A small group of people around the world have started implanting(移植) microchips to link the body and the computer.

    Mr. Donelson and three friends, who had driven 100 miles from their homes in Loockport, New York, to have the implants put in by Dr. Jesse Villemaire, whom they had persuaded to do the work, are part of a small group, about 30 people around the world, who have independently put in microchips into their bodies, according to Web-based reports.

    At a shop William Donelson was having a four-millimeter-wide needle put into his left hand. “I'm set,”he said with a deep breath. He watched as the needle pierced(刺穿) the fleshy webbing between his thumb and a microchip was set under his skin. At last he would be able to do what he had long imagined: strengthen his body's powers through technology.

    By putting the chip inside—a radio frequency identification device (RFID)—Mr. Donelson would have at his fingertips the same magic that makes safety gates open with a knock of a card, and bridge and tunnel traffic flow smoothly with an E-Zpass. With a wave of his hand he plans to connect with his computer, open doors and unlock his car.

    Implanting the chip was relatively simple task but very meaningful to Mr. Doneselson, a 21-year-old computer networking student so interested in the link between technology and the body that he has data-input jacks(数据输入插空) inside his body. They might lead to an imagined future when people can be connected directly into computers. His new chip is enclosed in a glass container no bigger than a piece of rice and has a small memory where he has stored the words “Technology”.

    Some doctors have done the piercing in people's homes, and others have implanted chips in their offices after patients signed forms showing the fact that long-term studies have not been done on their safety. Piercers treat the implants much like any other medical operation steps, instructing people to keep the site dry, and advising them that swelling and redness should last a week.

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    Don't you hate it when someone snubs（冷落）you by looking at their phone instead of paying  attention? The word “Phubbing”, which comes from “phone” and “snub”, describes such behavior. With popularization of smart phones, we see a new "Phubbing" group everywhere in public places: in subway, restaurants, roads, people are checking the mobile phone, ignoring the people around completely. What is worrying us is that not only young people, but also the elderly and kids are getting addicted（上瘾）to Phubbing.

    On Dec 29th, a 28-year-old woman—a mother of two in Wenzhou, drowned after she fell into a river while looking at her mobile phone. A Pakistani man was killed on Dec 15th, 2015, after being hit by a fast moving train while trying to take a selfie (自拍)with it on the track. Last month, Justin, a college student was shot in subway in San Francisco, the U.S. The surveillance(监控)video showed that before Justin was killed, the killer pulled out the gun several times, and even wiped his nose with it. However, nobody noticed that. The surrounding passengers all focused on their cell phones.

    Phone is the tool for communication, but now it distances people and makes them separated from each other. Therefore, someone jokes “the furthest distance in the world is not the distance between life and death, but that you don't know I stand in front of you while you focus on the mobile.”

    Phubbing appears harmless; however, it does affect our life. 23-year-old Alex from Melbourne wrote in his blog: "I can no longer focus on what I am eating since I started twittering. My skill of food photography has improved very fast, while my interest in food drops a lot as a result."

    For students at The Farm School in Hamilton, Virginia, the classroom is outside-every day.

Jaclyn Jenkins is a founder of the school. "The number one question immediately we get from parents is 'what happens if it rains?' And we say, 'Bring an extra pair of clothes!'" Jenkins adds, "We still educate them. They also get energy. Their brains are working when they're moving. So, our goal is to always be outside."

    The Farm School is a preschool-a place for three-and four-year-olds to learn and play. Teacher Alison Huff has taught at other schools. She says The Farm School gives its students more of a hands-on learning experience. For example, children use pumpkins to learn about colors and counting. They learn about measurements by planting seeds 30 centimeters apart. Huff says "We can use everything a regular preschool uses, but out in the garden."

Apart from planting vegetables and fruits, students help prepare food and clean up afterward. The school teaches the children to cook using the food they have grown. "They can see the advantages of what they have in the garden and taste it then instead of going to the grocery store and buying it," Huff says.

    The preschoolers also lean words in languages other than English. Huff speaks in both English and Spanish. Her assistant speaks French and Arabic. She adds that a 3-year-old in her class speaks four different languages.

    Farm animals are also an important part of the education program. Jaclyn Jenkins says the children learn about a different animal every month. Two months ago, she says, that animal was a cow. The children spent another month with a large bird-a turkey.

    The children come home with new experiences, new knowledge and sometimes a few vegetables.

