Your New Year's plan to move more is one of the toughest to stick to, and a group of scientists working with obese(过度肥胖的) mice think they're starting to understand why

    Rather than our sedentary(久坐的) lives causing weight gain, says Alexxai Kraviz, the National Institutes of Health neuroscientist who led the study, changes in brain chemistry after we start gaining weight affect our capacity to move.

    “Obses mice can move just fine,” says Kravitz, who published the work with his team in Cell Metabolism “They just don't.”

    What Kravitz's team found is that the activity of a particular dopamine(多巴胺) receptor linked to movement goes down as mice gain weight on a high-fat diet. So the nice slow down and they move less. And when the researchers restored the activity of that dopamine receptor—DR2—the mice started moving more, even though they were still obese. The team also saw that lean mice missing the DR2 receptor acted like obese mice. This is the target, says Kravitz—restoring that dopamine receptor function. “Maybe 20 or 30 years down the road, we could do that in people,” he says.

    And there is one more thing: The scientists fed normal mice and the mice lacking DR2 the same high-fat diet. Both sets of mice gained weight at the same rate.

    Kravitz says this is important because mice lacking DR2 move less from the get-go, whereas a normal mouse takes a little time to start seeing that dopamine receptor-related loss of exercise. The ability to exercise seems to be disconnected from weight gain, he says.

    “Exercise is a healthy thing to do, but its impact on weight loss has been exaggerated,” he says. “We have to be realistic about the size of the effect of exercise on weight, as opposed to health benefits.”

    Still, before you abandon your New Year's exercise plan, keep in mind that this study was done using a high-fat diet, and not the normal calorie restriction that people maintain when they diet.

    That's a big drawback to the work, says Vicki Vieira-Potter, a University of Missouri physiologist not involved in the study.

    “They feed the mice with high-fat diet, it damages the receptor, and that decreases activity. Those who plan to lost weight should remember high-fat diet is a nice way to cause obesity in the lab, but it's not the same as the normal situation of obesity,” she says.

    Sine also says that a lot of the weight gain in the mice came after they stopped moving around, which indicates that the loss of movement did impact obesity.

Four books that will inspire you to travel the world

    There's truly nothing like travel when it comes to gaining perspective(远景) and exposing yourself to other cultures. To get you in the adventuring mood, we asked Amazon Senior Editor Chris Schlep to help us come up with a list of books that transport readers to another time and place. Below, see his list of four books that will inspire you to travel around the world. For more information, please click Amazon.com.

SEATTLE: Where You d Go, Bernadette

Price: $16.73

    Maria Sample's first novel is not exactly a love story to Seattle, but if you read it, you just might want to come here to see if people are really as self-involved as the characters in her book. What really shines through is the strange storytelling and the laughs. Buy it on Amazon.

ITALY: Beautiful Ruins

Price: $16.29

    This book by the popular author Jess Walters is a love story that begins on the Italian Coast in the early 60s and eventually appears on the screen in Hollywood. With the settings of the background from Italy to Edinburgh to Los Angeles, you will find yourself longing to go as well. Buy it on Amazon.

ENGLAND: Wolf Hall

Price: $15.57

    You can't travel to Thomas Cromwell's England without a time machine，but reading Hilary Mantel's prize-winning novel is the next best thing. It will make you long to see the ancient buildings and green grass of the English countryside, much of which is still there. Buy it on Amazon.

NANTUCKET: Here's to Us

Price: $ 17.16

    Eli Hildebrand has built a writing career out of writing about her hometown island of Nantucket. Her latest is Here's to Us, which, perhaps not surprisingly, is a great beach read.

    Imagine walking through an ancient city, then climbing a gate tower to take in a wonderful view of the city and its more than 600-year-old walls. You can hear the city's heartbeat in the air. This is the Ancient City of Pingyao in Shanxi Province, a place that should definitely be on your travel route if you enjoy history or ancient architecture since its origins can be traced back to more than 2,700 years ago.

    Located in the center of Shanxi Province, Pingyao is the hometown of Jin merchants, a group of merchants who actively dominated (支配) a booming commodity market throughout China for more than 500 years, especially during the Ming and Qing dynasties. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the city's agriculture and manufacturing industries developed rapidly. Following China's reform and opening-up in the 1980s, Pingyao struggled with the transition from a managed economy to the current market-oriented economy. During this time, the city government sought out new ways to break through this economic bottleneck.

    Finally in the winter of 1997, opportunity came knocking. Through the efforts of the city government, Pingyao earned its place on the UNESCO World Heritage list, which caused the entire world to take notice of the city.

    Since the city's fame has risen, locals in Pingyao have deepened their understanding of the conservation efforts preserving the historical relics in their hometown. Meanwhile the city administration has continued to upgrade itself through a strategy that follows the pillars of “conservation, entrepreneurship, development and protection.”

    Currently, the city is focused on establishing a sustainable industry that will enable it to continue to grow while also protecting its relics and introducing them to the world.

    Angel Garcia Crespo is a computer engineer at Carlos III University of Madrid in Spain. His group has invented a new way for deaf-blind people to “watch” TV. The idea for the technology grew out of previous work by his group. The team had already worked on making audiovisual(视听的) materials accessible to people with either vision or hearing disabilities. But the group wanted to help people with both challenges. So they asked some deaf-blind people what would help.

    In addition to relying on their sense of touch to communicate, deaf-blind people can also get and send information with a Braille line. The Braille system uses patterns of raised dots to stand for letters and numbers. A Braille line is an electronic machine with a changeable Braille display. Dots rise up or drop down based on the information sent to the machine.

    Now the new system changes TV signals to data a Braille line can use. “The key to the system is the possibility of using subtitles(字幕) to collect TV information, " Garcia Crespo explains. "Subtitles travel with the image(影像) and the audio in electromagnetic waves we don't see. But an electronic system can keep those waves."

    First, a computer program, or app, pulls out the subtitles and visual descriptions from the broadcast signal. The system then combines the information and changes both into data for Braille.

    Now another app gets to work, which sends the data out to people's Braille lines on demand. “This is done in real time, in less than a second, " Garcia Crespo says. This lets a deaf-blind person "watch" TV as it's broadcast. The system will work with various Braille lines, as long as there's a bluetooth connection available. Now, the system is only used in Europe, and it should soon be available in the US.

    It was the last day of the final examination in a college. On the steps of building, a group of engineering students were waiting for the last exam. On their faces was confidence.

    They knew the exam would be easy. The professor (教授) had said they could bring any books or notes during the test.

    Right after they came into the classroom, the professor handed out the papers. There were only five questions on it.

    Three hours passed. Then the professor began to collect the papers. The students no longer looked confident. On their faces was nervous expression. The professor watched the worried faces before him, and then asked, "How many of you have completed all five questions?" No hand was raised. "How many of you have answered four?" Still no hands. "Three? Two?" The students moved restlessly in their seats. "One, then? Certainly somebody has finished one." But the class kept silent. The professor said, "That is exactly what I expected. I just want to make you know clearly that even though you have completed four years of engineering, there are still many things about the subject you don't know. These questions you could not answer are common in everyday practice." Then, smiling, he added, "You will all pass this course, but remember, your education has just begun."

    The years have obscured the name of this professor, but not the lesson he taught.