Maybe it has been the influence of the current scene: the type among urban biking. Apparently, urban biking requires entirely different bikes than suburban hiking does and therefore a Bike Design Project started where five design studios across five cities had to come up with a perfect urban bike. The winning bike will be manufactured for a limited run of 100 hikes and will be in stores next year. Industry, a Portland-based studio, came up with a very interesting bike: one that uses bluetooth and handlebars (车把手) that tell you when to stop or turn.

    Industry worked together with Ti Cycles to create a bike with a 3D printed titanium frame (钛框架). The hike is called Solid and can be connected to a smartphone APP: My Bike. This APP alarms a user when a light needs replacement and if something gets wrong with one's brakes. There is also software called Discover My City, which has a series of routes through Portland's most trendy neighborhoods, with suggestions about where to eat and shop.

    Nevertheless, the idea with cycling is that you need to focus on the road and not on your smartphone. This bike therefore uses integrated feedback on handlebars. Those handlebars tell a user when to turn, as they will buzz when a turn appears. As you are getting closer, they will buzz more frequently. And then there is the possibility to control your light via built-in sensors and change gears by pressing an electronic button.

    Although the bicycle looks highly interesting and can be seen as a piece of art for the designing world, we don't know if we would like our bike to have an automatic buzz when we are approaching a turn. On the other side, it could add some extra safety to traffic in general. Whether you like the bike or not, you have to admit the Portland-based studio brings the concept of urban biking to a whole new level.

    Many people go to school for an education. They learn languages, history, geography, physics, chemistry and mathematics. Others go to school to learn a skill so that they can make a living. School education is very important and useful. Yet no one can learn everything they want to know. The teacher's job is to show his students how to learn. He teaches them how to read and how to think. So, much more is to be learned outside school by the students themselves.

    It is always more important to know how to study by oneself than to memorize some facts or a formula (公式). It is usually quite easy to learn a certain fact in history or a formula in mathematics. But it is very difficult to use a formula in working out a maths problem. Great scientists, such as Einstein, Newton and Galileo didn't get anything from school. But they were all so successful. They invented so many things for mankind.

    The reason for their success is that they knew how to study. They read books that were not taught at school. They worked hard all their lives, wasting not a single moment. They would ask many questions as they read and they did thousands of experiments.

    Above all, they knew how to use their brains.

    Most of us have been in this situation: You're on your way to your friend's house, then you suddenly ask yourself,"Did I remember to turn the lights off?” For those with "smart homes", however, this wouldn't be a problem.

Over the last few years,smart home technology has become more popular. Thanks to user-friendly products like intelligent lighting and heating controllers, people can control nearly every electrical item in their homes from anywhere in the world.

    While smart homes aren't new, companies like Philips, Amazon and Xiaomi have finally brought automation to everyday people with affordable products like artificial intelligence(AI) speakers and sensors.

    “The obvious message is that you can stop wasting energy,” Tom Kerber, director of research for U. S -based digital company Parks Associates, told The Guardian.

    And the technology also has more meaningful uses. In Norway, for example, one company is using smart tech to make life easier for its elderly customers. Abilia's system allows carers to check up on patients through a tablet on a wall inside their home. The device sends patients reminders about tasks, such as when they need to take medication(冥想). It can even tell carers if there's any unusual activity in the home that could be life-threatening.

    “This kind of system allows people to take care of themselves, which is the most important thing,” Abilia's vice president, Oystein Johnsen, told the BBC. "It also saves the government money. In Norway, it costs 1 million kroner(about 0. 8 million yuan )per year to have someone in a care home. This system costs 15,000 kroner a year.”

    So, for those who have already "gone smart", will it ever be possible to go back to do things in the old-fashioned way? "I think it would be difficult. When we go to a friend's house or on vacation we find ourselves expecting the house to do things for us that we should do, "Poulson, 35, a senior program manager from Seattle.,U. S.,explained.

B

    According to a new study ,a smiley face emoji（笑脸符）in work-related e-mails may not create a positive impression and could even weaken information sharing. In formal business emails, a smiley is not a smile.

