By Michael R. Hicks

Jack Dawson stood in his supervisor’s office and stared out the window, his bright gray eyes watching the rain fall from the brooding summer sky over Washington, D.C. The wind was blowing just hard enough for the rain to strike the glass, leaving behind wet streaks that ran down the panes like tears. The face he saw reflected there was cast in shadow by the overhead fluorescent lights. The square jaw and high cheek bones gave him a predatory look, while his full lips promised a smile, but were drawn downward now into a frown. The deeply tanned skin, framed by lush black hair that was neatly combed back and held with just the right amount of styling gel, looked sickly and pale in the glass, as if it belonged on the face of a ghost. He knew that it was the same face he saw every morning. But it was different now. An important part of his world had been killed, murdered, the night before.

He watched the people on the street a few floors below, hustling through the downpour with their umbrellas fluttering as they poured out of the surrounding buildings, heading home for the evening. Cars clogged Pennsylvania Avenue, with the taxis darting to the curb to pick up fares, causing other drivers to jam on their brakes, the bright red tail lights flickering on and off down the street like a sputtering neon sign. It was Friday, and everyone was eager to get home to their loved ones, or go out to dinner, or head to the local bar. Anywhere that would let them escape the rat race for the weekend.

He didn’t have to see this building’s entrance to know that very few of the people who worked here would be heading home on time tonight. The address was 935 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest. It was the J. Edgar Hoover Building, headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI. Other than the teams of special agents who had departed an hour earlier for Lincoln, Nebraska, many of the Bureau’s personnel here at head quarters wouldn’t leave until sometime tomorrow. Some would be sleeping in their offices and cubicles after exhaustion finally over took them, and wouldn’t go home for more than a few hours over the next several days.  

A special agent had been brutally murdered, and with the addition of another name to the list of the FBI’s Service Martyrs, every resource the Bureau could bring to bear was being focused on bringing his killer to justice. Special agents from headquarters and field offices around the country were headed to Nebraska, along with an army of analysts and support staff that was already sifting through electronic data looking for leads.

 Everyone had apart in the investigation, it seemed, except for Dawson. In his hand, he held a plain manila folder that included the information that had been forwarded by the Lincoln field office. It was a preliminary report sent in by the Special Agent in Charge (SAC), summarizing the few known facts of the case. In terse prose, the SAC’s report described the crime scene, the victim, and what had been done by the local authorities before the SAC’s office had been alerted. And there were photos. Lots of photos. If a picture was worth a thousand words, then the ones Dawson held in his shaking hands spoke volumes about the agony suffered by the victim before he died. Because it was clear from the rictus of agony and terror frozen on Sheldon Crane’s face that he had still been alive when... 

“I’m sorry, Jack,” came a gruff voice from behind him, interrupting Dawson’s morbid train of thought as Ray Clement, Assistant Director of the Criminal Investigative Division, came in and closed the door. It was his office, and he had ordered Dawson to wait there until he had a chance to speak with him.

Ray Clement was a bear of a man with a personality to match. A star football player from the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide, Clement had actually turned down a chance to go pro, and had instead joined the FBI as a special agent. That had been his dream since the age of ten, as he had once told Jack, and the proudest moment of his life had been when he’d earned his badge. Jack knew that a lot of people might have thought Clement was crazy. “I loved football,” Clement would say, “and I still do. But I played it because I enjoyed it. I never planned to do it for a living.”

Over the years, Clement had worked his way up through the Bureau. He was savvy enough to survive the internal politics, smart and tough enough to excel in the field, and conformed to the system because he believed in it. He could be a real bastard when someone did something stupid, but otherwise worked tirelessly to support his people so they could do their jobs. He wasn’t a boss that any of his special agents would say they loved, but under his tenure, the Criminal Investigative Division, or CID, had successfully closed more cases than under any other assistant director in the previous fifteen years. People could say what they wanted, but Clement got results.

When he had first taken over the division, Clement had taken the time to talk to each and every one of his special agents. He had been up front about why: he wanted to know at least a little bit, more than just the names, about the men and women who risked their lives every day for the American Taxpayer. They were special agents, he’d said, but they were also special human beings.

Jack had dreaded the interview. Whereas Clement could have been the FBI’s poster child, Jack didn’t quite fit the mold. He was like a nail head sticking up from the perfectly polished surface of a hardwood floor, not enough to snag on anything, just enough to notice. Outwardly, he was no different than most of his peers. He dressed the same as most special agents, eschewing a suit for more practical and casual attire for all but the most formal occasions. His well-muscled six foot, one inch tall body was far more comfortable in jeans and a pullover shirt, with a light jacket to conceal his primary weapon, a standard service-issue Glock 22. While he had no problems voicing his opinions, which had sometimes led to respectful but intense discussions with his superiors, he had never been a discipline problem. He was highly competent in the field, and was a whiz at data analysis. At first glance, he seemed like what he should be: an outstanding special agent who worked hard and had great career prospects.

But under the shiny veneer ran a deep vein of dark emptiness. Jack smiled, but it never seemed to reach his eyes, and he rarely laughed. He was not cold-hearted, for he had often displayed uncommon compassion toward others, especially the victims, and their families, of the crimes he was sent to investigate. But he had no social life to speak of, no significant other in his life, and there were very few people who understood the extent of the pain that lay at Jack’s core.

                                                              收获的季节

夏日的华盛顿。杰克·道森直直地站在其上司的办公室里，凝视着窗外，他那明亮的灰眼睛望着雨滴从黑压压的天空落下。雨滴在狂风的挟持下撞向玻璃，然后像泪珠似的顺着玻璃滑落，留下一道道的“泪痕”。头顶上的荧光灯在窗户上投下阴影，杰克从反光的窗户上看到这样的一张脸：方正的下颌加上高高的颧骨——这使得这张脸看起来有点骇人；那微微上翘着仿佛随时都在微笑的饱满的嘴唇如今却紧紧地抿着；深棕色的皮肤，浓密的黑发一丝不苟地向后梳着，适量的发蜡恰到好处地把发型给固定住了。玻璃上映出的脸仿佛是属于魔鬼的，如此的憔悴而苍白。杰克很清楚这张脸就是他每天早晨起床后看到的那张脸。可现在一切都变了。他的世界里的一个重要部分被毁掉了，是谋杀，就在前一天的夜里。

杰克的目光移向楼下大街上的人群，那些从四周的建筑里涌出的人们在瓢泼大雨中撑着雨伞忙乱地走在下班回家的路上。宾夕法尼亚大道上塞满了车子，有出租车猛地驶向路边招揽生意，这使得后面的司机不得不猛踩急刹车，鲜红的车尾灯在大道上此起彼伏地闪烁着，就如同流光溢彩的霓虹灯一样。在这个周五的傍晚，人们都渴望早点回到家里与心爱的人儿团聚，或者到外面的餐馆享受晚餐，又或者去酒吧里消磨时光，总之就是要到那些能令他们在周末逃离激烈竞争的地方。

即便不看楼下的大门，杰克也知道在这栋大楼里工作的人们只有极少数能够在今晚回家休息。这里是位于宾夕法尼亚大道西北935号的诶德加胡佛大楼，美国联邦调查局（FBI）的总部所在地。除了一个小时之前动身前往内布拉斯加州林肯市的几组特工人员外，许多FBI成员要在大楼里呆到明天才会离开，一些人甚至在接下来的几天里都不会回家，他们要是实在累得不行的话，就会直接在自己的办公室或者小隔间里睡上一觉，这样就能将上下班路上的时间节省下来。

一名FBI特工被残忍地杀害了，FBI的烈士名单上又增添了一个亡灵，当局能做的就是全力追缉凶手，将凶手早日绳之于法以告慰英烈在天之灵。总部及全国各地的FBI特工已赶往内布拉斯加州，大批化验人员以及其他后勤支援人员也开始着手进行对电子数据的筛查工作以寻找线索。

似乎每个人都投身到调查中去了，除了杰克·道森。他的手里拿着一个厚纸做的普通文件夹，文件夹里面是已经被转发到林肯市FBI办事处的资料。这些资料是由特工主任(SAC) 对案件中少量已知的情况进行总结后所提交的初步报告。报告简单扼要地描述了案发地点、受害者以及在特工主任办公室收到消息前案发地FBI工作人员已进行的一些工作。报告中还附带了照片——大量的照片。如果说一张照片胜过千言万语，那么杰克颤抖的双手里攥着的那张照片则更是淋漓尽致地展现了受害者临死前所受到的极大痛苦。从照片上可以清楚地看到谢尔登·科雷由于巨大的痛苦以及极度的恐惧而变得面容扭曲、龇牙咧嘴，那时候的他还活着……

 “抱歉，杰克。”身后传来的沙哑声音打断了杰克漫无边际的恐怖想像。声音的主人是FBI罪案调查科（CID）助理主任雷·克莱门特，他走进房间然后关上了房门。这本是雷·克莱门特的办公室，他之前命令杰克在这里等着他，他要找机会跟他谈谈。

雷·克莱门特拥有粗壮的身体以及同样粗壮的神经。他曾是阿拉巴马大学“赤色风暴”橄榄球队的明星球员，但他并没有趁机转为职业球员，反而成为了FBI的一名特工。他曾告诉杰克，他从10岁开始就梦想着要成为FBI特工；而他生命中最为荣耀的时刻就是获得FBI徽章的时候。杰克知道，很多人可能会觉得雷·克莱门特简直是疯了。对此，雷·克莱门特会说：“我爱橄榄球，直到今天还依然爱着它。但我打橄榄球只是因为我享受这项运动，我从未打算以此作为谋生职业。”

加入FBI多年后，雷·克莱门特的努力工作换来了上级对他的提拔。他精明，所以能够在FBI的内部斗争中全身而退；他聪颖、坚韧，最终成为行业翘楚；他谨遵FBI的制度，因为他将其奉为信条。他总是不知疲倦地为手下提供支援，使他们的工作得以顺利进行，但如果手下做了蠢事，他就会变成十足的混蛋。这样的上司自然讨不到手下的欢心，但在雷·克莱门特的领导下，罪案调查科（CID）成功侦破的案件数比他的前任在位时要多得多，破案率为15年以来最高。别人爱说什么就让他们说去吧，反正雷·克莱门特已得到他想要的结果。

在刚接手CID时，雷·克莱门特花费了大量的时间去跟手下的特工逐一进行谈话。这样做的目的很简单：他希望能够多了解——哪怕只是多了解那么一点点——这些每天都在为美国纳税人出生入死的特工们，而不仅仅是知道他们的名字。他曾说过，这些人是特工，但同时也是一群特殊的普通人。

杰克曾经很惧怕面谈这种事儿。如果说雷·克莱门特是FBI的模范生，那么杰克则是跟模范生沾不上一点边儿的那一类人物。杰克就像是光滑的硬木地板上突起的钉头，顶多只会引起旁人的注意却不足以对别人构成障碍。他看上去与其他同事并无不同，穿着打扮也跟大多数特工差不多。除非是出席正式场合，否则为了行动方便，他平时一般都是穿休闲服而很少穿西服。牛仔裤和套头衬衫会让身高六呎1寸、浑身肌肉的他觉得更加的舒适，当然，还要外加一件轻便夹克以隐藏他的主要武器——一支标准配置的Glock 22手枪。发表意见对杰克来说并不是什么难事，虽然有时候他提出的意见会引起上司和他之间礼貌但激烈的讨论，但杰克从来没有在纪律问题上犯错误。他的工作能力毋容质疑，而且在数据分析方面，他绝对称得上是奇才。工作勤奋、前途一片光明的优秀特工，这是杰克给人的第一印象，而他似乎就是这样的一个人。

但阳光外表下包裹着的却是空虚、灰暗的灵魂。杰克微笑的时候，从来不会让人觉得这是发自心底的笑容，而且他很少会哈哈大笑。他并不是冷漠的人，他经常会对他人表现出非同寻常的同情心，尤其是那些他经手的案件中的受害者及其家属。但杰克的社交生活平淡如水，没有什么值得成为人们津津乐道的事情，他没有另一半，而能够明白他内心深处痛楚的也只有那么寥寥几个人。

by Zoe Wood

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 31 December 2011 19.29 GMT

Shoppers queue outside Selfridges on Boxing Day before the sales begin. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Boxing Day 当天，还没开门营业的Selfridges门外已经排起了长长的人龙。

The cold economic wind sweeping Britain's shopping centres has yet to reach London's West End, which remains an oasis of prosperity. The influx of high-rolling Chinese shoppers has helped luxury stores beat the gloom.

