Almost everybody in America will spend a part of his or her life behind a shopping cart(购物手推车). They will, in a lifetime, push thechrome-plated contraptionsmany miles. But few will know—or even think to ask—who it was that invented them.

Sylvan N. Goldman invented the shopping cart in 1937. At that time he was in the supermarket business. Every day he would see shoppers lugging(吃力地携带) groceries around in baskets they had to carry.

One day Goldman suddenly had the idea of putting baskets on wheels. The wheeled baskets would make shopping much easier for his customers, and would help to attract more business.

On June 4, 1937, Goldman’s first carts were ready for use in his market. He was terribly excited on the morning of that day as customers began arriving. He couldn’t wait to see them using his invention.

But Goldman was disappointed. Most shoppers gave the carts a long look, but hardly anybody would give them a try.

After a while, Goldman decided to ask customers why they weren’t using his carts. “Don’t you think this arm is strong enough to carry a shopping basket?” one shopper replied.

But Goldman wasn’t beaten yet. He knew his carts would be a great success if only he could persuade people to give them a try. To this end, Goldman hired a group of people to push carts around his market and pretend they were shopping! Seeing this, the real customers gradually began copying the phony(假冒的) customers.

As Goldman had hoped, the carts were soon attracting larger and larger numbers of customers to his market. But not only did more people come—those who came bought more. With larger, easier-to-handle baskets, customers unconsciously bought a greater number of items than before.

Today’s shopping carts are five times larger than Goldman’s original model. Perhaps that’s one reason Americans today spend more than five times as much money on food each year as they did before 1937—before the coming of the shopping cart.

                                                         Made In The USA: An Export Boom

In his State of the Union address two years ago, President Obama argued that in order to recover from the economic recession(经济衰退), one of the few things the U. S. needed to do was to export more goods around the world. That night, the president unveiled(公开) a new goal: to double U. S. exports over the next five years. It would be an increase that the president said would “support two million jobs in America.”

Most economists dismissed the promise at the time as something unrealistic, but two years later, the U. S. is on pace to meet that goal. American exports are up 34 percent since the president gave that speech, and the number continues to rise.

Competitive In A Global Market

Marlin Steel, a metal working business in Baltimore, makes parts that ship all across the world. “We export to 36 countries，” owner Drew Greenblatt tells All Things Considered Host Guy Raz. “We're working around the clock, and we're growing.”

It's not just advanced manufacturing exports on the rise, but pork, cattle and all kinds of agricultural exports are up as well. Even American craft beer has found an export market.

Flying Dog CEO Jim Caruso says that increasingly, people all over the world are trying the beer from the Maryland-based brewery（啤酒厂）. Caruso says，“Even in those top beer-producing countries, a competitive American product is finding a market.”

Services Are Exports, Too

Another place exports are coming from is New York City—in particular, the 30th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper on 5th Avenue and 52nd Street. That's where the consulting firm Kurt Solomon lies. It doesn't actually produce a product for export; it provides management advice and strategy.

“Four out of every five Americans is now employed in the service industry，” the nation's top trade official, Ron Kirk says, “Services are a significant part of our exports, and make up about a quarter of our exported goods.” These services can include everything from legal consulting, finance, information technology and even engineering.

And There Are Other Factors

So why has there been an increase of more than 30 percent for exports in almost everything? Part of the increase, at least for the manufacturing side, is due to better technology, says Tyler Cowen, an economist. “A lot of it is being driven by smart machines，” he tells Raz，“The U. S. has high wage rates, which is a disadvantage, but if machines are doing a lot of the work, that doesn't matter.”

China factors a lot in America's export economy, too. “Wages in China have been going up as the country becomes more productive. Thus China is losing the cheap labor advantage it has held for some time.” Cowen says.

Will Jobs Grow, too?

“Companies have become more productive by dismissing workers and lowering costs.” Cowen says. “So I don't view exporting as a way of creating a very large number of jobs, but it will create more profits.”

So not every business or worker is necessarily benefiting from the export boom in the U. S., and Cowen says that could ultimately lead to a polarization (两极) of economic outcomes.

Made In the USA: An Export Boom

For thousands of years,the most important two buildings in any British village have been thechurch and the pub. In fact,until a place has a church and a pub，it isn’t really considered acommunity worthy of a name. Traditionally,the church and the pub are at the heart of any villageor town, since it is where people gather to give and receive news. In fact, the word‘pubˈ is shortfor public house.

Thatˈs how it used to be, but things are beginning to change. It is said that the creditdecline is causing39British pubs a week to go out of business. People don’t have lots of sparemoney to spend on beer. Recently, the UK government banned smoking in all pubs, and that mayalso have affected the number of customers going to pubs.

