I was born and raised in Minnesota, the USA, but as an adult I have mostly lived in Europe and Africa. I teach cross-cultural management at the International Business School near Paris. For the last 15 years, I've studied how people in different parts of the world build trust, communicate, and make decisions especially in the workplace.

    While traveling in Tokyo recently with a colleague, I gave a short talk to a group of 20 managers. At the end, I asked whether there were any questions or comments. No hands went up, so I went to sit down. My colleague whispered to me, “I think there actually were some comments, Erin. Do you mind if I fry?” I agreed, but I guessed it a waste of breath. He asked the group again. “Any comments or questions?”

    Still, no one raised a hand, but this time he looked very carefully at each person in the silent audience. Gesturing to one of them, he said, “Do you have something to add?” To my amazement, she responded “Yes, thank you.” and asked me a very interesting question. My colleague repeated this several times, looking directly at the audience and asking for more questions or comments.

After the session, I asked my colleague, “How do you know that those people had questions?” He hesitated, not sure how to explain it, and then said, “it has to do with how bright their eyes are.”

    He continued, “In Japan, we don't make as much direct eye contact as you do in the West. So when you asked if there were any comments, most people were not looking directly at you. But a few people in the group were looking right at you, and their eyes were bright. That indicates that they would be happy to have you call on them.”

    I thought to myself I would never have learned from my upbringing in Minnesota. Since then, I try to focus on understanding behavior in other cultures I encounter, and keep finding the bright eyes in the room.

    Young sunflowers turn and swing every day. New findings add to evidence that the plants are animal-like.

    Harmer, a professor in the University of California at Davis, Department of Plant Biology, carried out a series of experiments on sunflowers in the field, in pots outdoors and in indoor growth chambers.

    By staking plants so that they could not move, Harmer showed that he could destroy their ability to track the sun. He also noticed that sunflowers prevented from moving were not as tough and leafy as those that were free to move. When plants were moved indoor with a settled overhead light, they continued to swing back and forth for a few days.

    The indoor plants did start tracking the “sun” again when the apparent source of lighting was moved across the room. The plants could reliably track the movement and return at night when the artificial day was close to a 24-hour cycle, but not when it was closer to 30 hours.

    When sunflowers track the sun, the east sides of their stems grew more rapidly than the west sides. At night, the west sides grew faster as the stem swung the other way. The team identified a number of genes that were expressed at higher levels on the sunward side of the plant during the day or on the other side at night. A plant growth-regulating hormone (激素), called auxin, appears to be a key driver.

    The “dance” to the sun cycle obviously slows when the sunflower matures (成熟) and its flowers open up. At that point, the plants stop moving during the day and settle down facing the sun in the east.

    “Bees like warm flowers.” Harmer said, adding that the bees are cold-blooded, so landing on a warm flower saves them energy and perhaps feels really good.

    “The morning warmth changes the flowers in a way to make them more appealing to insects, perhaps causing them to release more attractive scents earlier in the day.” he said “We're currently testing this idea.”

    Years ago, the American writer Kurt Vonnegut often said there was one story that would always make a million dollars: Cinderella.

    Cinderella made more like $ 70 million in ticket sales when it opened last weekend. But the movie got a mixed reaction. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter praised the movie and said, “Anyone will find something to enjoy in it.” Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer called the movie “a winning re-do”. Richard Corliss of Time magazine wrote that “Disney finally got Cinderella right. ” Other people were not as happy with the movie. Sara Stewart of the New York Post wrote, “This Cinderella is all dressed up with nowhere very interesting to go.”

    Although different people think differently towards the movie, what is clear, however, is the movie's business success. It is not only popular in the theaters but also in sales. And Disney has widened its usual market for Cinderella products.

    There are products connected to the Disney movie targeted (面向) not only at little girls, but women, too. For example, the famous shoe designer Jimmy Choo worked with Disney to create Cinderella's shoes”. You can buy them for about $ 5,000. At that price, you would not want to lose one at the party, even if that is the way you get your prince (王子).

    The make-up (化妆品) company MAC quickly sold all its products connected to Cinderella. HSN is a popular website selling clothing and objects for the home. The marketer is now also selling Cinderella products.

    So, is there anything left for the children, those people we think of as the traditional audience (观众) for the age-old tale? Yes, you can find toys and other children's products at the American store JCPenney. Of course, you can also visit a Disney store.

    The Nobel Prize Winners in Literature

    Rabindranath Tagore(1913)

    Prize motivation: because of his deep sensitive, fresh and beautiful poetry, with perfect skills, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words，part of the literature of the West.

    William Faulkner (1949)

    Prize motivation: for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel.

    Ernest Miller Hemingway(1954)

    Prize motivation：for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea.

    John Steinbeck (1962)

    Prize motivation: for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining sympathetic humour and keen social perception.

    Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill(1953)

    Prize motivation：for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for his brilliant speech skills in defending noble human values.

    Claude Simon (1985)

    Prize motivation: he in his novel combines the poet's and the painter's creativeness with a deepened awareness of time in the description of the human condition.

    Mo Yan (2012)

    Prize motivation：he, with dreamlike realism，combines folk tales，history and the contemporary.

    Bob Dylan (2016)

    Prize motivation：for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.

    As a young child, Ann Makosinski would spend hours experimenting with her toys and other everyday objects around her to create her own inventions.

    Now a first-year Arts student, Makosinski is a well-known inventor. She won the recent Sustainable Entrepreneurship Award of Excellence, which recognizes creative business solutions to social problems一the same recognition was given to Barack Obama in 2014. Her two inventions—the Hollow Flashlight and the e-Drink—have been causing excitement internationally since their creation.

    When Makosinski was 15 years old, she created a flashlight powered by the heat of one's hand. This invention was the result of a 9th grade science project, but her goal was to offer a practical solution to people with unlimited access to power and electricity. "One of my friends from the Philippines told me that she failed school because she had no light to study with at night, so that was kind of the inspiration." Makosinski explained.

    At 12th grade, Makosinski then went on to create the e-Drink. It is a coffee cup that harvests the extra heat of a hot drink while it cools, stores it as electricity in an intemal(内置的）battery and makes it available to charge an external device such as a phone, whose life can now be longer by approximately 10 to 30 minutes.

    "My favorite part of creating inventions would be when you had the idea and you have to physically build it, and it doesn't work out," she said. "So you have to figure out different ways to solve it. A lot of times, I'll give up and I'll come back after a couple of days and I'll take it up again."

    Her advice to other student innovators? "Start now. There's nothing holding you back. Actually, you can do whatever you want." Makosinski said, "If you want to make something, follow your heart, then go ahead. If there's something you really want to do, you will make time for it and you will find time in the day to do your schoolwork."