In ancient Egypt, a shopkeeper discovered that he could attract customers to his shop simply by making changes to its environment. Modern businesses have been following his lead,with more tactics（策略）.

One tactic involves where to display the goods. Foe example, stores place fruits and vegetables in the first section. They know that customers who buy the healthy food first will feel happy so that they will buy more junk food（垃圾食品）later in their trip. In department stores, section is generally next to the women's cosmetics(化妆品) section：while the shop assistant is going back to find the right size shoe, bored customers are likely to wander over cosmetics they might want to try later.

Besides, businesses seek to appeal to customers' senses. Stores notice that the smell of baked goods encourages shopping, they make their own bread each morning and then fan the bread smell into the store throughout the day. Music sells goods, too. Researchers in Britain found that when French music was played, sales of French wine went up.

           When it comes to the selling of houses, businesses also use highly rewarding tactics. They find that customers make decision in the first few second upon walking in the door, and turn it into a business opportunity. A California builder designed the structure of its houses smartly. When entering the house, the customer would see the Pacific Ocean through the windows, and then the poll through an open stairway leading to the lower level. The instant view of water on both levels helped sell these $10 million houses.

         Before birth, babies can tell the difference between loud sounds and voices. They can even distinguish their mother's voice from that of a female stranger. But when it comes to embryonic learning(胎教), birds could rule the roost. As recently reported in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, some mother birds may teach their young to sing even before they hatch(孵化)。New-born chicks can then imitate their mom's call within a few days of entering the world.

    This educational method was first observed in 2012 by Sonia Kleindorfer, a biologist at Flinders University in South Australia, and her colleagues. Female Australian superb fairy wrens were found to repeat one sound over and over again while hatching their eggs, When the eggs were hatched, the baby birds made the similar chirp to their mothers—a sound that served as their regular “feed me!”call.

To find out if the special quality was more widespread in birds, the researchers sought the red-backed fairy wren, another species of Australian songbird. First they collected sound data from 67 nests in four sites in Queensland before and after hatching, Then they identified begging calls by analyzing the order and number of notes. A computer analysis blindly compared calls produced by mothers and chicks, ranking them by similarity.

    It turns out that baby red-backed fairy wrens also emerge chirping like their moms. And the more frequently mothers had called to their eggs, the more similar were the babies' begging calls. In addition, the team set up a separate experiment that suggested that the baby birds that most closely imitated their mom's voice were rewarded with the most food.

    This observation hints that effective embryonic learning could signal neurological(神经系统的) strengths of children to parents. An evolutionary inference can then be drawn.“As a parent, do you invest in quality children, or do you invest in children that are in need? ”Kleindorfer asks. “Our results suggest that they might be going for quality. ”

China is a land of bicycles. At least it was back in 1992 when I traveled the country. Back then everyone seemed to be riding a bicycle. Millions of them, all black. Cars were rare. Yet since my arrival in Beijing last year, I've found the opposite is true. There are millions of cars. However, people still use their bicycles to get around. For many, it's the easiest and cheapest way to travel today. Bicycles also come in different colors — silver, green, red, blue, yellow, whatever you want.

    It's fun watching people biking. They rush quickly through crossroads, move skillfully through traffic, and ride even on sidewalks. Bicycles allow people the freedom to move about that cars just can't provide.

    Eager to be part of this aspect of Chinese culture, I decided to buy a bicycle. Great weather accompanied my great buy. I immediately jumped up on my bicycle seat and started home.

    My first ride home was orderly (守秩序的). To be safe, I stayed with a “pack” of bikers while cars on the streets came running swiftly out of nowhere at times. I didn't want to get hit. So I took the ride carefully.

    Crossing the streets was the biggest problem. It was a lot like crossing a major highway back in the United States. The streets here were wide, so crossing took time, skill and a little bit of luck.

    I finally made it home. The feeling on the bicycle was amazing. The air hitting my face and going through my hair was wonderful. I was sitting on top of the world as I passed by places and people. Biking made me feel alive.

    The morning after an evening struggle to care for my three-year-old daughter, I couldn't wait to get her to school. I, as a mother, was tired from the anger and her inability to communicate because of her slowed language development.

