SM Card Cutter

Change regular SM cards to smaller SIM cards.

    Did you know you can cut a regular size phone SIM card to a smaller size SM card and it will still work?This tool will help you do it.Just stick a SIM card in it,press it down like a stapler(订书机).A perfectly shaped smaller SIM is there.I've used it many times when swapping SIMs from one phone to another.

03/7/17-Mark Frauenfelder

Profi Cheese Slicer

    Uses a thin wire to slice up to medium-hard cheeses in four inch sections.

    I may own every cheese slicer ever made.I prefer a wire type cheese cutter so I can cut slices that work well on a piece of bread and sandwich.

    This cheese slicer is great for both tasks.It even has adjustable tension on the two cutting wires.A point of information: I did break a wire cutting a very hard piece of cheese with black pepper.Good news,the wire is replaceable,and I was able to purchase new wires to fix it.Maybe best to use on softer cheeses.Lessons learned.But, highly recommended for every other use except for those extremely hard cheeses.

03/6/17-Kent Bames

Ash Bucket(桶子）

Bucket with lid keeps your fireplace(壁炉）clear of ashes.

    I purchased this ash bucket recommended by my friend and have found it invaluable.Previously I had an old bucket that got left outside and usually filled up with rain and became a mess to clean.This ash bucket has a raised bottom and thermal insulation(隔热层）to prevent any accidental hot coals in your ash to damage your floor or cause a fire.You can store this bucket indoors since the lid is nice and tight.

03/3/17-Seth Wilson

    The FBI is investigating the disappearance of a visiting Chinese scholar from a central Illinois university town as a kidnapping（绑架）as her whereabouts（下落）have remained unknown since Friday.

    Zhang Yingying, 26, was last seen on June 9 near the north end of the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign（UIUC）, wearing a charcoal-colored baseball cap, a pink and white top, jeans and white tennis shoes and carrying a black backpack. She boarded a Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District bus and exited the West Springfield and North Mathews avenues at 1:52 pm local time（1852 GMT）, police said.

    The FBI has labeled the case as a kidnapping but isn't ruling out anything, said Campus police spokesman Patrick Wade. The suspect appears to be a white male who was in a car and stopped to talk to Zhang on Friday afternoon, the FBI said. Almost one month into a yearlong appointment at the UIUC campus, Zhang's friends told police that she was heading to an apartment complex in Urbana to sign a lease（租约）.

    Security camera footage（连续镜头）on Monday released by university police showed that Zhang talked to the driver of a black Saturn Astra, about five blocks from where she got off a bus in Urbana on Friday afternoon. She entered the car shortly thereafter. Zhang has not been seen or heard from since then and attempts to contact her by phone remain unsuccessful. Authorities have asked the public to help identify that vehicle.

    A massive search has been launched in Urbana in the US state of Illinois since Zhang's disappearance. Police are interviewing with her colleagues, checking local hospitals and coordinating with ride-hailing（打车）companies as part of their investigative efforts.

    In an interview with Xinhua through Wechat on Thursday, Zhang Ronggao, father of the missing visiting scholar from China's Fujian Province, expressed gratitude to all the people involved in the search and asked US police to accelerate the search.

    CHICAGO -- New research on vegetables and aging gives mothers another reason to say "I told you so." It is found that eating vegetables appears to help keep the brain young and may slow the mental decline（下降） sometimes associated with growing old.

    On measures of mental sharpness, older people who ate more than two servings of vegetables daily appeared about five years younger at the end of the six-year study than those who ate few or no vegetables.

    The research in almost 2,000 Chicago-area men and women doesn't prove that vegetables reduce mental decline, but it adds to mounting evidence pointing in that direction. The findings also echo（回应） previous research in women only.

    Green leafy vegetables including spinach（菠菜）, kale and collards （甘蓝） appeared to be the most beneficial. The researchers said that may be because they contain healthy amounts of vitamin E, an antioxidant（抗氧化剂） that is believed to help fight chemicals produced by the body that can damage cells.

    Vegetables generally contain more vitamin E than fruits, which were not linked with slowed mental decline in the study. Vegetables also are often eaten with healthy fats such as salad oils, which help the body absorb vitamin E and other antioxidants, said lead author Martha Clare Morris, a researcher at the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center.

    The fats from healthy oils can help keep cholesterol（胆固醇）low and arteries （动脉）clear, which both contribute to brain health. The study was published in this week's issue of the journal Neurology and funded with grants from the National Institute on Aging.

