Merry Christmas!

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.

Hamilton Wright Mabie

How to have a British Christmas

Merry Christmas!!

Some idioms with 'BY'

Refresh your idioms!

     IDIOMS with ‘BY’

Try to match the idioms with the right definitions.

By heart	Through people telling each other
By hand	On the whole, very generally
By chance/ coincidence	Tremendously and quickly
By mistake / accident	From memory
By the book	Not by machine
By and large	Following the rules very strictly
By leaps and bounds	Without planning
By word of mouth	Not on purpose

Did you manage? Was it easy? Are you sure?

...

...

...

...

...

...

 ...

 ...

Check here if you got them right:

IDIOMS ‘BY’

By heart	From memory
By hand	Not by machine
By chance/ coincidence	Without planning
By mistake / accident	Not on purpose
By the book	Following the rules very strictly
By and large	On the whole, very generally
By leaps and bounds	Tremendously and quickly
By word of mouth	Through people telling each other

If you did, congratulations!

If you didn’t, keep on trying.

If you want to watch a short video with the explanations and some examples, click here:

Idioms with 'BY'

 

Just in case you are spending your Christmas holiday in London

Ten of the best last-minute Christmas and New Year activities in London 

The run-up to the big day doesn’t have to be all shopping malls and panto: we pick cool, offbeat and cultural events and gift-buying opportunities across the capital

 Lose yourself in Kew Gardens, Richmond

It’s magical enough at the best of times but for Christmas Kew Gardens becomes a magical wonderland of light - from a flickering fire garden to laser beams shooting from the iconic Palm House. A trail through the grounds is lit by over a million lights, and the North Pole village is home to Santa and his elves, and plenty of toasted marshmallow.

Click here to continue reading: The_Guardian_Christmas

 

Facebook admits it poses mental health risk – but says using site more can help

Company acknowledges ‘passive’ consumption of material can make people ‘feel worse’ but argues more engagement could improve wellbeing

Facebook has acknowledged that social media use can be bad for users’ mental health, a sign the company is feeling pressure from a growing chorus of critics raising alarms about the platform’s effect on society.
Researchers for the social network admitted in a blogpost Friday that studies have found that spending time on Facebook “passively consuming information” can leave people “feeling worse”, but also argued that part of the solution is to engage and interact more with people on the platform.
The company’s public recognition of some of its platform’s detrimental effects came days after a former Facebook executive made headlines with a speech slamming the corporation, saying: “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.”
 
The blogpost, which also announced new tools meant to mitigate some of the negative experiences on Facebook, came at the end of a year of intense scrutiny and bad press for the company. Facebook has repeatedly been accused of spreading Russian propaganda and fake news, providing a platform and network for white supremacists, enabling hate speech and offensive ads and censoring critics of oppressive governments.
The company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has asked for forgiveness and claimed his new mission was to “bring the world closer together”.
Studies have repeatedly found that Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites can damage the emotional wellbeing of heavy users, particularly younger people. The new post from Facebook’s director of research, David Ginsberg, and the research scientist Moira Burke painted the literature on the subject as mixed and inconclusive, arguing that Facebook use can also have positive mental health impacts.
Ginsberg and Burke claimed that “actively interacting with people – especially sharing messages, posts and comments with close friends and reminiscing about past interactions – is linked to improvements in well-being”. They cited one study suggesting that students who scrolled through their own Facebook profiles experienced “boosts in self-affirmation” compared with others who looked at strangers’ pages.
The authors, however, also pointed to a study finding that people who clicked on four times as many links as the average person on Facebook reported worse mental health. The blog further acknowledged that reading about others online might lead to “negative social comparison” and that some theorize that the internet takes people away from in-person social engagement.
The post also referenced a psychologist’s claims that mobile phones have redefined modern relationships, making people “alone together”, and another expert’s arguments that an increase in teen depression is linked to technology use.
On Friday, Facebook launched a new feature called Snooze, which allows users to hide a person, page or group for 30 days without having to unfollow or unfriend them: “This will give people more control over their feed and hopefully make their experience more positive.”
The company also unveiled a tool called Take a Break, meant to help users going through break-ups, recognizing that seeing an ex-partner’s social media activities can be emotionally painful. The new feature gives people control over what they can see of their exes on Facebook and what their exes can see on their pages.
“In sum, our research and other academic literature suggests that it’s about how you use social media that matters when it comes to your well-being,” the blog authors wrote, adding a quote from Zuckerberg, saying: “We want the time people spend on Facebook to encourage meaningful social interactions.”
Zuckerberg also claimed last month that he believed “protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits”.
Facebook, however, has continually prioritized features designed to make the platform addictive and has allowed users to instantaneously purchase harmful ads without scrutiny. The company has also struggled to stop the spread of offensive live videos on the platform, some featuring graphic abuse and violence.
On Thursday, Chamath Palihapitiya, the former executive who criticized the company, walked back his comments, saying: “I genuinely believe that Facebook is a force for good in the world.”

