Some people will do just about anything to save money. And I am one of them. Take my family's last vacation. It was my six-year-old son's winter break form school, and we were heading home from Fort Lauderdale after a week-long trip. The flight was overbooked, and Delta, the airline, offered us $400 per person in credits to give up our seats and leave the next day. I had meetings in New York, so I had to get back. But that didn't mean my husband and my son couldn't stay. I took my nine-month-old and took off for home.

    The next day, my husband and son were offered more credits to take an even later flight. Yes, I encouraged—okay, ordered—them to wait it out at the airport, to "earn" more Delta Dollars. Our total take: $1,600. Not bad, huh?

    Now some people may think I'm a bad mother and not such a great wife either. But as a big-time bargain hunter, I know the value of a dollar. And these days, a good deal is something few of us can afford to pass up.

    I've made a living looking for the best deals and exposing （揭露） the worst tricks. I have been the consumer reporter of NBC's Today show for over a decade. I have written a couple of books including one titled Tricks of the Trade: A Consumer Survival Guide. And I really do what I believe in.

    I tell you this because there is no shame in getting your money's worth. I'm also tightfisted when it comes to shoes, clothes for my children, and expensive restaurants. But I wouldn't hesitate to spend on a good haircut. It keeps its shape longer, and it's the first thing people notice. And I will also spend on a classic piece of furniture. Quality lasts.

    Alibaba opened China's version of Amazon's cashier-less store, “Tao Cafe” at its second annual Taobao Maker Festival taking place from 8—12 July, and then showed it to the public. By scanning a QR code（二维码）on Taobao app at the entrance of the store« consumers are tracked with cameras for facial recognition. After going through the checkout doors, customers will automatically make a purchase through their smartphones without needing to head to a register and be able to leave the store with what they buy in hand.

    The company, putting its efforts in Artificial Intelligence and data technologies, caused some ripples（波动）among offline retailers （零售商）. But if you think the e-commerce giant plans to get a slice of the physical-store pie, then you might get it wrong: “It's not about Alibaba wanting to open more cafes, we are not in the restaurant business.” it's about digitalizing the footprints of the visitors to an offline store, '' said Chris Tung, chief marketing officer of Alibaba Group.

    He said, for example, in the online world, Alibaba can always personalize every web page based on users interest and preference thanks to big data, “When you open our app, every moment is different.” But on the other hand, “offline is becoming not so exciting anymore”, because many physical stores are always found to be very similar with no variation.

    Tung said offline retailers could improve by adopting online data competence to link the identity of the customers» and optimize（优化）their in-store shopping experience. So in this sense, after physical stores have an understanding of what their customers need online, then they can allocate the products in the physical offline store accordingly. He further explained the pop-up Tao Cafe is one of the ways to present this “new retail” idea and opens up people's thinking and calls for more partnership.

    Here are some recommendations for tourists to choose from.

    Banff, Canada

    Banff, located in the Rockies, has a view of tall mountains, deep valleys and lakes, making it the first town to become part of the country's national parks. Tourists can enjoy its beauty by hiking, horse riding and boat trips. Banff was founded in 1883 while a railroad was in construction. It was the water springs that drew the engineers' attention to the place as a settlement. With such a fantastic view, it's no surprise that Banff hosts a number of cultural festivals.

    Lisbon, Portugal

    Lisbon is the capital of Portugal, with the warmest winters of any major European city.

    Belem Tower and Jeronimos Monastery are listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The former was built in the 16^th century as a symbol of Portugal's Extraordinary Age and the latter is one of the greatest examples of the Portuguese late-Gothic style of architecture. The Lisbon Oceanaium is among Europe's finest aquariums. The Museum Calouste Gulbenkian is among the best museums in Europe containing priceless artworks covering 4000 years from ancient Egyptian times to the late 20^th century.

