Despite the fact that the Queen is currently alive and well, a secret plan has already been laid out for her death.

A code word has already been decided upon to deliver the news of her passing to the highest tiers of the government.

While the death of George Ⅵ was signalled by the words "Hyde Park Corner"— to stop operators at Buckingham Palace learning the news-the equivalent(相等的) word for Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ is "London Bridge is down".

The Prime Minister at the time will be woken, if not already awake, and informed by civil servants that "London Bridge is down”.

These words will signify the Queen has passed away, and that Operation London Bridgc-a highlyorganised set of arrangemcnts is to start.

The Foreign Office's Global Response Centre, located at an undisclosed location in London , will then immediately inform 15 governments outside the UK where the Queen is also the head of state. After this, the centre will pass on the news to the 36 other nations of the Commonwealth(英联邦) for whom the Queen has served as a symbolic figurehead for many decades.

It will not be long before the news spreads from world leaders to the general public, with the news of her passing to the Press Association and thus the global media as well.

This marks a brcak from the long-held tradition of the BBC being the first news outlet to learn of royal deaths. What's more, while George Ⅵ's death was not announced until four hours after he died, news of the Queen's death will be far more instant.

A footman in mourning clothes will be sent out of the door at Buckingham Palace at the same time to pin a notice of the news to the gates, while the official palace website will feature just one page, letting out the news on a dark background.

Many shopping malls now have special areas that offer shoppers their first chance to experience "VR Technology". You may have entered one out of curiosity, or you may think it is just another piece of useless technology. Whatever your opinion, VR , or virtual(虚拟的) reality, is going to become a bigger part of our lives very soon.

2016 saw the introduction of many fancy products in the world of VR, including Microsoft's HoloLens and Samsung's Gear VR. All of them offer an exciting look at the new "realities" and opportunities that VR brings.

These, however, are the early days of a technology that is expected to go from strength to strength. And 2017 looks like it is going to be the year in which VR technology really takes off.

For a start, using VR will become more normal in 2017. Microsoft and Intel have already discussed their plans for simpler and less expensive VR headsets.

"The idea of VR will stop being a scifi (science-fiction) idea, and instead it will turn into an industry of real products used as ways to show off imagination," said Andrew, a designer at US VR Company, Survios.

It is also expected that VR products will play a part in more common and real-life fields like fashion and film. For example, to enjoy the atmosphere and energy of the front row experience at a fashion show, fans will no longer have to go along in the flesh. Instead, people will be ahle to enjoy the experience by just wearing a VR headset at home.

You can also expect VR mirrors and fitting-rooms sooner rather than later. "This is an especially good opportunity for brands looking to offer very personalized experiences, said Roy DeYoung from US-based marketing agency, PMX.

As time goes on, there will be less discussion about whether people will accept VR technology. It will simply be a discussion of when.

Do you like spicy food?

What’s your opinion on spicy food? Some people cannot handle even the smallest amount of chili-red pepper-in their dinner while others can’t get enough of it.

Scientists have long been puzzled by why some people love chili while others loathe it. Plenty of research has been done on the subject, dating as far back as the 1970s. Previous results showed that a love of chili is related to childhood experiences, and cultural influences affect our taste buds too. But the latest study has found that a person’s love of spicy food may be linked to his or her personality more than anything else, CBC News reported.

‘We have always assumed that liking drives intake-we eat what we like and we like what we eat. But no one has actually directly bothered to connect these personality traits with intake of chili peppers,’ said Professor John Hayes from Pennsylvania State University, who led the study.

But before you look at the study, you should first know that “spicy” is not a taste, unlike sour, sweet, bitter and salty. It is, in fact, a burning sensation that you feel on the surface of your tongue. This got scientists thinking that maybe a love of spicy food is brought about by people’s longing for thrill, something they usually get from watching action movies or riding a roller coaster.

In the study, 97 participants, both male and female, were asked to fill out questionnaires about certain traits of their personality, for example, whether they like new experiences or tend to avoid risks. They were then given a glass of water with capsaicin, the plant chemical that makes a chili burn, mixed into it.

By comparing the answers to the questionnaire and what participants said they felt about the spicy water, researchers found that those who tended to enjoy action movies or take risks were about six times more likely to enjoy the spicy water.

Interestingly, we used to believe that the reason some people can withstand spicy food is that their tongues have become less sensitive to it. However, this latest study has found otherwise. “It’s not that it doesn’t burn as badly, it’s that you actually learn to like the burn,” Hayes explained.

By the end of last year, a British woman had failed her driving theory(理论) test 110 times. But the woman is not giving up just yet. It is hard to believe that the 30-year-old, from Southwark, southeast London, has failed the test three times — taking her total number of unsuccessful attempts（尝试）to a record 113. This year, the price of the test was lowered from ￡31 a time to￡25. Amazingly, if she had started sitting the exam at the age of 17, she would have sat it more than eight times a year for the past 13 years.

Although no other learner has come close to the woman’s number of attempts to pass her driving theory test, several seem to be trying their best. A 30-year-old man from Peterborough has failed the theory test 86 times. A 27-year-old man from Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire, Wales, and a 39-year-old man from London have both failed their 66th attempt to pass the exam this year. And a 47-year-old man from Reading has struggled through 61 tests without any luck.

Research shows that although men are said to be around six percent more likely to pass the practical（实践的）driving test than women, they are six percent less likely to pass their theory test. Even when learners manage to pass the theory test, some still struggle to master the practical exam and have to spend a lot of money on it.

For example, one middle-aged man forked out at least￡2,294 sitting the practical driving test — a record of 36 times before, thankfully, passing at his 37th attempt. The practical driving test, which lasts about 40 minutes, costs￡62 to take on a weekday or￡75 on an evening, weekend or holiday. It is generally considered more difficult than the theory test.

Some of the world’s most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO( United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying(联合) voice across cultures.

Despite the celebrations, though, in the U.S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger generations.

It’s Jason Moran’s job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center’s artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.

“Jazz seems like it’s not really a part of the American appetite,” Moran tells National Public Radio’s reporter Neal Conan. “What I’m hoping to accomplish is that mu generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and write anymore. It’s actually color, and it’s actually digital.”

Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. “The music can’t be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same,” says Moran.

Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller’s music for a dance party, “Just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music,” says Moran. “For me, it’s the recontextualization. In music, where does the emotion(情感) lie? Are we, as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context,” says Moran, “So I want to continue those dialogue. Those are the things I want to foster.”

During the Second World War, I met a housewifefromChicago who told me how she discovered for herself that “the cure for worry is to get completely occupied doing something constructive.” I met this woman and her husband in the diningcarwhile I was traveling from New York to my farm in Missouri.

This couple told me that their son had joined the armed forces the day after Pearl Harbour. The woman told me that she had almost ruined her health worrying over that only son. Where was he? Was he safe? Or in action? Would he be wounded? Killed?

When I askedherhow she overcame her worry,she replied: “I got busy." She told me that at first she had dismissed her maid and tried to keep busy by doing all her housework herself. But thatdidnˈt help much. “The trouble was,” she said, “that I could do my housework almost mechanically. So I kept on worrying. While making the beds and washing the dishes, I realized I needed some new kind of work that would keep me busy both mentally and physically. So I took ajobas a saleswoman in a store.”

“Thatdidit,” she said. “I immediately found myself in a lot of activities: customers crowding around me, asking for prices, sizes, colors. Never a second tothinkof anything except my immediate duty; And when night came, I could think of nothing except getting off my aching feet. As soon as Iatedinner，I fell into bed and instantly(immediately)became unconscious. I had neither the time nor the energy to worry.”