On James Owen's 70th birthday, he saw a video of himself walking with difficulty up to the stage where he was giving a talk. "I looked like an old man," says Owen, who built a successful career on Wall Street.
He was about 25 pounds overweight and had chronic trouble with his back, knees, and shoulders. But instead of giving in to age, Owen decided to set an ambitious five-year goal: He wanted to be pain-free, and he decided the way to get there was through exercise--even though at the time he couldn't do a single push-up.
Owen began his new exercise regimen (养生计划) by walking, though he became out of breath after five minutes. But that didn't discourage him. He kept at the walks every day, along with some stretching, Once he had those basics down, he started weight lifting and hired a personal trainer to teach him and to design a routine he could follow on his own. The last piece was finding other activities he enjoyed, which turned out to be cycling and swimming.
In less than five years, Owen was able to do three sets of 50 push-ups each and walk for miles each day. And yes, he was free of aches and pains.
Owen used his experience to write a book called Just Move! A New Approach to Fitness After 50, in which he details how older adults can safely get off the couch and add more movement to their lives. The key: getting started, even if you walk just three blocks, which was all he could manage at first. "Think of it as movement, not exercise," he says. "The key is slow and steady progress."
Now 81 and retired, Owen exercises an hour a day, six days a week. "It is the best investment I've ever made in my life," he says.
By the age of seven months, most children have learned that objects still exist even when they are out of sight. But it is something that self-driving cars do not have. And that is a problem. For a self-driving car, a bicycle that is momentarily hidden by a passing truck is a bicycle that has disappeared. How to give AI the reasoning ability for a seven-month-old child is now a matter of active research.
Modern Al is based on the idea of machine learning. If an engineer wants a computer to recognize a stop sign, he does not try to write thousands of lines of code that describe every pattern of pixels(像素) which could possibly indicate such a sign. Instead, he writes a program that can learn for itself, and then shows that program thousands of pictures of stop signs. Over many repetitions, the program gradually works out what features all of these pictures have in common.
Similar techniques are used to train self-driving cars to operate in traffic. But they do not understand many things a human driver takes for granted. In a recent paper in Artificial Intelligence, Mehul Bhatt of Orebro University in Sweden, describes a different approach. He and his colleagues took some existing Al programs which are used by self-driving cars and bolted onto them a piece of software. In tests, if one car momentarily blocked the sight of another, the reasoning-enhanced software could keep track of the blocked car, predict where and when it would reappear, and take steps to avoid it if necessary. The improvement was not huge. On standard tests Dr Bhatt's system scored about 5% better than existing software.
However, the question goes beyond self-driving cars to the future of Al itself." I don't think we're taking the right approach right now,"Dr Marcus, who studies psychology and neural science at New York University, says. "It's not actually the answer to AI. We haven't really solved the intelligence problem. "One way or another, then, it seems seven-month-olds still have a lot to teach machines.
Dogs can smell things at concentrations of one part in a trillion—equal to a single drop in a pond the size of 20 Olympic swimming pools. That ability is put to good use by human beings. Trained dogs can sniff out explosives and drugs, even tracking missing people. They can also detect (发现) illnesses, including cancer, malaria, Parkinson's disease and COVID-19, before obvious symptoms appear. A study published in 2019,for example, suggested that trained dogs detect (发现) illnesses, including cancer, malaria, Parkinson's disease and COVID-19, before obvious symptoms appear. A study published in 2019, for example, suggested that trained dogs were able, 97% of the time, to identify blood samples taken from patients with lung cancer.
Training dogs, however, takes time. Trainers must be paid. The animals themselves get tired and bored. Dogs are not, then, a practical answer to the question of how to detect illness quickly. But fruit flies might be. Unlike dogs, they are cheap and disposable--and their senses are just as good. Along with technology tailored to their talents, they could provide economical and easy ways of detecting cancer, and also offer an alternative to laboratory tests for COVID that might be welcome in countries with limited budgets.
Giovanni Galizia is one leading researcher of the University of Konstanz, in Germany. Fruit flies smell things using their feelers, and Dr Galizia has genetically modified (改变) his flies. When the flies get the smell of the cells with illness, a change in their brain activity can be seen under a microscope. With the help of machine learning, Dr Galizia can recognize the patterns to detect illness.
Whether this idea will come to fruition remains to be seen. Medical regulators will have to be convinced that what may seem wacky at first glance is actually practical. But doctors have been encouraged to use animals' noses to assist diagnosis (诊断) since ancient times. Having a little assistance from fruit flies might be no bad thing.
We've noticed our kids put on some extra weight during this pandemic（疫情）. Here are what doctors and specialists say about what to do to get the family back on track.
In the mess of the pandemic, sleep and wakeup times slid later and later for lots of kids, says Dr. Nazrat Mirza, medical director of the pediatric (小儿科）weight management clinic in Washington, D. C. Research has linked regular, adequate sleep to improved mental and physical health in kids. If sleep routines have become a problem in your family, try to move kids' bedtimes back by 15 minutes every two or three nights.
Create more structure around meal times.