                                                                                    By Julia Carrie Wong, The Guardian, Dec 2017

Once homeless under a bridge, now working high up on a roof

Sharon's life was rock bottom when she was homeless and sleeping under a bridge. But now she has a bright future in the solar industry.
She participates in a local job training and solar installation programme for low-income workers called Solar Works DC.

Watch this short but really stunning video about this former homeless lady and how she got a new life:

BBC_ homeless_video

My shock at discovering I was a donor child

Things can get complicated when you find out where you really come from. Some people can accept it without any problem. For others, it is really  hard to cope with it.

Read this interesting article about some real cases.

When parents tell a child that he or she was conceived from a donated egg, or donated sperm, it can come as quite a shock.

After Elaine Chong wrote about donating her eggs to help other couples have a child, two readers got in touch to explain how the revelation that they were donor children affected them - one said it split his family, the other said it drew hers even closer together.

'My entire existence is a lie'

I found out I was donor-conceived when I was 22. The conversation was not planned. When my younger sister discovered she was pregnant she asked my parents if there were any hereditary family conditions that she needed to be mindful about. Then my parents told her that they couldn't answer her question that she had been born as a result of gamete donation.
My social father (this is what we call the parents who raise us) then told me that was also the case for me. He said they had gone to a doctor at Harley Street who had helped them conceive both myself and my sister, who is three years younger. But that was all he was willing to talk about and neither he nor my social mother wanted to discuss the subject any more.
As I was conceived in the early 80s it's impossible to find records as to who the egg and sperm donors, my biological parents, are. It was rare for that information to be kept on file then.
I'd often wondered why I looked so different to the people that raised me. I'm tall, hairy, with dark eyes and features. My parents are shorter, pale with light eyes. I started wondering if maybe I could be of a different ethnicity. Suddenly my whole existence felt like a lie.
My relationship with my social parents deteriorated and I spent years moving around, doing a number of odd jobs. I also battled with gambling issues. I felt like a gypsy. I should add that my sister had a different reaction to me. She maintains a good relationship with our social parents, whereas mine has almost entirely broken down.
Even though I am now married, with a young child of my own, I am still against gamete donation. We shouldn't be playing around with science like this. If I had been adopted, it would be easier to trace the story of how I came to be and easier to find roots. As it stands it's unlikely that my egg or sperm donor parents knew each other, and I don't know the motivations of why they chose to donate.
I feel that donor conception is a trade in human beings and very few people consider the effects it has on a child.
John, 35, UK

'I also want to be an egg donor'

My sister and I have always been almost opposites - which was the main reason why I could tell something was different between us. She was slim, smart, and a rule-abider. I was more of a wild child with an athletic build. Throughout our childhood, it was always a joking topic, but it was never addressed until I was 11.
My dad and I were in the car and I had brought up again how my sister and I were so different. He said: "Yeah, we can talk about it when we get home." I was like, what? After all this time, now there's an explanation! In a way it was satisfying to know that my premonitions were correct.
At home, it was a full family conversation. My mom cried when she confirmed my suspicions that my sister and I weren't fully related.
She'd had a problem with her IUD implant in the 70s that affected her uterus and the transport of her own eggs. She had never told anyone in her family except for her mother because of the stigma against not being able to get pregnant.
My parents told me that my sister was an in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) baby, with my mom's egg and my dad's sperm, and that I was conceived from an egg donor with my dad's sperm.
It was very emotional. I can vividly remember that.
It's such a fragile state to be in, to have your own kid question where they're from. It was one of those things where my mom thought if I knew that I wasn't necessarily related to her, I would push her away - that's what she conveyed to me.
After, I remember sitting in my room and I felt like I had known it was true the whole time. I had grown up with these differences and my parents never loved me any less. I've never felt betrayed - I've just felt grateful for the chance to be given life.
My mom and I have gotten closer because of it. I think it is the bravest thing she has ever done. I began to see how it had shaped her as a mother too - every night she would tell my sister and me: "We did everything to have you, we're so grateful for you in our lives." Now I understand that they really did do everything.
As I got older, I became more intrigued by IVF. I thought it was very interesting to see how my parents had taken this very new technology and applied it to their lives.
I want to be an egg donor once I finish college because it would make me feel so proud.
I want to represent a successful story of in-vitro. My mom is very supportive of me becoming an egg donor. I think it would make her feel like she has continued the process of family completion in a way.
Donor conception is still seen as a very secretive process, but I think if it were to have more light brought to it, things might change. If I could help at all to de-stigmatise the idea, I would feel very proud.
Elizabeth, 21, US

