“A room without books is like a body without a soul,” observed the Roman philosopher, Cicero. It can also be a sign of financial problems to come. New research has uncovered a strong connection between the earning of adults and whether they grew up surrounded by books as children.

    Three economists at the University of Padua—Giorgio Brunello, Guglielmo Weber and Christoph Weiss—studied 6000 men born in nine European countries and concluded that children with access to books could expect to earn more money than those who grew up with few or no books.

    They studied the period from 1920 to 1956, when school reforms saw the minimum school leaving age raised across Europe. They booked at whether, at the age of 10, a child lived in a house with fewer than 10 books, a shelf of books, a bookcase with up to 100 books, two bookcases, or more than two bookcases.

    Over the period studied, the research, published in The Economic Journal, found that an additional year of education increased a man's average lifetime earnings by 9%. Men brought up in houses with less than a shelf of books earned only 5% more as a result of the extra year's education, compared with 21% more for those who had access to a lot of books. And those who had access to books were more likely to move to the better-earning opportunities in cities than those without books. The men's first job was also much more likely to be a white-collar job.

    The economists offer a number of theories for the results. “Perhaps books matter because they encourage children to read more and reading can have positive effects on school performance,” they said.

    The number of books in children's homes can effectively predict their cognitive(认知的) test scores. This may indicate a home that encourages cognitive skills, which are important for economic success in life.

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    Birthdays often involve surprises. But this year's surprise on the birthday of the great British playwright William Shakespeare is surely one of the most dramatic.

    On April 22, one day before his 441st birthday anniversary, experts discovered that one of the most recognizable portraits of William Shakespeare is a fake. This means that we no longer have a good idea of what Shakespeare looked like. “It's very possible that many pictures of Shakespeare might be unreliable because many of them are copies of this one,” said an expert from Britain's National Portrait Gallery.

    The discovery comes after four months of testing using X-rays, ultraviolet light, microphotography and paint samples. The experts from the gallery say the image —commonly known as the “Flower portrait”— was actually painted in the 1800s, about two centuries after Shakespeare's death. The art experts who work at the gallery say they also used modern chemistry technology to check the paint on the picture. These checks found traces of paint dating from about 1814. Shakespeare died in 1616, and the date that appears on the portrait is 1609.

    “We now think the portrait dates back to around 1818 to 1840. This was when there was a renewed interest in Shakespeare's plays,” Tarnya Cooper, the gallery's curator (馆长), told the Associated President.

    The fake picture has often been used as a cover for collections of his plays. It is called the Flower portrait because one of its owners, Desmond Flower, gave it to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

    “There have always been questions about the painting,” said David Howells, curator for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “Now we know the truth, we can put the image in its proper place in the history of Shakespearean portraiture.”

    Two other images of Shakespeare, are also being studied as part of the investigation and the results will come out later this month.________

    Alaska's state fair, which runs until September 5^th, began as a celebration among residents of the Mantanuska Colony, a project under which 200 farm families were moved to Alaska to see whether agriculture could be possible in the coldest state. The state fair lives on, but little more than a decade after the start of the project most of the participants had abandoned their farms. The project was widely seen as a flop.

    In this state, glaciers cover 300 times more acres than farms. Only 5% of the food consumed is grown locally, compared with 81% nationwide. The growing season is short and summer temperatures chilly. Tomato plants wither(凋谢). Fruit trees, in most parts of the state, are just a dream.

    Enter the high tunnel: a greenhouse consisting of a metal frame with plastic stretched across it. Its few millimeters of plastic separate crops inside from the great outdoors. But this is enough for Alaskan growers to produce tomatoes as well as sweetcorn, peaches and kiwi fruit, and to boost production of crops by a quarter or more.

    In a place where no one blinks(眨眼) if you call yourself a fisherman, boat captain or gold miner, an increasing number of Alaskans are thinking of themselves as people who grow food. Since the start of the programme, the number of farms registered(登记)with the state has nearly doubled. Local restaurants have begun shaping their menus around what neighboring farms can grow.

