A small group of people around the world have started implanting(移植) microchips to link the body and the computer.

    Mr. Donelson and three friends, who had driven 100 miles from their homes in Loockport, New York, to have the implants put in by Dr. Jesse Villemaire, whom they had persuaded to do the work, are part of a small group, about 30 people around the world, who have independently put in microchips into their bodies, according to Web-based reports.

    At a shop William Donelson was having a four-millimeter-wide needle put into his left hand. “I'm set,”he said with a deep breath. He watched as the needle pierced(刺穿) the fleshy webbing between his thumb and a microchip was set under his skin. At last he would be able to do what he had long imagined: strengthen his body's powers through technology.

    By putting the chip inside—a radio frequency identification device (RFID)—Mr. Donelson would have at his fingertips the same magic that makes safety gates open with a knock of a card, and bridge and tunnel traffic flow smoothly with an E-Zpass. With a wave of his hand he plans to connect with his computer, open doors and unlock his car.

    Implanting the chip was relatively simple task but very meaningful to Mr. Doneselson, a 21-year-old computer networking student so interested in the link between technology and the body that he has data-input jacks(数据输入插空) inside his body. They might lead to an imagined future when people can be connected directly into computers. His new chip is enclosed in a glass container no bigger than a piece of rice and has a small memory where he has stored the words “Technology”.

    Some doctors have done the piercing in people's homes, and others have implanted chips in their offices after patients signed forms showing the fact that long-term studies have not been done on their safety. Piercers treat the implants much like any other medical operation steps, instructing people to keep the site dry, and advising them that swelling and redness should last a week.

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    Minutes after the last movie ended yesterday at the Plaza Theater, employees were busy sweeping up popcorns and gathering coke cups. It was a scene that had been repeated many times in the theater's 75-year history. This time, however, the cleanup was a little different. As one group of workers carried out the rubbish, another group began removing seats and other theater equipment in preparation for the building's end.

    The film classic The Last Picture Show was the last movie shown in the old theater. Though the movie is 30 years old, most of the 250 seats were filled with teary-eyed audience wanting to say good-bye to the old building. Theater owner Ed Bradford said he chose the movie because it seemed proper. The movie is set in a small town where the only movie theater is preparing to close down.

    Bradford said that large modem theaters in the city made it impossible for the Plaza to compete. He added that the theater's location (位置) was also a reason. “This used to be the center of town,” he said. “Now the area is mostly office buildings and warehouses.”

    Last week some city officials suggested the city might be interested in turning the old theater into a museum and public meeting place. However, these plans were given up because of financial problems. Bradford sold the building and land to a local development firm, which plans to build a shopping complex on the land where the theater is located.

    The theater audience said good-bye as Bradford locked the doors for the last time. After 75 years the Plaza Theater has shown its last movie. The theater will be missed.

    In 1863, the great novelist Jules Verne wrote a novel called Paris in the Twentieth Century. In the book he used the full power of his great ability to forecast the coming century. Unfortunately, the manuscript (手稿) was lost until his great-grandson happened to discover it lying in a safe where it had been carefully locked away for almost 130 years. Realizing what a treasure he had found, he arranged to have it published in 1994, and it became a bestseller at once.

    Back in 1863, kings still ruled the ancient world in Europe, with so many poor people working in the fields. And steam power was just beginning to change the world. But Verne predicted that Paris in 1960 would have glass skyscrapers, air conditioning, TV, high-speed trains, gas-powered vehicles, and even something similar to the Internet. Verne described life in modem Paris almost without any mistakes.

    Just two years later Verne made another amazing prediction. He wrote From the Earth to the Moon, in which he predicted the details of the task that sent several astronauts to the moon 100 years later in 1969. He correctly predicted the size of the space capsule, the number of astronauts who would carry out the task, the weightlessness that the astronauts would experience, and the final landing in the ocean.

    How was Jules Verne able to predict 100 years into the future successfully? Although he was not a scientist himself, Verne often turned to scientists, asking them questions about their opinions of the future. He collected a vast amount of information about the great scientific discoveries of his time. Verne realized that science would make it possible for many amazing things to appear in the future. The secret of his successful prediction was his belief in the power of science to change society.

    Since we are social beings, the quality of our lives depends in large measure on our interpersonal relationships. One strength of the human conditions is our possibility to give and receive support from one another under stressful(有压力的) conditions. Social support makes up of the exchange of resources among people based on their interpersonal ties. Those of us with strong support systems appear better able to deal with major life changes and daily problems. People with strong social ties live longer and have better health than those without such ties. Studies over types of illnesses, from depression to heart disease, show that the presence of social support helps people defend themselves against illness, and the absence of such support makes poor health more likely.

