In today's world of smart phones and notebook computers, most people have at least one time-telling thing with them. Since these digital products are so common, is time running out for the 500-year-old watch? According to some consumers, the answer is yes. New Jersey teenager Charlie Wollman says a watch is “an extra piece of equipment with no necessary function.” Many young adults think so and use their smart phones to tell time. It is said that fewer young people wear watches today than ten years ago. As a result, some people say that the watch industry is at a crossroads.

    However, watchmakers optimistically say that watches regain popularity when consumers reach their 20s and 30s. By then, they are willing to spend money on a quality watch that doesn't just keep good time. Fifty years ago, watchmakers took pride in their products' accuracy. But in recent years, the watch industry has changed itself into an accessory(附属的) business. And today, the image a watch communicates has become more important than the time it tells.

    “Complications” — features that go beyond simple timekeeping — are an important part of a watch's image. Today's watches offer lots of features that meet almost any personality. These features include compasses, USB drivers, and even other functions .

    Creativity also plays a key role in designing today's watches. For example, Japanese watchmaker Tokyoflash makes watches that don't even look like watches. The company's popular Shinshoku model uses different color lights to tell time. It looks more like a fashionable bracelet(手镯) than a watch.

    Whether a watch communicates fashion sense, or creative talent of a love sports, consumers want their watches to stand out. Nowadays, everyone has the same kind of gadget(配件) in their bags, so people want to make a statement with what' s on their wrists. Will this interest in wrist fashion last? Only time will tell!

    If all the food that's thrown away in three American cities could be saved, it would provide 68 million meals for people who don't have enough to eat, according to a recent study.

    The researchers found that, in the cities they surveyed（调查）, more than a kilogram of edible food per person is wasted each week. Edible food is food you can eat. It doesn't include things like apple cores（果核）, egg shells, or bones from meat. Fruits and vegetables were the most common edible foods found in the dustbin, followed by food leftover from meals. Eggs, bread and milk were also commonly thrown out.

    The people taking part in the survey gave several reasons for throwing edible food away. Most said the food went off. Some said they weren't interested in eating leftovers. A few said the food had passed the “Best Before” date printed on the label（标签）. When food is wasted—by families, restaurants or grocery stores—we are also wasting all of the resources that go into producing that food. That means we are wasting water, land, energy and labour, as well as the fuel needed to transport food.

    A lot of food is wasted before it even reaches the grocery store（食品杂货商）. Some food is damaged while it is being transported from the farm to the stores. Fruits and vegetables that don't look attractive enough don't even get put onto the shelves because most people won't buy them. Grocery stores, restaurants and hospitals also waste a large amount of food. The researchers suggest that grocery stores should donate any food that is still okay to eat to homeless shelters, instead of throwing it away. Prepared meals from hospitals or restaurants could also be donated to shelters.

    “Did you hear what happened to Adam Last Friday?”Lindsey whispers to Tori.

    With her eyes shining, Tori brags，“You bet I did, Sean told me two days ago.”

    Who are Lindsey and Tori talking about? It just happened to be yours truly, Adam Freedman, I can tell you that what they are saying is not nice and not even true. Still, Lindsey and Tori aren't very different from most students here at Linton High School, including me. Many of our conversations are gossip(闲话). I have noticed three effects of gossip: it can hurt people, it can give gossipers a strange kind of satisfaction, and it can cause social pressures in a group.

    An important negative effect of gossip is that it can hurt the person being talked about. Usually, gossip spreads information about a topic-breakups, trouble at home, even dropping out-that a person would rather keep secret. The more embarrassing or shameful the secret is, the juicier the gossip it makes. Probably the worst type of gossip is the absolute lie. People often think of gossipers as harmless, but cruel lies can cause pain.

    If we know that gossip can be harmful, then why do so many of us do it? That answer lies in another effect of gossip: the satisfaction it gives us. Sharing the latest rumor(传言)can make a person feel important because he or she knows something that others don't. Similarly, hearing the latest rumor can make a person feel like part of the “in group.” In other words, gossip is satisfying because it gives people a sense of belonging or even superiority(优越感).

    Gossip also can have a third effect: it strengthens unwritten, unspoken rules about how people should act. Professor David Wilson explains that gossip is important in policing behaviors in a group. Translated into high school terms, this means that if everybody you hang around with is laughing at what John wore or what Jane said, then you can bet that wearing or saying something similar will get you the same kind of negative attention. The do's and don'ts conveyed through gossip will never show up in any student handbook.

    The effects of gossip vary depending on the situation. The next time you feel the urge to spread the latest news, think about why you want to gossip and what effects your “juicy story” might have.

    Mr. Peter Johnson, aged twenty- three, battled for half an hour to escape from his trapped car yesterday when it landed upside down in three feet of water. Mr. Johnson took the only escape route—through the boot (行李箱).

