A Lifesaving At-Home Checkup

    More importance is attached to physical fitness nowadays. However, staying fit can be expensive when going to professional agencies for medical checkups. Here we show you three ways to do medical checkup at home, try them for a rough idea about your health condition.

    1 Balance On One Leg

    Hold for up to 60 seconds. If you fall down early, you may be at higher risk for brain decline. In a Japanese study, 30 percent of older adults who could balance for only 20 seconds or fewer had microbleeds in the brain, an early sign of risk for stroke or dementia(痴呆). These microbleeds can affect balance, memory, and decision making.

    2 Touch Your Toes

    Sit with your back straight, then lean forward and try to touch your toes. Not even close? You might be at risk for heart problems. By using this test, University of North Texas researchers found that some old inflexible folks have to have the heart work harder to provide enough blood, raising the risk of heart attack or stroke.

    3 Sitting To Standing

    Time how long it takes to lift and lower yourself from a chair ten times as fast as you can. Senior adults who did ten repetitions in 21 seconds or fewer were less likely to die over the next 13 years than those who took longer. The test requires muscle strength, balance, and heart fitness; being slow could mean underlying disease before symptoms arise.

    The above are home tests everyone could do to keep you fit and they don't require much time or money. Learn what possible dangers are hiding inside you and how to deal with them.

    Dyslexia(失读症) is a learning disorder, it interferes with the ability to recognise words, and for some readers to understand what they have read.

    Experts say dyslexia affects about five to ten percent of the population of the United State. Researchers have long known that people with dyslexia write or read words and letters backwards in the wrong order.

    But a new study shows that people with dyslexia may have trouble redirecting(重新传入) their attention between senses, from seeing something to hearing something. The study suggests something that might help dyslexic people learn more quickly — play video games.

    Vanessa Harrar of Britain's University of Oxford led the study. She reported the findings in the journal Current Biology. The study suggests that dyslexic people may have trouble moving quickly from what they read to what they hear. Doctor Harrar calls this a "sluggish shifting of attention across the senses."

    "So, if you are trying to read something and then trying to listen to somebody who's reading aloud and you're trying to follow along with what they are reading -- they have to switch their attention from hearing what they are saying to looking at the piece of paper and back again. So we found they have quite sluggish shifting of attention across the senses," said Harrar.

    In the study, Doctor Harrar tested 17 people with dyslexia, and 19 others without reading problems. The volunteers were asked to push a button as quickly as possible when they heard a sound, saw a light or experienced both together. Doctor Harrar compared the speed of their reactions.

    She found that people with dyslexia were just as fast as the others when they saw only a picture or heard only a sound. But the dyslexics had a slower reaction time when they heard a sound and saw a picture at the same time.

    Doctor Harrar feels like playing action video games could help dyslexic people shift from seeing to hearing more quickly. She adds that images in video games force the eyes to move and focus quickly.

    "Video game types of things pop out of here and there, they move your eyes around the screen quite quickly in response to things quite quickly, and the more you play a video game the faster you get that kind of thing. So, the video game is really training the attention system to move quickly," said Harrar.

    The study also shows that dyslexic people have the most difficulty going between what they saw and what they heard, this may have an effect on how dyslexic children are taught how to read.

    When children learn the alphabet, they usually see the letter first and then hear the sound, or they see and hear the letter at the same time. The study shows that dyslexics might learn more quickly if they hear the sound of a letter or word first before seeing it.

    Imagine, one day, getting out of bed in Beijing and being at your office in Shanghai in only a couple of hours, and then, after a full day of work, going back home to Beijing and having dinner there.

    Sounds unusual, doesn't it? But it's not that unrealistic, with the development of China's high-speed railway system. And that's not all. China has an even greater high-speed railway plan to connect the country with Southeast Asia, and eventually Eastern Europe. China is negotiating to extend its own high-speed railway network to up to 17 countries in 10 to 15 years, eventually reaching London and Singapore.

    China has proposed three such projects. The first would possibly connect Kunming with Singapore via Vietnam and Malaysia. Another could start in Urumqi and go through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and possibly to Germany. The third would start in the northeast and go north through Russia and then into Western Europe. The new system would still follow China's high-speed railway standard. And the trains would be able to go 346 kilometers an hour, almost as fast as some airplanes. Of course, there are some technical challenges to overcome. There are so many issues that need to be settled, such as safety, rail gauge(轨距), maintenance of railway tracks. But the key issue is really money. China is already spending hundreds of billions of yuan on domestic railway expansion.

