Here is your best chance to travel around the UK in 2012: More than 200 B&Bs (bed & breakfast) across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are selected to offer you amazing services for your stay at their lowest prices! Don't miss it. Just collect the vouchers（活动券）in our B&B Daily printed from 01/ 04/ 2012 to 07/ 04/ 2012 and book the stays for your travel following the terms and conditions below:

● The offer includes a room for the night and a breakfast the next morning.

● The offer is of two kinds: £20 per room, per night, valid（有效的）during stay

period of 02/ 04/ 2012—31/ 05/ 2012 and then again 01/ 09/ 2012— 31/ 10/ 2012; £35 per room, per night, valid during stay period of 01/ 06/ 2012 — 31/ 08/ 2012.

● The offer is valid for a basic twin or double room only.

● The stay must be booked directly with the chosen B&Bs before 28/ 04/ 2012.

● Each voucher can only be used by the holder to book one room for one night.

● If voucher holders book either the £20 or £35 per room per night, any additional

    services such as lunch, evening meal or activities may require an extra charge. But these are not required in order to take up the offer. Please check directly with your chosen B&Bs to see what extra services are available.

● Vouchers must be presented on arrival. If no vouchers are presented, the B&Bs may reserve（保留） the right to charge at full price for every night of stay.

● Vouchers may not be used together with any other offer.

● The voucher holders must pay for the stay in full at the time of booking. Additional £10 may be paid to confirm（确认）the booking and will be returned on arrival.

● The B&Bs reserve the right to refuse voucher holders' bookings for people under the age of 18.

    Modern festival-goers who worry about ending up with a dead mobile phone battery after days stuck in a muddy field with no electric plug power points may now have a solution—power boots.

    Mobile phone company European Telco Orange has introduced a phone charging prototype(原型)— a set of thermoelectric gumboots or Wellington boots with a “power generating sole” that changes heat from the wearer's feet into electrical power to charge battery-powered hand-helds.

    The boot was designed by Dave Pain, managing director at GotWind, a renewable energy company. Pain said the boot uses the Seebeck effect, in which a circuit made of two dissimilar metals conducts electricity if the two places where they connect are held at different temperatures. “In the sole（鞋底）of the Wellington boot there's a thermocouple and if you apply heat to one side of the thermocouple and cold to the other side it produces an electrical charge,” Pain said. “That electrical charge we then pass through to a battery which you'll find in the heel of the boot for storage of the electrical power for later use to charge your mobile phone.” These thermocouples are connected electrically, forming an array of multiple thermocouples (thermopile). They are then sandwiched between two thin ceramic wafers(薄片). When the heat from the foot is applied on the top side of the ceramic wafer and cold is applied on the opposite side, from the cold of the ground, electricity is made.

    But the prototype boot does have one shortcoming. You have to walk for 12 hours in the boots to make one hour's worth of charge.

    Planning to get away? Think passport first

    If you're planning to get away from it all this year, you should think passport first. Checking you have a valid passport before you book your trip takes minutes but could save you the trouble and cost of not being able to go.

    Renewing (更新) your passport before it runs out

You can renew your passport up to 9 months before it can no longer be legally used. So take the time now and save the tears later.

    Applying for a passport for the first time

    Our eligibility (资格) checks mean that it takes a minimum of one week to issue (颁发) a passport. So make sure you don't leave it to the last minute, and apply in plenty of time.

    Help with your application is just around the corner

    Selected Post Office branches and Worldchoice travel agents offer a Check and Send service that helps you with your application. It's convenient and you should receive your passport within 2 weeks.

    If you need to apply for or renew a passport, you can either:

    Pick up a Passport Application Form at Selected Post Office branches and Worldchoice travel agents.

    Or call the Application Form Request line on 0901 4700 100 or visit www.passport.gov.uk

    If your need is urgent, call 0870 521 0410 for an appointment at one of our offices. We can't guarantee to see customers without an appointment.

    From 14th January a guaranteed same day (passport renewals only) or one week service will be available from passport public counters.

    Calls will be charged 60p per minute and the cost per call should not normally be more than 90p.

    Calls are charged at national rates.

    Believe it or not, the size of the human brain has become smaller over the past 20,000 years. Scientists argue over whether this means we are becoming more or less intelligent as a species.