    As I accompanied her into the car, I felt desperate. Nothing was right with our world. She'd been born around the same time when the nation was witnessing the birth of another Great Recession. My job and my house had been victims. Then this happened. My child's language delay was identified, but doctors struggled to properly help her, I felt like we both needed to he rescued.

    I returned that afternoon as disenchanted with the little girl 1 loved as when 1 left. Walking slowly toward the school's playground gate, I found her preschool teacher racing to greet me.

    “You should have seen her today!” His breathy words were supported by excitement. I didn't interrupt. “See that climber.” He pointed to a wooden piece of playground equipment that looked like a rock wall. I nodded. “Well, every day since she started school, she's tried and failed to make it to the top.” He took a breath. “And today she did it!”

    He expressed his joy just as he'd witnessed her conquering Mount Everest! “She cheered and celebrated! I wish I'd recorded it!” His words comforted me. My daughter had conquered her mountain.

    As she ran toward me, I recognized something I hadn't before. I saw her perseverance(毅力). I saw her strength. I saw a Hero.

    Everyday greatness celebrates ordinary people who do unusual things in big and small ways, showing courage, kindness, love and selflessness. We encourage you to click these brief accounts and invite you to share your own story.

    For most of us, work is the central, dominating fact of life. We spend more than half our conscious hours at work, preparing for work, traveling to and from work. What we do there largely determines our standard of living and our status to a considerable extent. It is sometimes said that because leisure has become more important, the injustices of work can be pushed into a corner, and that because most work is pretty intolerable, the people who do it should compensate for its boredom, frustrations and humiliations by concentrating their hopes on the other parts of their lives. For the foreseeable future, however, the material and psychological rewards which work can provide will continue to play a vital part in determining the satisfaction that life can offer.

    Yet only a small minority can control the pace at which they work or the conditions where their work is done; only for a small minority does work offer scope for creativity, imagination or initiative.

    Inequality at work is still one of the most glaring (明显的) forms of inequality in our society. We cannot hope to solve the more obvious problems of industrial life, many of which arise from the frustrations created by inequality at work, unless we handle it determinedly.

    The most glaring inequality is that between managers and the rest. For most managers, work is an opportunity and a challenge. Their jobs engage their interest and allow them to develop their abilities. They are constantly learning. They are able to exercise responsibility. They have a considerable degree of control over their own and others' working lives. Most important of all, they have opportunities to initiate. By contrast, for most manual workers, work is a boring, dull, even painful experience. They spend all their working lives in intolerable conditions. The majority have little control over their work. It provides them with no opportunity for personal development. Many jobs are so routine that workers feel themselves to be mere cogs (齿轮) in the bureaucratic machine. As a direct consequence of their work experience, many workers feel alienated (疏远) from their work and their firm.

    Babies born in summer are more likely to become short-sighted in late life, a study has shown.

    As many as a quarter of all cases of short-sightedness are caused by too great an exposure to sunlight in the first weeks of life, say eye experts.

    They are advising all parents to put sunglasses on their babies during the first weeks.

    Scientists had already established that over-exposure to sunlight caused shortsightedness in animals.

    Researchers who compared the months in which babies were born with whether they needed glasses later on say the principle also applies to humans.

    A study of almost 300, 000 young adults-the largest of its kind-showed that those born in June and July had a 25 per cent greater chance of becoming severely short-sighted than those born in December or January.

    Research leader Professor Michael Belkin, of Tel Aviv University, said it was because prolonged illumination(光照) causes the eyeball to lengthen-causing short-sightedness.

    Hence the more light a newborn is exposed to, the more the eyeball lengthens and the worse the short-sightedness will be.

    The mechanism which lengthens the eyeball is associated with levels of melatonin(褪黑激素), a pigment (色素) which protects the skin against harmful rays of the sun.

    In young babies not enough melatonin is released as protection, meaning they are more vulnerable to sunburn and changes to eyeball shape.

    Sight expert Professor Daniel O'Leary, of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, said "At the moment we don't know the precise cause of why light exposure affects sight, but the evidence seems to prove that it is one of the reasons for people becoming shortsighted."