    Here we introduce some rental houses to you.

    Apartment Levant in Komiza

    Overlooking one of the most beautiful fishing villages in Croatia, our two-storey house also gives you a full view of Komiza bay as well as neighboring island of Bisevo.The apartment has a wide，covered balcony and a small garden with lemon trees. It is only 10 minutes' walk from the centre of the village, although it is on the edge of the village, with forests behind the house.

    Apartment Domina

    Located in the centre of the city, the apartment is protected as a historical site. All other facilities are at your fingertips such as restaurants, shops and museums. The apartment is fully equipped and air-conditioned, having a kitchen with a dishwasher, a satellite TV and the free Web access. It contains a bedroom with a double bed and antique furniture. Besides, the apartment offers pet-friendly accommodation.

    Apartment Tonka

    The apartment is located in an old stone house in the centre of Komiza. It offers two bedrooms, each with a separate bathroom, and a living room with a furnished kitchen. The house is only a couple of minutes away from the old harbor, along the old town's street where you can enjoy Komiza's rich cultural history. The bus stop is less than 200 meters away, near the fruit and vegetable market.

    Pearl of Issa

    This two-bedroom apartment is only a few minutes' walk from beautiful beaches, shops, restaurants, cafés and bars. It consists of two bedrooms, a fully equipped modern kitchen, a dining room and a resting area with a sofa, which can be used as an extra sleeping place for one person, a bathroom and a balcony with comfortable garden furniture and barbecue equipment.

    Nancy Ballard, 60, went for a routine checkup that turned into something extraordinary. She had just completed her master's in botanical illustration. In fact, she was canting a painting of a plant she'd done when she arrived at her doctor's San Francisco office. “It would be great if we had artwork like that for our chemotherapy(化疗)rooms, ”the nurse said. Ballard asked to see one.

    She was shocked by what she found. The walls were bare, and the paint was chipping(剥落).She could tell where old artwork had hung because of the naked nails. It was a depressing room for a depressing routine—patients had chemo drips for perhaps several hours, often with nothing to look at other than those sad walls. She couldn't imagine how anyone could even think about getting healthy in a room like that. As it happened, Ballard's physician, Stephen Hufford was ill with cancer himself, so finding time to decorate the rooms was low on his to-do list. So Ballard made it her mission to brighten up the place.

    She wrote to 20 local interior designers and asked whether they would donate their time and money to transform just one of Dr. Hufford's rooms each. Six of them wrote back almost immediately. Each of them ultimately chose a theme: The dragonfly room, for example, now features bright artwork and dragonfly wall ornaments. Most rooms got new paint, light fixtures, artwork, and furniture. Each room cost about $5, 000.

    Dr. Hufford was delighted.“ All the patients feel soothed by it.” he noted. He even said that his own tone of voice was different in the rooms and that he was better able to connect with his patients.

    Ballard was so encouraged that she created a nonprofit to raise money and decorate more spaces. Since then, she has worked on 20 projects, including one in Pennsylvania. She once went to Philadelphia for a ribbon cutting, and a woman there was on her third battle with cancer. When she saw what Ballard had done, she said, “I'm gonna beat it this time.I thought I wasn't going to, but now I know I'm gonna beat it.”

    What would you like to be when you grow up? A teacher? A doctor? An astronaut? What do you need to do to achieve your dream job?

    Perhaps you think that studying well and then going on to work hard will get you the successful career you want. We are constantly taught that our hard work will eventually pay off.

    But a government survey has shown that hard work is not the only thing that will help you to move up the ladder. Two thirds of people believe that who you know matters more than what you know when it comes to social activity. So are the connections that you have more important than your education?

    Seventy-six percent of the people in the survey believed that family background is important in influencing your chances of success. They believe that if you are privileged from birth, you are more likely to have a successful career, especially if your family is wealthy.

    Even if you don't have a privileged background, the people you know can still make a difference to your career. Networking is a skill which is encouraged by many career advisers. Some companies run networking workshops to try and encourage staff to meet other people, to communicate and build relationships. It's a valuable skill.

    But the survey also showed something quite interesting. Although most people believed that networks are more important than education, many people put their own career success down to talent, rather than background. 41% of the people said that their parents' income had influenced their life, but at the same time, another 41% believed that they had achieved their own success.

    So which is more important, what you know or who you know? It seems that by working hard and making lots of connections, the answer may be that both are very important.