When to tell the children

If children have been conceived from a donated egg or sperm it's good to tell them early, says Nina Barnsley, director of the Donor Conception Network. Ideally at the age of five, and no later than 10.
This allows them to get used to the idea as they grow, and averts the possibly traumatic experience of a sudden revelation later on. "It ends up being just an exciting story of how they came into the world," she says. "Parents should see it as an open door to continuing the conversation as the child wishes and ages."
If parents wait until their child is an adult, they may be asked why they hid the truth for so long. But late is better than never, Barnsley says, and better than a deathbed confession. "We've had children in their 30s with parents in their 70s when they have the conversation. It can go very well."

                                                                                                                  BBC stories

Key to the grammar exercises

You can click here to get the key to the review and the future exercises:

review_unit1_future_key

The Beginner's Guide to Mindful Eating

With endless white elephant parties, holiday cookies, and champagne toasts on the horizon, indulgence is simply an inevitability this time of year—and we wouldn't have it any other way. That said, even though we're willing to feel stuffed in the name of mom's stuffing, the resulting food coma doesn't have to be a total guarantee.

Practicing mindful eating is a really easy way to actually savor the season's treats more while feeling less like you overdid it—because by truly learning to relish every single bite, you're able to better observe how satisfied you actually are. Most importantly, it has nothing to do with dieting or restriction. To the contrary, mindful eating is about maximizing enjoyment.

And there's no time like the present to give it a go. "You can practice mindful eating at a dinner party, out to dinner, on a date, with family, or with friends," says meditation expert Amanda Gilbert. "As long as you are being aware while you are eating, then you are practicing mindful eating. And you can be aware and mindful even when eating with others."

Curious how to get started? Try Gilbert's mindful eating technique for beginners below.

The 3-part technique

Step 1: Mindful eating begins before you even put the food in your mouth. Start by observing the color, texture, and smell of the food on your plate. Then, "bring awareness to the utensil and the bite of food you are bringing up to your mouth to eat," says Gilbert.

Step 2: "Mindfully chew and savor the bite of food itself," says Gilbert. "Notice the aromas, textures, and pleasure of eating this one bite of food."

Step 3: Maintain that awareness as you swallow and put your utensil down. Then, repeat this technique again with the next bite of food.

"When you bring your mindful awareness to what you are about to eat, how you eat, and to how hungry or full you become, this greatly increases the possibility of making healthier eating choices," says Gilbert. "It also allows us to slow down and savor our food more so we do not end up overeating regularly." In other words, it's an easy way to ensure that you truly enjoy every bite this holiday season—"healthy" or not—and evade the token food coma afterward.

                                                                                 Nov 16, 2017 by Victoria Hoff

William Butler Yeats

Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet;
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Safety fears as junior doctors left to run A&Es and other hospital units

General Medical Council says health of patients at risk with trainee medics forced to ‘act beyond clinical competence’

The safety of hospital patients is being put at risk because inexperienced young doctors are too often being left in charge of A&E and other units, Britain’s medical regulator has warned.

Understaffing and pressures on senior doctors mean trainee medics are being forced to “fend for themselves” by looking after patients whose conditions they are not qualified to treat, said the General Medical Council, which has shared the findings of an in-depth study with the Guardian.

“We are very worried when trainees tell us that they have been put in a position where they have been asked to act above and beyond their clinical competence and capabilities. That’s a concern because it creates very clear risks to patients from doctors who may not know what they’re doing,” said the GMC’s chief executive, Charlie Massey.

“In some cases trainees are being left to fend for themselves when they clearly don’t have the competence to make the decisions about patients’ treatment that are being asked of them. That’s a real concern. Significant proportion of trainees, especially those early in their careers, feel very exposed in terms of what they are being asked to do,” added Massey.

