What is the first thing you notice when you walk into a shop? The products displayed(展示) at the entrance? Or the soft background music?

    But have you ever notice the smell? Unless it is bad, the answer is, likely to be no. But while a shop's scent may not be outstanding compared with sights and sounds, it is certainly there. And it is providing to be an increasing powerful tool in encouraging people to purchase.

    A brand store has become famous for its distinctive scent which floats through the fairly dark hall and out to the entrance, via scent machines. A smell may be attractive but it may not just be used for fresheningair. One sports goods company once reposed that when it first introduced scent into its stores, customers' intension to purchase increased by 80 percent.

    When it comes to the best shopping streets in Pairs, scent is justas important to a brand's success as the quality of its window displays and goods on sales. That is mainly because shopping is a very different experience to what it used to be.

    Some years ago, the focus forbrand name shopping was on a few people with sales assistants' disproving attitude and don't-touch-what-you-can't afford displays. Now the rise of electronic commerce(e-commerce) has opened up famous brands to a wider audience. But whilee-shops can use sights and sounds, only bricks-and-mortar stores(实体店) can offer afull experience from the minute customers step through the door to the moment they leave. Another brandstore seeks to be much more than a shop, but rather a destination. And scent is just one way to achieve this.

     Now a famous store uses complex man-made smell to make sure that the soft scent of baby powder floats through the kid department, and coconut(椰子) scent in the swimsuit section. A departmentstore has even opened a new lab, inviting customers on a journey into the store's windows to smell books, pots andd rawers, in search of their perfect scent.

    BEIJING (News Agency) — Children in China today spend five times more money than their parents did when they were young.

    So what are all these children buying? The list is long: iPads, cell phones and jeans are typical items that children “have to” buy. And they will do anything to get them. They ask their parents over and over until they buy them.

    But parents also need to take the blame(责备) for spending so much money. They want their children to have the best things. They end up competing with other parents over whether their children have the latest products.

    So it's no wonder children find it hard to learn the importance of saving money rather than spending it all the time.

    And it's hard to save when companies use advertising (打广告)and clever slogans (口号) to encourage young people to buy their products. They even encourage children to keep asking their parents for something until they get it.

    Today, you don't even need to have money in order to buy something. Banks give out credit cards and loans (贷款) all the time, so people are saving less and less. We are used to carrying lots of money around. And if you don't have much, you can always borrow some.

    But this hasn't always been the case. When our grandparents were young, there was very little money and everyone had to save hard for things they bought. They only bought things they needed, not things they just wanted.

    The older generation made the wise expression, “Money doesn't grow on trees.” This is as true now as it was 50 years ago. They give money a great deal of value. And we all have a lot to learn from them.

    When we see a person in trouble, the first idea that comes to our mind is to lend a hand. But what if we see an animal in trouble, does the same rule apply?

    This question was raised after a group of penguins were saved from an icy gully (峡谷) in Antarctica. It was filmed for the BBC wildlife series Dynasties. The film crew were anxious when they saw that a group of penguins had fallen into a gully and been trapped with their young. They built a slope (斜坡) so that a few of the penguins could save themselves.

    The case has taken the international media by storm. Viewers watching this film let out a sigh of relief. "I'm so glad. I understand not taking action directly, but a helping hand isn't bothering, right?" viewer Kathryn Shaw said on her Facebook.

    However, others think human interference (干涉) is unnatural. "You can't have sunshine throughout your life. To have done anything else would only make matters worse," said the show's creator David Attenborough, according to The Times.

    In this case, however, Mike Gunton, the executive producer of the series, said that this was a one-off situation. "There were no animals going to suffer by interfering. You weren't touching the animals and it was just felt by doing this... they had the chance not to have to keep slipping down the slope," he told the BBC.

    Such cases are familiar to Paul Nicklen, wildlife photographer for National Geographic. He told Metro, "If it's ever a predator (捕食者) situation, no matter how gut-wrenching, you stay out of the way. Even when you're watching a male polar bear eat a baby bear."

    "There's no rule book in those situations. You can only respond to the facts that are right there in front of you," Will Lawson, the show's director, told Daily Mail.

