Do you love holidays but hate the increase weight that follows? You are not alone.

    Holidays are happy days with pleasure and delicious foods. Many people, however, are worried about the weight that comes along with these delicious foods.

    With proper planning, though, it is possible to control your weight. The idea is to enjoy the holidays but not to eat too much. You don't have to turn away from the foods that you enjoy. The following suggestions may be of some help to you.

    Do not miss meals. Before you leave home for a feast(宴会),have a small, low-fat snack(小吃). This may help to keep you from getting too excited before delicious foods. Begin with clear soup and fruit or vegetables. A large glass of water before you eat may help you feel full. Use a small plate; a large plate will encourage you to have more than enough.

    Better not have high-fat foods. Dishes that look oily or creamy have much fat in them.

    Choose lean meat(瘦肉 ).Fill your plate with salad and green vegetables.

    If you have a sweet tooth, try mints (薄荷) and fruits. They don't have fat content as cream and chocolate. Don't let exercise take a break during the holidays. A 20-minute walk after a meal can help burn off excess(过多的) calories.

    On Saturday my Catalan friend invited me to come along to a Calotada. Being from the UK, I had no idea what this would need, but he promised me it was a fun Catalan (卡塔兰) tradition, and so I agreed to go. I wasn't disappointed!

    First, we took a train out to a Small town near Tarragona, about an hour away from Barcelona centre. I was already amazed by how different everything looked from the city as the train rushed through small towns, all sitting on the coastline.

    When we arrived, we were greeted by the sight of a small wind instrument band and about a dozen people dancing in a circle. While my friend later told me that it is a traditional Catalan dance called La Sardana, at the time I was totally confused at what I was seeing! It seemed so strange but yet so lovely that they were doing this dance completely for themselves.

    Once we had been fully entertained by the dancers, we finally went inside for the Calatada and it was soon revealed to me what it actually was. We sat down at the table and a huge plate of leeks (大葱) was placed in front of us. It was explained to us that you have to peel the leeks with your fingers, dip them in a (delicious!) sauce and eat them. This sounds easier than it was.

    My friend had been right in the end, it had been an extremely fun day and it felt great to get involved in a local tradition of a place I am temporarily calling home. It really inspired me to learn more about the Catalan culture, although hopefully next time it will be something less messy!

    Australian cities can keep their native wildlife — but only if they can kick their habit of urban sprawl (扩展). That's the finding of a new study by leading Australian environmental researchers Jessica Sushinsky, Professor Hugh Possingham and Dr. Richard Fuller of The University of Queensland.

    “While urban development usually reduces the number of birds in a city, building more compact (紧凑的) cities and avoiding urban sprawl can slow these reductions greatly,” says lead author Jessica Sushinsky. “Compact housing development leaves birds' homes untouched, leading to fewer losses of birds.”

    The researchers surveyed native and wild birds in Brisbane's urban areas, including living and industrial areas, public parks and gardens, major roadways and airports. They then used statistical modeling to find out what will happen to the birds as the city grows. The first setting was compact growth — where multiple homes are built on land that previously had only one house. The second setting was sprawling growth — a familiar pattern where homes are built here and there beyond the city's current boundaries.

    The team's forecasts showed that a much greater diversity of species was lost over 20 years in the sprawling setting compared to the more compact setting. “Urban sprawl resulted in the disappearance of many urban-sensitive birds — birds that only live in areas where there is native vegetation (植被), such as parklands and woodlands,” Ms. Sushinsky says.

    “On the other hand, we found the city with the compact development attracted more birds because it kept more of its parks and green areas.”

    Now the Queensland Government has adopted the more compact urban growth strategy, which, Dr. Richard Fuller says, is good news for Australia's native birds. These birds are environmental specialists — they need a particular environment to do well. “While compact development means smaller backyards, it can also make our entire cities more biodiverse,” according to Dr. Fuller. “The study shows that we should hold on to our green spaces instead of clearing them for sprawling development.”

    This is the first time science has modeled the effects of different urban growth strategies on birds, the researchers say. “Statistical models like these are important because they help us to understand the ecological consequences of a particular decision,” says Dr Fuller.

