This year, we've put girls firmly in the spotlight. We've encouraged them to speak out on a global stage, share their stories with the world and be the change they want to see.

If you ask anyone about Celebrity Big Brother, you are almost guaranteed to be met with the same response. The screwing up of noses and the exhalation of snorts of disgust is the default reaction as it is expected that for one, you think that the show is below you and two, there is no way you would watch it.

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The always-on, connected world makes the difference between seniors being able to stay in their home and having to make the move to assisted living. Especially in the age of the IoT, where smart devices are connected via the web to ensure a seamless transfer of information and automation of processes.

As a Professor of Behavioural Addiction I know how easy people can fall into bad habits, and why on trying to give up those habits is easy to relapse. NYRs usually come in the form of lifestyle changes and changing behaviour that has become routine and habitual (even if they are not problematic) can be very hard to break.

Unfortunately, career changes mean starting at the bottom. Or they mean working evenings and weekends, building up a business or working freelance, and missing out on family time. What's the other choice? Oh, yeah. Work part-time for peanuts whilst paying what feels like a billion pounds for childcare.

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The key thing I noticed was that once a volunteer gave a bit of time to a cause, they generally then started to give money, or bring their networks in to help, to fundraise, and give other stuff. I dreamt of a technology platform that would bring all that under one roof to facilitate what I was currently doing, patchily, by phone and email.

Perhaps many of us will be glad to see the back of 2016. But it's important to differentiate between national/international events and the events in our own individual lives, many of which, hopefully, will be positive.

I was jealous that she had her mother and her husband with her at all the horrible, invasive, and frankly, quite embarrassing hospital procedures when I had to drag myself to and from mine on my own on the tube, feeling like death and had no one to hold my hand while I was crying my eyes out like a lunatic in the waiting room.

The Pickles report is a largely a smokescreen - to cover the implementation of other Tory anti-immigration policies with very tenuous links to voter fraud. The fact that voter fraud and personation is extremely rare - so rare as not to be statistically significant - is really not the issue.

It's believed that around one in 10 people are gay. That's three children in the average school classroom; three children who are from all different backgrounds and with all different interests - it may be football, it may be fashion - and these young people deserve nothing less than complete acceptance, inclusion and love. LGBT young people are, unsurprisingly, at increased risk of self harm and suicide, either living in secrecy, shame and self-hatred, or enduring relentless bullying, rejection and harassment from peers.

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These next generation intelligent joints will now be opened up to patients on the Health Service, meeting specific criteria, giving Prosthetists the opportunity to prescribe amputees with the best solutions the market has to offer.

If your guilty pleasure is watching The Kardashians, then forbid yourself to watch it unless you're on a treadmill. The same goes for dieting: tell yourself you can only watch Judge Rinder if you've had a salad, and new associations will take shape in your brain.

It is a great time to start thinking about your health, but I am sceptical about the benefits of New Year's resolutions. It is cold, it can be miserable and then we give up everything and feel bad when we fail. Too often we find ourselves reaching for the cookie jar as we have fallen off the wagon and feel bad about ourselves.

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ZSL London Zoo, alongside five other zoos around the world, played host this October to the US State Department's 'Zoohackathon' competition; inviting digital masterminds to come up with technological solutions to the biggest conservation issues facing the world today.

Yes, this year has been replete with sadness, tragedy, hurt and pain. But there has also been love and joy and fun and laughter. We need to look for the light because it's there. And so, as the year draws to a close, take from it the memories that made you smile, the feelings that lifted your soul; those are the things to treasure.

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To name just a few, solar power whose efficiency increases year by year; and the technological advances in battery technology which, combined with technological advances in electric vehicles, have propelled them to such a level deemed unimaginable ten years ago

We need change that builds, rather than destroys. That means controlling arms supplies as the Arms Trade Treaty already requires governments to do. It means offering a refuge to those fleeing violence and persecution, as the Refugee Convention has for decades prescribed. We must also develop a Global Compact on Migration, to protect migrants, so often as vulnerable as refugees, and to manage migration for the benefit of all. If the terrible events of 2016 are not to be repeated, the calls for change to make the world more secure and inclusive must be heard and acted on. Nadi's experience may seem a million miles away from ours but we share the same thread of laws and norms that are supposed to keep us safe. Ultimately we are all in this together.

The problem with dry January, for me anyway, is that there is no give. I know plenty of people who have done it, and who have loved it, and haven't given booze a second thought. It's helped kickstart healthier habits around drinking and given a much-needed break from alcohol.

Aleppo is not an evacuation of communities from danger to a place of refuge. It is the forced displacement of civilians from their homes. The point-blank shooting of civilians dragged from their homes by Regime soldiers and militias as reported by the UN. This is no evacuation, this is ethnic cleansing... The world has watched on as ethnic cleansing took place in Syria. We should be ashamed. The people of Aleppo continue to suffer, but does the world continue to care?

If you think being present sounds fluffy ask yourself how much money you spend trying to get there? And if you can sit back and enjoy the ride rather than get to the finish line the fastest, that is my definition of happiness; the rarest commodity of them all.