“Trainees left in this situation feel agitated and anxious that they don’t have enough supervision and worried that they might inadvertently cause harm to patients,” he added.

The boss of the regulator warned that junior doctors who act beyond their competence “are at risk of losing their licence” if the care they give a patient proves to be substandard and damages the patient’s health.

In its annual survey of the education and training received by Britain’s 55,000 junior doctors, the GMC heard about incidents that caused it concern about them being left in charge, despite their inexperience.

• In one hospital a group of young foundation-year doctors not long out of medical school began an overnight rotation in the A&E unit despite having had no induction or assessment of their skills. “There was a very real risk that they could be working beyond their competence because they were on a night shift with limited supervision, therefore they might have had to undertake tasks for which they weren’t qualified,” said Massey.

• In another emergency department a foundation-year doctor on duty in the resuscitation unit called three times for support from senior colleagues but no one came to help her. “She had no choice but to make decisions about that patient herself, even though she wasn’t confident that she was competent to do so.”

• Senior medics in a third A&E unit reported that junior doctors were displaying symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as continually interrupted sleep and uncertain decision-making. “That worried them and that worried us.”

Dr Sarah Hallett, the deputy chair of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors committee, said: “It is an all too common problem that many junior doctors move into new posts without a thorough induction.

“This is not the fault of senior doctors, who we know are under immense pressures and face ever-increasing workloads in a health service that is more and more overstretched. Despite this, it is crucial that junior doctors have access to appropriate training, and are able to work in an environment that is safe for both them and their patients.”

A year on from the junior doctors dispute in England that prompted eight walkouts by trainees, the number rating their training as good or very good remains high at 76%. However, “a worrying number of doctors in training continue to raise concerns about heavy workloads and shortness of sleep while on duty, with some missing educational opportunities because of these pressures”, the GMC’s report says.

• About 40% of trainees across all four home countries said their workloads were heavy or very heavy, although that is slightly fewer than last year.
• 54% work beyond their rostered hours, either daily or weekly.
• 22% regularly feel short of sleep while they are on duty.
•                                                                            The Guardian 27 Nov 2017

Future tenses

Better late than never!
Click here to see the summary of the different ways to express the future in Englisg:

Future_tenses

Black Friday

Now we are used to getting astonishing offers on the Black Friday in Spain, but it is something relatively new in our culture. As there is such a big difference in the prices, a lot of people decide to wait until Black Friday to get what they need or buy their Christmas presents in advance to be able to save money or even to be able to get more items for the same price.
Let's see where this special day comes from. Click here to see a short but well explained video:

How one country persuaded teens to give up drink and drugs

Watch here a short and really interesting video about how Iceland managedto stop this huge problem among teenagers.

Teens_bbc_video

After watching it, leave your opinion about the 5 rules mentioned in the video. Would something like this be possible in your country?

 

The Fratellis

And their song 'The Next Time We Wed'. Check now if you understood everything.

Daytime wounds heal more quickly than those suffered at night

We have here a really interesting article sent by Javier about the importance of the time of the day to heal wounds. Thanks, Javier!

You can click here to watch a short but really interesting video: Daytime_wounds

The antidote to a bad scrape-up is usually a fairly simple recipe: antibiotics, bandages, and time. Now, a new study suggests that timing also matters. Skin cells that help patch up wounds work more quickly in the daytime than they do at night, thanks to the workings of our circadian clock. The finding suggests patients might recover from injury more quickly if they have surgery during the right time of day.

Biologists and neuroscientists long thought the body’s time keeper, our circadian clock, resided only in the brain. In mammals, that place is a region of the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which receives signals from the eyes. However, recent research demonstrated that cells in other parts of the body—including the lungs and liver—keep their own time. Researchers aren’t quite sure how they maintain their own 24-hour schedule, whereas other cells need external reminders.

To find out, John O’Neill, a biologist at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, U.K., and his team studied skin cells known as fibroblasts, which are essential for wound healing. Fibroblasts invade the void left by a scratch and lay the foundation for new skin to grow. The cells are also known to keep their own time. For example, cultured cells exhibit rhythmic oscillations in gene expression where there is no input from the master clock.

