Car companies are developing vehicles that will plug into electric sockets, ust like many laptops, digital cameras, cell phones and Mp4 do. Called “plug-in vehicles”, these cars will get most of their power from electricity. Their drivers won't have to stop at gas stations as often as usual.

    The technology is more than just cool. In our car-filled world, plug-in vehicles could reduce the amount of gas we use, which keeps rising in cost now and then. Besides, driving around in these vehicles may even help the environment. Gas-burning cars produce a lot of greenhouse gas, which causes global warming.

    The first company-produced plug-in vehicles could hit the roads by 2020. But engineers still have a lot of work to do to make the technology practical and inexpensive.

    Batteries are the biggest challenge. In the plug-in-vehicle world，Li-ion(锂离子)batteries are getting the most attention. These batteries can store a large amount of energy in a small package, and they last a longer time between charges. Li-ion batteries can fit laptops, cell phones, heart instruments and other similar pocket ones.

    But because cars are so big and heavy, it would still require a suitcase-sized Li-ion batteries to power about 12km of driving. What's more, the batteries are much expensive.

    “A car filled with batteries could go a long distance,” says Ted Bohn, an electrical engineer in Chicago. “But it couldn't pull any people, and it would cost $100,000.” So researchers need to work out how to make batteries smaller and cheaper, among other questions.

    “The answers don't exist yet,” Bohn says, “As a kid, I thought someone someplace knows the answer to everything. All of these questions haven't been decided. That's what engineering is about-making a guess, running tests and getting fine results.”

    We've reached a strange—some would say unusual—point. While fighting world hunger continues to be the matter of vital importance according to a recent report from the World Health Organization (WHO), more people now die from being overweight, or say, from being extremely fat, than from being underweight. It's the good life that's more likely to kill us these days.

Worse, nearly 18 million children under the age of five around the world are estimated to be overweight. What's going on?

    We really don't have many excuses for our weight problems. The dangers of the problem have been drilled into us by public ­health campaigns since 2001 and the message is getting through—up to a point.

    In the 1970s, Finland, for example, had the highest rate of heart disease in the world and being overweight was its main cause. Not any more. A public ­health campaign has greatly reduced the number of heart disease deaths by 80 per cent over the past three decades.

    Maybe that explains why the percentage of people in Finland taking diet pills doubled between 2001 and 2005, and doctors even offer surgery of removing fat inside and change the shape of the body. That has become a sort of fashion. No wonder it ranks as the world's most body ­conscious country.

We know what we should be doing to lose weight—but actually doing it is another matter. By far the most popular excuse is not taking enough exercise. More than half of us admit we lack willpower.

    Others blame good food. They say: it's just too inviting and it makes them overeat. Still others lay the blame on the Americans, complaining that pounds have piled on thanks to eating too much American­ style fast food.

    Some also blame their parents—their genes. But unfortunately, the parents are wronged because they're normal in shape, or rather slim.

    It's a similar story around the world, although people are relatively unlikely to have tried to lose weight. Parents are eager to see their kids shape up. Do as I say—not as I do.

    Parents complain that children outgrow their clothes so fast that it costs a fortune（￡12, 000 on average per year）, going through seven different sizes in the space of their first two years. There could now be a solution：a new high－tech fabric（织物）that expands as the wearer grows.

    Ryan Yasin, who is studying for a master's degree at the London Royal College of Art, came up with the idea after purchasing clothes for his newborn nephew, only to find the baby had outgrown them by the time they arrived. In addition to the expense Yasin was also concerned about the environmental influence. The process of making and distributing just l kilogram, or 2. 2 pounds, of new fabric results in an average of 23 kg, or 50 pounds of greenhouse gases. To make matters worse, the “fast fashion” trend worldwide has caused garment production to double since 2000, with more than half of the clothing ending up in landfills annually!

    To find a solution, Yasin used his previous experience designing satellites to invent a way to fold synthetic（合成的）material such that it stretches in all directions.

    The first design, a pair of tiny pants, not only fit his baby nephew, but also his 2－year-old niece! After spending a lot of time perfecting the process and testing the design, Yasin is now awaiting a patent for his design and seeking investors（投资者）to bring the clothing to market.

    For his new line of Petit Pli, the designer plans to produce outerwear that is both waterproof（防水的）and windproof. The clothing will be machine washable and fold small enough to fit in a jacket or pant pocket. Yasin plans to establish a take－back system so that worn－out Petit Pli clothing can be recycled into new fabric.

