Having friends may well keep you healthier and help you deal with stress better. Some studies show that people with close friends have a greater ability to fight disease than people who are alone.

    Place friendship in the first place. Find the time to be with friends even if it means letting the lawn go unmoved or the dishes unwashed for a while. When you can't get together, use the phone to keep in touch.

    Open up to close friends. Keeping a deep friendship requires a level of “heartfelt” intimacy (亲密). Don't be afraid to express your inner fears and disappointments. Listen to your friends when they have problems, but offer advice only when it's wanted. Help raise friends' self-esteem when they are sad about a job loss, or other such events.

    Have different friends for different activities, such as going to the movies, singing in a choir, and joining in a bowling league.

    Don't wait for a friend to ask for helps. When a friend has the flu, offer to go to the store or drive his or her children to their after-school activities.

    Never take a friendship for granted. Like a good marriage, friendship needs care and patience. Become a joiner. Find a group that matches your interests.

    Talk to strangers. Conversations started in museums, laundry rooms, or bookstores can lead to firm friendship.

    Enroll in an adult-education course. A classroom is an ideal place to meet others with similar interests.

    The best festivals in Europe

    Whether they're in the countryside or a post-industrial landscape, Europe's yearly festival calendar means new events, old favourites, crazy people and great charm.

    OFF Festival, Poland

    A small festival in Katowice in south-west Poland, OFF has, over the past 10 years, built an international audience thanks to a challenging and interesting mix of acts. This year's selection focuses on female artists: singer-songwriters Feist and PJ Harvey headline, while Swedish pop singer Anna von Hausswolff and classical composer turned electronic producer Anna Meredith are also on the bill. Meanwhile, the experimental poetry and performance project by Moor Mother will undoubtedly be an unmissable show.

    ·4~6 August, ￡55, off-festival.pl

    Melt, Germany

    What would Melt be without its “sleepless stage”--a non-stop music marathon that runs from Saturday morning to midday on Monday? The German festival for those who love an all-hours party takes place in Ferropolis, Gra fenhainichen. This year, the festival celebrates its 20th anniversary, bringing 20,000 people together. A party train from Cologne also serves as your weekend accommodation! A worthy summer alternative to a party weekend in Berlin.

    ·￡140,14~16 July, melt festival.de

    Primavera Sound, Portugal and Spain

    A festival that has rapidly grown to attract visitors from across Europe with its electronic music, guitar-led acts and plenty of sunshine, Primavera Sound takes place in Barcelona and, since 2012, also in Porto, under the name NOS Primavera Sound. The Barcelona edition takes place across six days with an abundance of DJs on call to keep people dancing, while the smaller, three-day Porto festival has Bicep, Nicholas Jaar and Richie Hawtin, who will be doing a closing on the Friday night.

    ·Barcelona 31 May~4 June, ￡195; Porto 8~10 June, ￡110, primaverasound.com

    A blocked airway(呼吸道) can kill someone in three to four minutes, but it can take more than eight minutes for an ambulance to arrive. So a simple procedure such as opening someone's airway can save their life while they're waiting for emergency medical help. This means you're more likely to give first aid to someone you know than a stranger.

    There are many misconceptions (误解) surrounding first aid. Below are the ‘most popular' ones with details of what you should do.

    You should put butter or cream on a burn. The only thing you should put on a burn is cold water — keep the butter for cooking. Put the affected area under cold running water for at least ten minutes.

    The best way to treat bleeding is to put the wound under a tap. If you put a bleeding wound under a tap you wash away the body's clotting agents(凝血剂) and make it bleed more. Instead put pressure on the wound with whatever is available to stop or slow down the flow of blood. As soon as possible call 999. Keep pressure on the wound until help arrives.

    Nosebleeds are best treated by putting the head back. If you put the head back during a nosebleed, all the blood goes down the back of the airway. Instead advise them to tilt(倾斜) their head forwards and ask the person to pinch(捏) the end of their nose and breathe through their mouth.

    You need lots of training to do first aid. You don't — what you mostly need is common sense. You can learn enough first aid in a few minutes to save someone's life — whether it's from a book, attending a course or watching videos online.

