Expensive perfumes (香水) come in tiny bottles, but many hide a whale-sized secret.

    To perfect a particular smell, perfume-makers often use an ingredient that comes from sperm whales, called ambergris (龙涎香). But using ambergris, which helps a perfume last longer, is strongly opposed by many people who think it is wrong to kill whales just so we can smell sweet. Joerg Bohlmann is neither a perfumer nor a whale expert. He's a plant biologist at the University of British Columbia in Canada. But his discovery of a new plant gene (基因) might push whales out of the perfume business.

    The gene comes from fir trees, found throughout North America and commonly used as Christmas trees. The trees produce a chemical that can be used in perfume in place of ambergris-but with a catch. "There's a problem that many people wouldn't consider. In the tree, the chemical is mixed with many others. That makes separation a challenge," Bohlmann says. "lt's like trying to isolate sugar from a biscuit. "

     This is where science becomes useful. When Bohlmann learned that fir trees produce the ambergris-like chemical, he decided to use his gene know-how to find the instructions for how to make the ambergris-substitute.

    Bohlmann found that gene and took it out of the tree cells. Then he did something that might sound strange to someone who doesn't work in genetics: Bohlmann put the gene from the tree into yeast (酵母) cells.

    Yeast may sound familiar because it's used to make things like bread, wine and beer. Biologists like to work with yeast because it easily adopts new genes and changes its features and behaviour. When Bohlmann put the fir tree gene into the yeast, the yeast started making the same chemical that had been produced by the tree.

    Perfumers pay big money for ambergris because it is a fixative, which means it holds a smell in place on a person's body.

    "Cheap perfumes smell good in the first hour or so and then everything is gone," explains Bohlmann. "But expensive perfumes are much more stable.  Their smell lasts much longer, for hours or even a day after you apply them. "

    The new chemical, made from the tree genes, can be used as a fixative, too. And using yeast to make it is far cheaper than acquiring ambergris.

    Bohlmann admits he never thought he'd get into the perfume business. But now, he says, producers have been calling to find out how to use his technology in new perfumes.

    If you live in the U.S., you're probably used to throwing banana peel into the trash. But people in other countries, including India, have been taking advantages of their nutritional benefits for many years.

    While the flesh of a banana is soft and sweet, the skin is thick, hard and slightly bitter. To eat the peel, you can fry, bake, or boil it for at least 10 minutes. Also, the riper bananas get, the thinner and sweeter banana peel will become. That's because of a natural plant hormone(激素) called ethylene(乙烯) that fruits release as they ripen. Ethylene interacts with the sugars and fiber in the banana skin, changing complex sugars into simple sugars and breaking down pectin, a form of fiber in bananas that keeps them stiff. That's why the older your banana is, the flimsier(不结实的) it feels.

    The sweet flesh of a medium-sized banana contains great percentages of your daily recommended intake of various nutrients, such as:

·12% of your daily fiber, which helps with digestion and may help lower your risk of diabetes(糖尿病)

·17% of your vitamin C, which is important for your immune system as well as your growth

·20% of your vitamin B6, which aids the body's ability to turn food into energy

·12% of your potassium, which helps with the development of cells, tissues, and organs throughout the body

    If you eat the skin along with the flesh, you will get an even bigger increase in these same nutrients.

    Eating the peel is not only good for your body but also better for the earth. The average American ate 11.4 pounds of bananas in 2014. Since a medium-sized banana weighs about 0.3 pounds, that equates to about 38 bananas per person, or about 12 billion for the whole of the U.S. And since most of us throw away the peel, that also means a lot of organic waste.

    In the early 1980s, one of our neighbors asked my mom if she would make a few gift baskets for her to give as gifts for the holidays. My mom agreed and news of the unique gift baskets my mum was making spread like wildfire throughout the neighborhood. My mum was busy throughout the holiday season, so she asked a friend to help her. When the orders continued after the holiday season for baby gifts, birthday gifts and more, it occurred to them that maybe this job could be turned into a business and they did it.

    My mum went into her business because she had a creative idea. She got orders and filled orders. But there was no purpose and no real strategy(策略). In 1991, my mum' s partner got into financial trouble and there was not enough money to support either my mum or her partner.

    So if you are led by your creativity or enthusiasm, make sure you ask yourself what you want out of your business. If you don't set goals, how will you know what direction to go in? Do you want to create jobs and growth in the economy? Are you looking for a hobby? You can't keep scores if you don' t know what game you are playing.

    After my mom's partner gave up, she had to abandon(抛弃) her business to support herself. She swore（发誓）she would run a business again and do it differently the next time. However, there wasn't a "next time" for her. She passed away just after her 51st birthday. She never had someone tell her how important having a goal was. She never had an opportunity to be everything that she could be.

    There are no right or wrong goals, only the ones that matter to you. Set them so that you can make progress and achieve success, whatever that may mean to you.

    What would it be like to walk on Mars? If you could build the highest building in the world，what would it look like? Do you dream of being the next J. K. Rowling? This summer, you can experience all of these things, and more. All you need is an Internet connection and your imagination.

