China Merchants Bank Co Ltd has teamed up with ride-hailing major Didi Kuaidi to provide automobile financing and expand its reach in China's booming mobile payment industry.

    The two have inked a comprehensive partnership, which includes a strategic investment by the former in the latter. Under the partnership, CMB will become the first bricks-and-mortar bank that can offer in-app credit card payments to Didi users. At present, users of Didi can only choose third-party payment solutions like WeChat Payment and Alipay to pay cab fares.

    Zhao Ju, vice-president of CMB, said the cooperation with Didi was an important step in its mobile Internet finance strategy. “CMB's mobile payment is going to enter a new chapter by leveraging Didi Kuaidi's vast user base," he said.

    According to a report by China Internet Network Information Center earlier this month, Didi holds 87.2 percent of China's private car hailing market. The company said it has received 1.43 billion car-hailing requests on its platforms in 2015, which means 1.43 billion payments were made via smartphones.

    CMB is expected to use Didi to reach the core users of China's mobile payment market. Jean Liu, president of Didi, said many of the expats prefer payment by credit card rather than Alipay or WeChat. "The new partnership will help improve service quality and customer loyalty," she said. The investment makes CMB part of Didi's existing investors, including Tencent Holdings Ltd, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and China Investment Corporation. Both of the companies declined to reveal the actual amount of the investment.

    Liu, who showed up on Tuesday for the first time in public after her treatment for breast cancer, said the cooperation with CMB is for the long run and "the capital investment is only part of it".

    Under the partnership, CMB and Didi will cooperate on a wide range of initiatives on financial services and online-to-offline cooperation. Apart from the in-app credit card payments, the two companies are going to launch joint credit cards in late February and automobile financing services for Didi's car owners. CMB's branches across China are expected to help Didi recruit more drivers.

    "There is a lot of room for imagination in our partnership," Li said, adding in future people may use their CMB credit card reward points to pay for the ride on Didi.

    Li Chao, an analyst with iResearch Consulting Group, said the partnership may not significantly boost CMB's mobile payment business. "Didi has educated the market for three years and its customers have formed the habit of paying by WeChat or Alipay. So I think CMB can only turn a very smart proportion of Didi users into its payment customer," he said. "But the move shows that China's traditional banking industry is finally thinking out of the box and looking for outside partners in Internet finance competition," he said.

    Statistics from Big-Data Research showed that more than 90 percent of China's 9.3 trillion yuan ($1.41 trillion) worth of third party mobile payment market is donated by Alibaba and Tencent.

Sign Up for Your Free iDOGO ID

    The Mac Kids Book Club is home of the latest and greatest books, activities, and prizes. Claim your badge（徽章）now to join the coolest club around!

Why Join:

    With iDOGO you can:

    Create your custom avatar （虚拟化身）

    Earn points and badges

    Follow other DOGO users

    Bookmark & share news, books, and movies

    Express your opinions about news, books, and movies

    FREE Book Club giveaway:

    Terms and Conditions

    This Free Book giveaway is open to all iDOGO account holders in the US, except where prohibited by law. YOU MAY ONLY ENTER THIS GIVEAWAY ONLINE, NO OTHER METHOD OF ENTRY WILL BE ACCEPTED.

    If the number of readers interested in the book exceeds the number of copies available, winners will be picked solely at the mercy of DOGObooks.

    No purchase necessary. Only one entry is allowed per household. Ages 15 and under, and a legal resident of the US.

    The book publisher is the sponsor of this giveaway and is responsible for shipment of books to winners.

    You are not required to review the book if you win a copy. However, you are encouraged to do so.

    Winners will be notified by email. Note that in order to be considered for a giveaway participants must have their parent or legal guardian complete, sign, and return the Parental Consent Form.

    By accepting a free book and posting a review, you grant (授权) DOGObooks and the publisher a permanent, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute your review.

    Please reveal in your review that you received the book for free through DOGObooks.

    First opened to the public in 1976,the California State Railroad Museum is one of Sacramento's largest and most popular visitor destinations.Over 500,000 people visit the museum every year,with guests traveling from throughout the world to experience this world-famous place.

    The museum consists of six original buildings.The main exhibit building,the Railroad History Museum,totals 100,000 square feet.Completed at a cost of US $16.1 million,it opened in May 1981.

    Hours: The museum is open daily (except on Thanksgiving,Christmas and New Year's Day) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. From May 28 to September 3,the museum will be open until eight o'clock in the evening.

    Admission: US $10 for adults,US $5 for youths aged six to seventeen;Children aged five and under are free; Cash,personal checks,traveler's checks and credit cards are accepted for payment.

    Location: The California State Railroad Museum is located at the corner of Second and “I” street in Old Sacramento.

    Parking: A limited number of spaces are available for parking on the streets near the museum.However,these spaces are not suitable for guests visiting longer than 90 minutes.All-day parking is available in the large public garage at the “I” Street entrance to Old Sacramento,for a small fee.

    Food Service: Many restaurants are located near the museum.These range from reasonably priced, family-friendly places to some of the finest dining restaurants in the city.

    Accessibility: The museum is fully accessible to people with disabilities.Certain exhibits and programs have limited accessibility,due to factors such as narrow and historic stairways.

    Photography: We welcome photography for personal use.Hand-held cameras are allowed;however,tripods are not permitted for safety reasons.A Morning for Photographers at the museum is a special event.Tripods are allowed during this event.

