They wear the latest fashions with the most up-to-date accessories(配饰). Yet these are not girls in their teens or twenties but women in their sixties and seventies．A generation which would once only wear old-fashioned clothes is now favouring the same high street looks worn by those half their age．

    Professor Julia Twigg, a social policy expert, said, “Women over 75 are now shopping for clothes more frequently than they did when they were young in the 1960s．In the 1960s buying a coat for a woman was a serious matter．It was an expensive item that they would purchase only every three or four years — now you can pick one up at the supermarket whenever you wish to．Fashion is a lot cheaper and people get tired of things more quickly.”

    Professor Twigg analysed family expenditure(支出) data and found that while the percentage of spending on clothes and shoes by women had stayed around the same — at 5 or 6 percent of spending — the amount of clothes bought had risen sharply．

    The professor said, “Clothes are now 70 percent cheaper than they were in the 1960s because of the huge expansion of production in the Far East．In the 1960s Leeds was the heart of the British fashion industry and that was where most of the clothes came from, but now almost all of our clothes are sourced elsewhere．Everyone is buying more clothes but in general we are not spending more money on them．”

    Fashion designer Angela Barnard, who runs her own fashion business in London, said older women were much more affected by the celebrity(名流) style than in previous years．

    She said, “When people see stars such as Judi Dench and Helen Mirren looking attractive and fashionable in their sixties, they want to follow them．Older women are much more aware of celebrities. There's also the boom in TV programmes showing people how they can change their look, and many of my older customers do yoga to stay in shape well in their fifties．When I started my business a few years ago, my older customers tended to be very rich, but now they are what I would call ordinary women．My own mother is 61 and she wears the latest fashions in a way she would never have done ten years ago．”

    After a terrible electrical accident, which caused him to become both blind and deaf, the whole world became completely dark and quiet for Robert Edwards for almost ten years. The loss of sight and hearing threw him into such sorrow that he tried a few times to put an end to his life. His family, especially his wife, did their best to tend and comfort him and finally he regained the will to live.

    One hot summer afternoon, he was taking a walk with a stick near his house when a thunderstorm started all at once. He stood under a large tree to avoid getting wet, but he was struck by the lightning. Witnesses thought he was dead but he woke up some 20 minutes later lying face down in muddy water at the base of the tree. He was trembling badly, but when he opened his eyes, he could hardly believe what he saw：a plough and a wall. When Mrs. Edwards came running up to him，shouting to their neighbors to call for help，he could see her and hear her voice for the first time in nearly ten years.

    The news of Robert regaining his sight and hearing quickly spread, and many doctors came to examine him. Most of them said that he regained his sight and hearing from the shock he got from the lightning. However, none of them could give a convincing answer as to why this should have happened. The only reasonable explanation given by one doctor was that, since Robert lost his sight and hearing as a result of a sudden shock, perhaps, the only way for him to regain them was by another sudden shock.

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    Astronauts on shorter shuttle missions（使命）often work very long days. Tasks are scheduled so tightly that break times are often used to finish the day's work.  This type of schedule is far too demanding for long missions on the International  Space Station（ISS）.  ISS crewmembers usually live in space for at least a quarter of a year. They work five days on and two days off to mimic the normal way they do things on Earth as much as possible . Weekends give the crew valuable.  Weekends give the crew valuable time to rest and do a few hours of  housework.  They can communicate with family and friends by email , internet phone and through Private video conferences.

    While astronauts cannot go to a baseball game or a movie in orbit, there are many familiar activities that they can still enjoy . Before a mission. The family and friends of each ISS crewmember put together a collection of family photos, messages, videos and reading material for

    The astronauts to look at when they will be floating 370 kilometers above the Earth.  During their mission, the crew also receives care packages with CDs, books, magazines, photos and letters . And as from early 2010, the internet became available on the ISS , giving astronauts the chance to do some “web surfing （冲浪）”in  their personal time.  Besides relaxing with these more common entertainments, astronauts can simply enjoy the experience of living in space.

    Many astronauts say that one of the most relaxing things to do in space is to look out the window and stare at the universe and the Earth's vast land mass and oceans.

    People generally tend to pick out the best-looking fruits and vegetables when shopping for produce, but Canadian supermarket chain Loblaws is attracting customers with badly-shaped and faulty produce at the price of 30% lower than normal-looking ones.