It was also the case with some trained experts. "It was sort of this buffet-style experience where they were eating throughout the day," says Stacey Rosenfeld, a specialist in eating disorders, whose kid ended up gaining 20 pounds. While putting kids on a restricted diet can lead to unintended consequences, creating and sticking to set meal and snack. times can help kids control their appetites and develop sensible eating habits, experts say.
Have sympathy for yourself, and model it for your kids.
We've all been through an incredibly stressful and tiring year and a half, and it's not over. And some families have been especially hard hit by this pandemic. "We have to show ourselves little pity and it's not going to happen with a snap of the fingers," says Has sink. Even if your kids didn't gain weight, teach them not to tease others. Eventually, "We want to be building our kids up. We want to be focusing on who they are outside of their bodies," says Rosenfeld.
A. Get bedtimes back on track.
B. Do the same thing with wake-up times, she says.
C. Have sympathy for your kids and your life will be easy.
D. As things calmed down, she decided it was time for a reset.
E. Bedtimes play a vital role in improving the quality of sleep.
F. That sympathy is something we should also foster in our children.
G. All-day-long, unmonitored eating became a habit in many families of the pandemic.
Jane Goodall, the well-known scientist, is starting Trees for Jane on Tuesday, joining a global campaign to fight1change by planting a trillion trees by 2030.
Goodall made it2that planting is just one part of Trees for Jane. "The key is3existing forest because those big trees4have stored CO2,"she said in a National Geographic interview. 5to Trees for Jane will support local groups working to stop destroying trees. And those who plant are asked to agree to6the trees and monitor them7they're mature.
Of course, tree planting is not a8for reducing emissions(排放）, said Susan Cook-Patton, senior forest restoration scientist for The Nature Conservancy. " The most important action is to reduce fossil fuel emissions. 9,even if we rapidly reduce emissions, we're still going to need to10carbon from the atmosphere to prevent catastrophic warming. That's11carbon removal approaches like re-growing trees remain important. "
Some tree-planting12have come under fire from some scientists as being13,since many programs don't plant native species, essentially creating tree farms, not helping forests. And Cook-Patton's14is clear: "Plant the right trees, in the right places, in the right way. " This means planting native trees where they15lived.
Goodall said this16with the goal of Trees for Jane. She, noting that Trees for Jane17people to plant trees themselves or donate to support global efforts, said her love for18dates back to her childhood. Nearly eight decades later, she is19tirelessly and selflessly to share the20of trees with the entire world, for the good of the planet.
In January, US News & World Report rated the Mediterranean diet as the best overall diet of 2021. This is the (four) year in a row the diet has been ranked top.
According to USA Today, the Mediterranean diet (base) on the eating habits in areas of southern Italy and parts of Greece, Spain and Morocco. It features plant-based foods like fruits and vegetables, whole grains and seeds, and (have) a heavy emphasis on extra natural olive oil. That means the diet is rich in flavor low in fat. In addition to helping people keep weight off, experts believe that the diet can reduce the risks heart disease and high blood pressure.
But it's more than diet; it's a lifestyle. "The Mediterranean diet emphasizes (value) of hospitality and neighborliness," said the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). "Eating together" is part of the (culture) identity of communities throughout the Mediterranean.
In Mediterranean areas, it is customary to eat at big tables, (surround) by family and friends socializing together. It's time (enjoy) each other's company as well as the food.
There is nothing more wonderful than the smell of the Adirondack air! It fills your lungs with purity and freshness that motivates a love for living. Every weekend in the summer, my father would plan a trip from our home in upstate New York to one of the splendid lakes nestled among the tall pines and thick forests of the Adirondack Mountains. There were no favorites; instead, each lake was an adventure to explore and enjoy.
One trip that I will never forget was a visit to Oneida Lake at the foothills of the mountains. After arriving at the lake beach area, we emptied the car of our picnic supplies, towels, blankets and beach chairs, carrying them through a wooded path that seemed like a forever distance. Once we located the perfect picnic spot, my dad, sister and I ran into the splashing waves with our beach ball, leaving my mother behind to" "set up". In the lake, we immediately played "monkey in the middle" for at least an hour, and then after retiring the ball, my father let us dive from his knee, throwing us up in the air and turning us over like thick pancakes on a grill. This timeless game went on and on as our begging for "more, more" never stopped.
When we finally tired of our games, my dad stopped to watch my older sister. She loved synchronized swimming (花样游泳) and started practicing skills that her team used in competition. My father, being an athlete himself, was absorbed in her show. I was sad that no one was playing with me; no one was watching me. I became bored and jealous watching her show off. I was in sulk (愠怒)and decided to swim by myself and try some of my sister's skill son my own in deeper water, far from both of them. The waves were getting stronger, but I didn't care. I just wanted to do what my sister could do so that I could catch my father's attention.
注意：
1）所续写短文的词数应为150左右;
2）至少使用5个短文中标有下划线的关键词语;
3）续写部分分为两段, 每段的开头语已为你写好;
4）续写完成后, 请用下划线标出你所使用的关键词语。
Paragraph 1:
As I took a breath to try a dive, a huge wave swallowed me.
Paragraph2:
It was my dad!