Upmarket department store Selfridges said Chinese tourists were behind an 80% increase in VAT-free international sales last year as the capital cemented its reputation as a magnet for well-heeled fashion tourists. While Britons struggle to balance household budgets after Christmas, visitors from Asia were clamouring to get their hands on the latest collections from labels such as Prada, Gucci and Mulberry in Selfridges last week – and not just because they were in the sale.

The store's biggest spender on Boxing Day, who was described only as an "international shopper", splashed out £8,469 on a Chopard diamond necklace, although in this instance it was reduced from £18,820.

China's economic boom has fuelled a runaway demand for luxury brands, with Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Gucci the most coveted labels.

Li Bingbing, the Chinese actress, was among the thousands of shoppers who dashed to Selfridges on Monday, taking home a haul that was said to include fashion brands such as Paul Smith, Reiss, Mulberry and Nicole Farhi. Burberry has even hired Mandarin-speaking shop assistants for its London stores.

Consumer confidence among important luxury goods buyers – a field that is still led by the Middle East, but now includes China, Russia and India – has not been rocked by the European sovereign debt crisis, say analysts.

Per Setterberg, chief executive of card payments company Global Blue, said the spending power of these "global shoppers" far exceeded that of their domestic counterparts and was providing a shot in the arm for London's economy.

小公寓如何变身大空间

http://www.homedit.com/small-apartment-with-a-playful-interior-decor/

This lovely apartment that you see here is very small. It’s a 36 square meter apartment, tiny indeed. Still, it doesn’t look cramped or busy at all. In fact, it seems quite spacious, considering the dimensions. As in happens with many small apartments, it was difficult to find the appropriate furniture for this place.

In the living room, for example, a very common problem is when you have to choose between the sofa or the bed. Usually you can;t have them both and this is a problem. In this case, the owner chose to purchase a lovely sofa bed that solved everything. This seems like a bachelor’s apartment mostly because it only has the items that are really necessary. The apartment it very bright. It has white walls and ceilings and this helps create the impression of a larger space.

The apartment basically has everything a single person would need, except for the dishwasher, washer and dryer and this is mostly due to the small dimensions of the rooms. Also, in this case it’s important to be ingenious when it comes to storage space. Every little space is important.

Here, the sofa bed also offers some storage space and there are also some built-in cabinets that help solve this problem. What’s particularly interesting and something to appreciate about this place is the fact that everything is so simple. It’s important not to exaggerate with the decorations and details, especially when the space is so small.

Apple fined by Italy over misleading product guarantees 

27 December 2011 Last updated at 13:48 GMT

An Italian watchdog has fined Apple 900,000 euros ($1.2m, £750,000) for its handling of customer guarantees.

The country's Antitrust Authority said Apple had failed to inform shoppers of their legal right to two years' technical support, recognising instead only a one-year standard warranty.

It said the firm's action had led people to pay extra for Apple's own support service, which overlapped in part with the free guarantee.

Apple could not be reached for comment.

The authority said the penalties applied to the iPhone maker's three local divisions - Apple Italia, Apple Sales International and Apple Retail Italia.

It said it had fined the firm 400,000 euros for failing to recognise the length of the statutory guarantee, as set out in Italy's consumer code, either on its website or at point of sale.

It said that a further 500,000 euro penalty was imposed because the firm had gone on to offer its Applecare Protection Plan.

It said the information provided about the service, and the lack of clarification about customers' rights, combined to "induce consumers to sign an additional contract".

The authority added that Apple would have to publish an extract from its ruling on its website, and must add details of the two-year guarantee to its Applecare plan within 90 days.

Eurozone crisis: Osborne warns of impact on UK jobs

Chancellor George Osborne has said the financial crisis gripping the eurozone is hitting British jobs and growth.

11 November 2011 Last updated at 16:45 GMT

编译：Cathy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15691546

Mr Osborne said Britain was taking difficult decisions "on our own terms"

As Italy agreed austerity measures demanded by the EU and Greece's new prime minister took office, Mr Osborne said the situation remained "very difficult and dangerous".

Despite Friday's events, David Cameron said there was still a "big question mark" over the eurozone's future.

Labour's Ed Miliband said the PM should demand an urgent meeting of EU leaders.

On a day of fast-moving developments in Europe:

·         Former central banker Lucas Papademos was sworn in as the new prime minister of Greece after a week of political turmoil

·         The Italian senate adopted an austerity package designed to avoid a bailout

·         Stock markets across Europe and in the US rose on the news

 British politicians have been calling for decisive action by eurozone leaders to stand behind the euro and prevent the turmoil spreading further.

'Weathering storm'

Although the UK is not a member of the single currency, 40% of its trade is with the eurozone and Mr Osborne said there were signs the continuing uncertainty was having a direct effect on the UK economy - which has seen sluggish growth.

Mr Osborne told reporters: "It is a very, very difficult and dangerous situation in the eurozone - Britain is impacted by what's happening.

"There's no doubt that growth in Britain, jobs in Britain, have been hit by what's going on in the eurozone. "

"It's all the more reason that we in Britain weather this storm by taking the difficult decisions we take on our own terms - rather than being forced to do so by the markets."

After passing the Italian senate on Friday, a far-reaching package of spending cuts and tax rises is expected to get final approval at the weekend.

'Very worrying'

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is set to resign once both houses of Parliament have passed the measures, with former EU commissioner Mario Monti tipped to succeed him.

In Greece, Mr Papademos is leading a new government of national unity which is expected to implement further austerity measures - seen by EU leaders as a prerequisite for any further bailout.

In an interview with BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine programme, UK PM David Cameron said these were "very worrying times" with market turbulence and question marks over whether countries could deal with their debts and "a big question mark over the future of the eurozone".

He said if UK interest rates hit Italian levels it would be "calamitous" - "If we risked spending a lot more money or giving up on our plan to get on top of our debts and our deficit, interest rates could go up, mortgage rates could go up. That would be the worst thing for family finances."

"Keeping the economy safe, trying to get us safely through this storm that is taking place in Europe has got to be our priority."

Labour leader Ed Miliband called on Mr Cameron to take a much more hands-on approach to the economic difficulties both at home and in Europe.

"I think it's very disappointing that the prime minister hasn't been in regular touch in the last few days with either President Sarkozy or Chancellor Merkel," he said.

"I think what David Cameron needs to do is say to Europe's leaders: 'We must meet urgently as the 27 countries and get this problem sorted out once and for all', because, frankly, the British economy and actually the world economy can't afford the problems that we're seeing."

50p tax rate

Meanwhile the prime minister and chancellor have appeared to rule out any immediate change to the 50 pence tax rate after about 30 businessman urged it to be scrapped in a letter to the Daily Telegraph.

"This autumn we are not looking at the 50p tax rate," Mr Osborne said.

"This autumn our priority is to get the housing market going and to get infrastructure underway."

Mr Cameron said the decision to retain the 50p rate - which was introduced by the last Labour government - was symptomatic of the coalition's approach to cutting the deficit in that "those with the broadest backs bear the biggest burden".

Business groups, such as the CBI, have called for the top rate of tax to be reduced as soon as possible, arguing it is not bringing in the money anticipated and is actually deterring enterprise.

Social media revenue to hit $10bn in 2011, says Gartner

11 October 2011 Last updated at 11:48 GMT

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15254066

    Social media revenues are increasing sharply

    社交网站收入激增

Worldwide revenues from social media sites such as Facebook are on track to reach $10bn this year.

That is up 41% from 2010, according to technology research firm Gartner.

These figures are set to explode in the next few years, projected to grow by 50% next year and nearly triple to $29bn by 2015.

Advertising revenue is the largest contributor to this overall figure, with social gaming bringing in another significant revenue stream.

Room for growth

Analysts believe this is only the beginning in terms of making money from social media.

Neha Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner, said: "From a revenue perspective, the social media market is still in its early stages, even though it has a large number of users who, in some cases, are exhibiting increasingly mature usage patterns."

She said new business models would need to be built to tap into this revenue, where a transition would take place from clicking on an ad to "ongoing engagement" with online users.

Ms Gupta said that social networking sites, with the help of social analytics firms, were able to "unlock" data - "mapping lists of friends, their comments and messages, photos and all their social connections, contact information and associated media".

However, other analysts point out that wider use of this data raises concerns about privacy, with some users angry about the ways in which their online behaviour may be tracked.

中文译文

Toilet Powered Motorcycle

马桶动力摩托车

October 8th, 2011

http://www.toxel.com/tech/2011/10/08/toilet-powered-motorcycle/

中文翻译：请点击

Japanese toilet manufacturer TOTO created an eco-friendly motorcycle that runs on human waste.

Designed to promote TOTO’s environmental efforts, Toilet Bike converts human waste into biogas fuel. As an added bonus, this mobile toilet can also play music and even talk to the rider.

India launches Aakash tablet computer priced at $35

India has launched what it says is the world's cheapest touch-screen tablet computer, priced at just $35 (£23).

5 October 2011 Last updated at 13:06 GMT

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-15180831

    
     Millions of students will have access to the tablets, officials hope

   印度政府希望广大的学生群体能够用上平板电脑

Costing a fraction of Apple's iPad, the subsidised Aakash is aimed at students.

It supports web browsing and video conferencing, has a three-hour battery life and two USB ports, but questions remain over how it will perform.

Officials hope the computer will give digital access to students in small towns and villages across India, which lags behind its rivals in connectivity.

At the launch in the Indian capital, Delhi, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal handed out 500 Aakash (meaning sky) tablets to students who will trial them.