    China prefers that the other countries pay in natural resources rather than with capital investment. Resources from those countries could stream into China to sustain development. It'll be a win-win project. For other countries, the railway network will definitely create more opportunities for business, tourism and so on, not to mention the better communication among those countries.

    For China, such a project would not only connect it with the rest of Asia and bring some much-needed resources, but would also help develop China's far west. We foresee that in the coming decades, millions of people will migrate to the western regions, where the land is empty and resources unused. With high-speed trains, people will set up factories and business centers in the west once and for all. And they'll trade with Central Asian and Eastern European countries.

    Children who often move house are more likely to suffer poor health, research suggests. Moving several times before the age of 18 can affect the health, psychological distress and increase the chance that a child may use illegal drugs.

    The study included information for 850 people, followed-up for a period of 20 years. Scientists found changing home several times could cause psychological distress in children.

    By the age of 18, 59 percent had moved house once or twice while one in five had moved at least three times. Some 20 percent had stayed in the same house during their childhood.

    Children of single parents or those with step-parents were more likely to move home, as were those with two or three brothers or sisters. Those with four or more brothers and sisters were more likely to stay in the same house.

    Experts found that people who moved at least once had an increased risk of poor health, some of this could be because of changing schools. Those who had moved three times or more were three times as likely to have had suicidal thoughts as those who stayed in the same house.

    Dr Denise Brown said, “For many people, moving house is a good experience as it may lead to improved family conditions. But for some family members, especially children, moving can be bad and may lead to poor health outcomes and behaviors in adulthood. The bad effect on health in adulthood appears to be somewhat accounted for by a high number of school moves.”

    Honeybees can do three kinds of jobs.

    It is one of the most unusual insects in the world. Bees are special because they divide up their honeybee work. Each bee has a certain job to do.

    The busiest bee is the worker. Workers build the nest, called a hive. Inside the hive, workers make a honeycomb from wax(蜂蜡). They store honey there for food. Workers are always cleaning and fixing the hive. They even stand at the opening and fan their wings to cool the hive. Worker bees will attack anything—even people—to keep their hive safe, if need.

    Another kind of bee is the drone(雄蜂). Drones are male bees, and their job is to fly with the queen bee and mate with her. After the queen mates, the worker bees drive the drones away. The drones then starve to death.

    The third kind of bee is the queen. Each hive needs only one queen, and her job is laying eggs. She can lay as many as 2, 000 eggs a day.

    Back in 1969, it was the Apollo 11 crew who flew to the moon in a spaceship. When U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin stepped foot on the moon, they were the first. Meanwhile, their fellow astronaut Michael Coilins circled the moon in their spaceship, named Columbia.

    When Armstrong and Aldrin were done with their walk，they returned to the command module, and back to Earth. That part of the spaceship is on view at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. But, if you cannot get to Washington，soon you will be able to see Columbia on your computer or your smartphone.

    Digital scientists are scanning the inside of the spaceship. They are creating an online model, in three dimensions, or“3 D”. By looking at these photographs, you will be able to see outer space，the way the astronauts did. It will be like sitting in their seats.

    Want your very own Columbia spaceship? You will be able to print a 3D copy of Columbia. Experts say anyone can make a life-sized model. But they expect most people to make smaller models of the 320×400 cm(11'X 13')command module.

    Scientists are using special 3D technology to scan the inside. They use cameras on long arms to take the photographs. The thousands of photographs taken will be combined with 50 laser scans.

    What would it be like to sit inside Columbia and take a look around? All the images will be loaded into software that allows you to look around the module on a computer screen. The user will be able to see the Columbia both inside and out. The Smithsonian says that the 3D technology gives the user ways to see things they cannot see at the museum. And it will give information that even the museum curators(馆长)have not seen before.

    “With the Command Module, no one has been inside since it came into the collection,” says Adam Metallo. Smithsonian 3D imaging specialist. “Now the information we capture can give anyone in the world a view of what it looks like inside this incredible piece of history.”