Technology offers conveniences such as opening the garage door from your car or changing the television station without touching the TV.

    Now one American company is offering its employees a new convenience: a microchip implanted in their hands. Employees who have these chips can do all kinds of things just by waving their hands.Three Square Market is offering to implant microchips in all of their employees for free.Each chip costs $300 and Three Square Market will pay for the chip.Employees can volunteer to have the chips implanted in their hands.About 50 out of 80 employees have chosen to do so.The president of the company,his wife and their children are also getting chips implanted in their hands.

    The chip is about the size of a grain of rice.Implanting the chip only takes about a second and is said to hurt only very briefly.The chips go under the skin between the thumb and forefinger.With a chip in the hand,a person can enter the office building,buy food,sign into computers and more,simply by waving that hand near a scanner.The chips will he also used to identify employees.Employees who want convenience,but do not want to have a microchip implanted under their skin,can wear a wristband（腕带）or a ring with a chip instead.They can perform the same tasks with a wave of their hands as if they had an implanted chip.

    Three Square Market is the first company in the United States to offer to implant chips in its employees.Epicenter,a company in Sweden,has been implanting chips in its employees for a while.

    Three Square Market says the chip cannot track the employees.The company says scanners can read the chips only when they are within a few inches of them.“The chips protect against identity theft,similar to credit cards.”The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the chips back in 2004,so they should be safe for humans,according to the company.

    In the future,people with the chips may be able to do more with them,even outside the office.Todd Westby is Chief Executive Officer of Three Square Market.He says,“Eventually,this technology will become standardized allowing you to use this as your passport,public transit,all purchasing opportunities,etc.”

    The year 2117 will be an eventful one for art. In May of that year in Berlin, the philosopher-artist Jonathon Keats' “century cameras”— cameras with a 100-year-long exposure (曝光)time—will be brought back from hiding places around the city to have their results developed and exhibited. Six months after that, the Future Library in Oslo, Norway, will open its doors for the first time, presenting 100 books printed on the wood of trees planted in the distant past of 2017.

    As Katie Paterson, the creator of the Future Library, puts it: “Future Library is an artwork for future generations.” These projects, more than a century in the making, are part of a new wave of slow art intended to push viewers and Participants to think beyond their own lifetimes. They aim to challenge today's short-term thinking and the brief attention spans of modern consumers, forcing people into considering works more deliberately. In their way, too, they are fighting against modern culture—not just regarding money, but also the way in which artistic worth is measured by attention.

    In a similar fashion, every April on Slow Art Day, visitors are encouraged to stare at five works of art for 10 minutes at a time—a tough task for the average museum visitor, who typically spends less than30seconds on each piece of art.

Like the Future Library, the century cameras are very much a project for cities, since it's in cities that time runs fastest and the pace of life is fastest. “Since I started living in a city, I've somehow been quite disconnected,” Anne Beate Hovind, the Future Library project manager, who described how working on the library drew her back to the Pace of life she knew when she was growing up on a farm in her youth, told The Atlantic magazine.

    Truman headed home from school, with the homework in mind, a report on beehives (蜂巢). Truman's class had studied bees for three days, so he was ready. But, as his teacher Mrs. Lawrence had explained, to earn an A +，he needed a “new angle”.

    Truman pushed open the front door to find his four-year-old brother, Bryan, sitting on the living room rag, hard at work. Paper towel tubes were all over the floor.

    Bryan quickly stood up. “Truman, help me build a city!”

    “I'd like to,” Truman replied, “but I have to do a report on beehives and ...”

    “Can I help you?” Bryan begged.

    “I don't think so, Bry. Sorry.''

    “I know where there's a beehive.” Bryan smiled.

    “Where?”

    “In the wood pile by the garage.''

    The boys marched to the firewood. Bending down, Bryan pointed out the hive deep inside the pile. Truman carefully removed the hive out.

    “You got it!” Bryan shouted.

    Back in the living room, Truman paced around, turning the fragile hive under his nose. Each cell was a perfect hexagon(六边形). How did the bees fit the cells together so neatly? And how did they make each cell six-sided? Could they count? Lost in thought, his foot came down on something ...

    “Truman! You're mining my city!”

    “Get your stupid tubes out of here，Bryan! I'm trying to…”

    The towel tubes on the floor suddenly reminded him of something. The beehive!

    Looking closer, he noticed the tubes were arranged with one in the middle, surrounded by six others, just like the cells of the hive.