    No trip to Windsor could possibly be complete without a visit to amazing Windsor Castle, the family home to British kings and queens for over 1,000 years. The size of the Castle is breath-taking. In fact, it is the largest and oldest occupied Castle in the world and it's where Her Majesty The Queen chooses to spend most of her private weekends. You might even time your visit when she is in residence! The marriage of Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markle took place in Windsor on Saturday, 19 May, 2018.They became the sixteenth royal couple to celebrate their marriage at Windsor Castle since 1863. Windsor Castle offers something for everyone with so many areas to explore.

    Visit the magnificent State Apartments, furnished with some of the finest works of art from the Royal Collection, including paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and Canaletto.

    Take in the splendor of St George's Chapel, location of the wedding of Prince Harry and Ms Meghan Markle, the burial place of 10 Kings including Henry VIII and Charles I, and one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture in England.

    Be amazed at Queen Mary's Dolls' House, the largest, most beautiful and most famous dolls' house in the world, created in the 1920s and filled with thousands of objects made by leading craftsmen, artists and designers of the time.

    Imagine being entertained by royalty in the Semi-State Rooms, the spectacular private apartments open to visitors from September to March each year. Richly decorated, they are used by The Queen for hosting her guests.

    The belief that new technologies are causing the death of work is the idea that never goes away. Despite evidence to the contrary, we still view technological change today as being more rapid and dramatic in its consequences for work than ever before. But this is nothing new. People have always viewed the technological changes that take place during their lives as the most dramatic and dangerous that ever happened in history.

    In the 1930s, the British economist(经济学家) John Maynard Keynes predicted the widespread use of electricity would produce a world where people spend most of their time doing nothing. In the United States during the 1960s, the government repeatedly investigates fears that automatic machines would permanently reduce the amount of work available. In 1988, one Australian historian claimed that at least a quarter of the workforce would be without jobs within 10 years because of computers.

    Of course, none of these disasters came to pass in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, or anywhere else.

    Yet today, we are seeing the return of these predictions, with some experts claiming the world of work is once more undergoing radical(激进的)and unprecedented(前所未有的) change. They argue that robots and other workplace technologies are causing a reduction in the total amount of work available, or are bringing a more rapid pace of substitution of machines for humans than has been seen previously.

    But there is a little evidence to support such beliefs. Statistics show that the percentage of people in work, the number of hours they work, and how frequently they change jobs have remained remarkably constant over the past 20 years.

    This stability should not come as a surprise. There are good reasons why we should not expect new technologies to cause the death of work. New technologies always cause job losses, but that is only part of the story. What also needs to be understood is how they increase the amount of work available.

    One way this happens is through the increases in incomes that accompany the use of new technologies. With the introduction of these technologies, goods and services can be produced faster, which results in higher real incomes for workers. Higher incomes then increase demand for other products and consequently more workers are needed to make them. Additionally, while new technologies are likely to substitute for some types of workers, they will also increase demand for other types of workers, especially those with higher level skills and expertise.

    So, the end of work is no closer today than at any time in the past. But there is still a need to keep disproving the prediction, to reduce people's fears.

Let's face it. You're likely reading this article in an effort to avoid some other tasks you're procrastinating (拖延) to learn how to stop procrastination, but the clock is ticking. So why can't you seem to get rid of that?

Though the psychological causes are still debated, there's a human tendency to over or underestimate the value of a reward based on its temporal proximity (时间接近). This is often referred to as temporal discounting. For example, if I offered you $100 today or 110 in a month, most would take the hundred and run. But what if instead I offered you 100 dollars in a year or 110 in a year and one month, you might say to yourself if I can wait a year, I can wait the extra month.

But the time and value difference are the exact same in each example. It turns out that human motivation is highly influenced by how near the reward is meaning. The further away the reward is, the more you discount its value. So being online is more appealing than preparing for your test. The problem is surfing the Internet provides many small quick and continuous rewards unlike your test scores which are a future one.

So how do you overcome the urge to put off so many tasks?

Unfortunately, there is no definite answer, but try rewarding yourself with a timely snack or other enjoyable activities. The Pomodoro Technique makes use of a timer to work for 25 minutes straight and when you've done, this gives yourself the reward with a 5-minute break. Then start the working clock again. Gradually increasing the amount of work time you put in will improve your time management skills.

It's been shown that creating a costly deadline is also an effective way to manage your working habits. And try to enjoy the process of achieving something instead of thinking only our minutes of suffering.