It is made from grapes grown without pesticides (杀虫剂) and chemicals, is kind to the environment and rarely causes hangovers (酒后头痛). Sales of organic wine are booming in the UK.

    According to the organic food and farming group Soil Association, sales of organic beers, wines and spirits rose by 14.3% last year to reach nearly £6 million, driven by the demand from consumers who are increasingly seeking “natural” food.

    “It seems that people are rediscovering their link with the environment through organic food. Organic wines also taste better, perhaps due to less use of man-made chemicals.” said Finn Cottle of Soil Association. As well as the benefits of producing grapes without using pesticides, organic wine also contains less sulphur dioxide (二氧化硫), which can contribute towards hangovers.

    Supermarkets are increasing supplies on their shelves to meet consumer demand, while the switch to online shopping has also helped, as people are more easily able to find what they are looking for. Vintage Roots is now one of the UK's biggest online shops of organic wine, while Ocado provides more than 100 different organic wines and Daylesford, best-known for its organic vegetable boxes, has branched out into organic wine and spirits.

    The discount supermarket Aldi is set to start its first collection of so-called “green” wines this week, offering eight wines with organic certificates. Aldi expects the wines to appeal to the young shoppers who are increasingly concerned about the environmental influence of the produce that they are buying and consuming.

    English organic wine producer Oxney Estate's Noir Rosé recently won the Waitrose prize for the most outstanding rosé wine at the competition. A spokeswoman for Waitrose said: “Organic wine is a growing trend globally and we have seen sales increase by 16% in the last year”.

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    Standing in the shower waiting for the water to het up could be a thing of the past, along with all the wasted water. Three and a half years ago, Lindy Honeychurch, a thirty-year-old Australian full-time mum living on a farm outside Launceston, didn't consider herself a very good water saver. Neither did her partner who often complained about it with good reasons. Their farm had to rely on tank water and solar power, which meant water had to be trucked in if he tank water ran out in summer.

    “I looked at where I could save because I could lead an easier life without the complaint,” she said. Modeling her idea on a car thermostat(恒温器), Lindy used her kids' magnetic(磁的)drawing board to design a device that diverts the cold water back down the hot water pipe. “The first aim when I started designing was to keep it really small and simple without having to use power. I wanted to keep it as something that everyone could use,” said Lindy.

    She got a patent for her design and took it to some engineers to have it tested out. At first, even though the engineers were amazed that she wasn't an engineer, she said she sometimes found it hard to be taken seriously. “My age was a real factor because in the plumbing(管路系统)and manufacturing industries you're dealing with people who've got a lot of experiences,” she said. But the engineers soon saw the potential of her design, which she estimated would save average families between 14,000 to 22,000 liters per year.” when you transfer that to the dollar savings on tank water that you have to buy, it can be a saving of $600 per year,” said Lindy.

    Armed with positive feedback from engineers and people using rainwater tanks, her design proved a great success. Soon she found a manufacturer early this year, and completed a state government commercial ready course to help her research, her markets and distribution channels. With an Australian Standard for her device just approved, she's about to start manufacturing and wishes to see her products on the shelves within the next few months. Once that happens, Lindy plans to return to being a full-time mum.

    You may laugh it off if someone told you that extreme weather disasters were actually a child's tricks. But El Nino, meaning “little boy” in Spanish, could be about to cause trouble

    A recent statement from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned ofa strong El Nino event that may be similar to the strongest in modern times. Scientists believe that evidence shows a more than 90 percent chance that it is coming — and it's going to be big. “If this lives up to its potential, this thing can bring a lot of floods, mudslides（泥石流）, and trouble,” said Bill Patzert, a NASA scientist.

    El Nino is a climate event occurring in the Pacific Ocean. The wind usually blows strongly from east to west due to the rotation（旋转）of the Earth. This causes water to pile up in the Western Pacific and pulls up colder water from the boom in the eastern part. However, in El Nino years, the winds pushing the water get weaker and cause the warmer water to shift back toward the east. This warms the ocean as it travels before finally reaching the shores of North and South America. In an El Nino event, the waters of the eastern Pacific can be up to 4 degrees Celsius warmer than usual.

    Most El Ninos last from 9 to 12 months and their effects are felt around December. They don't happen every year though, usually between every two to seven years.

    Last seen in 1997-98, El Nino caused severe droughts in Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as deadly floods in Peru and Ecuador. The world also heats up during an ElNino-1998 became the warmest year on record at the time. If the current trend continues, 2015 is almost certainly to become the hottest year yet again.