    Portland, US

    Portland is frequently recognized as one of the world's most environmentally-friendly cities because of its well-built pavements, large community of cyclists and convenient public transportation. Us climate is ideal for growing roses and it's called the “City of Roses”. Besides, the seaport is also known as a city of beer: it has the largest number of beer breweries（啤酒厂）of any city in the world. Today's Portland is better known for its music. It's called “the capital of karaoke” and “one of the most exciting music scenes” in the US.

    Bordeaux, France

    Bordeaux attracts tourists with its rich cultural heritage, especially its wealth of architectural treasures. Besides the Cathedral of Saint Andrew dating back to 12^th century, the Basilica of Saint Michael is another one of the city's UNESCO World Heritage Sites. It took 200 years to build from 14^th to 16^th centuries. Other significant buildings include the Grand Theater built in 1780 in the new Classical style and the Stone Bridge built in 1821.

    When Oliver Sacks, 82, died on Aug 30 at his home in New York City, the world was saddened by the loss of a brilliant neurologist (神经学者)and a truly beautiful mind.

     London-born Sacks was most famous for his writing. A Forbes obituary (讣告)calls him "one of the greatest writers of science of the past 50 years. Maybe the greatest".

    In his best-selling 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife far a Hat, Sacks described man who could not tell the difference between his wife's face and his hat, because his brain had difficulty telling what he saw.

    In 2006, Discover magazine ranked it among the 25 greatest science books of all time, declaring, "Lots of neuroscientists now looking into the mysteries of the human brain cite (列举)this book as their greatest inspiration."

     His 1973 book. Awakenings, is about a group of patients who were frozen in a decades-long sleep until Sacks tried a new treatment The book led to a 1990 movie in which Sacks by Robin Williams. It was nominated (提名)for Academy Awards.

    Another book. An Anthropologist on Man、published in 1995, described cases like that of a painter who lost his color vision in a car accident but found new creative power in black-and-white images. Sacks also wrote the story of 50-year-old man who suddenly regained sight after nearly a lifetime of blindness. The experience was a disaster. The man's brain could not make sense of the visual world. After a full and rich life as a blind person, he became "a very disabled and miserable (悲惨的）sighted man," Sacks wrote. "When he went blind again, he was rather glad of it."

    Despite the drama and unusual stories. Sacks' books were not meant to be freak shows. "Oliver Sacks humanizes illness…he writes of body and mind, and from every one of his case studies there shows a feeling of respect for the patient and for the illness," Roald Hoffinann, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, said in 2001.

     When Sacks received the Lewis Thomas Prize for science writing in 2002, the citation (荣誉状)declare, "presses us to follow him into unknown areas of human experience and forces us to realize, once there, that we are facing only oureclves."

    These days, it seems like everyone wants to go out into space and live on new planets. Rather than depend on another pre-existing planet, could we make a new, proper planet ourselves?

    To start with, if we do want to be living on it, we should find a good place in space to put the new planet. We'd want it to be in a habitable zone, meaning the planet should be at the right distance from its star to make sure there would be perfect temperatures and most importantly, liquid (液态的) water.

    We'd also need the right materials to make the planet. Our Earth is made up of many different elements (元素). If we made our own new planet we'd probably want it to have similar elements and a similar structure (结构). We'd also want enough water to form some oceans.

    But even if we get all of the materials creating a new planet like Earth could have many troubles. It might be something more like a huge space station. It would be pretty expensive if we wanted it to be super big.

    We would probably also need a lot of food since there's going to be many scientists and astronauts out in space working on this project!

    According to NASA, each astronaut uses about 0. 83 kilograms of food per meal, including 0.12 kilograms of packaging (包装) material. Without the weight of the packaging material, we'd need about 780 kilograms of food just to feed one astronaut for a year.

    Putting all these together could make it possible to make our own planet one day! In reality, creating a new planet would probably require a very modern technology and there would be tons of other things to think about. And if this is even possible, it likely won't happen for a very long time.

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