We’ve all heard about techniques to get us more physically active — take the stairs and park the car a bit further from your destination. Now a study led by Dr. Buchman finds even simple housework may benefit brain health for the elderly.

“Our study shows exercise is an inexpensive way to improve health. It also shows exercise may have a protective effect on the brain,” says Dr. Buchman.

Previous research found just 45 minutes of walking three days a week actually increased brain volume.

The new study is unique. Dr. Buchman was able to analyze the actual brains of the study participants.

The study looked at 454 older adults who were over 70 years old when the research began. Of those adults, 191 had behavioral signs of dementia(痴呆) and 263 did not.

In the research, each participant wore an activity monitor called an accelerometer(加速度计). It measured those participants’ physical activity around the clock — everything from walking around the house to exercise routines. Researchers collected and evaluated ten days of movement data for each participant and calculated the levels of daily movement.

The findings show that higher levels of daily movement were linked to better thinking and memory skills. And when Dr. Buchman analyzed brain tissue under a microscope, this finding turned out to be the case even for individuals with at least three signs of Alzheimer’s disease(阿尔茨海默病). Even though these individuals might have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, 30 percent of them had“normal”cognition(认知), says Dr. Buchman.

Why one person shows signs of dementia and another, who has similar degenerative(退行的) changes in the brain, does not, is a mystery. But Dr. Buchman says the new findings suggest that physical activity may be protective, even among developing Alzheimer’s. It sort of masks the symptoms, he says. It suggests that you can have some control over your brain health even if you don’t have control over developing Alzheimer’s.

And, while intense exercise is highly beneficial, light activity can make a difference as well. “As long as you are doing exercise and you’re moving, whether you’re chopping onions or sweeping the floor, you can reduce your risk of cognitive decline,” says Dr. Buchman.

Playing stickball or jumping rope with friends in the street is a sweet memory for most adults and neighborhood streets used to be children’s playgrounds. However, traffic is always a problem. Now one organization wants to bring those back to kids by temporarily closing local streets to traffic and letting kids play outside.

Playing is important but community buildings end the fun. So here came Play Streets. It began in Bristol in 2009 with just one street encouraged by the success, the idea grew. It really took off in 2011 with support from The Funding Network and now thousands of people across the UK are taking part in the activity and playing in the streets. Later, Play Streets became a global movement and moved across to US communities in San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle. Now Play Streets is spreading like wildfire.

“Our society has changed and communities are having higher levels of isolation or loneliness than ever before and kids aren’t playing outside as much, either. But Play Streets gives people a place to have street meetings and parties, or simply a place to play for a few hours,” Valli Morphett, the chief executive of CoDesign Studios said.

You can bring Play Streets to your street in your neighborhood too. Get a group of neighbors together to organize activities and you can even ask local schools to help plan your activities. But you just can’t put up a sign and close your street to traffic. Before you start, you should consider the following question to make sure Play Streets will go well. Is the local government supportive? You should handle the necessary paperwork with the local government so that rules are followed. The local government is normally receptive to the activity and likely to make it easy to close the street. Once the permit has been approved, it’s time for fun. Gather a kit of toys and supplies, get the word out, and get each organizer to take on a role to share the load.

In 2011, the old style Malta buses were taken off the road and replaced by modern vehicles. Most of the old buses were deserted, a few were sold, and about 100 of them were put into storage in the hope of showing them in a museum at some stage.

A pre-2011 visit to Malta wouldn’t have been complete without a ride on one of the colorful buses. Until 1973 you could tell the destination of the bus just by looking at its color — Sliema was green and white, Zabbar was red and white with a blue stripe(条纹)etc. . Later, the buses all had numbers. For a while, they were all painted green and white before the ‘final’ orange, yellow and white.

In their prime, walking around the Triton fountain at the Valletta bus station, you would have found it very difficult to see two buses of exactly the same design. Most of them had locally built bodies. On the front of the buses carried names like Dodge, Leyland, Bedford etc. . You were equally likely to find football pennants(锦旗)and the like decorating the cabs. Real bus experts would have recognized that these were there mainly for decorative reasons, and were seldom an accurate reflection of the vehicle’s origins.

Nowadays much more modern buses are to be found at the Floriana bus station. They are more environmentally friendly and possibly even more comfortable than the older types. However, I miss the old buses. I remember, when you boarded your bus, you had to prepare the correct change to pay the usually bad-tempered driver as you got on. If you were seated anywhere near the front, you would have noticed that most drivers sat well to the right of their steering wheel. The reason for this, as any Maltese would tell you, was to leave space for their pet to sit alongside them. I wonder where the pet sits these days.