How Super Are Supermarkets?

    Buying e week's groceries is tiring. You want to get it over and done with quickly, so you head for the nearest supermarket, you find everything you need under one roof, and you feel glad that those days of going in and out of different shops in the high street are over. Supermarkets seem to be a big plus. There is a downside, though.

    In the UK 90% of all the food people consume is bought at 5 different supermarket chains. This makes these companies extremely powerful, which lets them use their huge buying power to squeeze small suppliers to get the best deal. Milk is a good example. Supermarkets like to use things like milk, which is the top of almost everyone's shopping list to attract customers. To offer the lowest price possible to the consumer, the supermarkets force dairy farmers to sell milk at less than the cost of production. Supermarkets guarantee their good profits while farmers are left struggling to make ends meet, and the taxpayer pays to support the system without even knowing it.

    It would be nice if local grocers supported local agriculture. But for the big supermarkets this just doesn't make sense. Supermarkets don't want little farmers thinking they can decide prices. So supermarkets have started a global search for the cheapest possible agricultural produce. In many supermarkets it is difficult to find anything which is produced locally.

    UK farmers used to grow a lot of apples. Not anymore. In 1999 36% of apples were imported. By 2015 the figure had risen to 80% and the domestic production of apples had fallen by two thirds. The consumer might just be happy to get a reasonably priced meal made up of foods from Thailand, Spain, Italy and Zambia, but we should also bear in mind the Influence on local producers.

    Then there's packaging. Supermarkets like everything to be packed and wrapped so it can be piled neatly on shelves. Supermarkets produce nearly 10 million tons of waste packaging in the UK every year, of which less 5%is recycled. Some supermarkets make sure that large recycling bins are obvious in their car parks, showing that they are environment-friendly. But that is just an image.

    When a new supermarket is planned there are claims about the number of new jobs that will be created. Unfortunately, the number of jobs lost in the area is larger than the number of new positions in the supermarket. On average each new supermarket leads to the loss of 276 jobs.

    However, the modern world is all about shopping, and the freedom to buy whatever you what, so it would be impossible to stop people shopping at some particular kind of shop. But some measures do need to be taken when small suppliers lose profits, local producers suffer, sea levels rise and jobs are lost, anyway, we can't just care about a free car park and special offers.

    There have always been a lot of commonly believed but false ideas about being fat and doing exercise. Some people believe that they can't help putting on weight as they get older, while others hold that if they stop exercising, their muscles will turn into fat. Here are some more myths:

I'll never lose weight — I come from a fat family

    Wrong! While we can't change the body type we are born with, we can't blame our genes for making us fat. There's plenty of evidence that fatness runs in families, and the main reason is that they share the same habits of eating too much and exercise too little.

    I am fat because I burn calories slowly

    Wrong! Fatness is not caused by a slow metabolism（新陈代谢）. If fact, although fat people consume more energy that slim people, they also fail to realize how much they eat! Keeping a diary can help you work out your daily food intake more accurately.

    Exercise is boring

    Wrong! Anything will become boring if you do it repetitively. The key is to develop a balanced and varied program that's fun as well as progressive. If you enjoy a Sunday walk, take a different route. If you do Yoga, try a tai chi class. If you like swimming, set yourself a distance or time challenge.

    No pain, no gain

    Wrong! Exercise is not meant to hurt. Indeed, pain is your body telling you something's wrong, and continuing to exercise could lead to serious injury. You may experience mild discomfort as you begin to exercise regularly, but this your body adapting to the positive changes in your lifestyle and the aches should disappear relatively quickly. If you don't, rest and seek medical advice.

    It is hardly surprising that clothing manufacturers (生产商)follow certain uniform standards for various features(特征)of clothes. What seems strange, however, is that the standard adopted for women is the opposite of the one for men. Take a look at the way your clothes button. Men's clothes tend to button from the right, and women's from the left. Considering most of the world's population—men and women—are right-handed, the men's standard would appear to make more sense for women. So why do women's clothes button from the left?

    History really seems to matter here. Buttons first appeared only on the clothes of the rich in the 17^th century, when rich women were dressed by servants. For the mostly right-handed servants, having women's shirts button from the left would be easier. On the other hand, having men's shirts button from the right made sense, too. Most men dressed themselves, and a sword drawn from the left with the right hand would be less likely to get caught in the shirt.