    A trial run of the ugly food line, named “Naturally Imperfect”, began with only apples and tomatoes to choose from. Consumer demand has been so huge that Loblaws is going to introduce more unsightly vegetables and fruit options like onions and mushrooms. The line is available at other stores, including Real Canadian Superstore and Your Independent Grocer.

    All the produce that will be sold through Naturally Imperfect would otherwise have been used in juices, sauces, or soups, or have not been harvested at all. The director Dan Branson explained that this program benefited both food producers who would otherwise have to let abnormal harvest go to waste, and consumers who could buy fresh produce at low prices. And he was right, given how popular the line has become.

    “It really went well beyond our expectation,” Branson said. “I think it really spoke to the fact that Canadians are out there really looking for some options.”

    Of course, Canadians know that beauty is more than skin deep, but they also recognize that they can get the same flavor and nutritional benefits in spite of appearances. The positive response to the initial offering of apples and potatoes showed the opportunity to expand the line and offer more options at a greater price to Canadian families.

    “If you grow produce in your backyard, there will be a lot of produce that won't look as pretty as what you will see in a grocery store, said Branson. “And nature doesn't grow everything perfectly. I'd like to think if somebody were to take a No Name Naturally Imperfect apple, put right beside a No.l apple, close their eyes and eat them, there would be no difference.”

    Publishers of books for beginning readers are in the business of doing whatever they can to make children develop a love of reading. At times, that means they'll produce books that are more colorful and more packed with pictures. But it turns out that when it comes to learning to read books, more pictures aren't always better.

    In fact, simply having more than one picture on a page can negatively(消极地) affect the ability of preschoolers to learn words from that page, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Sussex. “Storybook reading is a great activity to help children increase their vocabularies,” writes co-author Zoe M. Flack in the University's School of Psychology blog.

    But the illustrations(插图) can affect how well children will learn new words. “For example,” Flack writes, “We know that children learn words better if illustrations are realistic.” Also, studies have shown that adding bells and whistles(哨声) to storybooks may negatively affect learning, according to Jessica S. Horst, Flack's co-author for the study. “We also know that children look within illustrations for the things they hear in the story, so if the story mentions a girl dropping an ice cream, children will look at the ice cream in the illustration.”

    With that in mind, Dr. Horst and Ms. Flack began to wonder what would happen when picture books show many illustrations on a page and how young children who haven't yet learned to read know which illustration to look at while listening to a story. To find out, they read storybooks that displayed either one or two illustrations per page to 36 three-year-old children. As it turns out, children who listened to stories with only one illustration at a time learned twice as many words as children who listened with two or more illustrations.

    If you want to disturb the car industry, you'd better have a few billion dollars: Mom-and-pop carmakers are unlikely to beat the biggest car companies. But in agriculture, small farmers can get the best of the major players. By connecting directly with customers, and by responding quickly to changes in the markets as well as in the ecosystems(生态系统), small farmers can keep one step ahead of the big guys. As the co-founder of the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC, 美国青年农会) and a family farmer myself, I have a front-row seat to the innovations among small farmers that are transforming the industry.

    For example, take the Quick Cut Greens Harvester, a tool developed just a couple of years ago by a young farmer, Jonathan Dysinger, in Tennessee, with a small loan from a local Slow Money group. It enables small-scale farmers to harvest 175 pounds of green vegetables per hour—a huge improvement over harvesting just a few dozen pounds by hand—suddenly making it possible for the little guys to compete with large farms of California. Before the tool came out, small farmers couldn't touch the price per pound offered by California farms. But now, with the combination of a better price point and a generally fresher product, they can stay in business.

    The sustainable success of small farmers, though, won't happen without fundamental changes to the industry. One crucial factor is secure access to land. Competition from investors, developers, and established large farmers makes owning one's own land unattainable for many new farmers. From 2004 to 2013, agricultural land values doubled, and they continue to rise in many regions.

    Another challenge for more than a million of the most qualified farm workers and managers is a non-existent path to citizenship — the greatest barrier to building a farm of their own. With farmers over the age of 65 outnumbering(多于) farmers younger than 35 by six to one, and with two-thirds of the nation's farmland in need of a new farmer, we must clear the path for talented people willing to grow the nation's food.

    There are solutions that could light a path toward a more sustainable and fair farm economy, but farmers can't clumsily put them together before us. We at the NYFC need broad support as we urge Congress to increase farmland conservation, as we push for immigration reform, and as we seek policies that will ensure the success of a diverse and ambitious next generation of farmers from all backgrounds. With a new farm bill to be debated in Congress, consumers must take a stand with young farmers.