He said the government planned to buy 100,000 of the tablets. It hopes to distribute 10 million of the devices to students over the next few years.

"The rich have access to the digital world, the poor and ordinary have been excluded. Aakash will end that digital divide," Mr Sibal said.

The Aakash has been developed by UK-based company DataWind and Indian Institute of Technology (Rajasthan).

It is due to be assembled in India, at DataWind's new production centre in the southern city of Hyderabad.

"Our goal was to break the price barrier for computing and internet access," DataWind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli said.

"We've created a product that will finally bring affordable computing and internet access to the masses."

The company says it will also offer a commercial version of the tablet, called UbiSlate. It is expected to hit the shelves later this year, retailing for about $60.

Usability questions

Mr Sibal says the device will enhance learning in India.

Experts say it does have the potential to make a huge difference to the country's education, particularly in rural areas where schools and students do not have access to libraries and up-to-date information.

     Mr Sibal (right) hopes the tablet will end the 'digital divide'

  人力资源发展部部长Kapil Sibal（右）希望Aakash能够消除“数字鸿沟”

But critics say it is too early to say how the Aakash will be received as most cheap tablets in the past have turned out to be painfully slow.

"The thing with cheap tablets is most of them turn out to be unusable," Rajat Agrawal of technology reviewers BGR India told Reuters news agency.

"They don't have a very good touch screen, and they are usually very slow."

Critics also point out that an earlier cheap laptop plan by the same ministry came to nothing.

In 2009, it announced plans for a laptop priced as low as $10, raising eyebrows and triggering worldwide media interest.

But there was disappointment after the "Sakshat" turned out to be a prototype of a hand-held device, with an unspecified price tag, that never materialised.

中文译文：请点击

Australia's trade surplus jumps 72% as exports improve

Australia's trade surplus surged in August as exports of coal and other minerals increased despite concerns of a global slowdown.

4 October 2011 Last updated at 04:59 GMT

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15162390

Australia's coal exports have been picking up after being hurt by floods earlier this year

澳大利亚的煤矿出口已经从早前的水灾中恢复过来。

Shipments from Australia grew 8% from the previous month, while imports rose 3%, the statistical bureau said

That resulted in a trade surplus of 3.1bn Australian dollars ($2.9bn; £1.9bn), the second-largest on record.

Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) left the interest rate unchanged at 4.75%

The data comes amid concerns that fears of a slowdown may hurt demand for Australia's mineral exports.

"Export volumes are really kicking along and that will be a big fillip for the economy in the quarter," said Brian Redican of Macquarie.

Asia factor

Analysts said the fact that a huge amount of Australia's mineral shipments head to Asian economies has been a big factor in ensuring that its export sector sustains its momentum, despite global slowdown concerns.

They said that as economies like India and China see more people move from rural to urban centres, the demand for minerals will continue to rise.

"Both these countries have more than 1 billion people, and that is a big factor," David Lennox of Fat Prophets told the BBC.

As these countries undergo rapid urbanisation, they will also need to boost their power generation capacity in order to meet the increased demand for electricity.

"That process is not dependent on what happens in the US or European economies," Mr Lennox said.

He added that given these factors, exports of Australian minerals to the region will continue to grow.

Monetary easing?

However, despite the encouraging export numbers, the RBA indicated that it may ease its monetary policy going forward.

Glenn Stevens, the governor of the central bank, said the slowdown in the US and the ongoing debt crisis in Europe are likely to hurt global growth and also have an impact on Australia's economy.

"The indications are that the pace of near-term growth is unlikely to be as strong as earlier expected," he said in a statement.

There have been concerns that while its mining sector is booming, other parts of its economy are facing a tough time due to falling consumer demand.

However, the central bank inisisted it was ready to act in a bid to boost demand.

"An improved inflation outlook would increase the scope for monetary policy to provide some support to demand, should that prove necessary." the bank said.

中文译文：请点击  翻译：Cathy

Digital Life

Understanding Second-order Effects

Throughout modern history, technological breakthroughs surpass the people who invent them. The gap between the potential and the humanly possible, the chief by-product of the Law of Disruption, inevitably leads to dramatic change in the short term. But the real transformation comes later, as human systems—economic, social, legal—struggle to catch up. This chapter introduces the Law of Disruption and its key drivers, Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law. Together, they have built the foundation for our new existence, our digital life. Now comes the hard part: creating a new body of laws to regulate it, to keep the peace, and to ensure its prosperity.

Killer apps in the middle ages

Disruptive Technologies change the world. But not in the way you might think.

In the darkest days of the Middle Ages, a Germanic king adapted the rigid metal stirrups used in Asia, making them instead from flexible leather. Now soldiers could balance themselves on horceback and still fight, making them far more effective. The stirrup saved Europe, and these new mounted cavalry were celebrated forever after as knights. But that’s just the beginning of the story. To maintain the new fighting force, knights needed a source of income. Rather than pay them himself, the king granted the knights the right to collect rents and other tributes from farmers in their domain. Feudalism, landed nobles, and serfdom were born. More knights required more land, and the king began to take it from the church. Church and state, and the rise of the latter, established a long-lasting pattern of interaction.

The first-order effects of the stirrup were dramatic. Medieval society was saved. The Catholic Church survived and continued to provide social, cultural, and legal continuity with the long-dead Roman Empire. The king emerged as the first leader of a new and powerful empire, the forerunner of modern Europe. On Christmas Day in the year of 800, he took the crown from Pope Leo III’s hands as the pontiff was about to coronate him, and placed it on his own head. His name was Charlemagne—Charles Magnus, the Great—emperor of the Romans.

The long-term consequences of Charlemagne’s simple innovation were, in some sense, even more stunning. The social, economic, and legal systems that developed to support the mounted troops persisted for nearly a thousand years, long after the actual advantage of the stirrup had been neutralized. Charlemagne’s empire, in some form, lasted until the age of Napoleon. Even today, you still can’t buy property in parts of central London without paying tribute to the Duke of Westminister.

The stirrup is a classic example of what I describe ten years ago as a killer application, or “killer app”—a technological innovation whose introduction disrupts long-standing rules of markets or even whole societies. Killer apps establish new industries and transform existing ones. They can even create new empires. Their own inventors may have little idea of the uses for them that people will ultimately discover. And the real impact is often felt long after their introduction. The stirrup, crop rotation, reading glasses, iron rope, the steam engine, railroads, the telegraph, antibiotics, automobiles, the atom bomb, the semiconductor—this is just a short list of inventios whose dramatic introductions were followed by even more dramatic changes to the civilizations that used them.

Saying that the stirrup created medieval Europe is a stretch, but not a big one. As historian Lynn White Jr. put it, “few inventions have been so simple as the stirrup, but few have had so catalytic an influence on history.”

The three laws of digital life

Charlemagne had the stirup. We have the computer.

The information age, like the feudal age, began with a simple innovation. On November 6,1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president of the United States in a rout. Although Eisenhower was expected to defeat Adlai Stevenson, no one imagined so lopsided a victory. No one, that is, except a Census Bureau computer named Univac. Univac had been built to tally the census, but its operators programmed it instead to process election results. After only I percent of the vote had been counted, Univac correctly predicted an Eisenhower landslide.

Univac weighed 16,000 pounds, performed about 1000 calculations per second, and cost $750,000. it was the first commercially sold computer in the world, and the first to be used for business applications (General Electric programmed it to calculate its payroll in 1954). It was also the first to be programmed for a task it was not initially designed to perform—a trend that defines modern computing to this day. The Census Bureau’s machine was the first; by 1957, forty-six had sold.

Nearly sixty years after Eisenhower’s election, there are now more computing devices in the world than there are people, and their numbers are doubling every few years. The semiconductor, or “chip,” was first added to a calculator in 1967, to a toy in 1978, and to a toaster in 1983. A personal computer was first marketed in the early 1980s. Despite unfathomable advances in the computer’s power and abilities, the price of computing has dropped steadily for thirty years. Today’s PC costs 16 percent of what it did in 1981, but is nearly five hundred times more powerful. More than a billion have been sold.

As chips have become cheaper and more prevalent, their impact has moved from the world of computers and high technology to every aspect of modern life. Computers are the central driver of productivity gains across industries. Softwear has become a key source of new consumer products and services. The average automobile now has more than one hundred microprocessors and its own operating system. Even product packaging is becoming intelligent. Soon, more than a trillion items will be able to send and receive data about their price, whereabouts, and expiration dates.

The ubiquity of computers in business, however, has been eclipsed by their takeover of our personal lives. As e-mail and Web browsing have given way to virtual reality games, intelligent call phones, and social networking, we are each developing a second, parallel, existence. Human beings thrive on interaction, and computers have given us remarkable new tools to connect, collaborate, and communicate with one another. In 2008, consumer Internet usage surpassed business use for the first time, opening a gap that is expected to widen over the next decade. We have our real lives, and now we also have digital lives.

In our digital lives, we can simultaneously chat with friends in different time zones or explore alternative identities in role-playing games. We can let our computers scour the internet looking for things that interest us – auctions for obscure collectibles, music by artist liked by people who like the same books as you do, or just random content (blogs, photo images, YouTube videos) fed into our personal home pages. And we are no longer tethered by wired connections. All of our information is now available wherever we go on a variety of devices. Nearly 20 percent of American homes had dropped landline services by 2009, relying entirely on cell phones. “Computing,” as Nicholas Negroponte wrote in his 1995 classic, Being Digital, “”is not about computers anymore. It is about living.”

Digital life is the unintended side effect of cheap computing power and the ubiquitous network standards known as the Internet. Initially invented in the 1970s, the Internet had the modest goal of connecting the mainframe computers of U.S. government agencies and defense contractors. As more computers joined the network, however, the Internet mutated into something far different and much more interesting. Today, it connects billions of devices and billions of people. It moves information at ever-increasing speeds along a nearly infinite set of pathways, shortening distances and eliminating borders.

Three related principles – Moore’s Law, Metcalfe’s Law, and the Law of Disruption – explain the power and promise of digital life. Taken together, they provide its natural laws – its physics – overseeing its unique forms of time, space, and gravity.

Moore’s Law: Faster, Cheaper, Smaller

In 1965, Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel, made an astonishing prediction. In a brief article titled “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits,” he claimed that the number of transistors on his chips would double every year or two without increasing their cost to users. His promise is now known as Moore’s Law: every twelve to eighteen months, the processing power of computers doubles while price holds constant.

Moore’s Law is the result of technological breakthroughs that reduce the size of transistors, couples with manufacturing improvements that greatly reduce the frequency of defects. With each new generation, producers yield slightly larger chips made with slightly smaller transistors. Neither Moore nor his competitors have yet to break Moore’s Law, and there is every reason to believe they will continue to deliver it for the rest of our working lives.

The application of Moore’s Law boils down to one remarkable fact: computers continue to get faster, cheaper, and smaller. As a result, they become more powerful by a factor of two with every succeeding generation. Computer memory, data storage, and data communications have their own rough approximations of Moore’s Law. Improvements in fiber-optic cables (which transmit data at the speed of light) and the development of optical switches translate to data communications costs that are rapidly approaching zero from most uses. One fiber-optic cable can carry millions of simultaneous telephone calls.

