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.

    A small group of people around the world have started implanting(移植) microchips to link the body and the computer.

    Mr. Donelson and three friends, who had driven 100 miles from their homes in Loockport, New York, to have the implants put in by Dr. Jesse Villemaire, whom they had persuaded to do the work, are part of a small group, about 30 people around the world, who have independently put in microchips into their bodies, according to Web-based reports.

    At a shop William Donelson was having a four-millimeter-wide needle put into his left hand. “I'm set,”he said with a deep breath. He watched as the needle pierced(刺穿) the fleshy webbing between his thumb and a microchip was set under his skin. At last he would be able to do what he had long imagined: strengthen his body's powers through technology.

    By putting the chip inside—a radio frequency identification device (RFID)—Mr. Donelson would have at his fingertips the same magic that makes safety gates open with a knock of a card, and bridge and tunnel traffic flow smoothly with an E-Zpass. With a wave of his hand he plans to connect with his computer, open doors and unlock his car.

    Implanting the chip was relatively simple task but very meaningful to Mr. Doneselson, a 21-year-old computer networking student so interested in the link between technology and the body that he has data-input jacks(数据输入插空) inside his body. They might lead to an imagined future when people can be connected directly into computers. His new chip is enclosed in a glass container no bigger than a piece of rice and has a small memory where he has stored the words “Technology”.

    Some doctors have done the piercing in people's homes, and others have implanted chips in their offices after patients signed forms showing the fact that long-term studies have not been done on their safety. Piercers treat the implants much like any other medical operation steps, instructing people to keep the site dry, and advising them that swelling and redness should last a week.

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    I always experienced guilt when I passed by without giving a coin or two to a beggar.

    My conscience was pricked again on a tour of Venice in 2010. I had taken refuge from the crowds in a quiet canal-side café. Outside the café was an old woman kneeling on the ancient cobbled stones, begging. Steady streams of tourists were walking past her. A lone young back-packer stood away from the crowds drinking something, but I noticed he was also observing the woman.

    A tourist group glanced at the woman and walked on. Another group of tourists arrived and, again, walked past her. The backpacker watched. Then, as I prepared to leave, I stopped at the sight of the backpacker stepping forward and placing some money in the woman's cup. He did this rather ostentatiously(炫耀地), just before the arrival of another tourist group. I watched as the leader of the group stopped and put some money in the cup. Having been shown the way, other tourists followed suit and added more coins to the woman's cup.

    The young backpacker repeated this process in front of the next tour party going past. Once again, the subtle peer (同伴) pressure worked on the tourists, who all added coins to the cup. His work done, the young man walked over to the old beggar woman, patted her shoulder and said, “I hope that helps a bit.”

    I don't know if the woman understood his English or realized what had just happened, but I did. I placed some money in the woman's cup and continued my travels, light-hearted after witnessing such an act of caring.

    Finding fruits and vegetables at your typical grocery store that have been grown without the extensive use of pesticides can be difficult. Fortunately, The Environmental Working Group(EWG) has done all of the work for you in finding healthy and pesticide－free produce.

    EWG has created the 2018 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce, which helps shoppers to find uncontaminated produce. Many consumers do not realize that pesticide residues(残留) are very common on conventionally grown produce products, even after they have been washed or peeled. Because of this, EWG has created their series of guides to lead consumers to safer food choices.

    In order to create these guides, EWG analyzed the USDA pesticides tests, which found a total of 230 different pesticides and pesticides breakdown products on thousands of produce samples. Analyzing this information, EWG observed the big differences of the amount of pesticides found from product to product.

    The guide's two main components are two compiled lists highlighting the cleanest and dirtiest produce concerning pesticides. These two lists, Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen, show consumers how certain foods continue to carry trace amounts of pesticides with them all the way to the grocery store shelves, while others make it to your kitchen virtually pesticide－free.

    Some of the highlights from their analyses included the following findings：

    More than one－third of strawberry samples analyzed in 2016 contained 10 or more pesticide residues and breakdown products.

    Spinach(菠菜) samples had, on average, almost twice as much pesticide residue by weight compared to any other crop.

    No single fruit sample from the Clean Fifteen tested positive for more than four pesticides.

    “With EWG's guide, consumers can fill their fridges and fruit bowls with plenty of healthy conventional and organic produce that isn't contaminated with multiple pesticide residue," said Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst in EWG.

    Only 25 years ago, the National Academy of Sciences raised concerns about exposure to poisonous pesticides in our food, yet consumers still consume a mixture of pesticides every day in America.

    Climate change, pollution, overuse of water and development are killing some of the world's most famous rivers including China's Yangtze. India's Ganges and Africa's Nile. WWF said on Tuesday. At the global launch of its report "World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk", the group said many rivers could dry out. affecting hundreds of millions of people and killing unique aquatic (水生的) life.

    "If these rivers die, millions will lose their livelihoods, biodiversity (生物多样性) will be destroyed on a massive scale, there will be less fresh water and agriculture, resulting in less food security, "said. Rayi Singh, secretary—general of WWF—India. The report, launched ahead of "World Water Day" today, also cited the Rio Grande in. the United States, the Mekong and Indus in Asia, Europe's Danube, La Plata in South America and Australia's Murray—Darling as in need of greater protection.

    Rivers are the world's main source of fresh water and WWF says about half of the available supply is already being used up. Dams have destroyed habitats and cut rivers off from their flood plains, while climate change could affect the seasonal water flows that feed them, the report said. Fish populations, the top source of protein and overall life support for hundreds of thousands of communities worldwide, are also being threatened, it found. The Yangtze basin is one of the most polluted rivers in the world because of decades of heavy industrialization, damming and huge influxes (流入) of sediment (积淀) from land conversion.

    Climate change, including higher temperatures, also means serious consequences for fishery productivity, water supply and political security in Africa's arid Nile basin. Tributaries (支流) flowing into the Ganges are drying up because of irrigation, WWF said.

    If English means endless new words, difficult grammar and sometimes strange pronunciation, you are wrong. Haven't you noticed that you have become smarter since you started to learn a language?

    According to a new study by a British university, learning a second language can lead to an increase in your brain power. Researchers found that learning other languages changes grey matter. This is the area of the brain which processes information. It is similar to the way that exercise builds muscles.

    The study also found the effect is greater when the younger people learn a second language. A team led by Dr. Andrea Mechelli, from University College London, took a group of Britons who only spoke English. They were compared with a group of "early bilinguals" who had learnt a second language before the age of five, as well as a number of later learners.

    Scans showed that grey matter density (密度) in the brain was greater in bilinguals than in people without a second language. But the longer a person waited before mastering a new language, the smaller the difference.

    "Our findings suggest that the structure of the brain is changed by the experience of learning a second language," said the scientists.

    It means that the change itself increases the ability to learn.

    Professor Dylan Vaughan Jones of the University of Wales, has researched the link between bilingualism and maths skills. "Having two languages gives you two windows on the world and makes the brain more flexible (灵活的)," he said. "You are actually going beyond language and have a better understanding of different ideas."

    The findings were matched in a study of native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between the ages of two and thirty-four. Reading, writing, and comprehension were all tested. The results showed that the younger they started to learn, the better. "Studying a language means you get an entrance to another world," explained the scientists.