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.

    Nowadays airfare isn't getting any cheaper with fuel costs rising every day. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to find the most affordable fares and also avoid paying as many extra charges as possible when you plan ahead.

    The Parthenon(帕特农神庙) in Athens is a building with a long and complex(复杂的) history. Built nearly 2,500 years ago as a temple celebrating the Greek goddess Athena, it was for thousands of years the church of the Virgin Mary of the Athenians, then a mosque (清真寺), and finally a ruin. The building was changed and the sculptures(塑像) much damaged over the centuries. By 1800 only about half of the original sculptural decoration remained.

    Between 1801 and 1805, Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire(奥斯曼帝国), which controlled Athens, acting with the full knowledge and permission of the Ottoman authorities，removed about half of the remaining sculptures from the fallen ruins and from the building itself. Lord Elgin loved Greek history and transported the sculptures back to Britain. The arrival of the sculptures in London had a huge effect on the European public, greatly increasing interest in ancient Greek culture and influencing contemporary artistic trends. These sculptures were gained from Lord Elgin by the British Museum in 1816 and since then they have all been on show to the public, free of charge.

    Since the early 1980s, however, the Greek government has argued for the return of all the Parthenon sculptures in the British Museum. They have also challenged the British Museum Board of Trustees' legal title to the sculptures.

    The British Museum, however, insists that it exists to tell the story of cultural achievement throughout the world, from the dawn of human history over two million years ago until the present day. The museum considers itself an important resource for the world: the breadth and depth of its collection allows the world public to re-examine cultural identities and explore the complex network of interconnected world cultures.

    It also says that, within the context of this unparalleled collection, the Parthenon sculptures are an important representation of ancient Athenian civilization. Each year millions of visitors admire the artistry of the sculptures and gain insights on how ancient Greece influenced — and was influenced by — the other civilizations that it came across.

    Last year, when our three-year-old great-granddaughter Kylie was taken to see Santa Claus, she made sure to give him her wish list of toys. A week later, she ran into a different Santa in a mall. He stopped to ask what she wanted for Christmas. Kylie was surprised and let him know: “If you can't remember what I told you last week, how are you going to remember on Christmas Eve?”

    Mary Paul, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

    As my son Mike and I drove to the mall, we passed a Salvation Army Santa ringing his bell. “Mike,” I said, “there's Santa!” He shook his head. “That's just some guy in a Santa suit,” he said. It saddened me to think that maybe my son no longer believed in Santa, and we drove the rest of the way in silence. At the mall, we spotted another Santa greeting young believers. Suddenly, Mike took off toward him. Turning back to me, he shouted. “Now, there's the real Santa!”

    Michael E. Fahey, Huntley, Illinois

    We immigrated to America from China when I was six. Because I was shy and didn't speak English, I had few friends. My days were spent at home with my brother. Sometimes we'd help our neighbor Mr. Mueller pull weeds. One Christmas Day, there was a knock at the door. Grandma opened it, and there stood a big fellow in red with a snow-white beard, laughing, “Ho, ho, ho!” He handed out presents and made us laugh. I had so much fun. It was years later when I learned that our special Santa was our neighbor Mr. Mueller.

    Joanne Tang, Litchfield Park, Arizona

    Science is always advancing over time. A self-driving car from the Google may be coming to a street near you. However, you won't be able to buy it now. “We're working to build the world's most experienced driver,” Kraft, director of the project, said. “Everything that we learn in one of our cars gets passed to all of our cars. But you may need to get over the idea of traditional car ownership along the way.”

    Google's software has already driven 5 million miles in U.S. cities, including an “early rider” test in Phoenix last April. Since then Google has grown confident enough to remove the “auxiliary wheel”: a human “safety driver”. Powering the vehicle's self-driving functions is a series of cameras, radars and sensors on the car's roof, which detect everything nearby from other vehicles and passers-by to cyclists.

    Kraft stressed that Google's cars aren't connected—they don't need a 5G wireless link to go anywhere. “The car has everything it needs to drive on the car itself.” He said, “There are no signals coming from outer space or something telling it to turn right.” The resulting ride may not be too exciting but safe. Kraft added. “We can see three football fields down the road, we would come to a stop before we ran into these crowds.”

    Google's system has a major advantage over the semi-autonomous（半自主的）systems of Tesla and Cadillac, both of which need continued human attention. Kraft said Google plans to have service in every major city by 2028 with thousands of cars driving themselves.

    Three boys were enjoying themselves in their hometown of Bovina, Mississippi .However, their lives were turned upside down when they discovered the jawbone of a Mastodon (齿乳象).

    Brothers Shawn and Caid Sellers and cousin Michael Mahalitc found the prehistoric bone in a piece of earth that was recently plowed (犁、耕)."I thought it was a log," Caid said. "I tried to pick it up and it was really heavy and I saw teeth on it." The bone weighed about 50 pounds. They eventually got the bone to their home and fitted it in their tub (浴盆), but it took their collective strength, might and a golf cart, to carry the large Mastodon bone.

    "They didn't expect to find that," Michael's mom said. "Now that they have, I believe that they will be more aware of their surroundings and what they're digging up when they are digging and playing."

    "We've gotten a lot of petrified (石化的) wood and Civil War relics from the area and that's what I thought it was," the brothers' mother said. "This is our first set of teeth we've found. So we thought it was their imagination. We were quite surprised to see that it was not their imagination."

    They were exploring near the brothers' home. Lo and behold (真想不到), they saw what they thought resembled a fossil. It was the curator of paleontology (古生物负责人) of the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, George Phillips, who first identified the bone as a "very mature individual."

    The Mastodon was a mammal who lived during the prehistoric times. They had long tusks and trunks, like elephants. They were clearly different from their modern-day counterparts, as well as woolly mammoths (猛犸).