Total data storage has also expanded exponentially. In 1980, IBM sold refrigerator-sized disks for its mainframe computers that stored about 1.2 gigabytes of data at a cost of $200,000. Today, Wal-Mart sells 4-gigabyte drives — enough to store about 3,000 books — that are the size of a paper clip and cost only $5.00. GE announced in early 2009 a breakthrough that will increase the store capacity of CDs by 100,000 percent. IBM is working on technology that will store data in individual atoms and build circuits out of a single molecule.

Because chips are the raw material in the construction of digital life, the implications of the faster-cheaper-smaller principle are profound. Consider a few examples:

1. deflation. Basic commodities like oil, electricity, or cotton tend to become more expensive over time, with cost increases working their way through the rest of the system. Computer prices, on the other hand, have stayed the same, or gone down. Miniaturization leads to computers in more and more products, increasing economies of scale and pulsing costs down even faster.

2. abundant resources. Oil, natural gas, coal, and many of the sources of electricity are nonrenewable – as they are used, they are also used up, raising prices and limiting further increases in productivity. But the major ingredient of semiconductors is silicon, the second-most abundant element on earth.

以上内容摘自：Laws of Disruption: Harnessing the New Forces that Govern Life and Business in the Digital Age 一书，作者：Larry Downs

中文译文

Country with most millionaires next door is...?

http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/01/where-are-the-most-millionaires-next-door/?hpt=C1

(CNN) – Pop quiz: Which country hosts the world's highest concentration of millionaires?

A) The United States
B) Switzerland
C) Singapore
D) Qatar

The answer is C) Singapore. A whopping 15.5% of Singapore households had more than $1 million in assets in 2010, according to a study out by the Boston Consulting Group. You are more likely to bump into a millionaire in Singapore than anywhere else in the world. Runner-up Switzerland doesn’t even come close, with less than 10% millionaire households.

Singapore’s millionaire population is also growing – and fast. The city-state had nearly a third more millionaires in 2010 than a year earlier, the swiftest increase of any country.

Singapore’s rapid GDP growth – 14.7% last year – and the solid appreciation of its currency have driven the millionaire boom. Analysis shows Singapore has had strong growth in financial services, tourism and exports in 2010.

Singaporeans have ridden the wave of increasing wealth throughout Asia. “Singapore is more plugged into wealth creation than any other nation,” says Mykolas Rambus, CEO of intelligence provider Wealth-X . He adds that Singaporeans are not just benefiting from China’s phenomenal growth, but also that of India and Southeast Asia. Boston Consulting Group’s study found wealth in Asia ex-Japan grew the fastest of any region in 2010, increasing more than 17%.

Policy also plays a role in Singapore’s wealth, with the city-state boasting low taxes, efficient regulation and high rating for quality of life. The Heritage Foundation, a Conservative think tank, ranked Singapore the second freest economy in the world in 2010, citing its pro-business credentials. One example from Heritage: “Starting a business takes only three days, compared to the world average of 34 days.”

Like many other nations, Singapore is facing a growing wealth gap. The Gini coefficient, a commonly used measure of income inequality, has risen steadily over the last decade and the issue struck a chord with the public during recent elections.

Tan Ern Sur, Associate professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore, believes neither the rich nor the poor are very visible in Singapore. “We also do not have a strong politics of envy, perhaps because Singapore is largely a middle-class society,” he says by e-mail. People are more concerned with their own financial pressures than with overall wealth concentration.

It may also help ease concerns that Singapore only ranked tenth in the concentration “ultra-high-net-worth,” households, those with more than $100 million in assets. According to BCG, the highest proportion of the super rich is in Saudi Arabia, with 18 per 100,000 households.

Proportion of millionaire household by market

1. Singapore         15.5%
2. Switzerland        9.9%
3. Qatar                    8.9%
4. Hong Kong         8.7%
5. Kuwait                  8.5%
6. UAE                       5%
7. United States    4.5%
8. Taiwan                 3.5%
9. Israel                    3.4%
10. Belgium            3.1%
11. Japan                 3%
12. Bahrain             2.6%
13. Ireland              2.3%
14. Netherlands    2.3%
15. UK                       2.2%

Source: BCG Global Wealth

Virtual Grocery Store

July 8th, 2011

http://www.toxel.com/tech/2011/07/08/virtual-grocery-store/

中文译文：点击  

People in South Korea can now shop for groceries at Tesco Homeplus virtual stores while they wait for the subway train.

Displays with products were installed in subway stations. Customers scan QR codes with their phone, and the groceries are delivered to their home.

Fleeing to Foreign Shores

By GRAHAM BOWLEY

Published: June 7, 2011   

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/business/global/08exchange.html?_r=1  

Reva Medical, a maker of medical devices in San Diego, wanted to go public last year to raise money to satisfy impatient venture capitalists and finance research for its heart stents.

But it found little investor interest in the United States for an early-stage medical device company that had not yet made a profit.

Reva Medical did what a small but increasing number of young American companies are doing — it looked abroad for money, in Reva’s case the Australian stock exchange.

After an eight-month road show, meeting investors and pitching the prospects of a biodegradable stent, the 12-year-old company sold 25 percent of its stock for $85 million in an initial public offering in December.

“There are so many companies that require capital like our company, and they don’t have access to the capital markets in the United States,” said Robert Stockman, Reva’s chief executive. “People are looking at any option to stay alive, which is what we did.”

Reva’s example shows that nearly three years since the financial crisis began, markets in the United States are barely open to many companies, leading them to turn to investors abroad. Denied a chance to list their stock and go public here, they are finding ready buyers of their shares on foreign markets.

The 10 companies that went public abroad in 2010 — and 75 from 2000 to 2009 — compares with only two United States companies choosing foreign exchanges from 1991 to 1999.

Nearly one in 10 American companies that went public last year did so outside the United States. Besides Australia, they turned to stock markets in Britain, Taiwan, South Korea and Canada, according to data from the consulting firm Grant Thornton and Dealogic.

The trend reflects a decidedly global outlook toward stocks, just as the number of public companies in the United States is shrinking.

From a peak of more than 8,800 American companies at the end of 1997, that number fell to about 5,100 by the end of 2009, a 40 percent decline, according to the World Federation of Exchanges.

The drop comes as some companies have merged, or gone out of business, or been taken private by private equity firms. Other young businesses have chosen to sell themselves to bigger companies rather than go public.

To be sure, as the economy improves and investors shaken badly by the financial crisis begin to regain their confidence, American stock markets may once again open up for companies trying to go public and listings may rise in the United States.

LinkedIn, the social networking site for business professionals, had a successful initial public offering last month on the New York Stock Exchange, and Groupon, the social buying site, has registered its plans to go public in the United States.

But these are big companies, enjoying the popularity of being Internet darlings. Executives and analysts fear that a long-term structural shift in American equity markets means these markets are now closed to legions of smaller, more ordinary businesses. They could more easily have gone public in the United States in the past. But they now remain private or, for the time being, have to market themselves overseas and rely on foreign investors.

For example, initial public offerings by American companies totaled only 119 in the United States last year, according to Dealogic — higher than the depressed rates of the previous two years but a far cry from the 756 companies that went public at the peak in 1996.

As young, fast-growing companies are forced to look overseas for public status and investors, executives and analysts fear that they may increasingly shift their geographic focus — and as a result any jobs they create will be abroad.

“Issuers have to put themselves through a grinder to go overseas, so any significant percentage of overseas listings is a sign that our markets have become hostile to innovation and job formation,” said David Weild, a former vice chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange and a senior adviser to Grant Thornton.

A variety of factors explain each company’s decision to list on a foreign exchange, like the increased regulatory costs of going public in the United States. Underwriting, legal and other costs are typically lower in foreign markets, companies say.

In addition, the extra annual cost of maintaining a public listing, including complying with Sarbanes-Oxley rules, can be typically much higher in the United States: $2 million to $3 million each year depending on the size of a company compared with a cost as low as $320,000 on AIM or $100,000 to $300,000 in a market like Taiwan, according to advisers.

There are concerns that some foreign exchanges attract companies because their oversight may be less stringent. But companies insist standards are high.

A more important factor than cost, said Sanjay Subhedar, managing director of Storm Ventures, a California venture capital firm, is that investors in the United States who traditionally participate in I.P.O.’s and the banks that underwrite the offerings are no longer interested in share sales by small companies.

Institutional investors like mutual funds want the liquidity of larger offerings with abundant buyers and sellers, he said; bank underwriters want to focus on the more lucrative fees that bigger deals generate.

One of the companies he invests in, Integrated Memory Logic (iML), of Campbell, Calif., last year became one of the first non-Taiwanese companies to list on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. A supplier of semiconductor chips for LCD screens, it raised $40 million with a 10 percent sale of the company after the exchange changed its rules to allow foreign companies to join.

Integrated Memory Logic, which had a work force of 60 when it went public, has since added a handful of engineers in the United States but also another 40 employees in Shanghai, Taipei and Seoul, South Korea.

“Because of the nature of the industry, large mutual fund companies and investment banks don’t want to do an offering of less than $100 million,” said Mr. Subhedar. “This means unless the company has a market size of $500 million, you can’t really go public in the United States. We were in the $250 million to $350 million range.”

Another reason to go abroad, some American businesses like HaloSource of Seattle are discovering, is that investors in the United States may not be as interested as foreign investors in companies whose growth potential is strongest overseas.

HaloSource makes water purification devices for use in American pools and spas but also for drinking water in countries like India, China and Brazil. Last year, it had an $80 million initial public offering on AIM. One reason it chose London, according to James Thompson, chief financial officer, was that investors there were more sympathetic to growth opportunities in emerging markets. ”Though it is a smaller capital market than New York, AIM is much more globally focused.”

For some companies like HaloSource, the move to a foreign exchange may make longer term strategic sense as their growth shifts away from America to markets like China and India. Integrated Memory Logic’s biggest suppliers of the wafers for its semiconductor chips and its biggest customers are in Asia — so a listing in Taiwan raises its profile in a region that is already home to most of its corporate partners.

Another company, Samsonite, the luggage company that was founded in Denver in 1910 but shifted its corporate location to Luxembourg in 2009, now sees most of its growth coming from Asia. It plans a $1.5 billion offering in Hong Kong next week.

The attraction of an Asian listing will be underlined further this month when Prada, the Italian fashion house, lists its shares in an offering that could generate $2.5 billion, also in Hong Kong.

But while some companies see their foreign I.P.O. as a long-term move, others see it as an interim step, one that after further expansion could lead them to seek investor interest back home and a dual listing in the United States.

One reason Reva Medical chose Australia was that country’s system of research hospitals that it intends to use for its clinical trials.

Mr. Stockman, the chief executive, also sits on the board of another company, HeartWare International, based in Massachusetts and Florida, that carried out an Australian I.P.O. in 2005, and then listed on Nasdaq in the United States in 2008.

In its Australian I.P.O., Reva sold stock to investors from Britain, Australia and Hong Kong, as well as America.

