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    Have you ever wondered why the roots of the plants always know which way to grow—into the soil but not above it? Some British scientists have recently solved this mystery.    

      It turns out that roots have special hairs that tie them into the soil and help them grow their way past obstacles, a team at the John Inners Center in Norwich reports in the February 29 issue of Journal Science.

    "The key is in the fuzzy(有绒毛的) coat of hairs on the roots of plants," says professor Liam Dolan. "We have found a growth control system that enables these hairs to find their way and to become longer when their path is clear."

    Root hairs explore the soil in much the same way a person would feel their way in the dark. If they come across an obstacle, they make their way around until they can continue growing in an opening. I the meantime, the plant is held in place as the hairs grip the soil.

    The hairs are guided by a clever chemical trick. A protein(蛋白质) at the tip of the root hairs called RHD2 helps them to take calcium(钙) from the soil. Calcium makes the hairs grow, and produce more RHD2, and take more calcium.

    But when an obstacle blocks the hair's path, or the hair reaches the surface of the soil, the cycle is broken and growth starts in another direction.

    This system gives plants the flexibility to explore a complex environment and to live in even the most unpromising soils, says Dolan.

    In poor soils such as in parts of Australia and Africa, native plants have adapted by producing enormous numbers of root hairs. A better understanding of this adaptation will allow scientists to develop hairy rooted crops that can grow in unfriendly environments.

    According to Dolan, "Research in the John Inners Center is taking a breeding approach(育种方法) to increase hair length in wheat but it will be some time before new cultivars(栽培变种) are developed."

    Alibaba started taking the lead in China by connecting big Chinese manufacturers（制造商）with big buyers across the world. Its business-to-business site, Alibaba.com allowed business to buy almost everything. Alibaba's advantage wasn't hard to judge: size. Alibaba is just big, even by Chinese standards. Its market attracts 231 million active buyers, 8 million sellers, 11.3 billion orders a year—and Alibaba is just the middleman. It encourages people to use its markets—not charging small sellers a percentage of the sale.

    If you want a quick look into the influence of Alibaba on daily Chinese life, take my experience. I moved to Beijing a year ago and quickly got tired of visiting small stores across the crowded, polluted city of 20 million people in search of new electronics, bathroom furnishings, and anything else my wife wanted. “You're looking for what exactly? Why not try it?” My Chinese teacher asked me one day. With that, my wonderful new relationship with Alibaba began.

    Alibaba's original business-to-business model now is second to consumer buying. Chinese retail（零售）buying makes up 80% of Alibaba's profit, and leading that group is Taobao, with 800 million items for sale and the most unbelievable selection of things you'll ever find. TMall.com is Alibaba's other big site, where you can find brand name goods from Nike and Unilever near the lowest prices.

    What I have a hard time explaining to friends and family back in the U.S.is how China has gone beyond traditional shopping—big-box retailers especially—in favor of online purchases on Taobao and a few other sites. In smaller towns than Beijing, where big retailers have not yet traveled, shopping online is shopping, and shopping is Taobao.

    I have a list of some of my recent purchases on Taobao for a sense of how wide the marketplace is. Almost everything arrived a day or two after ordering with free shipping. I'm not even a big buyer, because I need friends to help me search the Chinese-language site. When I was searching my purchase history on my Chinese teacher's iPad, which helps me buy goods, I looked through with great difficulty about 10 of her purchases for every one of mine.

    Whether you are entering the job market for the first time or you are already at work, you have to know the various fields where you can work and the types of jobs available per field. Now it is time that you gained basic knowledge about ten common fields of work and some types of jobs in that field. Here they are:

    Technology Jobs

    The technology field is always growing very fast, so job growth in the field is also constantly booming. Here, you are always in the cutting-edge. However, you always have to update your skills when you are working in technology. Engineering and IT graduates are people who primarily do work related to technology.

    Education Jobs

    Here is a field which allows you to share your knowledge with others. You need subject-matter knowledge and teaching skills to be in this field. Most of all, you need plenty of hearts. While the everyday life of teachers may be tiring, education is one of the most fulfilling (令人满意的) fields to enter. You may need some certifications, though.

    Healthcare Jobs

    Healthcare professions enable you to use a great knowledge base of the human body and of latest health advances so you can save lives, provide comfort, cure illness, and maintain people's health. Work here is often done in hospitals and private clinics.