    A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that kids spend an average of 1 hour and 29 minutes online each day. Many kids like to use that time to chat with friends, play games or check e­mails. But the next time you get on the Web, try exploring the world instead. “With the Internet，you can go back 11,000 years in time，or go 11,000 kilometers across the planet.” said Russell, Web search expert of Google. “The whole scope of history and the world is open to you.”

    There is a wealth of information to be found online. For example, if your family is going on vacation somewhere, do a quick online search on the area before you even get in the car. “What's the background of the place; what's the history？” says Russell. “I like to tell my kids, ‘Whenever you have a question, whenever you have a doubt, search it out.'”

    Ready to launch a virtual journey of your own? Here are a few starting points to get you thinking and to help you on your way. You can invite your parents along for the ride, too. Always ask for permission before downloading programs and software onto your computer. And check with a parent or an adult before visiting any new Web site.

    Navigate the world in 3­D with Google Earth. Begin in outer space and zoom (快速移动) into the streets of any city, from Hong Kong to San Francisco. Or visit ancient monuments, watch the changing rainforests over time, and dive underwater to explore tropical reef.

    With the Moon in Google Earth tool, you can walk in Neil Armstrong's famous footsteps. Take a guided tour of the moon's surface with Armstrong's fellow shuttle mate astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

    When you're exploring that part of the solar system, hop on over to the Red Planet with Google Mars. There, you can move very quickly around the surface and see images from the Mars Rovers.

Preparing Cities for Robot Cars

    The possibility of self-driving robot cars has often seemed like a futurist's dream, years away from materializing in the real world. Well, the future is apparently now. The California Department of Motor Vehicles began giving permits in April for companies to test truly self-driving cars on public roads. The state also cleared the way for companies to sell or rent out self-driving cars, and for companies to operate driverless taxi services. California, it should be noted, isn't leading the way here. Companies have been testing their vehicles in cities across the country. It's hard to predict when driverless cars will be everywhere on our roads. But however long it takes, the technology has the potential to change our transportation systems and our cities, for better or for worse, depending on how the transformation is regulated.

    While much of the debate so far has been focused on the safety of driverless cars (and rightfully so), policymakers also should be talking about how self-driving vehicles can help reduce traffic jams, cut emissions (排放) and offer more convenient, affordable mobility options. The arrival of driverless vehicles is a chance to make sure that those vehicles are environmentally friendly and more shared.

    Do we want to copy—or even worsen—the traffic of today with driverless cars? Imagine a future where most adults own individual self-driving vehicles. They tolerate long, slow journeys to and from work on packed highways because they can work, entertain themselves or sleep on the ride, which encourages urban spread. They take their driverless car to an appointment and set the empty vehicle to circle the building to avoid paying for parking. Instead of walking a few blocks to pick up a child or the dry cleaning, they send the self-driving minibus. The convenience even leads fewer people to take public transport—an unwelcome side effect researchers have already found in ride-hailing (叫车) services.

    A study from the University of California at Davis suggested that replacing petrol-powered private cars worldwide with electric, self-driving and shared systems could reduce carbon emissions from transportation 80% and cut the cost of transportation infrastructure (基础设施) and operations 40% by 2050. Fewer emissions and cheaper travel sound pretty appealing. The first commercially available driverless cars will almost certainly be fielded by ride-hailing services, considering the cost of self-driving technology as well as liability and maintenance issues (责任与维护问题). But driverless car ownership could increase as the prices drop and more people become comfortable with the technology.

    Policymakers should start thinking now about how to make sure the appearance of driverless vehicles doesn't extend the worst aspects of the car-controlled transportation system we have today. The coming technological advancement presents a chance for cities and states to develop transportation systems designed to move more people, and more affordably. The car of the future is coming. We just have to plan for it.

    New study shows that when teachers participate in a training program focused on prosocial (亲社会的) classroom behavior, their students are better able to control their emotions, and that children who can regulate emotions are more likely to be academically successful.

    For the study, which appears in Prevention Science, researchers looked at more than 100 teachers and 1,817 students from kindergarten to third grade to see if teachers could support students' emotional and behavioral growth through the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management (IYTCM) program.

    The program uses videos and training sessions, along with role-playing and coaching, to help teachers learn management skills such as using behavior-specific praise, building positive relationships with students, and considering how to reduce poor behavior. Teachers in the training group increased interactions with students by 64 percent compared with 53 percent for teachers in the control group without the training.

    "Emotional regulation is the ability to recognize what behavior is appropriate in the present situation," says Wendy Reinke, professor in the College of Education at the University of Missouri. "For example, a student might have difficulty controlling the feeling of anger if he or she becomes annoyed with another student. But under this program, the teacher encourages them to move to a different spot in the classroom, effectively teaching them that sometimes stepping away and taking a break is a good way to calm down and manage8ha8feeling."

    After one school year of using the program in classrooms, students improved their social ability and ability to regulate their emotions. These improvements resulted in an increase in the tests for students in Incredible Years classrooms vs. students in control classrooms. And this classroom management approach can help reduce the risk for struggling learners early on, which could help prevent more accumulative support needs in a child's future.