Mr. Stockman said two Wall Street investment banks told him there was no interest in an offering of the company in the United States. Instead, he found an underwriter, Inteq, in Australia. In the end, the cost of the Australian listing was $7 million, roughly what it would have cost Reva to list in the United States, he said.

One of the biggest costs was travel time and flights. He concedes that he would have preferred to list in the United States in the first place — after all the traveling back and forth to Australia, and the long road show in Asia, the United States and Europe.

“All things being equal, it would have been easier,” he said. “It is a long way.”

 中文译文

Country with most millionaires next door is...?

June 1st, 2011 08:32 AM GMT

http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/01/where-are-the-most-millionaires-next-door/?hpt=C1

(CNN) – Pop quiz: Which country hosts the world's highest concentration of millionaires?

A) The United States
B) Switzerland
C) Singapore
D) Qatar

The answer is C) Singapore. A whopping 15.5% of Singapore households had more than $1 million in assets in 2010, according to a study out by the Boston Consulting Group. You are more likely to bump into a millionaire in Singapore than anywhere else in the world. Runner-up Switzerland doesn’t even come close, with less than 10% millionaire households.

Singapore’s millionaire population is also growing – and fast. The city-state had nearly a third more millionaires in 2010 than a year earlier, the swiftest increase of any country.

Singapore’s rapid GDP growth – 14.7% last year – and the solid appreciation of its currency have driven the millionaire boom. Analysis shows Singapore has had strong growth in financial services, tourism and exports in 2010.

Singaporeans have ridden the wave of increasing wealth throughout Asia. “Singapore is more plugged into wealth creation than any other nation,” says Mykolas Rambus, CEO of intelligence provider Wealth-X . He adds that Singaporeans are not just benefiting from China’s phenomenal growth, but also that of India and Southeast Asia. Boston Consulting Group’s study found wealth in Asia ex-Japan grew the fastest of any region in 2010, increasing more than 17%.

Policy also plays a role in Singapore’s wealth, with the city-state boasting low taxes, efficient regulation and high rating for quality of life. The Heritage Foundation, a Conservative think tank, ranked Singapore the second freest economy in the world in 2010, citing its pro-business credentials. One example from Heritage: “Starting a business takes only three days, compared to the world average of 34 days.”

Like many other nations, Singapore is facing a growing wealth gap. The Gini coefficient, a commonly used measure of income inequality, has risen steadily over the last decade and the issue struck a chord with the public during recent elections.

Tan Ern Sur, Associate professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore, believes neither the rich nor the poor are very visible in Singapore. “We also do not have a strong politics of envy, perhaps because Singapore is largely a middle-class society,” he says by e-mail. People are more concerned with their own financial pressures than with overall wealth concentration.

It may also help ease concerns that Singapore only ranked tenth in the concentration “ultra-high-net-worth,” households, those with more than $100 million in assets. According to BCG, the highest proportion of the super rich is in Saudi Arabia, with 18 per 100,000 households.

Proportion of millionaire household by market

1. Singapore         15.5%
2. Switzerland        9.9%
3. Qatar                    8.9%
4. Hong Kong         8.7%
5. Kuwait                  8.5%
6. UAE                       5%
7. United States    4.5%
8. Taiwan                 3.5%
9. Israel                    3.4%
10. Belgium            3.1%
11. Japan                 3%
12. Bahrain             2.6%
13. Ireland              2.3%
14. Netherlands    2.3%
15. UK                       2.2%

Source: BCG Global Wealth

Triplette Chair by Paul Menand Turns Into One Chair When Three’s a Crowd

http://www.furniturefashion.com/2011/05/29/triplette-chair-by-paul-menand-turns-into-one-chair-when-three’s-a-crowd.html

Designer Paul Menand has come up with a unique solution to solve two important issues in a home owner’s life: enough seating for all the guests and plenty of storage space for all those seats that remain empty when the guests decide to finally leave. The Triplette Chair offers a maximum of three chairs at any time but, when put away, the three chairs can be merged into a single seating solution. The Triplette Chair is able to offer enough seating for 1-3 persons, so, depending on your needs, you might want to purchase a bunch of these babies as soon as possible. Beware though, you won’t be able to join more than three of them when it’s time to store them away. Via Paul Menand

Bank of Korea Should Raise Rates More Aggressively, State Think Tank Says

By Eunkyung Seo

May 22, 2011 11:00 AM GMT+0800

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-22/bank-of-korea-should-raise-rates-more-aggressively-state-think-tank-says.html

The Bank of Korea should raise interest rates more aggressively to tackle fast-growing inflationary pressures, government-run think tank Korea Development Institute said.

“Demand-driven inflation is fast accelerating here,” the KDI said in a report released today. “As long as the base rate is kept as low as it is now, it will be hard to anchor in inflation expectations.”

Higher interest rates and sustained economic growth will likely push the won higher, which should be tolerated because it will help ease price gains, the research institute said.

The KDI also called for policy measures to cope with growing risks related to record-high household debt, including by closely monitoring reckless loans in the non-banking sectors.

Asia’s fourth-largest economy will likely grow 4.2 percent this year and 4.3 percent next year on exports and domestic demand, the KDI projected. Inflation is expected to accelerate to 4.1 percent in 2011, exceeding the central bank’s target limit.

The Bank of Korea held off from boosting borrowing costs for two months after two quarter-point increases in January and March.

Magistral Cabinet by Sebastian Errazuriz Is a Protective Bamboo Storage Solution

带刺儿的橱柜

http://www.furniturefashion.com/2011/05/17/magistral-cabinet-by-sebastian-errazuriz-is-a-protective-bamboo-storage-solution.html

The Magistral Cabinet designed by Sebastian Errazuriz is an interesting concept that combines an artistic approach with actual usefulness. The Magistral Cabinet has a lot of compartments that can slide open to offer you enough storage space for all your needs and a protective shell that seems to keep intruders away at all costs. The Magistral Cabinet certainly impresses with its imposing design achieved by the extensive use of bamboo sticks. No less than 80,000 of such bamboo sticks were used to cover the whole surface of the cabinet, a process that involved a team of 12 woodworkers working on the Magistral Cabinet for six weeks to complete it. The real question is, would you have any matching furniture for it? Via Sebastian Errazuriz

Eco Friendly Floating Boat Homes

http://www.shelterness.com/eco-friendly-floating-boat-homes/

Eco Floating homes are green, friendly, low carbon, sustainable architecture objects with contemporary interiors. These floating homes are stylish, have natural wood exteriors and looks beautiful as outside as inside. They are constructed to deliver maximum comfort with minimum energy bills. If you live in UK these floating homes can be delivered to your site by a boat. You’ll be able to enjoy an outdoor lifestyle all year round. It’s a dream, right?

Flexbook by Hao-Chun Huang

Flexbook 可以折叠的电脑

By Ben

Thu May 12 2011

http://www.likecool.com/Flexbook_by_HaoChun_Huang--Design--Gear.html

Flexbook designed by taiwan-based designer Hao-Chun Huang.  Flexbook can be folded be folded for easy portability, or used as a gaming device, e-reader, tablet, or laptop.

"with a waterproof keypad and 21:9 screen, 'flexbook' is designed for portability and range of use among the constantly connected. featuring a flexible structure with a center joint, the laptop can be folded into a range of configurations, while a 180-degree swivel touch screen offers different configurations of viewing, including a laptop and tablet mode."

中文译文    (编译：Cathy)

Miniature Airport

May 9th, 2011

http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2011/05/09/miniature-airport/

The largest model airport in the world is located at the Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany.

Spread over an area of 150 square meters, Knuffingen Airport features 40 different airplanes that take off and land up to 360 times each day.

More than 150,000 working hours and 3.5 million Euro have been invested in this amazing project. The airport is now open to the public.

Funny Coffee Table Inspired By Rubik’s Cube

http://www.shelterness.com/funny-coffee-table-inspired-by-rubiks-cube/

Our lives aren’t always easy and fun. Interiors of our homes usually can prove that. It’s a good idea to make them more fun. One way to do that is to buy furniture that loos cool and fun. For example that could be furniture inspired by toys. Here is a coffee table inspired by famous toy Rubik’s Cube. It’s customizable and features a lot of built-in storage. Each table uses no glue and the pieces are put together through wood dowel pins. The material used are sheets of plywood and the finish is made with lacquer ink. Why not to make your life more fun?

中文译文   (编译：Cathy)

   

发表于 1204068273 @ 09:45 AM CST

Modern Soft Rocker Lounger Charges & Relaxes At the Same Time

可充电躺椅

http://www.furniturefashion.com/2011/05/06/modern-soft-rocker-lounger-charges-relaxes-at-the-same-time.html

Designed by architecture students at MIT, the Soft Rocker is a modern outdoor lounger that offers you a nice relaxing seating solution while making sure that it can also provide a free charging solution for all your mobile gadgets. Whether it’s a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, or any other device for that matter, the Soft Rocker comes with built in energy gathering capabilities. Balancing in the Soft Rocker combined with harnessing the power of the sun will get you enough energy to store in the 12-ampere hour battery of the lounger that can be used whenever it’s needed. Would you get a Soft Rocker for your own back yard? Via Designboom

中文译文    (编译：Cathy)

Sleep Your Way to Better Memory

Posted: 04/ 7/11 08:00 AM ET

By Dr. Michael J. Breus

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-breus/sleep-memory_b_839734.html 

The routine of all-nighters is familiar to anyone through their own experiences in college or from TV and movies: it's the night before a big test, you realize you've never taken the plastic off the textbook, and you have nine hours to stay up all night and learn everything. Or maybe you need to stay up all night for a presentation at work?

Sounds fun, right? It turns out, however, that you may have been better off just going to sleep.

Well, sort of. We've known for a long time that quality sleep helps with good memory formation -- that's one of the reasons that pulling all-nighters in college is not a successful strategy.

Now a new study suggests that during sleep our brains actually choose to focus memory building on information it thinks will be important in the future. This tells us a few things:

1. We actually forget most of the information we process each day

2. We tend to remember things because we think they are important

3. The brain knows which pieces of information we consider important and highlights them for memory storage

4. A good night's sleep is a necessary step to really solidify information in our memory

There are some people with better memories than others, but even the mental athletes who win memory competitions know they won't do very well on a poor night's sleep!

The brain is actually more active during sleep when you know you need to remember particular information. This is just one of the many active things the brain does while you're sleeping, and is one of the reasons why quality sleep is so important for everyone -- especially during early life, when the brain is rapidly maturing and highly changeable.

Do you have a knack for remembering things? Or looking for a strategy to help remember something? If so, perhaps the best way to remember something is to tell yourself it is very important, decide you're going to test yourself on it the next day, and get a good night's sleep.

Sweet dreams,

Michael J. Breus, Ph.D 

中文译文  （编译：Cathy）

McDonald's to hire 50,000 workers - in 1 day

By Aaron Smith

April 4, 2011: 12:48 PM ET

http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/04/news/companies/mcdonalds_jobs/index.htm?cnn=yes&hpt=Sbin

McDonald's is planning a one-day hiring spree of 50,000 additional workers. 麦当劳计划于 4月19日当天在全美范围内招聘5万名的新员工。

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- McDonald's said Monday that it is planning a one-day hiring spree of 50,000 new workers on April 19 for its U.S. restaurants.

