

    Degree

    We offer a wide choice of bachelor's degrees(学士学位) for international students, which includes: Arts, Communication Studies, Social Sciences, etc. Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Education are only for New Zealand citizens, for further information: deg@waikato.ac.nz.

    Tuition Fees(学费)

    Tuition fees are different from department to department, generally from $5,000 to $6,000 a year. For further information: tui@waikato.ac.nz.

    Accommodation(住宿)

    You can have a room in a 4-bedroom flat, which will cost about $100 a month with other regular living costs of about $150 a month for one person. For further information: acc@waikato. ac.nz

    Health

    The Student Health Service provides excellent medical services for students. The Medical Centre is open five days a week, including student holidays with four doctors and nurses to meet your medical needs. For further information: heal@waikato.ac.nz.

    Sports

    The Centre is a great place to have sports activities. Trained exercise teachers can help you work out a training plan and keep you active. The sports hall has volleyball, basketball and indoor football courts and a swimming pool as well. There are also a large number of sports clubs at Waikato. For further information: sport@ waikato.ac.nz

    “When your mother scolds you, you can look elsewhere and think about other things. Just ignore her words. But remember: such a tough attitude cannot be used often.” These words are from a series of cartoons which outline skills for children to fight against their mothers. The images have created heated debate among Chinese netizens（网民）.

    Regarded as “a book for children aged 6 to 12 who are always scolded by their parents”， the cartoons, drawn by two 10-year-old Beijing girls, list over 20 skills which children can use to deal with their mothers' anger such as crying, pretending to be ashamed, fleeing into the toilet and pleasing her afterwards. Each skill is described with vivid pictures and humorous notes. The creativity of the young girls has amazed netizens, the Yangtse Evening Post reported on Thursday.

According to one of the girls' mothers, her daughter once received a poor mark in an exam, and the mother blamed her and compared her performance with another classmate. The daughter's feelings led to her creating the cartoons. The girl's father, who first posted the pictures on his Sohu Microblog on Monday, said he hopes parents pay close attention to the pictures, allow children to feel free to develop their own characteristics and try not to criticize them so often.

“The cartoons, although an individual case, reflect a modern phenomenon and some of the problems within Chinese family education,” said Yu Qinfang, an expert on family education. According to a survey of 104 children and their parents, Yu discovered that as many as 51.9 percent of primary school students hate being urged to do things by their mothers. “Not giving children enough time and hurrying them to do things seems to be a very tiny detail within family life, but it is potentially a huge problem which can easily be ignored by parents. A mother's blame may lead to negative feelings within her child's heart,” Yu said. “Parents should learn to blame less and be more patient.”

    A team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that too many kids are eating too much pizza and too many calories are doing harm to children's health.

    "There are a lot of takeaways from the study. But the biggest thing is that parents are serving their kids too much pizza," said Dr. William Dietz, one of the study's authors and the director of the Sumner M. Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness at the Milken Institute of Public Health at the George Washington University.

    The researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which tracked the diets of more than 11,000 children and teenagers. Researchers figured how many children eat pizza in the United States, how often they eat it, and how much they eat when they do.

    Pizza, pretty alarmingly, is the second leading source of calories in the diets of America's children, next only to grain desserts, such as cookies and other sweets. On any given day, roughly 20 percent of all children aged 2 to 11 and adolescents aged 12 to 19 eat pizza. And when they do, they eat a lot of it. When children eat pizza, they eat roughly 400 calories, according to the study. For teenagers, it's upwards of 600 calories.

    All that is pretty problematic, according to Dietz largely because kids don't tend to balance the pizza slices with salads, vegetables and other more nutritional(有营养的) foodstuffs. Days on which children and teenagers eat pizza are not only associated with considerably higher intakes of fat, but also, quite simply, with more food: on average, children consume 84 extra calories on the days they eat pizza, while adolescents consume an extra 230 calories.

    "When you eat extra calories and don't compensate(抵偿) for them at another point of the day or week, it can lead to weight gain and even obesity." Dietz said.

    There is a Silver lining. Pizza consumption is still too high by nutrition standards, but it's lower than it used to be. Consumption(消费) fell by roughly 25 percent between 2007 and 2016, according to the study. Much of that has come at dinner where it's fallen by 40 percent for children and about 33 percent for teenagers. It's unclear whether the decline has been in connection with a growing concern over obesity, especially among the country's youth.

    But the drop in pizza consumption, while significant hasn't been big enough "It's a positive trend," Dietz said. "But we're not quite them yet."

    It's easy to see the appeal of pizza. It's cheap. Parents can buy a lot of pizza for not a lot of money. Besides, they can buy pizza from a chain shop, a mom-and-pop store or a grocery freezer. And it's universally loved. The estimated 3 billion pizza eaten each year in the United States is a proof of the food's unmatched popularity. Given how much the country loves pizza, what's to be done? Dietz suggests pizza with smaller serving sizes and healthier toppings(配料). "We're not suggesting that kids avoid pizza altogether." said Dietz. "But when parents serve it, it's important that they understand it's extremely caloric. They should serve smaller pizza, or at least smaller slices."

    Do you find it difficult to put down your mobile phone?

    If yes, you're not alone. These days, many people suffer from the stress of FOMO (fear of missing out). They reach for their mobile phones when they wake up in the morning, and for the rest of the day, they constantly scroll down (向下滚动) the timelines of their social media apps to get the latest updates.

    Despite the convenience smartphones bring, many people struggle with their digital habits.

    As Sameer Samat, US tech Company Google's vice president of product management, said in his speech at the 2018 Google I/O developer conference on May 8, 70 percent of people don't want to spend so much time on their phones.

    This is why during the conference Google introduced an app called Dashboard for the new version (版本) of its Android operating system. This new app includes well-being functions that aim to help users manage the time they spend on their digital devices.

    It all starts with a bird's-eye view. Dashboard allows users to look at all the details of their phone habits. For example, a user can see how many times they've unlocked their phone and how many times they've checked their social media apps, as well as how much time they spend on each app every day.

    Once the users see this information, they'll be able to make some changes. With the App Timer function, users can set a time limit for how long they can use each app for every day. After they've hit the limit, they won't be able to launch the app until the next day.

    But even if users become more mindful of their usage, they're still likely to be drawn in by notifications (通知). This is where the Shush feature comes in. It automatically (自动地) silences incoming calls and notifications when a user puts their phone face down.

    If people truly want to make full use of their free time instead of losing hours using their smart phones, these new functions are just one way of doing that.

After all, who needs to use an app to stop you from using other apps when the easiest answer would be just to use your willpower?