Such chronic (慢性的) diseases as heart disease, stroke, cancer and lung disorders are the most leading causes of death in the world. Yet health experts say these conditions are often the most preventable.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) points out chronic diseases lead to about 17 million early deaths each year. The United Nations (UN) agency expects more than 380 million people to die of chronic diseases by 2015. About 80% of the deaths will happen in developing nations.

    Chronic diseases now cause two-thirds of all deaths in the Asia-Pacific area. In ten years it could be almost three-fourths. People are getting sick in their most economically productive years. In fact, chronic diseases are killing more middle-aged people in poorer countries than in richer ones. The WHO estimates (估计) that chronic diseases will cost China alone more than 500,000 million dollars in the next ten years. That estimate represents the costs of medical treatment and lost productivity. Russia and India are also expected to face huge economic losses.

    According to a WHO report, deaths from chronic diseases have increased largely as the result of economic gains in many countries. Until recently infectious and parasitic (寄生的) diseases have been the main killers in Asia and the Pacific but they are no longer the major cause of death in most countries.

As many as 80% of the deaths from chronic diseases could be prevented, health officials say. An important tool for governments is to limit the marketing of alcohol and tobacco to young people. Also, more programs are needed to urge healthy eating and more physical activity.

    The UN aims to reduce chronic-disease deaths by 2% each year by international action through 2015, that's to say, 36 million lives could be saved, including 25 million in Asia and the Pacific.

    "A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically with a smart phone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website" is the definition of "selfie" in the Oxford English Dictionary. In fact, it wasn't even in the dictionary until August of last year. It earned its place there because people are now so obsessed with (对……痴迷) selfies—we take them when we try on a new hat, play with our pets or when we meet a friend whom we haven't seen in a while.

    But is there any scientific explanation for this obsession? Well, you should probably ask James Kilner, a neuroscientist(神经系统科学家) at University College London.

    Through our lifetime we become experts at recognizing and interpreting other people's faces and facial expressions. In contrast, according to Kilner, we have a very poor understanding of our own faces since we have little experience of looking at them—we just feel them most of the time.

    This has been proved in previous studies, according to the BBC.

    Kilner found that most people chose the more attractive picture. This suggests that we tend to think of ourselves as better-looking than we actually are. To further test how we actually perceive our own faces, Kilner carried out another study. He showed people different versions of their own portrait—the original, one that had been edited to look less attractive and one that was made more attractive—and asked them to pick the version which they thought looked most like them. They chose the more attractive version.

    But what does it say about settles? Well, isn't that obvious? Selfies give us the power to create a photograph—by taking it from various angles, with different poses, using filters (滤色镜) and so on—that better matches our expectations with our actual faces.

    "You suddenly have control in a way that you don't have in non-virtual(非虚拟的) interactions," Kilner told the Canada-based CTV News. Selfies allow you "to keep taking pictures until you manage to take one you're happy with", he explained.

    A Language Program me for Teenagers

    Welcome to Teenagers Abroad! We invite you to join us on an amazing journey of language learning.

    Our Courses

Regardless of your choice of course, you'll develop your language ability both quickly and effectively. Our Standard Course guarantees a significant increase in your confidence in a foreign language, with focused teaching in all 4 skill areas—-speaking, listening, reading and writing. Our Intensive Course builds on our Standard Course, with 10 additional lessons per week, guaranteeing(确保) the fastest possible language learning (see table below).

    Evaluation

    Students are placed into classes according to their current language skills. The majority of them take on online language test before starting their program me. However, if this is not available, students sit the exam on the first Monday of their course. Learning materials are provided to students throughout their course, and there will never be more than 15 participants in each class.

    Arrivals and Transfer

    Our programme offers the full package—students are taken good care of from the start through to the very end. They are collected from the airport upon arrival and brought to their accommodation(住宿) in comfort. We require the student's full details at least 4 weeks in advance.

    Meals / Allergies(过敏) / Special Dietary Requirements

    Students are provided with breakfast, dinner and either a cooked or packed lunch(which consists of a sandwich, a drink and a dessert). Snacks outside of mealtimes may be purchased by the student individually. We ask that you let us know of any allergies or dietary requirements as well as information about any medicines you take. Depending on the type of allergies and/ or dietary requirements, an extra charge may be made for providing special food.

    Students in a college French class have helped fill the empty bookshelves of a very poor Haitian(海地的) school by writing 90 books. Although many children in Haiti speak Creole(克里奥尔语) at home, French is taught in classrooms and used by the government , and students are asked to know the language in order to get further education. Therefore, the class hoped to provide resources to help the young students learn French well.