    Eight decades ago, the Mantanuska Colony tried to turn farmers into Alaskans. Today, the high tunnels are turning Alaskans into farmers.

    Dieting to lose weight has become very popular in recent years. People have become more health conscious and try to take better care of their bodies by eating more healthily and exercising more regularly to lose any unnecessary fat that they may have.

    Not only are people being more careful about what they eat, they are also concerned with how they eat and how their meals are prepared. People are taking more time for each meal. Many avoid the so-called "plastic" fast-food hamburgers and choose to eat a salad or a sandwich of more healthful ingredients(营养成分) in a quiet restaurant with a more leisurely atmosphere. At home, they also try to take enough time to eat a relaxed dinner without phone or TV interruptions.

    While dieting may be viewed as beneficial, it has also become a serious problem for Americans, particularly for young women. Dieting for them has actually become a psychological addiction. They eat so little that they can lose as much as fifty percent of their total body weight, and although they look like skeletons, they still insist that they are fat.

    The current wave of exercising, dieting and the problems produced have caused many organizations to begin educating the public. Many schools, hospitals, health organizations, newspapers and magazines, for example, are offering classed, printing booklet articles and so on, to inform the public of the way to exercise and diet, of the dangers of dieting too rapidly, and of the places people can go for medical help if they find themselves on the road to "diet addiction".

    One of the most efficient ways to achieve peace and speed up economies (经济) is to provide girls with better education and more rights. Today, girls' lack of access (进入) to basic education is getting more serious when it comes to the use of digital (数码的) technology, leaving them far behind boys. And because the world is even more digital, those who lack basic internet skills will find it increasingly more difficult to take part in the formal economy, to get a quality education, and to have their voices heard.

    Since 2013 the global gender gap (性别差异) in male and female access to the Internet has actually increased from 11 to 12 percent. Worse yet, women and girls living in the poorest countries are 31 percent less likely than men and boys to have access to the Internet. In developing countries, some 200 million fewer women than men own a mobile phone, the most common means of internet access there. This digital divide is increasing, and should it continue at the present pace, it is projected that over 75 percent of women and girls will lack internet access and digital skills.

    There are many causes of the digital gender gap. They include girls' exclusion (排斥) from basic education, from specific technology education and high costs of mobile phones and internet access.

    Indeed, one of the so-called reasons why girls may be discouraged from learning how to access and use digital technology is also a groundless one: that girls are simply not good at using technology.

    Without the help of the government, most of the benefits of technological change will be enjoyed only by men, exacerbating gender inequality.

    When my father married my mother in 1943, he gave my mother a 1937 crown coin and told her to keep it in the back of her purse and not to spend it. This would mean that she always felt that she was protected and would always have money if she really needed it.

    When I was married in 1970 my husband who had heard this story, obtained a 1937 crown coin for me and I have always kept it in my wallet, and I have always had enough for my needs.

    A friend recently fell on hard times, partly through external (外部的) circumstances and partly through poor planning. Friends and I have loaned her money, paid her bills, given her food, and even tried to teach her budget techniques, but none of them has been a solution. She has just slipped deeper and deeper into financial trouble and depression.

    Last week she looked pale and unwell, very depressed and hopeless, very sad for a friend to see and I then thought about how the crown coin, a physical reminder of another's care and love had protected me, so I went to the bank for a $ 100 dollar-bill.

    I told my friend the story and asked her to keep the $ 100 in the back of her wallet. It turned out that she didn't have a wallet, so she put the money in a little pencil case where she kept her coins. She immediately felt better—"I feel rich, and thank you for being a good friend," she said, and we were both a bit teary.

    I went home and remembered a little wallet I had that I'd never used, and thought, "I'll give that to my friend." I opened it, and inside, found $ 100.