    Plants are living things. So can they feel pain? Plants don't feel pain the same way animals and people do, says Anke Steppuhn. She is a scientist at the Free University of Berlin in Germany. "What we define as pain usually has to do with a nervous system," Steppuhn explains. When you put your hand too close to a hot stove, nerve cells send a signal to your brain. Your brain decodes (解码) that signal as pain. This causes you to pull your hand away before any serious damage is done.

    Plants don't have nerves or brains, so they can't feel pain like we do. "But plants do recognize when something is hurting them," Steppuhn says. Because they are rooted to the ground, they can't escape a dangerous situation. So they need other ways of fighting back.

    The biggest threat to a plant's life is getting eaten. Some plants grow sharp little hairs. Other plants produce bad-tasting or even harmful chemicals. These force an attacker to abandon its meal. A plant called bittersweet nightshade does something even smarter, Steppuhn found. When a slug (蛞蝓) chews holes in a nightshade' s leaf, liquid begins dripping (滴) around the wound. It is almost as if the plant were bleeding. The liquid is sugary nectar (花蜜), and it happens to be a favorite food of ants. In their effort to collect the nectar, the ants swarm (蜂拥而至) all over the injured plant. They will attack anything that stands in their way. That includes the slug that damaged the plant in the first place. It's a very clever trick. Whenever a slug attacks a plant, the plant calls an army of ants to kill the slug.

    Nectar isn't the only way plants attract bodyguards. They also release certain chemicals into the air when they are being eaten. People usually can't detect these smells. But wasps (黄蜂) can. When a wasp detects this cry for help, it races to the scene of the crime. If it finds the right kind of insect chewing down on the plant, the wasp will interrupt the attacker's meal. It will do this by laying eggs inside the insect's body!

    If you have a chance to go to Finland, you will probably be surprised to find how "foolish" the Finnish people are.

    Take the taxi drivers for example. Taxis in Finland are mostly high-class Benz with a fare of two US dollars a kilometer. You can go anywhere in one, tell the driver to drop you at any place, say that you have some business to attend to, and then walk off without paying your fare. The driver would not show the least sign of anxiety.

    The dining rooms in all big hotels not only serve their guests, but also serve outside diners. Hotel guests have their meals free, so they naturally go to the free dining rooms to have their meals. The most they would do to show their good faith is to wave their registration card to the waiter. With such a loose check, you can easily use any old registration card to take a couple of friends to dine free of charge.

The Finnish workers are paid by the hour. They are very much on their own as soon as they have agreed with the boss on the rate. From then on they just say how many hours they have worked and they will be paid accordingly.

    With so many loopholes in everyday life, surely Finland must be a heaven to those who love to take "petty advantages". But the strange thing is, all the taxi passengers would always come back to pay their fare after they have attended to their business; not a single outsider has ever been found in the free hotel dining rooms. And workers always give an honest account of the exact hours they put in. As the Finns always act on good faith in everything they do, living in such a society has turned everyone into a real "gentleman".

"Having the world at our fingertips" is a metaphor often used when we put our hands on information technology, like smartphones and computers. This is a good metaphor. But what is much better is how we use our hands to make things done.

Put one hand flat on a surface, palm down, and you might be able to make out the outline of 14 short bones in your thumb and fingers, in addition to 5 longer ones in your palm that are jointed to your wrist. These bones give each hand its rigid, knuckled structure. Together they're critical components of the anatomical （解剖的） architecture that allows your hand to move. At each of your fingertips there's an ever-growing, translucent plate of fibrous protein, otherwise known as a nail. Although they're nice for decoration, your nails protect and enhance your sensitivity to touch, too.

Imagine squeezing a piece of paper between your thumb and index finger, for example. We use this type of forceful pad-to-pad precision grasping without thinking about it, and literally in no time. Yet it was a breakthrough in human evolution. Other primates （灵长目动物） exhibit some kinds of precision grasps in the handling and use of objects, but not with the kind of efficiency that our hand does.

With a unique combination of traits, the human hand shaped history. No question, stone tools couldn't have become a keystone of human technology without hands that could do the job, along with a nervous （神经的） system that could regulate and coordinate the necessary signals. Even for those who have never attempted to make a spear tip or arrowhead from a rock, it's obvious that it would require strong grasps, constant rotation and repositioning, careful strikes with another hard object. And even for those who have done so, it can be a bloody business.

Of course, the most common object that people touch nowadays is a screen. And the tap-tap-tap movement of our fingers is a unique human ability, as no other primate can move their fingers as rapidly and independently as we do. Here again, we can thank the extraordinary human brain given that normal finger tapping requires the functional integrity of different parts of our central nervous system.