“Freelance retail consultant” refers to daigou in Chinese, or overseas people who buy goods for customers in the Chinese mainland.

     It's estimated that there are 40,000 daigou in Australia, most of whom are young migrants or international students looking for ways to help cover their rent and university cost.

    These freelance retail consultants have created thousands of trading routes, both small and big, into China.

    Shops in Australia sold out of instant formula （婴儿配方奶粉）, leaving many Australian parents unable to buy their preferred brands. The Sydney Morning Herald reported last year that half of Australia's infant formula sold went to China through customers selling to other customers.

    Because of this, daigou have received criticism from Australian media. The Sydney Morning Post even suggested that the Australian government should put a limit on instant formula exports.

    However, not everyone dislikes daigou. “We think daigou are good for the local economy and they are very good for our business,” Peter Nathan, the chief executive of A2 Milk, a New Zealand infant formula maker, told Reuters. “We clearly believe they are a positive force.”

    Others agree that nothing is wrong with the practice. “People are buying these products legally on the Australian market… they're not illegally being exported to China,” Tim Foulds, head of research at Euro monitor Australia and New Zealand, told The Washington Post.

    Our mother earth is going through a very tough situation and we, the entire human race, are destroying our environment or unconsciously without even realizing its consequences. Now we have to act very smartly and plan something to sustain what we still have, getting all necessary support from nature to lead healthy lives.

    Gardening is always an excellent and environmentally friendly idea. If you can go for sustainable gardening, then it will be even more useful for all. Gardening is a favorite hobby for many. It is time to channelize your hobby towards a more meaningful motivation.

    When we do gardening we need to use different ingredients (材料) to grow plants. Some of them are natural resources like water, soil, sunshine, and many things like this. Using these resources smartly is a part of sustainable gardening. Some simple techniques include: use less water and organic things to grow plants; try to store rainwater so that you can use them for gardening; try using less energy to drive devices; avoid using plastics in any form while gardening; reuse the leaves from your garden to fertilize them. These are the basic sustainable measures. To do so we need to have proper knowledge about gardening and its requirements so that we can use proper resources without wasting any of them.

    In today's busy life we don't get much time to spend on our environment. Gardening gives us a chance to do so. We can also have some pesticide-free (无农药的) and fresh food if we grow them in our garden. This is the right time to do some good to protect our own environment and gardening is one of the easiest ways. Do you want to start gardening, but you're not sure how? Click here: http://www.gardenhowto.com.

    Scientists around the world are striving for effective detection of cancer in the early stages, which is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body, and a Chinese scientist may have found a quick way of knowing whether malignant tumors (恶性肿瘤) exist in a patient's body, with just one drop of blood.

    Malignant tumors in early phases can be cured. However, it's extremely difficult to be aware of cancer in its early stages, as patients don't show obvious symptoms and thus it can only be found in its later stages, which is already too late, so to detect cancer early remains a global challenge for scientists.

    Back in 1989, scientists have found a kind of heat shock proteins (HSP), named Hsp90α, which existed in human bodies and can be used as a cancer biomarker detection kit. Scientists around the globe have been working on it since then, and more than 10, 000 journals have been published on accredited magazines, yet no one has actually turned their research results into medical products.

    However, Luo Yongzhang and his team in Tsinghua University's School of Life Sciences in Beijing seemed to have cracked the code, after working on the problem since 2009.The team has produced an artificial Hsp90α protein for clinical use that gains structural stability by regrouping proteins. The test kit can diagnose multiple kinds of cancer by analyzing a drop of human blood. This means they are able to "create" the protein, in any quantity, and at any time they wish to.

    The kit has since been used in clinical trials involving 2, 347 patients at eight hospitals in China. It was the first clinical trial in the world to test if the protein could be a useful tumor biomarker for lung cancer, and it succeeded. Now, the kit has been approved to enter the Chinese and European markets, 24 years after Hsp90α was discovered.

    You've heard the old advice that skipping meals is a sure-fire way to ruin a weight loss plan, but a new study presented this week at the annual Obesity Society Meeting in New Orleans suggests that perhaps we've overlooked the benefits of selective fasting. According to the research, eating during a smaller window of time each day and skipping your evening meal could have a positive health effect.

    The study concluded that overweight individuals who ate during the day and fasted during the evening reported fewer hunger swings and burned more fat at night, WebMD reported. However, although this diet plan results in more fat burned in the evenings, it did not seem to increase fat burning overall. Due to this, at this moment it's still unclear as to how this eating schedule can affect general weight loss.

    "At this point, we are not sure whether or not total fat burning is increased," study lead author Courtney Peterson told Medical Daily in a recent email." We will need to do a larger study to find out for certain whether or not time-restricted feeding improves fat burning."

    Still, although the results do not indicate a clear association between nighttime fasting and weight loss, they are still important for the world of nutrition. For example, Peterson told Medical Daily that she was surprised to find that participants did not report being hungrier than average, or have above-average swings in hunger levels, despite fasting daily for 18 hours.

    "So we overturned the belief that fasting for longer period each day when the same number of total calories are eaten makes a person hungrier, "wrote Peterson.

    While the effects of fasting and time-restricted feeding have been studied and proven to work in a rodent(贴齿动物)model, research on human subjects is still in its early stages. For this reason, Peterson explained that it is far too early to say, with factual evidence as backing, that time-restricted feeding will improve weight loss in humans. Still, Peterson explained that practicing this eating behavior does have obvious benefits, such as reducing overall food intake, and suggested that practicing time restricted eating a few times a week could be both practicable and healthy.

    "It could be used for short-term goals or longer-term goals，"concluded Peterson." As far as we know，it is safe for adults，although pregnant women and children should not try it."

    Meeting people from another culture can be difficult. From the beginning, people may send the wrong signal. Or they may pay no attention to signals from another person who is trying to develop a relationship.

    Different cultures stress the importance of relationship building to a greater or lesser degree. For example, business in some countries is not possible until there is a relationship of trust. Even with people at work, it is necessary to spend a lot of time in "small talk", usually over a glass of tea, before they do any job. In many European countries, like the UK or France, people find it easier to build up a lasting working relationship at restaurants or cafe rather than at the office.

    Talk and silence may also be different in some cultures. I once made a speech in Thailand. I had expected my speech to be a success and start a lively discussion, instead there was an uncomfortable silence. The people present just stared at me and smiled. After getting to know their ways better, I realized that they thought I was talking too much. In my own culture, we express meaning mainly through words, but people there sometimes feel too many words are unnecessary.

    Even within Northern Europe, cultural differences can cause serious problems. Certainly, English and German cultures share similar values, however, Germans prefer to get down to business more quickly. We think that they are rude. In fact, this is just because one culture starts discussions and makes decisions more quickly.

    People from different parts of the world have different values, and sometimes these values are quite against each other. However, if we can understand them better, a multicultural environment will offer a wonderful chance for us to learn from each other.