    Social support cushions stress in a number of ways. First, friends, relatives and co-workers may let us know that they value us. Our self-respect is strengthened when we feel accepted by others in spite of our faults and difficulties. Second, other people often provide us with informational support. They help us to define and understand our problems and find solutions to them. Third, we typically find social companionship supportive. Taking part in free-time activities with others helps us to meet our social needs while at the same time distracting (转移注意力) us from our worries and troubles. Finally, other people may give us instrumental support — money aid, material resources, and needed services — that reduces stress by helping us resolve and deal with our problems.

    Although the idea of "zero emission net carbon-positive, sustainable (可持续)" development was promoted worldwide, most cities are at a loss what to do or even some have objected to it. But in Liuzhou, a city in southern China, attitudes could not be more different.

    The Liuzhou Municipality Urban Planning Bureau has signed up Italian architect Stefano Boeri, the father of the forest city movement, to build a self-contained community for up to 30, 000 people. He is the go-to man for such projects thanks to the success of his "vertical forests", two residential (住宅的) towers. Completed in 2014, they remove up to 17.5 tons of soot (煤烟) from the air each year, and a year later one of them was named Best Tall Building Worldwide.

    The Liuzhou project is a much more ambitious undertaking, however. Its homes, hospitals, hotels, schools and offices will be built on a 340-acre site in what Boeri calls the first attempt to create an "urban environment that is really trying to find a balance with nature". Its 100 species of plant life are expected to absorb almost 10, 000 tons of carbon dioxide and 57 tons of pollutants per year, while at the same time producing 900 tons of life-giving oxygen.

    Although the architects haven't published the cost of the forest city, the Milan towers cost only five percent more than traditional skyscrapers.

    The construction of his forest city at Liuzhou is set to begin in 2020, and there is still a great deal of planning and research required before a projected completion date can be set. However, Boeri remains optimistic about the project and has confidence in the soundness of his vision: "I really think that bringing forests into the city is a way to deal with global warming."

Economically speaking, are we better off than we were ten years ago? Twenty years ago?

In their thirst for evidence on this issue, commentators seized on the recent report by the Census Bureau, which found that average household income rose by 5.2% in 2015. Unfortunately, that conclusion puts too much weight on a useful, but flawed and incomplete, statistic. Among the more significant problems with the Census's measure are that: 1) it excludes taxes, transfers, and compensation like employer-provided health insurance; and 2) it is based on surveys rather than data. Even if precisely measured, income data exclude important determinants of economic wellbeing, such as the hours of work needed to earn that income.

While thinking about the question, we came across a recently published article by Charles Jones and Peter Klenow, which proposes an interesting new measure of economic welfare. While by no means perfect, it is considerably more comprehensive than average income, taking into account not only growth in consumption per person but also changes in working time, life expectancy, and inequality. Moreover, it can be used to assess economic performance both across countries and over time.

The Jones-Klenow method can be illustrated by a cross-country example. Suppose we want to compare the economic welfare of citizens of the U.S. and France in 2005.

In 2005, as the authors observe: real consumption per person in France was only 60% as high as the U.S., making it appear that Americans were economically much better off than the French on average. However, that comparison omits other relevant factors: leisure time, life expectancy, and economic inequality. The French take longer vacations and retire earlier, so typically work fewer hours; they enjoy a higher life expectancy, presumably reflecting advantages with respect to health care, diet, lifestyle, and the like; and income and consumption are somewhat more equally distributed there than in the U.S. Because of these differences, comparing France's consumption with the U.S.'s overstates the gap in economic welfare.

Similar calculations can be used to compare the U.S. and other countries. For example, this calculation puts economic welfare in the United Kingdom at 97 % of U.S. levels, but estimates Mexican well-being at 22%. The Jones-Klenow measure can also assess an economy's performance over time. According to this measure, as of the early-to-mid-2000s, the U.S. had the highest economic welfare of any large country. Since 2007, economic welfare in the U.S. has continued to improve. However, the pace of improvement has slowed markedly.

Methodologically, the lesson from the Jones-Klenow research is that economic welfare is multi-dimensional. Their approach is flexible enough that in principle other important quality-of-life changes could be incorporated—for example, decreases in total emissions of pollutants and declines in crime rates.