空の受信箱でメールを読もう

An Empty In-Box, or With Just a Few E-Mail Messages? Read On
（ New York Times ）

SINCE e-mail became a fixture in our professional and personal lives, many academic researchers have investigated the complex mix of feelings brought on by the technology.

We feel guilty about being late in responding, about our in-boxes being disorganized, about the tens of thousands of unread messages that we’re sure we’ll never get to. What is it about e-mail that consumes us -- that invades every corner of our personal space, demands ever more sophisticated methods of organization, and makes us wish for extra hours in the day to deal with the deluge? More important, how can we overcome it?

But eventually every finely honed trick to tame my mail would
collapse, and I’d backslide into a messy, undisciplined in-box. So in my search for a new way to deal with e-mail, I followed one guiding principle: Keep it simple. Any method that made too many demands on my time or my brain was bound to fail.


【 まずは準備運動 】

・fixture　定着物、備品
・bring on　生じさせる
・in-box　（電子メールの）受信箱
・overcome　打勝つ、克服する
・principle　原理、原則


● 解説ザブ〜ン！

ハイテクの故障をローテクで補う

Low-Tech Fixes for High-Tech Problems
（ New York Times ）

BEHIND the cash register at Smoke Shop No. 2 in downtown San
Francisco, Sam Azar swipes a customer’s credit card to ring up
Turkish cigarettes. The store’s card reader fails to scan the
card’s magnetic strip. Azar swipes again, and again. No luck.

As customers begin to queue, he reaches beneath the counter for a black plastic bag. He wraps one layer of the plastic around the card and swipes it again. Success. The sale is rung up.

“I don’t know how it works, it just does,” says Mr. Azar, who learned the trick years ago from another clerk. Verifone, the company that makes the store’s card reader, would not confirm or deny that the plastic bag trick works. But it’s one of many low-tech fixes for high-tech failures that people without engineering degrees have discovered, often out of desperation, and shared.

Today’s shaky economy is likely to produce many more such tricks. “In postwar Japan, the economy wasn’t doing so great, so you couldn’t get everyday-use items like household cleaners,” says Lisa Katayama, author of “Urawaza,” a book named after the Japanese term for clever lifestyle tips and tricks. “So people looked for ways to do with what they had.”


【 まずは準備運動 】

・swipe　強打する、（磁気データカードを）読み取り機にさっと走らせる
・queue　長い列をなす、並ぶ
・layer　層、積み重ね
・confirm　強める、確認する
・degree　程度、度、学位、称号
・desperation　絶望、死に物狂い


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睡眠不足で風邪を引く

Susceptibility to Colds Linked to a Lack of Sleep
（ New York Times ）

People who got less than seven hours of sleep a night were almost three times more likely than those who slept eight hours or more to get sick after exposure to a cold virus, a new study has found.

Adults who spent a lot of time in bed tossing and turning were even more vulnerable, the researchers reported.

“It’s consistent with anecdotal impressions many people have that when they get a bad night’s sleep, when they worked as students through the night or had small children that hadn’t slept at night, that 36 hours later, they have a cold,” said Dr. Lauderdale, an associate professor of health studies at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

“There is a lot that is not yet understood about sleep and the
inflammatory response," she added. "Lots of pieces of evidence are pointing to there being something there.”


【 まずは準備運動 】

・virus　ウイルス
・consistent　一致した、矛盾のない
・inflammatory　炎症性の（名詞：inflammation）


● 解説ザブ〜ン！

あながた口にしない11の最高の食べ物

The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating
（ New York Times ）

Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of
healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.

1. Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because
they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters. How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.


【 まずは準備運動 】

・nutritionist　栄養士
・grocery　食料雑貨店、食料品店
・spinach　ホウレンソウ
・pigment　顔料、（生物）色素
・grate　（おろし金で）おろす、すり砕く
・antioxidant　抗酸化作用のある


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不朽の健康診断法、腕立て伏せ

An Enduring Measure of Fitness: The Simple Push-Up
( New York Times )

As a symbol of health and wellness, nothing surpasses the simple
push-up.

Practically everyone remembers the actor Jack Palance performing
age-defying push-ups during his Oscar acceptance speech. More recently, Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor whose last lecture became an Internet sensation, did push-ups to prove his fitness despite having pancreatic cancer.

The push-up is the ultimate barometer of fitness. It tests the whole body, engaging muscle groups in the arms, chest, abdomen, hips and legs. It requires the body to be taut like a plank with toes and palms on the floor. The act of lifting and lowering one’s entire weight is taxing even for the very fit.


【 まずは準備運動 】

・surpass　まさる
・pancreatic　膵臓の
・chest　胸
・abdomen　腹（部）
・taut　ぴんと張った
・plank　厚板
・palm　手の平
・tax　重荷を負わす、税


● 解説ザブ〜ン！