McDonald's (MCD, Fortune 500) said that these new "Mcjobs" will include crew and management positions, part-time and full-time.

McDonald's, which has 14,000 restaurants in the United States, said the hires will occur nationwide.

"We're excited to offer 50,000 new jobs, all across America, all in one day," said Jan Fields, president of McDonald's U.S.A.

Fields, who started working at a McDonald's restaurant as a crew member behind the counter in 1978, said the 50,000 new hires will increase the U.S. workforce to 700,000 from its current level of 650,000.

She said the average pay for the jobs is $8.30 an hour. That's compared to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, though in some states the minimum wage is higher. She said that restaurant managers can make $50,000 a year.

This announcement from McDonald's is just the latest sign of an improving job market. On Friday, the U.S. government announced a gain of 216,000 jobs in March, pushing the unemployment rate down to 8.8%, its lowest level in two years.

中文译文  (编译：Cathy)

Dining And Pool Table In One

Wed, Mar 30, 2011

By kate

http://www.digsdigs.com/dining-and-pool-table-in-one/

Modern furniture is functional furniture! Take this dining table that turns into a pool table. Fusion Table by Aramith will be a nice variant for a big family, especially if you don’t have much space. First you can dine and then have fun playing pool on it. You will find evetything you need for the game underneath the top of the table. Then if you need to have a meal, just put the top back on the table. The table is made of veneer and looks very traditional in its dining look. Make a surprise for your family buying this table!

 

中文译文 (编译：Cathy) 

 

发表于 1204068273 @ 11:10 PM CST

Chic Purple Living Room Design

优雅别致的紫色客厅

March 26, 2011  

http://www.shelterness.com/chic-purple-living-room-design/

编译：Cathy

Purple color is a real hit interior design fashion. Here is a living room designed using this color as the main one. Thanks to that it turned out elegant and chic. In additional to purple white and different shades of berry-like colors were used. They all looks great together.

I recommend you also to check out walls in this living room. An interesting technique is implemented in the design of one of them. Its lower third is covered with wall panels painted in purple while the other part of the wall is completely flat and white. You can implement this idea in any room and you definitely won’t regret it.

紫色是室内设计中的流行颜色，本文的案例是一个以紫色为主色调的客厅，出来的效果既优雅又别致。除了紫、白两大主色以外，设计中还加入了深深浅浅的浆果般的颜色，这些颜色搭配在一起的效果非常不错。

另外，客厅其中一面墙壁的设计手法非常巧妙。这面墙壁原本只是平整的白色墙壁，但设计师为下面的三分之一墙体装上了刷成紫色的护墙板，原本平平无奇的墙壁就立马变得不一样了。

发表于 1204068273 @ 05:04 PM CST

A Bookcase For You And Your Cat

Tue, Mar 15, 2011

By kate

http://www.digsdigs.com/a-bookcase-for-you-and-your-cat/

Guys, who like cats, raise your hands! Designer Corentin Dombrecht has created a bookcase especially for those who love cats and have a pet at home, it’s called the Cat Library. It’s a modular construction so you can make more shelves if you like. As we all know, cats like to explore every single thing in our houses, they like to climb everywhere and this system was made exclusively for them as there is an interesting system of stairs to climb up and down the bookcase. Cats can you these stairs doing no harm to your books, magazines of other things. The system is made of natural wood, the color is neutral so it would fit many modern interiors. Make a present to yourself and your favorite pet.

中文译文  (编译：Cathy)

Cute Photo Frame Clock

http://www.shelterness.com/cute-photo-frame-clock/

Here is an amazing that you could get online at Dutch by Design a while back. Even though they don’t sell this cute photo frame clock anymore it can become a great inspiration for a weekend DIY project. All you need is a quite large yet simple clock mechanism and 12 different photo frames that looks good together. You can fill these frames with wallpapers, prints, photos, cards, small items and many other things to get your very own unique look.

5 sectors hit hardest by Japan's crisis

The scale of Japan's tragedy is still difficult to assess but there are several industries that are particularly vulnerable, and the impact on them could be felt around the globe.

By Nin-Hai Tseng, writer-reporter

Last updated March 15 2011: 1:31 PM ET

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/fortune/1103/gallery.japan_industries.fortune/index.html

Natural gas industry

Unlike many of the world's commodities, the price of natural gas has been one of the few that has actually declined this past year.

But perhaps not for long. The production of nuclear power, which accounts for about 30% of Japan's electricity, has stalled as workers try to avert a nuclear disaster following last week's earthquake.

The power disruptions have helped send natural gas futures rallying on speculation that liquefied natural gas cargoes would be diverted to Japan.

On Tuesday, natural gas futures rallied for a third day, gaining 1.2% in the New York Mercantile Exchange to $ 3.959 a million British thermal units. Despite the recent rise, gas is still down 11% this year.

Auto industry 

Cars waiting for export burn after an 8.9 magnitude strong earthquake on March 12, 2011 in Tokai, Ibaraki, Japan. 2011年3月12日，日本 茨城 东海，原本等待出口的汽车在大地震之后起火燃烧。

As the world's third-largest producer of automobiles, Japan could expect major headwinds as the natural disasters disrupt production of vehicles sold across the world.

As Fortune's Alex Taylor notes, Japan's largest auto producers are now expected to remain shut down through Wednesday, and some analysts foresee further disruptions lasting months. He also points out that U.S. car buyers will be feeling the effects of the disaster in coming weeks -- Deutsche Bank estimates that about 12% of all vehicles sold in North America come from Japan and that vehicles produced in the region by Japanese automakers contain at least some Japanese-made component.

The next five months are the seasonally strongest of the year for U.S. sales, so extended disruptions could cause shortages of some products.

Semiconductor industry

Japan is one of a few technologically sophisticated economies to dominate the global semiconductor industry -- those tiny chips that power a myriad of electronics from cell phones to computers.

But suspension of operations at two major manufacturing plants could present headwinds for the industry in the coming months, potentially pushing prices higher for electronic products globally. Shin-Etsu Chemical, which makes silicon wafers needed to produce semiconductors, announced it has halted operations of its Shirakawa plant, which alone accounts for more than half of Japan's production of electronic wafers. As of Tuesday afternoon, the company's website says the plant remains out of operations as inspections continue.

"A protracted stoppage could have a substantial impact on the semiconductor industry," according to Nomura Global Economics, noting that it could be a while before operations resume. The forecasting firm also says that suspension at another key facility, Sumco's Imari plant in Kyushu, could impact the industry.

Oil industry

A sign showing gasoline is sold out is displayed at a gas station in Tokyo, Japan. 日本东京一家加油站外贴出汽油售罄的告示。

Natural disasters, like the earthquake and tsunami that pummeled Japan, often force refineries to shut down, leading to higher fuel prices. And indeed, several refineries in Japan have stopped operations, but crude prices have tumbled below $100 a barrel for the first time in more than a week.

On Tuesday, U.S. crude for April delivery slid $3.77 to $97.42 a barrel in electronic trading. To be sure, the natural disaster in Japan has diverted attention away from troubles in the Middle East, which had sent oil prices surging.

But expectations of lower oil demand from Japan -- the world's third-largest importer of oil -- has helped put downward pressures on prices. It's still a speculator's guess over where prices could go from here, but for now, they're on the way down.

Tourism industry 

Stranded travelers sleep at Tokyo's Haneda airport on Friday, March 11, 2011. 2011年3月11日，滞留的旅客在东京羽田机场席地而眠。

Japan has long drawn tourists from around the world. But while the quake and tsunami only modestly damaged theme parks and hotels, it has forced them to temporarily close, which will likely have at least a negative impact on earnings, according to Nomura Global Economics.

Oriental Land Co., which runs the Tokyo Disney Resort, has closed its parks and hotels to assess damages, but it's planning to announce a reopening later this month. Nomura notes that there's a widening mood across Japan toward staying at home, so other areas of the leisure industry including karaoke, bowling, video arcades and travel will likely be impacted as well.

LIGHT SWITCH STICKERS By Henrietta Swift

http://www.furniturefashion.com/2011/03/16/light-switch-stickers-by-henrietta-swift.html

Looking to add a touch of fun in your home decor without breaking the bank? Then the uber cute LIGHT SWITCH STICKERS by Henrietta Swift should do the trick. These funky little stickers transform your hackneyed switch boards to pieces of art so that you can show off your individualistic streak.Each pack contains four sheets of peel-off vinyl stickers, enough to make eight faces, including mustaches, hair-clips, cheeks, bow-ties, sunglasses, freckles, smiles and more! The stickers are available in versions like Boy, Girl and Animal and can be purchased online from Brighton Pod.

中文译文 (编译：Cathy)

14 Cool Modern Bookshelves For Home Usage

http://www.furniturefashion.com/2011/03/15/18089.html

Posted by Tanya Palta

If you are always running out of space for storing your books and don’t want a stuff old library in your house then this is the post for you. Listed below are some of the coolest bookshelves on the market which act as your personal libraries. All the mentioned products are fun, funky and functional and very relevant in modern homes.

Wisdom Tree Bookshelf By Jodi Mila

The United States Map Bookshelf By  Ron Arad

The Pulse Bookshelf By  Måns Salomonsen

The Patatras Bookshelves

The Console Bookshelf By Katz

The Circular Bookshelf By  Zhdanova Irina

The Bookshelf Chair By Nobodyandco

The AAKKOSET Bookshelf By  Lincoln Kayiwa

Casual Style Bookshelf

Biblio Bathtub With Bookshelf By Antonio Lupi

The Infinity Bookshelf By Job Koelewijn

The Staircase Bookshelf By Tim Sloan

The Circular Library With Seating Solution By Thomas Mills

The Spinning The Giro One Library By Juli Kim

Subway Runs Past McDonald's Chain

By JULIE JARGON

MARCH 8, 2011

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703386704576186432177464052.html

It's official: the Subway sandwich chain has surpassed McDonald's Corp. as the world's largest restaurant chain, in terms of units.

At the end of last year, Subway had 33,749 restaurants worldwide, compared to McDonald's 32,737. The burger giant disclosed its year-end store count in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late last month.

The race for global dominance is an important one for an industry that's mostly saturated in the U.S. High unemployment and economic uncertainty have battered the restaurant industry in the U.S., and chains are increasingly looking overseas for growth, particularly in Asia.

Starbucks Corp. recently said it plans to triple its number of outlets in China, for example. Dunkin' Brands Inc., parent of Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins, plans to open thousands of new outlets in China in coming years as well as its first stores in Vietnam in the next 18 months. Subway just opened its 1,000th location in Asia, including its first in Vietnam.

Subway, which opened its first international restaurant in 1984, in Bahrain, expects its number of international restaurants to exceed its domestic ones by 2020, says Don Fertman, Subway's Chief Development Officer. The chain currently has just over 24,000 restaurants in the U.S., where it generated $10.5 billion of its $15.2 billion in revenue last year.

