On one of her trips to New York several years ago, Eudora Welty decided to take a couple of New York friends out to dinner. They settled in at a comfortable East Side cafe and within minutes, another customer was approaching their table.

      “Hey, aren't you from Mississippi?” the elegant, white-haired writer remembered being asked by the stranger. “I'm from Mississippi too.”

      Without a second thought, the woman joined the Welty party. When her dinner partner showed up, she also pulled up a chair

      “They began telling me all the news of Mississippi,” Welty said. “I didn't know what my New York friends were thinking.”

Taxis on a rainy New York night are rarer than sunshine. By the time the group got up to leave, it was pouring outside. Welty's new friends immediately sent a waiter to find a cab. Heading back downtown toward her hotel, her big-city friends were amazed at the turn of events that had changed their Big Apple dinner into a Mississippi.

      “My friends said: 'Now we believe your stories,'” Welty added. “And I said: 'Now you know. These are the people that make me write them.'”

      Sitting on a sofa in her room, Welty, a slim figure in a simple gray dress, looked pleased with this explanation.

      “I don't make them up,” she said of the characters in her fiction these last 50 or so years. “I don't have to.”

Beauticians, bartenders, piano players and people with purple hats, Welty's people come from afternoons spent visiting with old friends, from walks through the streets of her native Jackson, Miss., from conversations overheard on a bus. It annoys Welty that, at 78, her left ear has now given out. Sometimes, sitting on a bus or a train, she hears only a fragment(片段) of a particularly interesting story.

    Technology is the application of knowledge to production. Thanks to modern technology, we have been able to increase greatly the efficiency of our work force. New machines and new methods have helped cut down time and expense while increasing overall output. This has meant more production and a higher standard of living. For most of us in America, modern technology is thought of as the reason why we can have cars and television sets. However, technology has also increased the amount of food available to us, by means of modern farming machinery and animal breeding techniques, and has made our life span longer via medical technology.

    Will mankind continue to live longer and have a higher quality of life? In large measure, the answer depends on technology and our ability to use it widely. If we keep making progress as we have over the past fifty years, the answer is definitely yes. The advancement of technology depends on research and development, and the latest surveys show that the united States is continuing to put billions of dollars annually(每年) into such efforts. So while we are running out of some limited resources, we may well find technological substitutes (代用品) for many of them through our research programs.

    Therefore, in the final analysis, the three major factors of production (land, labor and capital) are all influenced by technology. When we need new skills or techniques in medicine, people will start developing new technology to meet those needs. As equipment proves to be slow or inefficient, new machines will be invented. Technology responds to our needs in helping us improve our standard of living.

    If you could be anybody in the world, who would it be? Your neighbour or a super star? A few people have experienced what it might be like to step into the skin of another person, thanks to an unusual virtual reality（虚拟现实）device. Rikke Wahl, an actress, model and artist, was one of the participants in a body swapping experiment at the Be Another lab, a project developed by a group of artists based in Barcelona. She swapped with her partner, an actor, using a machine called The Machine to Be Another and temporarily became a man. "As I looked down, I saw my whole body as a man, dressed in my partner's pants," she said. "That's the picture I remember best."

    The set-up is relatively simple. Both users wear a virtual reality headset with a camera on the top. The video from each camera is sent to the other person, so what you see is the exact view of your partner. If she moves her arm, you see it. If you move your arm, she sees it.

    To get used to seeing another person's body without actually having control of it, participants start by raising their arms and legs very slowly, so that the other can follow along. Eventually, this kind of slow synchronised（同步的）movement becomes comfortable, and participants really start to feel as though they are living in another person's body.

    Using such technology promises to alter people's behaviour afterwards-potentially for the better. Studies have shown that virtual reality can be effective in fighting racism-the bias（偏见）that humans have against those who don't look or sound like them. Researchers at the University of Barcelona gave people a questionnaire called the Implicit Association Test, which measures the strength of people's associations between, for instance, black people and adjectives such as good, bad, athletic or awkward. Then they asked them to control the body of a dark skinned digital character using virtual reality glasses, before taking the test again. This time, the participants' bias scores were lower. The idea is that once you've "put yourself in another's shoes" you're less likely to think ill of them, because your brain has internalised the feeling of being that person.