    The designer does not expect parents to dress their children only in his expandable clothing, particularly since the current designs use synthetic materials. But he plans to soon produce the wear in “a wider variety of garments” and hopes that Petit Pli will be able to have an “influence on over-consumption. ”We surely hope he succeeds!

    Your local grocery store is a psychological minefield (布雷区), where even the bananas are ripe with mystery.

    ⒈Southpaws (左撇子) have an invisible (看不见的) advantage

    You've probably seen that stores keep go-to items—produce, meats, dairy—on the outer edge. But did you notice that most of them are set up to make you run counterclockwise (逆时针)? Ninety percent of us are right-handed, so we buy more when it's counterclockwise. You'll also often find the dairy section in the back left corner：Because dairy is likely on your list, stores make sure you take the longest route to get there. In fairness, it's also a more convenient place to put a fridge.

    ⒉Everything is in its place

    It's safe to say that nothing you see on a shelf is there by chance. The cookies on sale at the end of a passage are likely the result of smart product placement. More expensive items are usually placed at an adult's eye level, while colorful treats and other products for kids are positioned lower—to catch the attention of children.

    ⒊Time goes by so slowly

    Stores rarely have windows or clocks. With no reference to the outside world, customers can easily lose track of how long they've been there so that they can buy more. Grocery stores may use another trick to control your sense of time: small floor tiles (瓷砖).

For a number of Indians who for over half a century have replayed a race again and again, Milkha Singh's 400 metres final run at the Rome Olympics should be among the greatest heartbreaks in global sporting history. In fact, they hoped it would throw up a different result.

However, continued praise for the man decades later is due to the effort by India's greatest track athlete on that September day in the Italian capital, though he still missed out on becoming India's first Olympic track medallist.

As he was growing up, he used to run barefoot daily on hot sand to school, which was situated 20 kilometres from his house. He thinks this was good training but knows it is not possible to ask children to do this today. However, he does feel that the early identification of talented athletes is also important for India's athletic teams to shine.

India has in the last few years judged success purely in terms of medals, but looking into the past reveals how a more generous generation saluted Milkha as a pioneer. Milkha is India's finest track athlete of all time. He remains the only Indian male to win an individual Commonwealth Games athletics gold—he won the 400 metres at Cardiff in 1958，the first athlete from independent India to do so.

Since retiring from athletics, the former champion athlete has set up the Milkha Singh Charitable Trust, which helps poorer families survive if an athlete in their family has died. A percentage of the profits from the film Bhaag Milkha Bhaag are going to his trust.

Finally, let's read a quote from Milkha himself: "There is no shortcut to success." A scene in the film shows Milkha Singh running with injured feet—this actually happened. "I haven't found an alternative to hard work. You need to be patient, dedicated and true to yourself and your work."

In 1998, people in Na Doi, a quiet village in northwest Thailand, noticed that their fish catches in the nearby Ngao River were declining. The fish they did manage to net were also getting smaller. Together, Na Doi's 75 households decided to try a new solution: they would set aside a small stretch of river to be strictly off-limits to fishing.

The rules are usually simple: no fishing of any kind in an agreed-upon area marked by flags or signs. While freshwater reserves won't solve everything, in places where fish populations are under pressure, they can give species much-needed breathing room to rebuild their numbers, ultimately making them better able to weather other environmental problems.

Na Doi was the second village in the Ngao River valley to adopt this pioneering approach to freshwater fisheries management. Since the late 1990s, at least 50 other villages there have done the same. As a whole, the entirely grassroots-led reserves have been surprisingly successful, according to findings recently published in Nature. Most importantly, the Thailand case provides probably the best real-world proof that fisheries reserves can benefit not just oceans, but freshwater, too

In 2012. Aaron Koning, then a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin, began investigating the Ngao River valley reserves to see how widespread and successful they truly were. Koning found, not surprisingly, that older and bigger reserves were more successful, because they offered more time and space—including more kinds of habitat—in which to rebuild fish populations and re-establish rare species. But even reserves established in the last couple of years showed clear benefits from being spared intense fishing pressure. "Reserves that were located closer to a village tended to have an advantage," Koning says, "probably because villagers were better able to enforce the rules."

By comparing different systems and approaches around the world, Koning and his colleagues hope to identify common factors for success that could be tailored to diverse rivers and lakes.