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.

    It was 3:21 a.m. when nine-year-old Glenn Kreamer awoke to the smell of burning. Except for the cracking(爆烈声) of flames somewhere below there was not a sound in the two-storey house at Baldwin Long Island.

    With his father away on night duty at a local factory, Glenn was worried about the safety of his mother, his sister Karen, 14 and his 12-year-old brother Todd. He ran downstairs through the smoke-filled house to push and pull at Karen and Todd until they sat up. Then he helped each one through the house to the safety of the garden. There, his sister and brother, taking short and quick breaths and coughing, fell down onto the lawn.

    The nine-year-old boy raced back into the house and upstairs to his mother's room. He found it impossible to wake her up. Mrs. Kreamer, a victim of the smoke, was unconscious(昏厥的), and there was nobody to help Glenn carry her to the garden. But the boy remained calm and, as a fireman said later, "acted with all the self-control of a trained adult."

    On the bedroom telephone, luckily still working, Glenn called his father and, leaving Mr. Kreamer to telephone the fire brigade and ambulance service, got on with the task of saving his mother.

    First he filled a bucket with water from the bathroom and threw water over his mother and her bed. Then, with a wet cloth around his head he went back to the garden.

    He could hear the fire engine coming up, but how would the firemen find his mother in the smoke-filled house where flames had almost swallowed up the ground floor?

    Grasping firmly a ball of string(线) from the garage, Glenn raced back into the house and dashed upstairs to his mother's room. Tying one end of the string to her hand, he ran back, laying out the string as he went, through the hall and back out into the garden.

    Minutes later he was telling fire chief John Coughlan, "The string will lead you to mother." Mrs. Kreamer was carried to safety as the flames were breaking through her bedroom floor.

    New York's iconic, blue-green statue of liberty wasn't always green. When the statue was gifted to the US from France in 1885, she was actually a shiny copper color. A new video reveals the chemical reactions involving oxygen and even air pollution that led to her color change from copper to liberty green. The statue of liberty was a gift from France to the US as a way of commemorating the US's fight for independence, as well as their own aspiration for democracy.

    A video, published by the American Chemical Society, explains that the 305-foot (93 meter) statue was built over nine years in sections of copper skin on top of an iron skeleton.

    In her first few decades in the Big Apple, the statue slowly turned from that shiny copper color to a dull brown and the, finally, to the blue-green, or as they'd say back in France, 'verdigris' we see today,' said the video's narrator.

When it changed color, some officials suggested restoring her back to her original color, but after the public protested against this decision, she was left the way she is. The statue's color change was as a result of oxidation reactions between copper and the air. But it was more than one reaction - the color change is due to about 30 years worth of different reactions leading to a mixture of greenish minerals.

    Oxidation reactions happen when an atom loses an electron to another atom.

    In the case of the statue of liberty, her color change was bound to happen due to oxygen in the atmosphere that is 'hungry' for electrons. On top of this, elements of New York City's polluted air added to the color change too.

The first chemical reaction of the color change involved copper giving up electrons to electron-hungry oxygen in the atmosphere. This led to a mineral called cuprite - which is pinkish red.

    Then, cuprite loses even more electrons to oxygen, forming a new mineral（矿物质） called tenorite, which is blackish in color. The black color of tenorite explains why the statue got darker over time, forming a dark brown color.

    Then, further chemical reactions occurred when sulfur（硫） in the atmosphere reacts with oxygen to form sulfur dioxide. Sulfur comes from natural processes such as volcanic eruptions, but also from man-made emissions from boats, cars, airplanes and factories. When sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere reacts with water, it produces sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid forms green minerals with copper oxides, so the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere made the state green over time.

    Added to that, chloride from the sea spray surrounding Ellis Island where the statue is located made the statue even greener.

    The statue stayed this way for over 100 years because the exposed copper is now oxidized and stable, but the statue wouldn't be the same anywhere else.

    Interesting Exhibitions Held in Four Different Museums

    Name: The British Museum

    Phone: 020-7323-8000

    Website: www.britishmuseum.org

    Opening hours: daily 10 a.m.—5:30 p.m.

    Price: Free

    This exhibition aims to show the mysteries of mummification（干尸化）. From a king's daughter to a temple doorkeeper, the displays explore the identities of eight people, using their bodies to discover clues about how they lived. By using new methods, such as CT scanning and 3D visualization, the British Museum has been able to build up a picture of life in the Nile valley over 4,000 years.