The closely held company, owned by Doctor's Associates Inc., does not disclose its profits.

McDonald's is still the leader when it comes to sales. The burger chain reported $24 billion in revenue last year. "We remain focused on listening to and serving our customers, and are committed to being better, not just bigger," a McDonald's spokeswoman says.

Subway, which surpassed the number of McDonald's in the U.S. about nine years ago, expects China to eventually become one of its largest markets. The sandwich shop only has 199 restaurants in China now, but expects to have more than 500 by 2015.

Subway 赛百味门店

The Subway sandwich chain has surpassed McDonald's as the world's largest restaurant chain in terms of units. 若从门店数量方面来说，赛百味已经超越麦当劳成为全球最大的餐饮连锁店。

Subway has achieved its rapid growth, in part, by opening outlets in non-traditional locations such as an automobile showroom in California, an appliance store in Brazil, a ferry terminal in Seattle, a riverboat in Germany, a zoo in Taiwan, a Goodwill store in South Carolina, a high school in Detroit and a church in Buffalo, New York.

"We're continually looking at just about any opportunity for someone to buy a sandwich, wherever that might be. The closer we can get to the customer, the better," Mr. Fertman says, explaining that it now has almost 8,000 Subways in unusual locations. "The non-traditional is becoming traditional."

The company has some concerns about the economies of certain international markets, such as Germany and the United Kingdom. The company is trying to develop more affordable offerings in those countries, similar to the $5 foot-long sandwiches that have been successful in the U.S.

"Finding that kind of value proposition in those countries is essential," Mr. Fertman says.

中文译文  (翻译：Cathy)

Jobs, Zuckerberg, Schmidt to Meet With Obama Tonight

By Kate Andersen Brower

Feb 18, 2011 7:54 AM GMT+0800 Thu Feb 17 23:54:42 GMT 2011

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-17/jobs-zuckerberg-schmidt-to-talk-with-obama-in-california.html

Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Photographer: Asa Mathat/All Things Digital via Bloomberg 苹果公司首席执行官斯蒂芬·乔布斯（摄影：Asa Mathat / 彭博资讯All Things Digital供图）

Google Inc. Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt. Photographer: Denis Doyle/Bloomberg 谷歌首席执行官埃里克·施密特（摄影：Denis Doyle / 彭博资讯供图）

Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg. Photographer: Tony Avelar/Bloomberg   Facebook创始人马克·扎克伯格（摄影：Tony Avelar / 彭博资讯供图）

President Barack Obama plans to discuss his economic agenda and ideas for job growth at a private dinner tonight with technology executives including Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs, Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, according to an administration official.

The president will meet with the executives in the San Francisco area, three days after releasing a $3.7 trillion budget that aims to keep up government funding for education, infrastructure and research. He’s likely to hear from the executives about taxes, patents and regulations.

The companies represented at the dinner at a private residence are major components of a sector “that has been a huge contributor to economic growth in the last several decades,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said today, before Obama left for California. “There’s a lot of support among leaders of this industry for our education agenda.”

Also expected to attend the session are John Doerr, senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo! Inc., Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter Inc., Reed Hastings, CEO of NetFlix Inc., Arthur Levinson, Genentech Inc. chairman, John L. Hennessy, president of Stanford University, and venture capitalist Steve Westly, managing partner of The Westly Group, the official said, speaking on condition on anonymity.

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems Inc., and Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison also will attend, spokeswomen for both companies said. Andrew Noyes, a spokesman for Facebook, confirmed Zuckerberg will be at the dinner.

 “Mark looks forward to speaking with President Obama and fellow technology industry leaders about the value of innovation to economic growth, jobs, and U.S. competitiveness,” Noyes said in an e-mail.

Economic Policies

Obama is holding the meeting as his economic policies are under fire from Republican lawmakers, who control the House of Representatives, and the administration is seeking ways to bring down the unemployment rate. The U.S. jobless rate has stood at 9 percent or more for the longest stretch since monthly data was first compiled in 1948.

Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who co-founded a company that became Nextel Corp., now Sprint Nextel Corp., said in an interview that the Internet and social networking have been one of the rare areas of significant growth in the past decade.

Warner, who met Zuckerberg on Jan. 19 at Facebook’s Palo Alto, California, headquarters, said that “without innovation and a growing economy out in” Silicon Valley, “we’re not going to be competitive.”

Expanding Access

Along with proposals to improve U.S. public education, Obama’s budget includes $18 billion to build up wireless networks for emergency workers, expand access to high-speed wireless service and supplement communications research.

Former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt said that “there’s a natural alignment of interests” between the president and technology executives.

 “I think the president is clearly trying to establish himself as being at least comfortable with the business community and not alien to their interests,” said Levitt, an adviser to the Carlyle Group, Promontory Financial Group and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. He is also on the board of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

There is a feeling of frustration among technology executives that the administration has paid lip service to investments in innovation and education without backing them up with actions, said Russell Hancock, chief executive officer of Joint Venture, a research group in San Jose, California, that provides analysis on the region’s economy.

‘Strategic Investments’

“We’re not getting the sense that the president and his team are spending enough time here or directing those crucial strategic investments to this region” like improving infrastructure, including ports for the transportation of goods, and stepping up developments in communications, he said.

In his State of the Union address Jan. 25, Obama cited technology companies as heirs to the industries that made the U.S. the world’s biggest economy.

“We’re the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook,” he said. “In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It is how we make our living.”

Warner said the executives will likely seek Obama’s help in improving the business climate in the U.S. That would include lowering corporate taxes, shortening the patent approval process, helping new businesses get the capital they need to launch and expand and shortening the Food and Drug Administration approval process, he said.

Relations With Business

Obama also is seeking to burnish his pro-business credentials after struggles with groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during his first two years in office.

“This is his way of showing he’s very interested in figuring out how to strengthen the U.S. economy,” said Bill Kreher, an analyst with Edward Jones in St. Louis. “Obama recognizes there are bright tech CEOs that can help him shape the direction of the country.”

Tomorrow, Obama plans to highlight education during a visit to Intel Corp.’s Hillsboro, Oregon campus, where he will tour the company’s semiconductor manufacturing facility with Intel CEO Paul Otellini.

Obama has tapped Silicon Valley for support in the past. While this trip doesn’t have a direct political purpose, according to Carney, when Obama was in California last October, he helped raise money for the Democratic National Committee at the home of Westly.

Industry Employees

Employees in the high-tech industry contributed $8.5 million to Obama’s 2008 campaign, compared with $1.5 million for Republican nominee John McCain, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group. No 2008 candidate received more money than Obama from industry employees. Obama won more than 70 percent of the vote in 2008 in the area where the dinner is taking place.

During that October stop in the San Francisco area Obama held a separate meeting with Jobs.

Jobs announced on Jan. 17 that he was taking a medical leave from the most valuable technology company. It marked the third time the Apple co-founder has taken time away from the company since 2004 to deal with health problems.

Tips:

House of Representatives：（美）众议院

pay lip service to：嘴上说得好听；口头上承认

lip service：空头支票，口头上说得好听的话

State of the Union：国情咨文

Food and Drug Administration：食品和药物管理局，缩写为FDA

De Beers Diamond Sales Up 53 Percent

By Jane Lee

Feb. 11 2011 - 10:19 pm  Image via Wikipedia

http://blogs.forbes.com/janelee/2011/02/11/de-beers-sales-up-53-percent/

De Beers announced Friday that overall diamond sales in 2010 jumped 53% year-over-year to $5.88 billion, bringing the world’s leading rough diamond company “from stabilisation to strong recovery.”

Driven by robust demand from China and India, sales of rough diamonds in 2010 by the Diamond Trading Company, a distribution segment of De Beers, totaled $5.08 billion, up $1.85 billion from the previous year.

Strong consumer interest fueled a rebound in the prices of DTC rough diamonds by an average of 27% over the year to levels above those prior to the onset of the economic crisis, according to the statement.

In another strong indication of market recovery, the company’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) climbed to $1.43 billion, an increase of 118% over 2009.

Production from its independently-owned and joint venture operations in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Canada yielded approximately 33 million carats in 2010. Debswana Diamond Company, a joint venture between the government of Botswana and De Beers, recently launched the Cut-8 expansion project at Jwaneng mine, the largest ever investment in Botswana. The venture is expected to yield 100 million carats worth approximately $15 billion over the life of the mine.

De Beers cites western market recovery and emerging markets as foundations for continued growth. 

Apple to unveil cheaper iPhone mid 2011: report

By IBTimes Staff Reporter

February 12, 2011 4:56 AM EST

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/111791/20110212/apple-iphones-cheaper-iphones.htm

Apple is working on a cheaper version of the iPhone that is aimed at slowing the advance of competing handsets based on Google Inc.'s Android software, according to people who have been briefed on the plans, Bloomberg said in a report today. 

One version would be cheaper and smaller than the most recent iPhone. Apple is also developing technology that makes it easier to use the iPhone on multiple wireless networks, the report quoted sources as saying.

REUTERS

Apple to unveil cheaper iPhone mid 2011: report苹果公司将于年中推出价格较低的iPhone（路透社 供图）

Apple hopes that the low-cost device would help rival the success of Google Android, which while targeting the high-end smartphone market has also become popular with low-cost devices that offer many of the same functions as smartphones, the report said.

Apple would sell it at a low price mainly because the smartphone will use a processor, display and other components similar to those used in the current model, rather than the pricier, more advanced parts that will be in the next iPhone, the source said. Component prices typically drop over time, according to Bloomberg.

The report also said that Apple initially aimed to unveil the device mid-way through 2011 and very few Apple employees know the 'iPhone mini' exists.

Tips:

smartphone: 智能手机

中文译文 (编译：Cathy)

China buying more and more in Europe

By ANDREW WILLIS

09.02.2011 @ 09:40 CET

http://euobserver.com/884/31774

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Long known for its record export sales throughout Europe, new research suggests China is becoming an increasingly important buyer of eurozone goods, replacing Switzerland as the region's third most important customer.

Only the UK and the US bought more eurozone goods in 2010, according to the research carried out by Unicredit bank and the Ifo Institute in Munich, as reported by the Financial Times Deutschland on Tuesday (8 February).

Trade is a two-way street shows the new research (Photo: EUobserver.com)

贸易是双向的（图片来源：EUobserver.com）

Since 2007, China has been the principle supplier of goods to the eurozone but its role as an important export market is set to increase in 2011, indicate the report's authors.

"The country will probably overtake the USA as the second most important trading partner of the euro area, " said Steffen Elstner, an economist at the Ifo Institute.

Given the ongoing difficulties within the UK economy and solid growth forecasts for China, the Asian powerhouse economy could even take the top spot in 2011.

Machinery, equipment and chemicals dominated the eurozone sales to the Far East, with Germany leading the export charge.

"Above all, the German exports to the Chinese market in 2010 have produced the jump in market share, " said Andreas Rees, an economist at Unicredit.