This decline is happening despite the fact thatin recent yearsthe UK governmenthasstarted to allowpubs to stay open after11p. m. Previously,with11p. m. as closing time,customers would haveto drink quite quickly,meaning they sometimes got more drunk than they would if allowed to drinkslowly. The British habit of drinking a lot very quickly is known as“binge drinking“,and it causes some long-term health problems for people and problems with violent crime forcommunities. The UK government is changing the law to discourage binge drinking, and regularlyspends money on television advertisements to warn people of the problems of drinking too much.

In order to save their businesses, pubs are trying to change with the market. Now, there area number of different types of pubs.

As you can see, British pubs now offer something for everyone. A lot of pubs used to be
working menˈs clubs, meaning that women could not usually enter. Today, however, women canfreely enter99%of pubs without experiencing any problems. Perhaps things are changing for thebetter after all.

Job stress hits students

As the job－hunting season kicks off, many graduates are suffering from anxiety. Job interview results are becoming the most common conversation topic in dormitories. Worried about not getting satisfactory offers, some students have sleep problems, or lose their appetite. Some might even  display symptoms of depression.

According to a survey across several universities in Wuhan conducted by Wuhan Yangtze Business University, over 72 percent of student participants were worried about finding a job. Students in the first one or two years were also uneasy about their job prospects, which contributed to spreading anxiety further.

Lang Lei, 22, a business major from Renmin University in Beijing, admitted having mood swings when job hunting. The student hoped to get positions with large state－owned enterprises in his hometown of Yantai, Shandong. But when it turned out that things wouldn't be so easy, Lang became concerned. After some struggling moments, he has now changed to more realistic goals.

Others feel tortured(受折磨)  while waiting for interview results. Mo Tong, a senior software  engineering major at South China Normal University, would fall into a nervous state every time after he attended a job interview.

“For a day or two I couldn't help but keep thinking about how I performed in front of the interviewers, how well I dealt with their questions, and whether they would consider giving me a chance in the end，” Mo was unable to focus on other things as his anxiety grew.

Media reports about rising unemployment rates and a difficult job market have touched students' nerves.

“I'm alarmed by articles saying how bachelor's degree holders are losing ground，” said Wang Hongjuan, a sophomore English major from Putian University in Fujian province. “It suggests to me that good jobs are only available to graduate or doctoral students.”

As Wang has no plans to further her education, she has to commit herself to all sorts of extracurricular activities to improve her prospects. This throws her into a packed schedule.

Wen Fang, a well－known education psychology expert and consultant in Beijing, advises students not to be misled by depressing surveys and reports about the job market. “Unemployment rates are not linked to an individual's chances of getting a job，” he said. “An individual's chances are actually mainly determined by his or her capability.”

According to Wen, a moderate degree of anxiety  is normal—it can even be helpful.  But if it constantly affects a student's normal life, one should pay more attention. “Focus on adapting yourself to the needs of society, and never ever overestimate your goals，” Wen added.

Nobody is allowed to eat pizza near Christopher Merrett－just the smell of it can be deadly for the two-year-old, who has a severe allergy (过敏反应) to dairy products (奶制品).

    Mrs. Merrett said she first realized something was wrong with her son when she stopped feeding him with her milk at six months old and moved onto cows’ milk.

She said her son spent three weeks in hospital after sitting in a supermarket trolley (手推车) which had tiny traces of milk in it. She said, “It looked clean. We put him there and within minutes his feet and hands had gone blue and we knew there was something dreadfully wrong. We realized then he must have put his fingers in his mouth after touching the trolley and it must have previously had some sort of milk product on it.”

Mrs. Merrett added, “We cannot have pizza when he is in the house. I remember going to Pizza Hut for my daughter’s birthday and Christopher began to cough as soon as we got there.”

Mrs. Merrett, who took time off her job to care for her son, and her husband Michael, 47, have spent hours reading ingredients labels (成分标签) and carrying out hard research on the Internet, trying to find suitable food that their son can eat.

Because Christopher’s allergies are so severe that the couple has prepared an entire cupboard for his food. He also has his own shelf in the fridge and oven.

    Little Christopher was taken out of nursery school when he was given cheese by accident and he ended up in hospital. His mother now worries about what could happen when he eventually goes to school.

(no more than 20 words)

The latest attack on the Internet and on computers in general is Nicholas Carr’s writing, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.”

Carr and other digital alarmists make a case that seems reasonable, at least on the surface. They argue that Internet communication tools trap us in a shallow culture of constant interruption as we crazily tweet, text and e-mail. This in turn leaves us little time for deep reading, reflection and serious conversation — activities traditionally thought to build knowledge and wisdom.