    Mr. Johnson's car had finished up in a ditch (沟渠) at Romney Marsin, Kent, after skidding on ice and hitting a bank. "Fortunately, the water began to come in only slowly," Mr. Johnson said. "I couldn't force the doors because they were jammed against the walls of the ditch and dared not open the windows because I knew water would come flooding in."

    Mr. Johnson, a sweet salesman of Sitting Home, Kent, first tried to attract the attention of other motorists by sounding the horn and hammering on the roof and boot. Then he began his struggle to escape.

    Later he said, "It was really a half penny that saved my life. It was the only coin I had in my pocket and I used it to unscrew the back seat to get into the boot. I hammered desperately with a hammer trying to make someone hear, but no help came."

    It took ten minutes to unscrew the seat, and a further five minutes to clear the sweet samples from the boot. Then Mr. Johnson found a wrench (扳手) and began to work on the boot lock. Fifteen minutes passed by. "It was the only chance I had. Finally it gave, but as soon as I moved the boot lid, the water and mud poured in. I forced the lid down into the mud and scrambled clear as the car filled up."

    His hands and arms cut and bruised，Mr. Johnson got to Beckett Farm nearby, where he was looked after by the farmer's wife, Mrs. Lucy Bates. Trembling in a blanket, he said, "That thirty minutes seemed like hours." Only the tips of the car wheels were visible, police said last night. The vehicle had sunk into two feet of mud at the bottom of the ditch.

    After photographer Monni Must's daughter Miya died, the sad mother adopted her black dog, Billy Bean. As Billy became increasingly weak, the thought of its dying was just more than Must could handle. So she decided to clone the dog. “I feared everyone was going to forget Miya," she said, "and my other daughters thought I had completely lost my mind."

    Billy's cells were shipped to ViaGen Pets, a Texas company that provides the cloning service. With more than $50,000, Must picked up a new puppy. "The dog has a real soul and is everything my daughter was—fun, social and kind," she said. "I feel that I still have that touchable connection and not just a spiritual connection.”

    Cloning animals is hardly new. But the recent news that singer Barbra Streisand had cloned her dog grabbed international headlines. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals(PETA) president Ingrid Newkirk issued a statement saying she would love to talk her out of cloning, noting that millions of wonderful dogs are getting old in animal shelters every year or dying in terrifying ways when abandoned.

    Normally, a doctor takes a tissue biopsy(组织活检), a piece of skin and muscle about the size of a pencil eraser, from the dog. The next step is to take an egg cell from a donor dog, remove the egg's nucleus, and insert DNA from the pet to be cloned. When an embryo(胚胎)develops, it is transplanted in the body of a mother dog.

    In the basic cloning procedure, scientists take an entire adult cell and put it into an egg that's been relieved of its own DNA. The resulting embryo is a clone. However, in many animals, only one in 100 cloned embryos ever leads to a live birth. Some embryos die in the IVF dish or in the mothers bodies. Of those that are born, a few suffer from abnormalities and quickly die. Besides, pet cloning doesn't mean copying everything of your beloved pets.

    It is a question people have been asking for ages—is there a way to turn back the aging process?

    For centuries, people have been looking for a "fountain of youth." The idea is that if you find a magical fountain, and drink from its waters, you will not become old. Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León searched for waters with magical powers in the early 1500s. But what he found instead is the American State of Florida.

    Researchers in New York did not find a fountain of youth in fact, but they may have found a way to turn back the aging process. It appears the answer may be hidden right between your eyes, in an area called the hypothalamus (丘脑下部).The hypothalamus is part of your brain. It controls important activities within the body, including growth, reproduction and the way we process food.

    Researchers at New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine found that hypothalamus stem cells also influence how fast aging takes place in the body. What are stem cells? They are simple cells that can develop into specialized cells, like blood or skin cells. Stem cells can also repair damaged parts in the body.

    Professor Dongsheng Cai was the lead researcher in a study on aging in mice. Cai explains in the Journal Nature what they found. "Aging speed can be controlled by a particular place in the body, which is the hypothalamus. And it can be controlled by a particular type of cells, which are hypothalamus stem cells. I think these findings are quite interesting."

    He adds that when the hypothalamus starts aging, so does the body. "So when hypothalamus function is decreasing, particularly the loss of hypothalamus stem cells, this protection against the aging development is lost. It finally leads to aging."

    Using this information, the researchers began trying to activate (激活) the hypothalamus in mice. They did this by putting stem cells from younger mice into middle-aged animals. Later, the researchers examined mice and tested for changes in behavior. They also looked for changes in the strength of the animals' muscles and the way they worked. The researchers say the results show that the treatment slowed aging in the animals.

    Cai says when hypothalamus stem cells, which were derived from young mice was put into middle-aged mice, the mice aged slowly and they also have increased the length of their lives.

    But these results were just from studying mice in a lab. If the mice can live longer, does that mean people could have longer lives? The next step is to see if the anti-aging effects also work in human beings.