    The creators of The Machine to Be Another hope to achieve a similar result. "At the end of body swapping, people feel like holding each other in their arms," says Arthur Pointeau, a programmer with the project. "It's a really nice way to have this kind of experience. I would really, really recommend it to everyone."

    You probably know who Marie Curie was, but you may not have heard of Rachel Carson. Of the outstanding ladies listed below, who do you think was the most important woman of the past 100 years?

    Jane Addams (1860-1935)

    Anyone who has ever been helped by a social worker has Jane Addams to thank. Addams helped the poor and worked for peace. She encouraged a sense of community(社区)by creating shelters and promoting education and services for people in need. In 1931, Addams became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

    Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

    If it weren't for Rachel Carson, the environmental movement might not exist today. Her popular 1962 book Silent Spring raised awareness(意识) of the dangers of pollution and the harmful effects of chemicals on humans and on the world's lakes and oceans.

    Sandra Day O'Connor (1930-present)

    When Sandra Day O'Connor finished third in her class at Stanford Law School, in 1952, she could not find work at a law firm because she was a woman. She became an Arizona state senator(参议员) and in 1981, the first woman to join the U. S. Supreme Court(最高法院). O'Connor gave the deciding vote in many important cases during her 24 years on the top court.

    Rosa Parks(1913-2005)

    On December 1,1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rasa Parks would not give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. Her simple act landed Parks in prison. But it also set off the Montgomery bus boycott(抵制). It lasted for more than a year, and kicked off the civil-rights movement. "The only tired I was, was tired of giving in," said Parks.

    Painkillers (止痛药) are turning out to be a real pain: according to a new study in the British Medical Journal. Taking them for just a week can increase your risk of heart attack by 50%. The research suggested that the risk related to the use of certain drugs was greatest with higher doses (服用量) and during the first month of use. The potential risk may increase by 75% for medicines like ibuprofen (布洛芬) and naproxen, and more than 100% for rofecoxib.

    It all sounds bad but, your risk is very low, — say, one in a million — a 100% increase means you still only have a two in a million chance. Of course, all painkilling medication that works can have side effects — nothing is safe and effective. Paracetamol (扑热息痛) has very few unless taken too much, in which case it can cause serious liver danger, but it isn't very effective. Drugs like opiates are strong painkillers but easy to be addicted and often have other bad effects. Maybe you find that you are in a dilemma now. But don't despair; you can refer to a pain clinic for some professional guidance. For ongoing pain, music and exercise may be the best choices to help you reduce the feeling of it.

    Scientist at Harvard have recently done a quite horrible study on mice. They made the mice experience extremes of hot and cold, applied pressure to their back legs and injected the capsaicin (辣椒素) into their feet. And then they timed how long it took them to respond to the pain. Lack of sleep increased the discomfort, while stimulants (兴奋剂) such as caffeine made them less responsive to pain. This has been widely reported that a good night's sleep and a cup of coffee in the morning may help reduce pain.

    But anyway  don't throw the pills away because the study also shows taking small doses of drugs, such as for short periods of time can be effective and safe as long as your heart is in good condition.

    Some of the world's most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying(联合) voice across cultures.

    Despite the celebrations, though, in the U. S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger generations.

    It's Jason Moran's job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center's artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.

    "Jazz seems like it's not really a part of the American appetite, "Moran tells National Public Radio's reporter Neal Conan. "What I'm hoping to accomplish is that my generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and white anymore. It's actually color, and it's actually digital. "

    Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. "The music can't be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same, "says Moran.

    Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller's music for a dance party, "just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music," says Moran. "For me, it's the recontextualization. In music, where does the emotion(情感) lie? Are we, as humans, gaining any insight(感悟) on how to talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context," says Moran, "so I want to continue those dialogues. Those are the things I want to foster. "