The alarmists use the concept of “neural plasticity(神经可塑性)” and talk of technology “reshaping” the brain to convince us that the new distractions make us not just less willing but less able, on a physiological level, to focus.

Whenever you hear that something is changing your brain, you ought to be worried — or at least the person telling you wants you to be worried. But does a cultural change like this necessarily lead to a fundamental change to the brain?

The appeals to neural plasticity, backed by studies showing that new changes can reorganize the brain, are largely irrelevant. The basic plan of the brain’s “shaping” is genetically determined long before a child discovers Facebook and Twitter. There is simply no experimental evidence to show that living with digital culture fundamentally changes brain organization in a way that affects one’s ability to focus. Of course, the brain changes any time we form a memory or learn a new skill, but new skills build on our existing capacities without fundamentally changing them. We will no more lose our ability to pay attention than we will lose our ability to listen, see or speak.

The idea that the Internet might make us shallower has some instant appeal, because it is easy to see how the cognitive performance of people around us drops when they are distracted. But the notion that prolonged focus and deep reading mark the best path to wisdom and insight is just an assumption, one that may be an accidental consequence of the printing press existing before the computer. To book authors like us it seems a weird notion, but it is possible that spending 10 or more hours engaged in a single text might not be the most favorable way for building brainpower.

So don’t be afraid of the digital era. Google is not making us stupid, PowerPoint is not destroying literature, and the Internet is not really changing our brains.

Social Networking and Its Effect

Social networking has become an unquestionable part of our everyday lives. Those who have a life on the Internet do not always realize that they are losing their connections with the real world. Nowadays, a reputation online is more important. Some are even finding a way to make a living online. Social media seems to have quite the impact, especially on teenagers.

Years ago, before social networking existed, friends would go out and have a good time, and popularity in high school would be something of importance to a lot of people. Today, popularity means having a lot of followers on Twitter or Tumblr. Tumblr has its own way of creating “celebrities”. Users are considered “Tumblr famous” if they have a high number of followers. Websites make us think that greatness is achieved just because thousands of strangers are familiar with your face. Popularity is not about having a lot of friends anymore; it is just about being known for absolutely nothing.

Social networking has its positives, considering it allows us to connect with friends and family in a matter of seconds. Although this is extremely useful, it is also destroying our ability to make real life conversations. People are attacked over the Internet, but do not say a word to each other in person. Social media is preventing us from standing up for ourselves the way we should be. Facebook limits our conversations that we have with people, which is why it is always better to strike up a conversation in person instead of through a computer screen. Social networking destroys the true meaning of human interaction.

Teens are finding new ways to make a living out of advertisements that they post on their social networking pages. Social networks allow them to make money without even getting up off the couch. Being out in the real world and working creates ways to communicate and is a crucial part of life, but that will be destroyed if young teens think it is okay to just make money through social media. Social networking makes things easier, but that does not always mean that it makes things better.

Social networking affects young lives and causes teens to grow up differently from how their older relatives have. They rely on their blogs and pages to communicate with people, keep up with the latest trends and enjoy their separate little world. Social media has ruined how life should be: fun, adventurous and exciting. Instead, it has turned most teenagers into anti-social couch potatoes. There needs to be a break from social networking so young people can once again live a real life in the real world.

Time

Traveling with pets will take longer and will have unexpected turns. In reality, forgetting about time means leaving impatience behind. Don’t be in a rush. Your pets will require more extra stops than you will, and they’ll often surprise you with unexpected delays. Plan on leaving early and arriving later and you’ll be right on time.

Anger

Getting angry at the delay (延误) will only make matters worse. Your feelings can add unnecessary stresses to you and your pets’ travel experience. If you feel yourself becoming out of control, stop and take a deep breath. Your pets have little control over their emotions, bowel movements, or motion sickness when traveling. Remember to be kind and understanding at all times, especially when under pressure.

Work Attitude

This may seem like a no-brainer, but when you are traveling, leave your work attitude behind. Traveling is not a task to be accomplished; it can be an enjoyable and memorable experience for both you and your pets as long as you have the right attitude.

Control

Part of the joy of traveling with pets is dealing with the unexpected. You can’t control everything and trying to do so will only end in frustration (挫败) and anger. Knowing that things will happen beyond your control will bring great relief to you and your pets. Messes happen; accidents happen. Once you accept that, traveling with your pets will be far easier to manage.

Selfishness

Traveling with pets often requires an extreme amount of selflessness. Your pets rely on you to take care of their needs, and sometimes you will need to put their needs before your own. Leave your selfish ambitions behind when traveling with your pets. They need your attention and care more than anything else because of the stresses and strains of traveling.

Traveling with pets can and will be a joy if you remember to leave these five items behind. It can be difficult at times to handle, but the traveling will go well if you can manage to do so.

Traveling with pets