    Remember: anyone can save a life

    Our mother earth is going through a very tough situation and we, the entire human race, are destroying our environment or unconsciously without even realizing its consequences. Now we have to act very smartly and plan something to sustain what we still have, getting all necessary support from nature to lead healthy lives.

    Gardening is always an excellent and environmentally friendly idea. If you can go for sustainable gardening, then it will be even more useful for all. Gardening is a favorite hobby for many. It is time to channelize your hobby towards a more meaningful motivation.

    When we do gardening we need to use different ingredients to grow plants. Some of them are natural resources like water, soil, sunshine, and many things like this. Using these resources smartly is a part of sustainable gardening. Some simple techniques include: use less water and organic things to grow plants; try to store rainwater so that you can use them for gardening; try using less energy to drive devices; avoid using plastics in any form while gardening; reuse the leaves from your garden to fertilize them. These are the basic sustainable measures. To do so we need to have proper knowledge about gardening and its requirements so that we can use proper resources without wasting any of them.

    In today's busy life we don't get much time to spend on our environment. Gardening gives us a chance to do so. We can also have some pesticide-free and fresh food if we grow them in our garden. This is the right time to do some good to protect our own environment and gardening is one of the easiest ways. Do you want to start gardening, but you're not sure how? Click here: http://www. Garden how to.come.

    Cold weather during winter months may keep many people from leaving home and running in the open air.

    However, a new study shows that the drop in temperature is a good reason to run. In fact, researchers say, running in cold weather helps improve one's performance.

    Many people say running in the winter can be difficult. Two reasons are the low temperatures and bitter winds. Yet many runners might find it easier than running in hot weather.

    That could be because lower temperatures reduce stress on the body. When you run in cold weather, your heart rate and the body's dehydration (脱水) levels are lower than in warmer conditions. The body needs less water on a cold day than in warm weather.

    This information comes from sports scientists at St. Mary's University in London. John Brewer is a professor of applied sport science at St. Mary's.

    For this study, he and other researchers put a group of people into a room they called an "environmental chamber." The researchers then recreated summer and winter weather conditions in the room. The test subjects were asked to run 10,000 meters under both conditions. Brewer says he and his team recorded biological measurements of the runners.

    "We've got a group of subjects into the environmental chamber, we've changed the conditions to replicate the summer or winter and we've got them to run a 10km under both of those conditions and taken various measurements on each runner while they've been completing their 10km."

    Brewer says every movement runners make produces heat. He explains that one way in which we lose heat is by sweating. The body loses heat through droplets of sweat. He says the body also loses heat by transporting the blood to the surface of the skin.

    Surely, given the near-universal use of home computers and smart devices(设备 )like smartphones and tablets, most of us would suspect that watching TV-seen as out dated or even old-fashioned by some-is on the decline. We probably would. And we would be wrong. A new study on screen time conducted by researchers from Robert Stempel College of Public Health Social Work have found that TV-watching has actually gone up since the moment when smart devices became widely available in 2014.

    "The findings are surprising as it feels like mobile devices are omnipresent, but the television still commands more eyeballs than its more advanced brothers and sisters" said Dr. Jenny Radskey" And there is a growing concern over the screen time of children, particularly very young children, for whom watching shows in front of screens is still the most common way to consume media."

    According to a study published in JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) Pediatrics the increase in the amount of screen time for inns and toddlers(婴幼儿) is telling. Specifically, in 1997 children under the age of 2 spent 1.3 hours in front of TV per day on average, while children between the ages of3 and 5 did the same for 2.5 hours. By 2014, however, the latter group showed no significant change, while the former group more than doubled their time spent watching TV, clocking in at 3 hours per day.

    The research also shows that too much screen time before age 2 or 3 is associated with language development delays, ADHD, and learning difficulties. A child's brain develops rapidly during the first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens.

    Based on these findings, parents who worry about the excessive amount of time their children spend glued to their smartphones and tablets might do well to pay more attention to their littlest ones, for whom viewing time in front of the TV should be greatly cut down.