    Just to be sure, he tried five and then seven tubes surrounding the center tubes, but neither way fit. Six was the only number that worked.

    “Bees don't count to six,” he said aloud. “The cells have to be six-sided.

    Truman ran to Bryan and threw his arms around his brother. Bryan, you did it! Now I can build a model beehive with your tubes! I mean — if it's O. K. with you.”

    Art Gallery of New South Wales

    Art Gallery Road

    Phone 61 29225-1744

    Cost: Free, except for special exhibits

    Hours: Daily 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

    Every Sunday afternoon at 2:30, families can enjoy special performances on various topics, including art appreciation, dance and storytelling. During school holidays, the museum schedules storytelling and performances, often in mime or Aboriginal dance, for children aged 6-12. Children can also participate in occasional hands-on art workshops.

    The Australian Museum

    6 College Street

    Phone 61 29320-6000

    Cost: Free

    Hours: Daily 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

    For children under 5, Kids Island is decorated with a model hot-air balloon and features a slippery side and a shipwrecked boat with interesting cubbies to explore. The museum's dinosaur exhibition appeals to children aged 5-12. A Science and Discover Room, with microscopes, specimens and reference books, allows children to conduct their own “research”.

    Taronga Park Zoo

    Bradley's Head Road

    Phone 61 29969-2777

    Hours: Daily 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

    Admission charged

    Taronga lets children visit up close with some of Australia's most spectacular creatures- native koalas, of course, but also kangaroos, dingoes, Tasmanian devils and wombats.

    Centennial Park

    Oxford Street, Paddington

    Phone 61 29331-5056

    Cost: Free

    Hours: Daily, but hours change seasonally

    Rent children's bikes and rollerblades to help youngsters bum off excess energy in the park's beautiful setting. A nearby Equestrian Center offers horseback rides, and guided nature walks are available during school holidays.

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making it possible for companies to monitor workers' behavior in great detail and in real time. Start to slack off (懈怠), and AI could talk to your boss.

    One company offering such services is London-based start-up Status Today. Its AI platform relies on a regular supply of employee data, including everything from the files you access to when you use a key card. From this, it builds a picture of how employees normally function and signals any unusual performance. The idea is to spot when someone might become a security risk by doing something different from their usual behavioral patterns. “All of this gives us fingerprint of a user, so if we think the fingerprint doesn't match, we raise a warning”, says Mircea Dumitrescu, the company's chief technology officer.

    The system also aims to catch employee actions that could accidentally cause a security breach (漏洞), like opening malware (恶意软件).“We're not monitoring if your computer has a virus.” says Dumitrescu. “We're monitoring human behaviors.”

    But catching the security breach means monitoring everyone, and the AI can also be used to track employee productivity. “It seems like they are just using the reputation of AI to give an air of lawfulness to old-fashioned workplace surveillance (监视),” says Javier Ruiz Diaz of digital campaigning organization the Open Rights Group. “You have a right to privacy and you shouldn't be expected to give that up at work.”

    Exactly how companies use the system will be up to them, but it's hard to shake the picture of an AI constantly looking over employees' shoulders. “It will bother people, and that could be counterproductive if it affects their behavior,” says Paul Bemal at the University of East Anglia.

    Phil Legg at the University of the West of England says it will never catch every security risk. “If people know they're being monitored, they can change their behavior,” he says.

    Bottled water is a booming industry in New Zealand, but it's terrible for the environment —each bottle thrown away adding to the 190,000 tons of plastic New Zealanders throw into landfills each year.

    But now one company has created water storage that they hope will prove to be just as convenient as a plastic bottle—but contains no actual plastic.

    Skipping Rock Labs make Oohos, flexible membranes filled with water that are constructed using a seaweed extract—meaning they, re totally edible and biodegradable, wrapping and all.

    There aren't any known side effects from digesting the membranes, which are tasteless—though Ooho! says flavors can be added to make them more appetizing.

    The company took to crowdfunding site CrowdCube with the idea, and it has since gone viral— with more than 900 investors bagging them A£ 751,700 to develop and launch the Ooho! balls ( $ 1.35 million).

    Skipping Rock Labs create the balls by dipping ice into brown algae and calcium chloride, with the membrane taking shape around the ice—and while that may sound complicated, the company says it, s more cost-effective than producing a plastic bottle.

    A layer atop the membrane can be peeled off just before drinking, for hygiene purposes. Skipping Rock Labs are hoping their new product takes off—and that it starts to put a dent into the plastic packaging industry.