A handsome man can earn a fifth more than an average-looking colleague but a beautiful woman is not paid a penny more than her average-looking colleague, new research has shown.

    The study by senior economists（经济学家）found that being good-looking meant male workers could earn 22 percent more than average-looking colleagues. Researchers said good looks did not give women a similar advantage.

    Andrew Leigh, a former economics professor at the Australian National University who co-authored the report, said: “Beauty can be a double-edged sword for women.”

    “Some people still believe good looks and intelligence are incompatible(矛盾的) in women, so a good-looking women can't be that productive, but it doesn't affect men's pay.”

    He said that although he believed good-looking women may also earn more, the research did not support his theory.

    The research found that handsome men in all jobs, from manual labour（手工劳动）to highly-paid professional careers, can earn 22 percent more than their colleagues doing the same work.

    Men with below-average looks face a battle in the office, with ugliness reducing a man's earnings by 26 percent compared to an average-looking worker.

    Former male model, Caitlan Mitchell, 28, who has a first class degree in history from Edinburgh University and now works for a cosmetics company, told the Sunday Times:' It gives you confidence, and I suspect people tend to warm to you more quickly.”

    The study, named Unpacking the Beauty Premium, was the largest exercise of its kind and repeated a survey from 1984 to see if the beauty premium（美貌溢价) had changed.

    Leigh said the research showed people in the workplace were “lookist(以貌取人的)”and he hoped the findings would encourage employers to remove their prejudice.

    What might the future be like? Here are some predictions: things to come, things to go.

    Spring Festival, the most important Chinese holiday when everyone returns home has caused headaches for millions of Chinese. More than 2 billion people travel at the same time, making getting travel tickets and the journey difficult. But in 28 years, Spring Festival travel may not be a problem at all. China plans to build more than 120,000 kilometers of railway and a fast transportation network that will serve 90% of the population by 2020.

    And because most of China will be cities, people will not have to go to other places to find a job, so it will no longer be a problem.

Newspapers will come to an end in 2043. In the future, digital newspapers will be sent to personal web tools through Internet. Readers can discuss topics with journalists and editors. Information will move faster.

    Oil is running out faster than expected. But scientists have found something else for oil as fuel. Coal, natural gas, solar power, nuclear power and even water can take the place of oil as sources of energy.

    Schools will go electronic. Computers will be important and popular among the students. Everything will be in the computer and students will not need to bring books to school. They will find information on the Internet. A computer will be the students ‘library, schoolbag and connection to the outside world. There will be robot teachers, who will check homework on computers and communicate with the students' parents through e-mail. And school buses will be like spaceships, comfortable and safe.

    Jack Ma is the founder and CEO of Alibaba Group. He was one of the 100 global "future leaders" of the 2001 World Economic Forum and the "commercial leader" of 2001 elected by US Commercial Association of Asia.

    Born in the city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, Ma graduated from Hangzhou Teachers Institute in 1988 (he failed the entrance exam twice) and became a lecturer in English and International Trade.

    In 1985, a one-month visit to see an Australian pen pal he had met in Hangzhou changed his life. "Everything I'd learned in China was that China was the richest country in the world," he said. "When I arrived in Australia, I realized it's totally different. I started to think you have to use your own mind to judge, to think." After his return, Ma became the chairman of the Students' Union of the whole city.

    Jack Ma founded Alibaba.com in 1999, a China based business to business marketplace site. In 2003, Alibaba launched Taobao.com, a consumer to consumer auction (消费者拍卖) website similar to eBay.

    Ma said that he got most of his ideas while taking very long, hot showers. He likes to spend time walking his four dogs and playing chess and poker. He said, "I've learned a lot of business philosophy by playing poker."

    Looking ahead, Ma said that he dreamed of using his group's resources to improve the lives of all Chinese people, especially the 900 million farmers. "There must be some way of using our experience, our know-how, and make their life easier," he said.

    The idea of cloning your pet sounds like a laughable waste of money, because it is. But it starts to seem a little less laughable when your own beloved pet starts getting older. If I had had a few hundred thousand dollars to spare, I know I would have half-seriously considered it for my dear little cat, who died last year. One couple that does happen to have a few hundred dollars to spare is Barry Diller and Diane, who have reportedly cloned their beloved Jack Russell Terrier (a kind of dog), Shannon, and now have two identical Jack Russell Terrier named Deena and Evita.