Given the fibroblasts’ time-keeping abilities, O’Neill and colleagues searched for proteins within the cells that ebb and flow with daily rhythms. They came back with an unexpected result: Proteins that direct the construction of the cell’s actin-based skeleton worked daytime shifts. These cellular contractors tell fibroblasts to move into an injury to begin the healing process. So the finding suggests that the time of day a wound occurs may affect how quickly it heals. Such a “skyscraper” hypothesis seems reasonable, says Steven Brown, a chronobiologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland who was not involved in the study. “To build a complex tissue over several days, it makes sense to import building materials in a regularly timed fashion,” he says.

The researchers then tested that hypothesis with cells grown in a flat layer in a petri dish. The fibroblasts filled in scratches more quickly during the day than at night. “You can see by eye, when the cell is wounded only 8 hours apart from each other, in a different circadian phase, the [daytime] wounded ones take off, and the [nighttime] one drags,” O’Neill says.

The researchers then showed in mice that skin wounds suffered during waking hours healed better than ones incurred during resting hours. What’s more, those increases lined up with the cell culture data. About twice as many fibroblasts migrated into the daytime wounds as nighttime ones. “We were really astonished,” O’Neill says.

Finally, O’Neill and colleagues looked for evidence of such an effect in humans. The team examined data from the International Burn Injury Database, which records, among other things, the time of day an injury occurred. The analysis revealed that nighttime burns took an average of 11 days longer to heal than burns incurred during the day, the researchers report today in Science Translational Medicine. Brown calls the findings insightful. “I find it fascinating that even though wound healing takes days, a circadian clock is still used to optimize different aspects of the process.” 

O’Neill says that the time-varying response may be an evolutionary adaptation. As people are more likely to sustain injuries when awake than when sleeping, perhaps our bodies are primed to respond more quickly in the daytime. But he emphasizes the need for further controlled clinical studies to confirm the effect. He speculates that, if real, the effect could help people recover more quickly by scheduling surgeries in time with their personal circadian rhythms, earlier for morning larks and later for night owls.

                                                                                                                      By Roni Dengler

'Mick, I owe you a beer': British surfer thanks Fanning after fending off shark

A British doctor who was attacked by a shark on the New South Wales central coast while surfing says he owes Mick Fanning a drink after copying the professional surfer’s tactics and punching the animal off.
Charlie Fry, 25, was surfing with three friends at Avoca beach on Monday afternoon when a shark hit him on the shoulder.



“I said: ‘Just do what Mick did, just punch it in the nose’,” Fry told the Nine Network on Tuesday. “If you are watching or listening, Mick, I owe you a beer, thank you very much.”
Fry said he was up to 40 metres offshore when the shark jumped out of the water and hit him on the right shoulder.
“I got this massive thud on my right-hand side, which completely blindsided me. I thought it was a friend goofing around. I turned and I saw this shark come out of the water and breach its head.
“I punched it in the face with my left hand ... and managed to scramble back on my board, shout at my friends. Luckily a wave came, so I just surfed the wave in,” he said.
“I was just surfing, [saying] get in as fast as possible, ride the wave as fast as possible, ride the wave as long as you can and start paddling for your life essentially. It was very, very hectic. Very, very hectic.”
Fry said he was not conscious of his injured and bleeding arm until he reached the shore.
“I didn’t really notice it at the time because when you’re surfing, all I’m thinking was: ‘I’m about to die. I’m literally about to die’,” Fry said.
He was taken to Gosford hospital with scratches and a puncture wound on his shoulder.
The Westpac Life Saver Rescue Helicopters said a three-metre shark, probably a bronze whaler, had been sighted in the surf zone at Avoca.
Avoca Beach and North Avoca will remain closed for Tuesday.
Australian surfing great Fanning was attacked by a great white while competing at Jeffreys Bay in South Africa in 2015 and walked away physically unscathed after fighting it off.
Fry indicated he would be taking a break from surfing for the foreseeable future.
“I probably wouldn’t go to that point for a while. It is called ‘shark tower’ for a reason, so I will probably just go somewhere else,” he said. “I mean, the surf was rubbish. It wasn’t even worth it.”
                                                                                                                   The Guardian

Watch him explaining what happened clicking here: shark_attack_the_guardian

Practise the ellipsis

Can you put this dialogue in the right order? I'm sure you can. Give it a try!

Very funny!

Biscuit?

You joking?

Please, two.

I shouldn’t. Diet starts tomorrow!

Love one.

Sugar?

Fancy a cup of tea?

No. Not at all. It always starts tomorrow!

 Come to class with the dialogue organised.