What is the first thing you notice when you walk into a shop? The products displayed(展示) at the entrance? Or the soft background music?

    But have you ever notice the smell? Unless it is bad, the answer is, likely to be no. But while a shop's scent may not be outstanding compared with sights and sounds, it is certainly there. And it is providing to be an increasing powerful tool in encouraging people to purchase.

    A brand store has become famous for its distinctive scent which floats through the fairly dark hall and out to the entrance, via scent machines. A smell may be attractive but it may not just be used for fresheningair. One sports goods company once reposed that when it first introduced scent into its stores, customers' intension to purchase increased by 80 percent.

    When it comes to the best shopping streets in Pairs, scent is justas important to a brand's success as the quality of its window displays and goods on sales. That is mainly because shopping is a very different experience to what it used to be.

    Some years ago, the focus forbrand name shopping was on a few people with sales assistants' disproving attitude and don't-touch-what-you-can't afford displays. Now the rise of electronic commerce(e-commerce) has opened up famous brands to a wider audience. But whilee-shops can use sights and sounds, only bricks-and-mortar stores(实体店) can offer afull experience from the minute customers step through the door to the moment they leave. Another brandstore seeks to be much more than a shop, but rather a destination. And scent is just one way to achieve this.

     Now a famous store uses complex man-made smell to make sure that the soft scent of baby powder floats through the kid department, and coconut(椰子) scent in the swimsuit section. A departmentstore has even opened a new lab, inviting customers on a journey into the store's windows to smell books, pots andd rawers, in search of their perfect scent.

    There is little rain in desert. Because deserts are so dry, they have no “quilt” to help stop the soil from going away. As a result, they may get very hot during the day with the sun shining, but don't hold the heat overnight. Many deserts can quickly get cold once the sun goes down. Some deserts can reach temperatures of over 100 degrees F during the day and then drop below freezing (32 degrees F) during the night.

    The largest hot and dry desert in the world is the Sahara Desert in Northern Africa. The Sahara is a sandy desert with great sand hills. It covers over 3 million square miles of Africa. Other large deserts include the Arabian Desert in the Middle East, the Gobi Desert in Northern China and Mongolia, and Kalahari Desert in Africa.

    Animals that live in the desert are also used to needing little water. Many get all the water they need from the food they eat. Other animals keep water that they can use later. The camel stores up fat in its hump while other animals keep something they need in their tails.

    Only certain types of plants can live in the terrible environment of the desert. You won't see a lot of tall trees in the desert. Most plants have a way to keep water in their leaves, or trunks so they can live a long time without water.

    Now deserts cover around 20% of the world's land, but they are growing. This is called desertification and is caused by different reasons including human activities. The Sahara Desert is growing larger and larger each year. What should we do with it?

    Babies teach their older brothers and sisters empathy (移情), according to a new research. Empathy means understanding and entering others' feelings. Until now, younger kids have generally been regarded to learn plenty from their older brothers or sisters but don't give back much. But this study, published in Child Development, confirms that younger siblings (兄弟姐妹) ensure their big brothers and sisters don't grow into disgusting people—no easy task.

    “Although it's assumed that older siblings and parents are the primary socializing influences on younger siblings' development but not vice versa, we found that both younger and older siblings positively contributed to each other's empathy over time,” study co-author Marc Jambon said in a statement. Prior sibling studies have focused on the influence of older brothers and sisters, probably because their impact is most obvious. As one review of literature notes, studies have shown that older siblings influence everything from their younger siblings' motor development to their risk of smoking later in life. And although separated studies have tried to pin down effects that younger siblings have on their older siblings, the influence of baby brothers and sisters remains unclear.

    For this new study, Jambon and his colleagues recruited (招募) a diverse group of 452 Canadian sibling pairs between the ages of 18 months and four years. At the start of the study, individual researchers assessed children's baseline empathy levels by visiting the kids at home and then pretending to hurt themselves or break a valuable item. Eighteen months later, they found small but significant increases in empathy.

    One unexpected exception—older sisters did not appear to experience increased empathy after 18 months living with their little brothers, specifically. The researchers aren't sure why this exception appeared, and they recommend that future studies dive into more complex phenomena.

    One time a young man, who hoped to study law, wrote to Lincoln for advice, and Lincoln replied, "If you are determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. Always bear in mind that your own determination to succeed is more important than any other one thing."

    Lincoln knew. He had gone through it all. He had never, in his entire life, had more than a total of one year's schooling. And books？Lincoln once said he had walked to borrow every book with in fifty miles of his home. A fire was usually kept going all night in the small house and he read by the light of it.

    He walked twenty or thirty miles to hear a speaker and, returning home, he practiced his talks everywhere﹣in the fields, in the woods, before the crowds. He joined several societies and practiced speaking on the topics of the day.

    A lack of confidence always troubled him. In the presence of women he was shy and dumb. Even when he was in love with Mary Todd, he used to sit there, nervous and silent, unable to find words, listening while she did the talking. Yet that was the man who, by practice and home study, made himself into the speaker who debated with the famous speaker Douglas! That was the man who, in Gettysburg address, rose to the heights of eloquence （雄辩） that have seldom been achieved in all the human history.

    Small wonder that, speaking of his own great barriers and painful struggle, he wrote, "If you are determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already."

    LONDON Tuesday April 11—Dustin Hoffman fan Pamela Crack got the shock of her life when the movie star telephoned her as she was doing her housework.Crack, 58, said she was "flabbergasted" when she picked up the phone and heard the star at the other end.

    "It's not every day you get a Hollywood superstar phoning you when you're doing the housework," Crack told the Sun."It was a moment I'll never forget."

    Hoffman was in the back of a London taxi driven by Crack's husband, Dave, when he made the call after being told Pamela was a fan. Dave Crack later became the star of Hoffman's speech at the Bafta award ceremony Sunday, where the 62-year-old American actor presented the Best Film award.

    "He said to give him a mention," Hoffman told the audience to a burst of laughter. "Cheers Dave."Taxi driver Crack said the Hollywood star was a joy to drive from the moment he got into the taxi eating a cheese and tomato sandwich.

    "I said 'You're that Dustin Hoffman, aren't you?' and he said, 'Yes I am—would you like a sandwich?' I was a bit surprised but I took a sandwich from him and ate it hungrily."

    It is common to see many different kinds of insects while spending time outside in the summer. Some of them do not trouble people and can even add beauty to the natural environment. Other insects can harm the environment or humans. The population of these insects seems to stay large and healthy.

    But scientists say this does not appear to be true for some flying insects that serve an important purpose. There is growing evidence that these insects are decreasing across the world.

    One researcher looking into the present insect population is Doug Tallamy, a professor at the University of Delaware. He remembers walking through Washington D. C., in the past when it was "alive with insects, especially butterflies". Now, he said, "The flying insects are actually gone." Wilson said this point seemed to be proved during a drive he made last year from Boston to Vermont. He was surprised that, during his trip, he counted only one insect that had hit the car's front window. Several other scientists have carried out similar tests by checking how many insects hit their cars while traveling.

    While researchers admit this method is not scientific, they say it can still help them understand the changing flying insect population. There have not been many studies done on the flying insect populations covering large areas. However, some international research suggests a downward turn. In 2006, a group of studies showed that there had been a 14-percent drop in ladybugs(瓢虫) in the United States and Canada from 1987 to 2006. In Germany, a 2017 study found an 82-percent drop in the number of flying insects compared to levels recorded in 1990.

    After the German study, other countries also started looking into the problem. David Wagner of the University of Connecticut says other evidence leads him to believe the findings of the 2017 study are "clearly not a German thing".