    Today women are seldom dressed by servants, but buttoning from the left is still the standard for them. Is it interesting? Actually, a standard, once set, resists change. At a time when all women's shirts buttoned from the left, it would have been risky for any single manufacturer to offer women's shirts that buttoned from the right. After all, women had grown so used to shirts which buttoned from the left and would have to develop new habits and skills to switch. Besides, some women might have found it socially awkward to appear in public wearing shirts that buttoned from the right, since anyone who noticed that would believe they were wearing men's shirts.

    Welcome to Holker Hall & Gardens

    Visitor Information

    How to Get to Holker

    By Car: Follow brown signs an A590 from JB6, M6. Approximate travel times: Windermere-20 minutes, Kendal-25 minutes, Lancaster-45 minutes, Manchester-1 hour 30 minutes.

    By Rail: The nearest station is Cark-in-Cartmel with trains to Carnforth, Lancaster Preston for connections to major cities & airports.

    Opening Times

    Sunday-Friday (closed on Saturday)11:00 am-4:00pm,30 March-2nd November.

Admission Charges

    Special Events

    Producers: Market 13th April

    Join us to taste a variety of fresh local food and drinks. Meet the producers and get some excellent recipe ideas.

    Holker Garden Festival 30th May

    The event celebrate its 22nd anniversary with a great show of the very best of gardening, making it one of the most popular events in gardening.

    National Garden Day 28th August

    Holker once again opens is gardens in aid of the disadvantaged. For just a small donation you can take a tour with our garden guide.

    Winter Market 8th November

    This is an event for all the family. Wander among a variety of shops selling gifs while enjoying a live music show and nice street entertainment.

A rainy day can be a chance to recharge. While you relax on the sofa with a movie, the raindrops falling on your windows might one day provide the power for your TV. This is the idea behind an invention that harvests energy from water. 

The technology is based on the triboelectric (摩擦电的) effect. An engineer at the University of Hawaii, David Ma knew that it was possible to generate electricity by rubbing two things together. So, he thought, "Why don't we use water?"

A drop of water sliding across a surface coated with two different materials would generate enough friction(摩擦) to create an electrical charge. By placing metal wires that the drop of water touched as it moved, it should be possible to harvest electricity, he reasoned. 

It worked. In fact, the researchers lit up 15 LED bulbs with a single moving water drop. 

This is not the first time that scientists have got electricity from water-generated friction. Earlier experiments, though, harvested the charge produced in a surface by a sliding drop of water. There, the surface had acted as an electrode(电极). This is different. The energy of friction is being harvested from the water itself. 

"The technology could someday power phones, sensors or other small electronics," says Christopher Oshman, an engineer at the Colorado School of Mines. "This work is a step towards harvesting the energy of moving objects all around us, including ourselves, to power the electronic devices we use every day," he says. 

"Ma has shown that the technology can work in a lab," Oshman says. Next, the Colorado researcher would like to see it tried on a larger scale, such as on an umbrella. 

Smoking is harmful.But as soon as you quit the habit, everything will be OK,right?Wrong.

New research has found that even if you give up smoking, the damage it has done to your genes will stay there for a much longer time.In the research, a team of US scientists studied the blood of 16,000 people.Among them, some were smokers, some used to smoke, and the rest were non-smokers.Scientists compared their genes and found that more than 7,000 genes of smokers had changed--a number that is one-third of known human genes.

According to NBC News, both heart disease and cancer are caused by genetic changes.Some people may have had the changes when they were born, but most people get them in their day-to-day lives while doing things like smoking.

When you stop smoking, a lot of these genes will return to normal within five years.

This means your body is trying to heal (治愈) itself of the harmful effects of smoking.But the changes in some of the genes stay for longer.They can stay for as long as 30 years.It's almost like leaving a footprint on wet cement (水泥)—it will always be there,even when you've walked away and when the cement becomes dry.

Although the study results may make people unhappy, there is a bright side:the findings could help scientists invent medicine to treat genetic damage caused by smoking or find ways to tell which people have heart disease or cancer risks.