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.

    According to a recent survey on money and relationships, 36% of people are keeping a bank account from their partner. While this financial unfaithfulness may appear as distrust in a relationship, in truth it may just be a form of financial protection.

    With almost half of all marriages ending in divorce, men and women are realizing they need to be financially savvy, regardless of whether they are in a relationship.

    The financial hardship on individuals after a divorce can be extremely difficult, even more so when children are involved. The lack of permanency in relationships, jobs and family life may be the cause of a growing trend to keep a secret bank account hidden from a partner, in other words, an "escape fund".

    Margaret's story is far from unique. She is a representative of a growing number of women in long-term relationships who are becoming protective of their own earnings. Every month on pay day, she banks hundreds of dollars into a savings account she keeps from her husband. She has been doing this throughout their six-year marriage and has built a nest egg worth an incredible $100,000. Margaret says if her husband found about her secret savings he'd be hurt and would take this as a sign that she wasn't sure of the marriage. "He'd think it was my escape fund so that financially I could afford to get out of the relationship if it went wrong. I know you should approach marriage as being forever and I hope ours is, but you can never be sure."

    Like many of her fellow secret savers, Margaret was hurt in a former relationship and has since been very guarded about her own money.

    Coming clean to your partner about being a secret saver may not be all that bad. Take Colleen for example, who had been saving secretly for a few years before she confessed (坦白) to her partner. "I decided to open a savings account and start building a nest egg of my own. I wanted to prove to myself that I could put money in the bank and leave it there for a rainy day."

    From ancient stories to modern researches, the label（标签）attached to being left-handed is undeniable. Left-handed people, or "lefties" as they are often called, are generally believed to be good at art — Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso and Michelangelo are all left-handed.

    Our brain is divided into two parts: the left hemisphere(大脑半球)and the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere, linked to logic and analysis, is responsible for the right side of the body. The right hemisphere, linked to creativity and imagination, controls the left side of the body. So, people tend to believe lefties are controlled by the right side of the brain, and are more creative than right-handers. Some also think that lefties may not be as good as right-handers in mathematics and problem-solving skills.

    However; a recent study carried out by scientists from the University of Liverpool in the UK and the University of Milan in Italy proved this theory wrong. The study involved(涉及)more than 2,300 students in Italy aged between 6 and 17 years old. They were asked to complete several mathematical tasks of different levels. It turned out the left-handers outperformed the others when the tasks involved difficult problem-solving. This pattern was particularly clear in male adolescents. However; when it came to simple arithmetic, there was no difference between left-handers and right-handers.

    It was also discovered that those who are "severely" right-handed performed less well in all the experiments compared to "medium" right-handers and left-handers.

    "Taken together, these findings show that handedness does influence abilities to some degree," the study's authors wrote. However, "handedness is just an indirect expression of brain function," wrote psychology professor Giovanni Sala from the University of Liverpool in the UK, the lead author of the study. Sala also noted that only one third of people with a highly-developed right side of the brain are left-handed. It means that there are lots of right-handed people with a similar brain function as left-handers.

    The great-grandmother is learning English with the help of her family when she is at the age of 91. She hopes to use the language at next year's Olympic Games in Tokyo. Takamizawa was one of the more than 200, 00 people who requested to volunteer for Tokyo's 2020 Games. English is not required for service, but it is a useful skill for volunteers to have.

    But Takamizawa had not been able to learn the language when she was young. Takamizawa said that she was in high school when World War Two started. She said, "In my second year there, English was banned because it was the enemy language."

    Takamizawa said her grandchildren helped persuade her that she was not too old to learn. "When I talked to my grandchildren about my wish, they said, 'It's not too late. We will teach you one word a day' ". Natsuko is Takamizawa's granddaughter and main English teacher. Natsuko sends a new English word to her grandmother's phone every day. They also often work together directly on phrases that Takamizawa will need for the Olympics. "Welcome to Tokyo, this is the Olympic stadium, how can I help you?" Takamizawa answers when asked to say an English phrase she has learned. Natsuko explains that she wanted to give her grandmother something to enjoy. "I can clearly see her English is getting better. It's my joy now."

    The EF English Proficiency Index is a measure of the level of English spoken in a country. Japan ranks 49th among countries where English is not the first language. This situation is slowly changing as younger generations welcome English. However, Takamizawa believes real change will not happen unless Japanese people become more open to the rest of the world. With around 500 days to go until the games begin, the whole Takamizawa family is ready to welcome the world to Tokyo.

    Have you ever taken a test that you thought you could have passed easily, only to make some silly mistakes that really hurt your grade? More than a few students have done that. And some seem to do it over and over again.

    There are several problem areas that can cause students to goof up or do poorly in a test that they could have passed.

    Some students can become overconfident in their knowledge of the subject matter. They think they know the material better than they actually do. It is easy for students to misjudge their own knowledge, and when they realize that they don't know the material, it is too late.

    What happens more often, though, is that some students feel they are smart enough to be able to guess their way through a test. So they don't bother studying the material. They are overconfident in their ability to figure things out.

    In either case, overconfidence can result in lower grades in tests. Does this apply to you?

    Another thing that can happen is that students underestimate (低估) the difficulty of the test. They expect an easy test, but the teacher throws in a real tough test that they haven't prepared for. Sometimes the teacher may cover material in the test that students weren't expecting. That can happen, especially if you weren't paying attention in class.

    Finally, there are students who don't feel that getting a good grade is important to them, so they don't bother to study or even try to do well. Such students may be trying to punish their parents, have a poor image of themselves, or are just plain foolish. Hopefully, you are not one of these students.

    It started during a yoga class. She felt a strange pull on her neck, a feeling completely foreign to her. Her friend suggested she rush to the emergency room. It turned out that she was having a heart attack.

    She didn't share similar symptoms with someone who was likely to have a heart attack. She exercised, watched her plate and did not smoke. But on reviewing her medical history, I found that her cholesterol (胆固醇) level was sky-high. She had been prescribed a cholesterol-lowering statin (他汀) medication, but she never picked up the prescription because of the scary things she had read about statins on the Internet. She was the victim of fake medical news.

    While misinformation has been the object of great attention in politics, medical misinformation might lead to an increase in deaths. As is true with fake news in general, medical lies tend to spread further than truths on the Internet—and they have very real bad consequences.

    False medical information can also lead to patients experiencing greater side effects through the "nocebo effect (反安慰剂效应) ". Sometimes patients benefit from an intervention (干预) simply because they believe they will—that's the placebo effect (安慰剂效应). The nocebo effect is the opposite. Patients can experience harmful effects because they anticipate them. This is very true of statins. In blinded trials, patients who get statins are no more likely to report feeling muscle aches than patients who get a placebo. Yet, in clinical practice, according to one study, almost a fifth of patients taking statins report side effects, leading many to discontinue the drugs.

    What else is on the fake news hit list? As always, vaccines (疫苗) . False concerns that the vaccine may cause side effects have greatly reduced coverage rates.

    Cancer is another big target for pushers of medical misinformation—many of whom refuse alternative therapies. "Though most people think cancer tumors are bad, they're actually the way your body attempts to contain the harmful cells," one fake news story reads. It warns that prescription medications lead to the uncontrolled cell mutations (变异) .

    Silicon Valley needs to face this problem. I am not a free-speech lawyer, but when human health is at risk, perhaps search engines, social media platforms and websites should be held responsible for promoting or hosting fake information. Meanwhile, journalists should do a better job of spreading accurate information.