    Science and Mathematics

    Discovering new knowledge is the primary task of scientists and mathematicians. Training here takes a long time and goes beyond getting a bachelor's degree. However, the work will be fulfilling, especially that you may be at the edges of revolutionary discoveries. You can also use any experience and research skills acquired in either field to work in regular employment settings.

    A so-called “smart drug” intended to improve people's cognitive (认知的) function to protect the brain from altitude sickness.

    Visiting high-altitude sites for work, spot, religious pilgrimages and military can result in cognitive effects, including memory loss and attention difficulties. There's little you can do to prevent these symptoms except acclimatize -but this takes time and doesn't always work. A drug called oxiracetam might be the answer.

    ShengLi Hu at the Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China and her colleagues studied the performance of male military personnel at altitude. All lived in towns around 1,800 meters above sea level, During the study, they spent eight days at this altitude and then climbed for three days to reach 4,000 meters, where they stayed for up to a month.

    Twenty participants took oxriacetam three times a day for the first 15 days of the study, while another 20 received no intervention. The man did tests of attention and memory at the start and end of the study and 20 days in, by which time they had been at 4,000 meters for nine days.

    While all the participants experienced a drop in cognitive ability at 4,00 meters, those who took oxiracetam showed a much smaller drop than the control group.

    The team found that at high altitude the brain stem, which plays a critical role in supporting basic living functions, received blood at the expense of areas responsible for more advanced cognitive functions. But in people who took oxiracetam, blood flowing throughout the brain rose, thus offering more oxygen to these areas. This may be how the drug seems to lessen cognitive problems like with low oxygen.

    It isn't yet known whether diverting blood in this way could have negative effects in the long run. "The results are striking and imply that oxiracetam may be beneficial for helping to relieve cognitive ability decline caused by altitude." says Timothy Hales at the University of Dundee, UK.

    The clock always seems to be ticking rather too fast in the doctor's office and the queue of patients outside the door seems to be pressing rather too hard. Some say it's high time for the model of short, sharp one-to-one appointments to give way to shared medical appointments (SMAs共享医疗预约).

    SMAs are doctor-patient visits in which a group of patients receive patient education and counseling (咨询), physical examination and medical support in a group setting. Typically SMAs are designed to have one or more doctors attend to a group of patients who share a common illness or medical condition. In contrast to one-to-one visits, SMAS provide a longer appointment time-frame as well as the opportunity for patients to have improved access to their physicians and meanwhile pick up additional information and support from peers.

    However, doctors who have pioneered the shared appointment approach report that there are significant challenges involved. Dr. Sumego, director of shared medical appointments, Cleveland Clinic, identifies culture change as the most significant challenge. Physicians and nurses are trained in a model of personal service and privacy; the SMA approach is a fundamental challenge to those fixed ideas. They need shared goals and a way of testing the innovation against agreed standards. Dr. Sumego says, "The physicians may be worried about the possible chaos and efficiencies that are marketed. They also have to make the patients understand what their appointment is, and what the expectation is."

    "So, if an organization was looking to start shared medical appointments, I would advise them to start the buy-in from a few champion physicians, develop the work-flow and develop some experience. Provide some support behind what that best practice should look like. Create some standards so that, as the concept spreads, you can employ that experience to start the next shared medical appointments and the next."

Simply being quiet is a growing appeal. Lots of business have appeared to meet a rising demand for quiet time, from silent weekend getaways to silent dining, silent reading parties and even silent dating. Silence can mean different things to different people. We are usually silent only with those closest to us. So there is something almost radical(不同凡响的)about the recent trend towards enjoying silence with strangers.

Mariel started a regular silent reading party in Dundee just under a year ago. Readers bring their books and meet in a bar, where they read together in silence for an hour or sometimes two and then put their books away to chat and have a drink. "When the reading party starts, everything goes quiet," says Mariel," It's a little bit surreal (超现实的), especially in what is usually a noisy bar. However, there is something special about sharing the silence with others. It offers a chance to escape from reality; everyone is so busy with work and with technology being ever present. An event like this gives people the opportunity to escape these things for a while."

Honi Ryan is an artist based in Berlin who began hosting silent dinner back in 2006. The rules of the dinner are: no talking, no using your voice, no reading or writing, trying to make as little noise as possible, not connecting with technology, and staying for at least two hours. So far she has taken her silent dinner project to Mexico, the US, Australia and China. "It's evident that the age-old connections we make over food do not depend on the words around it. Silence creates the space for the people and places involved to fill with whatever is needed; it is quite different from our usual social behaviors."