    The project, called Little French Books, was headed up by Jennifer Shotwell, a French professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. Shotwell had visited Haiti with a group of students in 2013 to support a Haitian student and give books to a new library. Following the trip, Shotwell brought the experience back to her classroom.

    "My students have a chance to use the French language in a special way by writing children's books," Shotwell said. "Though some learners don't think they can produce much with a new language, my students are learning to express themselves and create entertaining stories that we finally share with disadvantaged children who are also learning French."

    Shotwell had sent French books to Haitian schools, but they were printed on cheap paper that could be easily broken. So she started a Kickstarter, which collected more than $1,000 to make books with durable covers.

    The books, which included stories about princesses, dinosaurs and exciting experiences, were given to the St.Gabriel's school in Lascahobas.

    "Each time a child gets into a new book, he will no doubt get new knowledge and new understanding. The Little French Books means a lot to our students, said Gardy Myrtil, a teacher at the school.

    People in developed countries are increasingly suffering from illnesses resulting from overeating. While starvation and hunger are still big problems in many poor countries in the world, more than 25 percent of the population in America and other western countries are obese. This doesn't just mean you are a little bit fat. It means you are more than 20 kilos overweight.

    Dr. John Colon from Ohio State University says the problem is only going to get worse.” As more women have gone out to work, you find that parents in general have less time to spend on preparing food. That's not just cooking, but also planning what to eat, doing the shopping and buying the fresh food. Families, therefore, increasingly rely on ready-made and frozen meals, which tends to be high in fat and contain a lot of additives(materials added to food to improve its taste) and sugar. The other thing is that parents seem to feel guilty about not spending so much time with their kids, so they tend to give more quickly to children's demands for things like sweets and chocolate.”

    Ben Brown. Who is a British Member of Parliament, blames the big food companies. He wants to ban any food advertising that is aimed at children. "The problem is that these companies spend millions of pounds selling food to children. It's all crisps (薯片) in the shape of dinosaurs and chocolate in the shape of Mickey Mouse. I meanwhat's going to be more fun to an sight-year-old —an ice cream with a free toy or an apple?"

    One food company thinks it has an answer to this: it has invented cheese-flavored cabbage and chocolate-flavored carrots. It developed the "Whacky Veg" with money donated by a cancer research charity, which found that a diet containing lots of fruit and vegetables helps reduce cancer. However, today's sweet-toothed kids need to be bribed(贿赂)into a healthy diet, and will only cat their greens if they taste different.

    There are two kinds of secrets: secrets of nature and secrets about people. Natural secrets exist all around us; to find them, one must study some undiscovered aspect of the physical world. Secrets about people are different: they are things that people don't know about themselves or things they hide because they don't want others to know. So when thinking about what kind of company to build, there are two distinct questions to ask: What secrets is nature not telling you? What secrets are people not telling you?

    It's easy to assume that natural secrets are the most important: the people who look for them can sound authoritative (权威的).This is why physics PhDs are difficult to work with—because they know the most basic truths, they think they know all truths. But does understanding electronic theory automatically make you a great marriage counselor? Does a gravity theorist know more about your business than you do? At PayPal, I once interviewed a physics PhD for an engineering job. Halfway through my first question, he shouted, "Stop! I already know what you're going to ask!" But he was wrong. It was the easiest no-hire decision I've ever made. Secrets about people are relatively overlooked. Maybe that's because you don^'t need a dozen years of higher education to ask the questions that uncover them: What are people not allowed to talk about? What is forbidden or taboo?

    The best place to look for secrets is where no one else is looking. Most people think only in terms of what they've been taught; schooling itself aims to spread basic wisdom. So you might ask: are there any fields that matter but haven't been standardized? Physics, for example, is a real major at all major universities, and it's set in its ways. The opposite of physics might be astrology, but astrology doesn't matter. What about something like nutrition? Nutrition matters for everybody, but you can't major in it at Harvard. Most top scientists go into other fields. Most of the big studies were done 30 or 40 years ago, and most are seriously flawed (有缺陷的). The food pyramid that told us to eat low fat and large amounts of grains was probably produced by Big Food(美国著名食品公司)than real science; its chief impact has been to worsen our obesity(肥胖)problem. There^'s plenty more to learn: we know more about the physics of far away stars than we know about human nutrition. It won't be easy, but it's not obviously impossible: exactly the kind of field that could produce secrets.