    Experts say moods are feelings that tend to become fixed, influencing one's outlook for hours, days or even weeks. That's great if your mood is a pleasant one, but a problem if you are sad, anxious, angry or simply lonely.

    Perhaps the best way to deal with such moods is to talk them out; sometimes, though, there is no one to listen. Modern pharmacology（药理学）offers a lot of tranquilizers（镇静剂）. What many people don't realize, however, is that scientists have discovered the effectiveness of several non – drug methods to set you loose from an unwanted mood. These can be just as useful as drugs, and have the added benefit of being nonpoisonous. So next time you feel out of sorts, don't head for the drug – store but try the following methods.

    Of all the mood – altering self – help techniques, aerobic exercise（有氧运动）seems to be the most efficient cure for a bad mood. "If you could keep up the exercise you'd be in high spirits," says Kathryn Lance, author of Running for Health and Beauty.

    Researchers have explained biochemical and various other changes that make exercise compare favorable to drugs as a mood raiser. Physical work such as housework, however, does little. The key is aerobic exercise —running, cycling, walking, swimming or other repetitive and sustained activities that increase the heart rate, increase blood circulation and improve the body's use of oxygen. Do some of the activities for at least 20 minutes a session three to five times a week.

    Liana nervously bit her nails while she waited for the exam to arrive. She looked around the room; hundreds of other law students sat in rows staring anxiously at the tables in front of them. Just as she began to take a deep breath to calm her anxiety, an exam booklet(册子) was placed in front of her. This was the moment she had been expecting ever since she began law school three years ago. She picked up her pencil, and opened to the first page of the bar exam, a test for all students wanting to become licensed lawyers.

    Liana never thought she would want to become a lawyer. Her parents were both artists. Law was something she had not been exposed to as a child. But art made for a tumultuous career—both of her parents had struggled to find jobs and worked round the clock when they were young. Even though they finally seemed successful and happy, Liana wanted something different.

    She was the anchor on her high school debate team, and consistently impressed her competitors with her analytical thinking. "Never argue with Ms. Lakes," her teachers would say. So she chose to major in law. In her mind, she pictured herself in a New York City courtroom(法庭) dressed in an expensive suit, with papers in her hand, waving at the jury(陪审团) in a speech on human rights.

    But now, with the bar exam sitting in front of her, she started to worry. "What if I don't pass? Did I study enough?" Her thoughts raced through her mind. On the first page were seven paragraphs detailing a law situation followed by a series of questions. Liana read through the paragraphs, and quickly scribbled down an explanation of the first question before moving onto the next question. The next few hours went like this as the clock ticked closer and closer to the lunch hour.

    At 12:00 p.m. sharp, a buzzer(蜂鸣器) sounded and everyone was told to put down their pencils and walked out for an hour-long lunch break. At lunch, Liana met her friend, Kevin.

    "How did it go?" she asked. "To be honest, I've no idea. I just kept writing." Kevin said. Liana laughed and said she felt the same way.

    After lunch, the two exchanged words of encouragement. They strolled back into the exam center a bit more refreshed. Liana finished the second half of the exam that day with a better feeling than what she started with in the morning.

    Children exposed to "safe" levels of air pollution in the womb(子宫) develop brain damage that damages their concentration, a study has shown.

    The research is the first too link common pollutants such as nitrogen(氮) dioxide and soot(油烟) to changes in the brains of unborn babies that mean they may struggle to focus at school in later life. The findings suggest that even comparatively clean city air could lead to worse academic performance and an increased risk of mental health problems such as addition or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(缺陷多动障碍).

    In recent years scientists have found that children who grow up surrounded by air pollution are more likely to have a broad range of "neuro(神经)­developmental" difficulties, including autism and various kinds of cognitive(认知) damage. However, only a handful of studies have looked at the ways in which the poisonous gases and microscopic particles(微粒) that mothers and young children take in affect the brain during critical stages of its growth.

    A group led by Monica Guxens, of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, found that exposure to air pollution before birth appeared to have slowed the development of several brain regions that play an important role in people's capacity for self­denial and sustained effort. This lack of inhibition could in turn cause "cognitive delays" when the children get older, the scientists argue in Biological Psychiatry.

    "We need this function in our daily life," Dr. Guxens said. "It controls our impulses(冲动) and our selective attention. Children need it to learn and for making decisions in later life. We're interested to see what will happen: is there going to be an impact on their academic work, are there going to be clinical implications? It might be that this will lead to problems later."

    The results were drawn from MRI scans of 873 children between the ages of six and ten in Rotterdam. Even though 99.5 percent of their mothers had lived with nanoparticle pollution levels well below EU legal limits while they were pregnant the pollution still appeared to have taken its toll(伤亡人数).

    Children who had been exposed to more pollution in the womb did worse on a test of their ability to block out irrelevant stimuli(刺激). They also had thinner outer layers in the precuneus(楔前叶) and the rostral middle frontal regions of their brains, both of which are involved in cognitive inhibition, which refers to the mind's ability to tune out stimuli that are irrelevant to the task at hand or to the mind's current state.

    Experiments on animals show that so­called fine particles are able to pass through the placenta and affect the brain of the fetus(胎儿). Dr Guxens said there were probably no such thing as a safe concentration of air pollution.