    Name: The Fashion and Textile Museum

    Phone: 020-7407-8664

    Website: www.ftmlondon.org

    Opening hours: daily 11 a.m.—5:30p.m.

    Price: £8.80 adults, £5.50 students

    This Fashion and Textile Museum is housing the first-ever exhibition on classic Mexican shawl(披肩), which became famous in the 20th century. Mexican artists, photographers and fashion and textile designers will be exhibiting their colorful works there.

    Name: The Victoria and Albert Museum

    Phone: 020-7907-7073

    Website: www.vam.ac.uk

    Opening hours: Mon, Thur., Sat, Sun, 10 a.m.—5:30 p.m.; Fri. 10 a.m.—10 p.m.

    Price: Free

    The Victoria and Albert Museum has dug out some of their most charming wedding dresses to record their history during the past two centuries. White wedding dresses were made popular by Queen Victoria in the nineteenth century. See beautiful wedding dresses made by famous designers.

    Name: The Science Museum

    Phone: 0870-870-4868

    Website: www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

    Opening hours: daily 10 a.m.—6 p.m.

    Price: Free

    This four-day festival displays the latest exciting gadgets(小机械) and introduces their inventors. Visitors can explore electronics(电子产品), build robots, get hands-on with new technologies and have a go at 3D printing. There will be displays taking place throughout the festival, which is suitable for anyone aged ten and over.

    In many American schools the holiday celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is used as an opportunity to teach children about his life and legacy. But in too many of those same schools, Black children's extraordinary talents are still being wasted today. Nearly three-quarters of Black fourth and eighth grade public school students cannot read or compute at grade level. Black students made up only 18 percent of students in public schools in 2009-2010 but were 40 percent of students who received one or more out-of-school suspensions (暂被停学). A Black public school student is suspended every four seconds. Black students are more than twice as likely to drop out of school as White students. Each school day 763 Black high school students drop out.

    So I applaud the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice for their recent action to address harmful school discipline policies that push so many thousands of black children out of school each year and into the juvenile (青少年) justice and adult prison pipeline. If the education system is to do its part in replacing it with a cradle to college, career and success pipeline, we must end the current practice where children in the greatest need are suspended from school mostly for nonviolent offenses.

    These resources, officially known as "guidance," will help schools and districts meet their legal responsibility to protect students from discrimination (歧视) on the basis of race, color or national origin as required under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As we recognize the 50^th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and so many other important hard-won victories in the Civil Rights Movement this year, we must remember those victories could be lost without meaningful enforcement of the laws advocates fought so hard to win half a century ago.

    While the guidance does not prohibit (禁止) schools or districts from using any particular nondiscriminatory policy, it does call into question some policies that have historically excluded Black students and are of questionable educational value including "zero tolerance" discipline policies which require mandatory (强制的) consequences for certain infractions (违反), and policies that prevent students from returning to school after completion of a court sentence.

    Information of the new guidance recommendations is available at this government website for almost every school and district in the country. Check your own school district now to see whether the discipline policy is focused on creating a positive school climate and preventing misbehavior, whether consequences are clear, appropriate and consistent, and whether there is a commitment to fairness in the application of discipline.

    When I was six, Dad brought home a dog one day, who was called “Brownie". My brothers and I all loved Brownie and did different things with her. One of us would walk her, another would feed her, then there were baths, playing catch and many other games, Brownie, in return, loved each and every one of us. One thing that most touched my heart was that she would go to whoever was sick and just be with them, we always felt better when she was around.

    One day, as I was getting her food, she chewed up(咬破)one of Dad's shoes, which had to be thrown away in the end. I knew Dad would be mad and I had to let her know what she did was wrong. When I looked at her and said, "Bad girl," she looked down at the ground and then went and hid. I saw a tear in her eyes.

    Brownie turned out to be more than just our family pet, she went everywhere with us. People would stop and ask if they could pet her. Of course she'd let anyone pet her. She was just the most lovable dog. There were many times when we'd be out walking and a small child would come over and pull her hair. she never barked(吠) or tried to get away. Funny thing is she would smile. This frightened people because they thought she was showing her teeth. Far from the truth, she loves everyone.

(Now many years have passed since Brownie died of old age. I still miss days when she was with us.)