    In one of the experiments, people were asked to read a work-related e-mail from an unknown person and then tell about both the ability and warmth of that person. Before that, they all received similar messages. But some included smileys while others did not. The results suggested that contrary to face-to-face smiles, which increase both ability and warmth, the smileys in a business e-mail had no effect on the perception（感知）of warmth, and in fact had a bad effect on the perception of ability. The perceptions of low ability in turn weakened information sharing.

    In another experiment, the use of a smiley was compared to a smiling or neutral photograph. The findings showed that in the case（情况）of a photograph, a smiling sender was judged to be more able and friendly than a neutral one. However, when an e-mail on formal work-related maters included a smiley, the sender was thought to be less able. The smiley did not influence the opinion on the sender's friendliness.

    “People are easy to accept that a smiley equals a real smile, but the findings of this study show that in the workplace, this seems not the case, especially when first communications are concerned.” Dr. Glikson says. “In such a situation, it is better not to use smileys to people at whatever age. Smileys could hardly be a wise choice to a person you are not familiar with.”

    What are two things that make humans different from animals? One is language, and the other is music. It is true that some animals can sing (and many birds sing. better than a lot of people). However, the songs of animals, such as birds and whales, are very limited. It is also true that humans, not animals, have developed musical instruments.

    Music is strange stuff. It is clearly different from language. However, people can use music to communicate things—especially their emotions. When music is combined with speech in a song, it is a very powerful form of communication.

    If music is truly different from speech, then we should process music and language in different parts of the brain. The scientific evidence suggests that this is true. Sometimes people who suffer brain damage lose their ability to process language. However, they don't automatically lose their musical abilities. For example, Vissarion Shebalin, a Russian composer, had a stroke in 1953. It injured the left side of his brain. He could no longer speak or understand speech. He could, however, still compose music until his death ten years later. On the other hand, sometimes strokes cause people to lose their musical ability, but they can still speak and understand speech.

    Why does music have such a strong effect on us? That is a harder question to answer. Geoffrey Miller, a researcher at University College, London, thinks that music and love have a strong connection. Music requires special talent, practice, and physical ability. That's why it may be a way of showing your fitness to be someone's mate. For example, singing in tune or playing a musical instrument requires fine muscular control. You also need a good memory to remember the notes. And playing or singing those notes correctly suggests that your hearing is in excellent condition. Finally, when a man sings to the woman he loves, it may be a way of showing off.

    However, Miller's theory still doesn't explain why certain combinations of sounds influence our emotions so deeply. For scientists, this is clearly an area that needs further research of sounds influence our emotions so deeply. For scientists, this is clearly an area that needs further research.

    You've heard the old advice that skipping meals is a sure-fire way to ruin a weight loss plan, but a new study presented this week at the annual Obesity Society Meeting in New Orleans suggests that perhaps we've overlooked the benefits of selective fasting. According to the research, eating during a smaller window of time each day and skipping your evening meal could have a positive health effect.

    The study concluded that overweight individuals who ate during the day and fasted during the evening reported fewer hunger swings and burned more fat at night, WebMD reported. However, although this diet plan results in more fat burned in the evenings, it did not seem to increase fat burning overall. Due to this, at this moment it's still unclear as to how this eating schedule can affect general weight loss.

    "At this point, we are not sure whether or not total fat burning is increased," study lead author Courtney Peterson told Medical Daily in a recent email." We will need to do a larger study to find out for certain whether or not time-restricted feeding improves fat burning."

    Still, although the results do not indicate a clear association between nighttime fasting and weight loss, they are still important for the world of nutrition. For example, Peterson told Medical Daily that she was surprised to find that participants did not report being hungrier than average, or have above-average swings in hunger levels, despite fasting daily for 18 hours.

    "So we overturned the belief that fasting for longer period each day when the same number of total calories are eaten makes a person hungrier, "wrote Peterson.

    While the effects of fasting and time-restricted feeding have been studied and proven to work in a rodent(贴齿动物)model, research on human subjects is still in its early stages. For this reason, Peterson explained that it is far too early to say, with factual evidence as backing, that time-restricted feeding will improve weight loss in humans. Still, Peterson explained that practicing this eating behavior does have obvious benefits, such as reducing overall food intake, and suggested that practicing time restricted eating a few times a week could be both practicable and healthy.

    "It could be used for short-term goals or longer-term goals，"concluded Peterson." As far as we know，it is safe for adults，although pregnant women and children should not try it."