For the Travel section, writers and editors selected special items to profile from a dozen cities.

Brussels:Chocolate

    Nearly half the chocolate consumed in the world is eaten in Europe, and Belgium—with average consumption of 14.99 pounds per person a year—certainly covers its fair share. While Brussels, the country's capital, is home to hundreds of chocolate makers, what makes a visit necessary is the rich heritage of traditional chocolate makers.

Budapest: Paprika (红辣椒)

    The job of preparing Hungarian paprika was once considered too dangerous for mothers to do. A woman who touched her children upon returning from work risked burning them, so only the elderly and unmarried were allowed the delicate task of separating the skin from the flesh. But by the early 20^th century, sweeter varieties and a machine turned paprika into a common feature of all Hungarian cuisine.

Lisbon: Tiles (瓷砖)

    Is there a bluer Country than Portugal? The blue sky and Atlantic Ocean embrace the land. The blue moods of Fado, the dark folk music, form the national soundtrack. And all across Portugal, the typically blue designs of azulejos—ceramic tiles—are spread across churches, castles, palaces, university halls, parks... The result is a beautiful land of Christian saints, Portuguese kings, historical glories, aristocrats at leisure, seascapes and so on.

Madrid: Guitars

    Walking into one of Madrid's storied guitar makers' workshops can feel like stepping into the past. Curly wood shavings, from the palest pine to ebony, fall onto the floor as artisans turn some humble wood into works of art. It's painstaking work—all done by hand—with classical guitar models and the methods of making them changing little over the last century.

    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(处理) information. It is similar to the way that exercise builds muscles(肌肉).

    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(双语使用者) ” who had learnt a second language before the age of five, as well as a number of later learners. Scans(扫描) showed that grey matter density(密度) in the brain was greater in bilinguals who learnt a second language at an early age. 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 had the same result in a study of native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between the ages of two and thirty-four. Reading, wiring, and comprehension were all tested. The results showed that the younger they stared to learn, the better. “Studying a language means you get entrance to another world,” explained the scientists.

    People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in distinguishing facial expressions — and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.

    Rachael Jack from University of Glasgow, said that rather than scanning evenly across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.

    "We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions," Jack said. "Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, while Easterners favor the eyes and ignore the mouth."

    According to Jack and his colleagues, the discovery shows that communication of human emotions is more complex than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally recognizable cannot be used reliably to convey emotions in cross­cultural situations.

    The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the facial movements of 13 Western people and 13 Eastern people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put them into categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, or angry. They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.

    It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more errors than Westerners did. "The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural difference in facial expressions," Jack said. "Our data suggests that while Westerners use the whole face to convey emotions, Easterners use the eyes more and the mouth less."

    In short, the data shows that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotions. From here on, examining how cultural factors have diversified these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotions. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.

    “How can we live longer?” many people wonder. Being sociable looks like a good way to add years to your life. Relationships with family, friends, neighbors, even pets, will all do the trick, but the biggest longevity (长寿) boost seems to come from marriage or an equal relationship. The effect was first noted in 1858 by William Farr, who wrote in 1858 by William Farr, who wrote that widows and widowers (鳏夫) were at a much higher risk of dying than their married peers. Studies since then suggest that marriage could add as much as seven years to a man's life and two to a woman's, The effect holds for all causes of death, whether illness, accident or self-harm.

    Even though the odds are stacked against you (the conditions are not favourable to you), marriage can more than compensate. Linda Waite of the University of Chicago has found that a married older man with heart disease can expect to live nearly four years longer than an unmarried man with a healthy heart. Likewise, a married man who smokes more than a pack a day is likely to live as long as a divorced man who doesn't smoke. There's a less pleasant side, however, as partners are more likely to become ill or die in the couple of years following their spouses; death, and caring for a spouse with mental disorder can leave you with some of the same severe problems. Even so, the odds favour marriage. In a 30-year study of more than 10,000 people, Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School describes how all kinds of social networks have similar effects.

    So how does it work? The effects are complex, affected by socioeconomic factor, health-service provision, emotional support and other more physiological mechanisms (机制). For example, social contact can boost development of the brain and immune system, leading to better health and less chance of depression later in life. People in supportive relationships may handle stress better. Then there are the psychological benefits of a supportive partner.

    A life partner, children and good friends are all recommended if you aim to live to 100. The best social network is still being mapped out, but Christakis says: “People are interconnected so their health is interconnected.”

    Shark nets in place across Australia, specifically in New South Wales(NSW) and Queensland, to protect beachgoers should be dropped as they have caused more harm than good, a study has found.

    The measures was carried out by some governments, including nets and traditional drum lines, and provided beachgoers with a false sense of safety. The study found the effectiveness if nets was difficult to evaluate, while the significant damage they cause to other marine(海生的)wildlife was clear. Researches desire for non-deadly shark control measures such as eco barriers, sonar(声呐)technology, and various shark-spotting techniques.

    Researchers said while the risk coming across a shark was rare, any shark-related deaths and injuries caught huge public and media attention.

    One of the arguments in support of using shark nets is that just one shark-related death has been reported in Queensland since the 1960s. Similarly, since the 1930s, NSW has had only one shark-related death. But there have been at least 13 people killed by sharks at beaches without nets in the NSW north coast over the past two years.

    The Human Society International' head of campaigns, Nicola Beynon, said the government needed to move away from outdated methods. Deadly shark nets and drum lines are more than 50 years behind scientific and animal welfare standards for dealing with marine wildlife,” said Beynon.

    The NSW Greens' marine spokesman, Justin Field, said, People are 100 times more likely to drown at the beach than to be killed by a shark in Australia. Therefore, millions of dollars going into the shark net program should be directed to observation towers for our lifeguards and improving the beach devices.”

    Recently, a 1935 letter in which Ernest Hemingway detailed his catch of a 500lb blue marlin(青枪鱼), an adventure that is believed to have partly inspired his novel The Old Man and the Sea, has been sold for﹩28, 000 (£22, 000).

    The handwritten letter was sent by Hemingway on 8 May to the fishing editor of the Miami Herald, laying out in great detail how the author and his friend Henry Strater battled to keep sharks away from the marlin after catching it off the Bahamian island of Bimini.

    Nate D Sanders, the auction(拍卖) company which sold the letter, said it documented for the first time in Hemingway's own words not only the size of the marlin, but also the attack by sharks, reflecting the plot of the novel.

    The company added that Hemingway's account of the marlin catch differed from other anecdotes of it, one of which described Hemingway using a machine gun on the sharks, which is said to have attracted more sharks rather than frightened them away.

    The Old Man and the Sea was also inspired by an anecdote told by Hemingway's Cuban friend Carlos Gutierrez. In 1936, Hemingway wrote in a magazine that Carlos had told him about an old fisherman who caught a great marlin alone.

    Three years later, Hemingway told his editor Max Perkins that he was planning a short story about the old commercial fisherman who fought the swordfish all alone in his sailing boat. Instead, he ended up writing For Whom the Bell Tolls, not returning to the story about the old fisherman until January 1951. It won him the Pulitzer in 1953, and was specifically cited when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954.