    A strong El Nino also affects hurricane seasons around the planet. The warmer the Eastern Pacific is, the more hurricanes it gets. The Western Pacific, on the other hand, tends to see more and stronger typhoons.

    The weather isn't the only thing that's affected. Warmer surface waters in the Eastern Pacific make the cold-water fish swim away and damage the fishing industry in much of Latin America.

    “That one looks just like a sheep! And look over there. That one looks like a horse!” Do you remember lying on your back in a grassy field on a summer afternoon, discovering the soft shapes in the clouds in the sky? Those were the good old days when you could see anything and everything in the clouds.

    But now people look at the sky and see clouds in the shape of a motor company's advertising logo (商标),or a message inviting them to go out and buy a certain brand (品牌) of beer. These cloud pictures are not products of their imaginations. Instead, they are produced by a machine. These new floating advertisements are called Flogos; the name stands for “floating logos.” They' re made from a mixture of soapy foam (泡沫)and a lighter-than-air gas such as helium, and they can be made into different sizes and shapes depending on the advertisement.

    Flogos can last up to an hour if weather conditions are good, and they can fly several kilometers high. Advertisers can rent a Flogo machine for$2,500 a day. The set-up is normally performed within 1 to 2 hours, and it will release four Flogos per minute. Advertisers can fill the air with any shape or message they want.

    Some people are worried that the Flogos might not be pollution-free. However, the Flogo's inventor insists that the soap he uses is natural, and that a Flogo just dissipates in the air, leaving nothing behind. Though it may be true that Flogos are environmentally friendly, some people believe that the natural clouds in our memory may be replaced by man-made ones. They are afraid that soon there will be nowhere left where their imaginations can float freely.

    In this Pennsylvania city, Pittsburgh is shrinking but getting wealthier. Since 2000, its population has declined by 95,000 while its income per capita (人均) has shot up 24 percent. The trend is taking hold in many other cities, like Buffalo in New York, Providence in Rhode Island and New Orleans.

    Some of these areas have created more high-paying jobs in energy, health care or education. Others have managed to reshape their producing industry for a new economy. Higher-paying jobs have a greater effect because they create demand for additional services. "The story in Pittsburgh is very positive, and other areas are looking at it as an example of the transformation that might be possible," said Guhan Venkatu, who wrote an economic history of the area called “Rust and Renewal" for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

    Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have helped bring tech jobs and innovation(革新) to the area by sponsoring tech centers that help graduates start companies without moving to Silicon Valley or San Francisco. This has helped keep Pittsburgh's educated young population growing even as the entire population in the city has dropped.

    Pittsburgh has more STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) jobs than other shrinking cities, about 80, 000 or 7% of all jobs. STEM jobs add productivity and income growth to the area. Manufacturers of high-tech medical equipment in the Pittsburgh area also have doubled employment in the last 10 years.

    However, some experts question whether growing income per capita can really make up for a declining population. According to Patrick Adler, a researcher at the University of Toronto, population loss does matter if it means lower-skilled workers have fled because of a lack of opportunity. What's more, high-paying jobs in education and health care can disappear if the population declines too greatly. So it'd be wise to find ways to increase the population.

    Some kinds of mental skills naturally decrease as people get older. Yet research seems to show that some training can improve such skills. A recently published study also appears to attest that the good effects of training can last for many years after that training has ended.

    Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland wanted to learn how long memory and thinking skills would last in older people who were trained to keep them. The people were part of the ten-year research project. They were taught methods meant to improve their memory, thinking and ability to perform everyday tasks.

    More than 2,800 volunteered for the study called ACTIVE ­ short for Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly. Most were studied when they were more than 70 years old.

    The volunteers took one of several short training classes meant to help them keep their mental abilities. One class trained participants in skills including how to remember word lists. Another group trained in reasoning. A third group received help with speed-of-processing ­ speed of receiving and understanding information. A fourth group ­ the control group did not get any training.

    Earlier results had established that the training helped the participants for up to five years. Now, leading study writer George Rebok says, the research showed most of the training remained effective a full ten years later.

    Professor Rebok and his team found that the people trained in reasoning and speed-of- processing did better on tests than the control group.

    "We are wondering whether those effects which endured over time would still be there ten years following the training, and in fact, that's exactly what we found.

    The effect on memory, however, seemed not to last as long. Still, the old people in any of the three classes generally reported less difficulty in performing daily activities than the control group. The total training time for the older people was between 10 and 15 hours.