    Many of us have had this experience: we lie down in a bed other than our own, perhaps at a friend's house or in a hotel room, and find it difficult or impossible to fall asleep. Is it because the bed is uncomfortable? Maybe, but perhaps there can be other reasons.

    According to a new study published in Current Biology, a significant reason is what the scientists call "first night effect". They believe that one side of the brain acts as a "night watch" to warn us about potential dangers. It forces us to stay awake on the first night in a new environments.

    For the study, 35 young volunteers were asked to sleep in a sleep lab for several days. Meanwhile, researchers watched their brain activities.

    According to the researchers, on their first night, the left brain was more active than the right brain and people had a hard time sleeping. However, left-brain activities decreased as days went by, falling even to the point of complete calm. In this process, the participants got an increasingly better sleep experience.

    The findings suggest that the different rhythms of the sides of the brain affect our sleep. When the two sides work differently, the balance between them is broken. Thus, the brain can't relax and is sensitive to anything strange in the surroundings, just as it is in the daytime.

    "At some level, the brain is continuing to analyze things, even though you are not aware of the analysis, " US professor Jerome Siegel told Smithsonian

    "If something unusual happens - if a door opens or you hear a key in a lock --you can be alert, even though the intensity of the stimulus (刺激强度) is quite low." More surprisingly, this phenomenon is similar to the way some animals sleep.

    The researchers think that it is the result of evolution (进化), and works to protect us in potentially dangerous environments.

    If you have ever had what you think is "first night effect", researchers suggest that you bring your own pillow or sleep in a room similar to your bedroom next time you sleep away from home.

    Annette Larkins is an incredible woman who looks like a healthy 40-year-old, although she just turned 70. She follows a special raw diet and only drinks rainwater.

    She looks so young that people mistake her to be the daughter, when she's out with her husband of 54 years, but I suppose he isn't complaining.

    Mrs. Larkins says the secret to her beauty lies in her special diet, consisting of organic vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts grown in her own garden; she calls it the "fountain of youth". The woman doesn't touch anything that has been cooked.

    And another strange thing she does is to collect rainwater, to keep her garden blossoming, but also to drink. But the residents of Miami-Dade County, Florida, didn't always have such a healthy lifestyle. In fact, she consumed meat regularly, as her husband used to own a meat factory way back in the 1960s. It was then that she decided to change her eating habits forever. And what a great decision that was. I mean, just look at her!

    When she started off, Mrs. Larkins was just looking for a few health benefits and never anticipated that she would look like a 40-year-old at the age of 70. Over the 27 years that she has been eating raw, Mrs. Larkins has written two booklets railed Journey to Health and also produced a DVD containing all her healthy secrets.

    Her husband, Mr. Larkins, wishes he had followed her example, because now he looks much, much older and also suffers from diabetes (糖尿病) and high blood pressure. He takes prescription medicine every day, but Annette doesn't even take an aspirin.

Grief ran through the first decade of my career. I photographed stories about terrible topics: immigration, conflict, war. On the cover of my notebook in 2019, I wrote, "Discover the joy again." It was intended to remind me to play more.

Sometimes I'd get a rare assignment where I could breathe — for example, photographing an article on tea for an airline magazine. I took the job hoping to make interesting, almost movie images, but at the end of the day, I found I'd made nothing of the sort. Packing up my camera, I felt like a failure.

On the drive back to the hotel, I noticed heavy steam rising from a building up ahead. Arriving at the scene, I opened the car door — and realized it was a tourist attraction traditionally pulled by a steam engine. Then, out of nowhere, a figure ran toward me. I picked up my camera and quickly made three pictures. One was out of focus. One was poorly composed. But one worked.

When I submitted my pictures to the editor for the tea article, this one wasn't chosen to be published, but I knew it meant something to me. I had been looking for good luck in my own life. This photograph symbolized exactly that.

I was 27 when I first traveled to India after the sudden passing of my father. Over many months, with my best friend, I traversed India with no phone, with limited Internet, and with healing as my compass. I climbed mountains, swam in the sea, and lived in relief entirely.

As I learned to travel to some of the world's cities with the largest population, I began to see life with more color and magic. I permitted myself to walk aimlessly, with no goal but to observe, and each moment became a dance. If this journey taught me anything, it's that what comes next will bring its own magic.