These days everyone is worried about the size of their carbon footprint. In order to reduce global warming, we need to make our carbon footprints smaller. But how much CO are we responsible for?

A new book by Mike Berners-Lee (a leading expert in carbon foot-printing) might be able to help. The Carbon Foot print of Everything looks at the different things we do and buy, and calculates the amount of CO₂ they produce, including the ingredients, the electricity, the equipment, the transport and the packaging. And it’s frightening how much carbon dioxide everything produces.

But all of this can help us decide which beer to drink. From Berners-Lee’s calculations, it’s clear that a pint (568 ml) of locally-brewed (酿制的) beer has a smaller carbon footprint than a bottle of imported beer. This is because the imported beer has been transported from far away, and it uses more packaging. The local beer only produces 300 g of CO₂-but the imported beer produces 900 g! So, one pint of local beer is better for the environment than three cans of cheap foreign beer from the supermarket.

Berners-Lee has even calculated the carbon footprint of cycling to work. Nothing is more environmentally - friendly than riding a bike, surely? Well, it depends on what you’ve had to eat before. To ride a bike we need energy and for energy we need food. So, if we eat a banana and then ride a kilometer and a half, our footprint is 65 g of CO₂. However, if we eat bacon before the bike ride, it’s 200 g. In fact, bananas are good in general because they don’t need packaging. They can be transported by boat and they grow in natural sunlight.

So, does this mean that cycling is bad for the environment? Absolutely not. If you cycle, you don t use your car; and the fewer cars on the road, the fewer traffic jams. And cars in traffic jams produce three times more CO₂ than cars travelling at speed. Cycling also makes you healthy and less likely to go to a hospital. And hospitals have very big carbon footprints!

So, maybe it’s time for us all to start making some changes. Pass me a banana and a pint of local beer, please.

Things to Keep Your Brain Sharp and Healthy Later in Life

These behaviors and activities are proven to help keep your brain young.

Learning new information and skills throughout your entire life helps to keep your brain strong even in the later years of life. Activities that have the highest value for brain health are novel and complex to each particular person. What is easy for one person may be challenging for another. 【小题1】

Exercise can improve our energy levels, sense of well-being, sleep, and brain health. 【小题2】Identifying why we do not exercise permits us to systematically break down our barriers, and to slowly change our behaviors towards a healthy lifestyle.

Friends provide opportunities to enable the sharing of experiences, new learning, challenge, emotions, trust, and understanding. Friendship also provides the necessary motivation towards activity and involvement. Engaging in new pursuits with friends often helps develop new life roles, which provide us with an opportunity to feel appreciated, enjoy life, laugh, and have fun. 【小题3】

It is important for us to take control of our health and understand that we are in charge of managing of our bodies. 【小题4】 Once we establish our own role in the management of our health, the importance of a close and trusting relationship with our physician becomes apparent.

Studies have shown a relationship between spirituality and the immune system. As we continually learn more about the potential of positive thoughts to influence health, people are beginning to integrate these practices more frequently into their daily lives, and experiencing life-changing results.

4 Tips to Be an Expert at Managing Your Time

Do you have too much to do and too little time? Of course! Actually it’s the biggest problem facing most people today. The key to becoming more efficient(高效的) is the ability to set priorities and focus on one task at a time.【小题1】.

If you want to be a big success in any area, find out what other successful people in that area are doing.【小题2】. Study the interviews, speeches, biographies of them.

The most foolish person of all is either the person who feels he has no time to learn about time management or, the person, who feels that she already knows all that’s needed to know on the subject.【小题3】.

Successful men and women are both effective and efficient（高效的）.【小题4】. Develop a plan, then decide what is the most important thing to do and how to do it.

Start with your top tasks. Focusing on your highest-value tasks is the starting point of getting your time under control .Although small things are easier and are often more fun than the big, important things .