    “I'd call that a major downsizing in an evolutionary eye blink (眨眼),” John Hawks told Discover magazine.

    Why is the brain becoming smaller?

    There are different theories to explain it. One is that tens of thousands of years ago, before the decline began, to survive in cold and dangerous conditions, humans needed a stronger and larger body and therefore, a larger head. Also they had to chew the tough meat of rabbits, foxes and horses. As conditions improved, the brain stopped growing, according to supporters of this theory.

    Another theory comes from a recent study by David Geary and Drew Bailey. They found that brain size decreased as population density(密度) increased.

    “As complex societies appeared, the brain became smaller because people did not have to be as smart to stay alive.” Geary told AFP.

    But smaller brain size does not necessarily mean that modern humans are less smart than their ancestors. “Modern humans simply developed different, more complex forms of intelligence,” said Brian Hare.

    Hare's studies focus on two types of great apes: chimpanzees and bonobos. Both are much like humans, but are physically quite different from one another. The bonobo has a smaller brain than the chimpanzee, and is also much less aggressive and more tolerant.

    “When it comes to working out a problem,” Hare said, “chimpanzees are much less likely to accomplish it if it involves working together. Not so with bonobos.”

The smaller brain in modern humans may be evidence that we can cooperate,” Hare told the US National Public Radio.

    Human began farming around 12,000 years ago, and only in the past 50 years have scientists realized we're not the only species to research into agriculture. A new study has revealed that a small Fijian ant species beat us to becoming the first farmers by almost three millions years.

    The ants have been observed carefully sowing seeds, fertilizing (施肥) them, and waiting for them to grow into plants which bear tasty fruit. What led to the formation of this relationship remains a mystery to scientists. But it puts the ants millions of years ahead of the first human societies to use farming techniques.

    The newly discovered relationship is unique to the animal kingdom. Researchers say they have already watched ants spread seeds, and ants feed plants, but they never had a case where they farm a plant they can't live without. The ants rely on the plants for shelter and food, while the plants need the ants to sow and spread their seeds.

    The find puts the ants millions of years ahead of the first human societies to use farming techniques, who began using agriculture around 12,000 years ago.

    As the plants grow under the care of the ants, the plants to keep further growth. Once the plant is big enough, its hollow chambers provide shelter for the ants. It had previously been spotted that the ants like to live in these small chambers, but the Munich researchers have uncovered the true nature of the relationship that ants sow and take care of the plants to grow themselves a new home.

    The ants will eat the fruit of the plant and harvest their seeds for further projects.

While many other examples of mutually (相互地) beneficial relationships between ants and plants exist, the discovery marks the only case in which both parties other for are totally dependent on each other survival.

    E-Sports, short for electronic sports, is one of the growing industries in the world, with prizes totaling around $25 million up for grabs in some tournaments. E-Sports are professional multiplayer video game competitions. Any video game with a strong competitive element is considered e-Sports. The competition models itself after traditional professional sports in several ways: it uses corresponding tournament formats, involves player contracts, and is governed by regulations. The athletes who compete in e-Sports competitions are gamers．

    The history of e-Sports dates back to 1972 when some Stanford University students competed in the Intergalactic Space War Olympics for the opportunity to win a one-year subscription to the Rolling Stone Magazine. E-Sports pretty much continued on the rather quiet path until the 80s when competitions like the Space Invaders Championship shot them to the spotlight. 2002 marked the beginning of a new era for the sport and laid the foundation for what e-Sports would become thanks to the release of the Xbox live, which brought online play to consoles. Halo Ⅱ became the first game to be shown on national television for Major League Gaming in 2004, paving the way for e-Sports to become a global phenomenon.

    Today, e-Sports are growing at a rapid pace thanks to advance in technology and the arrival of streaming services like Twitch which have exposed video game competitions to a new audience due to their extensive reach.

    To understand how much impact Twitch has made, data from gaming analyst group Newzoo show that e-Sports global audience increased 43 percent from 204 million to 292 million between 2014 and 2016. Interestingly, this coincides (一致) with Amazon's acquisition of Twitch in 2014 and its effort to make the competition a spectator sport.