    When your pet dies, you just want your pet back, or at least as close a copy as you can get. So it's really no surprise that of the around 600 dogs cloned by Sooam Biotech Reaserch Foundation most were cloned for sad pet owners. The lab in Seoul, South Korea, is now the only place on the planet in the business of cloning pet dogs for pet owners.

    But, in fact, the technology won't give you your pet back. There don't yet appear to be any studies on the behaviour of cloned pets, but research on cloned cows and pigs has so far shown marked differences in behaviour and even looks in cloned animals. The DNA is exactly the same, but there are still differences in personality and appearance.

Even if Diller and Von Furstenburg raise their new dogs in the exactly same environment in the exactly same way that they raised Shannon, the new dogs will still behave differently. “The promise of pet cloning is that your cloned pet is going to behave and look like the one you already have — and that will not be the case,” said Professor Jorge Piedrahita at N.C. State. “We have cloned animals that were raised in the same environment, but they still didn't act the same.”

    Nisha Pradhan is worried. The recent college graduate just turns 21 and plans to live on her own. But she's afraid she won't be able to stay safe. That's because she isn't able to smell.

    Back home, her family do her smelling for her. She's moved in with them for now, but she's looking for a place of her own. “Now that I'm searching for ways or place to live as an independent person, I find that the sense of smell is important to how we live our lives,” Pradhan says.

    She says when she was a child she liked to eat and ate a lot. But there came a point where she lost interest in food.

    “One of the first things that people notice whenever they have a smell problem is that food doesn't taste right any more,” says Beverly Cowart, a researcher. That's because eating and smell go hand in hand. How food tastes often rely on what we smell. “When you lose your sense of smell, your whole sense of food flavors changed and reduced,” Cowart says, “You can still taste the basic tastes. What you're missing are the small distinctions.”

    “When I go out to eat I have often found that food is very tasteless to me. I never feel full,” she says. “I think a lot of us today like to pretend to be food lovers and we all like to talk about 'Oh, I think this could use a little bit more flavor,' or ‘I think this has a hint of meat,' I can't really participate in those conversations,” she says.

    Pradam thinks her smell loss also may have affected her memory. Pradhan may be on to something, according to biologist Paul Moore. “When smell signals come in, you feel about them first. And then you think about it and then the memory is laid down. So without the feel part, the thinking about its part doesn't come. And that means no new smell memory gets created.”

    Fabien Cousteau was born with deep love for the ocean. His grandfather and his father were ocean explorers and documentary filmmakers. Fabien spent his early years on his grandfather's ships. Today Fabien follows in his family's footsteps to protect the planet's endangered ocean life. With his vast knowledge and experience, he tries to strike a balance between environmental problems and market economies.

    Fabien is well known for his study of sharks. During 2000-2002, he created a TV special called Attack of the Mystery Shark based on the shark attacks that occurred along the New Jersey shoreline in the summer of 1916. Then in 2003-2006, with the help of a large crew, Fabien created a shark submarine (潜艇) that enabled him to put himself inside the shark world, providing people with a rare view of the mysterious and often misunderstood creatures.

    For the next four years (2006-2010), Fabien was part of a series called, Ocean Adventures, which offered a rare look into some of the most fantastic ocean species (物种) and environments.

    In 2010, Fabien started Plant A Fish, a nonprofit project for children to help restore local water ecosystems by replanting key ocean species. Save the world, one fish at a time. The project is still in progress now and its final goal is to plant 1 billion "fish" worldwide.

    From June 1 to July 2, 2014, Fabien and his team spent 31 days underwater to research how climate change and pollution are affecting the oceans. Fabien's Mission 31 broke new ground by going deeper, longer and further, exposing (显露) the world to the adventure and the mystique (神秘) of what lies beneath.

    Fabien is currently working on a documentary film about the adventures of Mission 31, as well as building an Ocean Learning Center to provide children around the world with the opportunity to learn about oceans and engage with ocean explorers directly through social media.