The new figures highlight China's growing importance to the health of the eurozone economy, at a time when Beijing is also investing in the sovereign bonds of several 'peripheral' members of the single currency club.

Reports suggest China has made important purchases of Greek, Spanish and Portuguese bonds in recent months, helping to alleviate pressure on the debt-ridden economies.

 Tips:

Eurozone: 欧元区

sovereign bond: 主权债券

Digital Life

Understanding Second-order Effects

Throughout modern history, technological breakthroughs surpass the people who invent them. The gap between the potential and the humanly possible, the chief by-product of the Law of Disruption, inevitably leads to dramatic change in the short term. But the real transformation comes later, as human systems—economic, social, legal—struggle to catch up. This chapter introduces the Law of Disruption and its key drivers, Moore’s Law and Metcalfe’s Law. Together, they have built the foundation for our new existence, our digital life. Now comes the hard part: creating a new body of laws to regulate it, to keep the peace, and to ensure its prosperity.

Killer apps in the middle ages

Disruptive Technologies change the world. But not in the way you might think.

In the darkest days of the Middle Ages, a Germanic king adapted the rigid metal stirrups used in Asia, making them instead from flexible leather. Now soldiers could balance themselves on horceback and still fight, making them far more effective. The stirrup saved Europe, and these new mounted cavalry were celebrated forever after as knights. But that’s just the beginning of the story. To maintain the new fighting force, knights needed a source of income. Rather than pay them himself, the king granted the knights the right to collect rents and other tributes from farmers in their domain. Feudalism, landed nobles, and serfdom were born. More knights required more land, and the king began to take it from the church. Church and state, and the rise of the latter, established a long-lasting pattern of interaction.

The first-order effects of the stirrup were dramatic. Medieval society was saved. The Catholic Church survived and continued to provide social, cultural, and legal continuity with the long-dead Roman Empire. The king emerged as the first leader of a new and powerful empire, the forerunner of modern Europe. On Christmas Day in the year of 800, he took the crown from Pope Leo III’s hands as the pontiff was about to coronate him, and placed it on his own head. His name was Charlemagne—Charles Magnus, the Great—emperor of the Romans.

The long-term consequences of Charlemagne’s simple innovation were, in some sense, even more stunning. The social, economic, and legal systems that developed to support the mounted troops persisted for nearly a thousand years, long after the actual advantage of the stirrup had been neutralized. Charlemagne’s empire, in some form, lasted until the age of Napoleon. Even today, you still can’t buy property in parts of central London without paying tribute to the Duke of Westminister.

The stirrup is a classic example of what I describe ten years ago as a killer application, or “killer app”—a technological innovation whose introduction disrupts long-standing rules of markets or even whole societies. Killer apps establish new industries and transform existing ones. They can even create new empires. Their own inventors may have little idea of the uses for them that people will ultimately discover. And the real impact is often felt long after their introduction. The stirrup, crop rotation, reading glasses, iron rope, the steam engine, railroads, the telegraph, antibiotics, automobiles, the atom bomb, the semiconductor—this is just a short list of inventios whose dramatic introductions were followed by even more dramatic changes to the civilizations that used them.

Saying that the stirrup created medieval Europe is a stretch, but not a big one. As historian Lynn White Jr. put it, “few inventions have been so simple as the stirrup, but few have had so catalytic an influence on history.”

The three laws of digital life

Charlemagne had the stirup. We have the computer.

The information age, like the feudal age, began with a simple innovation. On November 6,1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president of the United States in a rout. Although Eisenhower was expected to defeat Adlai Stevenson, no one imagined so lopsided a victory. No one, that is, except a Census Bureau computer named Univac. Univac had been built to tally the census, but its operators programmed it instead to process election results. After only I percent of the vote had been counted, Univac correctly predicted an Eisenhower landslide.

Univac weighed 16,000 pounds, performed about 1000 calculations per second, and cost $750,000. it was the first commercially sold computer in the world, and the first to be used for business applications (General Electric programmed it to calculate its payroll in 1954). It was also the first to be programmed for a task it was not initially designed to perform—a trend that defines modern computing to this day. The Census Bureau’s machine was the first; by 1957, forty-six had sold.

Nearly sixty years after Eisenhower’s election, there are now more computing devices in the world than there are people, and their numbers are doubling every few years. The semiconductor, or “chip,” was first added to a calculator in 1967, to a toy in 1978, and to a toaster in 1983. A personal computer was first marketed in the early 1980s. Despite unfathomable advances in the computer’s power and abilities, the price of computing has dropped steadily for thirty years. Today’s PC costs 16 percent of what it did in 1981, but is nearly five hundred times more powerful. More than a billion have been sold.

As chips have become cheaper and more prevalent, their impact has moved from the world of computers and high technology to every aspect of modern life. Computers are the central driver of productivity gains across industries. Softwear has become a key source of new consumer products and services. The average automobile now has more than one hundred microprocessors and its own operating system. Even product packaging is becoming intelligent. Soon, more than a trillion items will be able to send and receive data about their price, whereabouts, and expiration dates.

The ubiquity of computers in business, however, has been eclipsed by their takeover of our personal lives. As e-mail and Web browsing have given way to virtual reality games, intelligent call phones, and social networking, we are each developing a second, parallel, existence. Human beings thrive on interaction, and computers have given us remarkable new tools to connect, collaborate, and communicate with one another. In 2008, consumer Internet usage surpassed business use for the first time, opening a gap that is expected to widen over the next decade. We have our real lives, and now we also have digital lives.

In our digital lives, we can simultaneously chat with friends in different time zones or explore alternative identities in role-playing games. We can let our computers scour the internet looking for things that interest us – auctions for obscure collectibles, music by artist liked by people who like the same books as you do, or just random content (blogs, photo images, YouTube videos) fed into our personal home pages. And we are no longer tethered by wired connections. All of our information is now available wherever we go on a variety of devices. Nearly 20 percent of American homes had dropped landline services by 2009, relying entirely on cell phones. “Computing,” as Nicholas Negroponte wrote in his 1995 classic, Being Digital, “”is not about computers anymore. It is about living.”

Digital life is the unintended side effect of cheap computing power and the ubiquitous network standards known as the Internet. Initially invented in the 1970s, the Internet had the modest goal of connecting the mainframe computers of U.S. government agencies and defense contractors. As more computers joined the network, however, the Internet mutated into something far different and much more interesting. Today, it connects billions of devices and billions of people. It moves information at ever-increasing speeds along a nearly infinite set of pathways, shortening distances and eliminating borders.

Three related principles – Moore’s Law, Metcalfe’s Law, and the Law of Disruption – explain the power and promise of digital life. Taken together, they provide its natural laws – its physics – overseeing its unique forms of time, space, and gravity.

Moore’s Law: Faster, Cheaper, Smaller

In 1965, Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel, made an astonishing prediction. In a brief article titled “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits,” he claimed that the number of transistors on his chips would double every year or two without increasing their cost to users. His promise is now known as Moore’s Law: every twelve to eighteen months, the processing power of computers doubles while price holds constant.

Moore’s Law is the result of technological breakthroughs that reduce the size of transistors, couples with manufacturing improvements that greatly reduce the frequency of defects. With each new generation, producers yield slightly larger chips made with slightly smaller transistors. Neither Moore nor his competitors have yet to break Moore’s Law, and there is every reason to believe they will continue to deliver it for the rest of our working lives.

The application of Moore’s Law boils down to one remarkable fact: computers continue to get faster, cheaper, and smaller. As a result, they become more powerful by a factor of two with every succeeding generation. Computer memory, data storage, and data communications have their own rough approximations of Moore’s Law. Improvements in fiber-optic cables (which transmit data at the speed of light) and the development of optical switches translate to data communications costs that are rapidly approaching zero from most uses. One fiber-optic cable can carry millions of simultaneous telephone calls.

Total data storage has also expanded exponentially. In 1980, IBM sold refrigerator-sized disks for its mainframe computers that stored about 1.2 gigabytes of data at a cost of $200,000. Today, Wal-Mart sells 4-gigabyte drives — enough to store about 3,000 books — that are the size of a paper clip and cost only $5.00. GE announced in early 2009 a breakthrough that will increase the store capacity of CDs by 100,000 percent. IBM is working on technology that will store data in individual atoms and build circuits out of a single molecule.

Because chips are the raw material in the construction of digital life, the implications of the faster-cheaper-smaller principle are profound. Consider a few examples:

1. deflation. Basic commodities like oil, electricity, or cotton tend to become more expensive over time, with cost increases working their way through the rest of the system. Computer prices, on the other hand, have stayed the same, or gone down. Miniaturization leads to computers in more and more products, increasing economies of scale and pulsing costs down even faster.

2. abundant resources. Oil, natural gas, coal, and many of the sources of electricity are nonrenewable – as they are used, they are also used up, raising prices and limiting further increases in productivity. But the major ingredient of semiconductors is silicon, the second-most abundant element on earth.

以上内容摘自：Laws of Disruption: Harnessing the New Forces that Govern Life and Business in the Digital Age 一书，作者：Larry Downs

中文译文 （翻译：Cathy）

Fluorescence test can show water quality

By Stephen Harris

6 January 2011

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/fluorescence-test-can-show-water-quality/1006706.article

People in disaster areas could one day test if water is safe to drink in seconds using technology under development at Birmingham University.

A team of engineers and scientists are developing a device that measures water’s fluorescence in order to detect harmful microbes and chemicals.

They plan to work with several water companies in England and Wales to test the device in the UK’s distribution system.

But they also hope it could also be deployed in parts of developing countries where there is no established water supply, as well as used by aid agencies assisting areas hit by natural disasters.

‘Normal tests for whether you’ve got microbial activity in the water or not can take three to five days,’ project leader Dr John Bridgeman
told The Engineer.

 ‘Using fluorescence we could give you an answer in seconds as to whether water is contaminated or not.’

‘In this country, water quality is generally assessed at the customers’ tap and there is little real-time quality management in the distribution system. If we put an instrument in the system it could measure the water quality and send the data to a control centre.’

Water, like other substances, can absorb certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation and then emit it at a different wavelength, a process known as fluorescence.

Bridgeman’s technology identifies where radiation absorbed and emitted at specific wavelengths creates high intensity fluorescence, indicating that water pollutants are present.

‘For example if we irradiate water at 280nm and receive an emission wavelength of about 360nm and get a large fluorescence intensity, we know that it is indicative of microbial activity – bugs in the water,’ said Bridgeman.

Other pairs of specific wavelengths correspond to other pollutants such as organic matter and whitening agents from detergents.

When chlorine is added to water to kill microbes, it can react with organic material to produce disinfectant by-products such as trihalomethanes (THMs). Low-level exposure to these over a long period of time can cause cancer.

Bridgeman is leading two projects related to the technology, funded by EPSRC grants of around £200,000 and £450,000, respectively.

The first involves testing water in Durban, South Africa, for microbes and correlating the results with laboratory analysis to ensure the process is robust enough to work in different environments.

The second involves constructing an LED device to detect both microbes and organic matter that will be tested at Sheffield University and then in the water system. The tests are expected to be complete by April this year.

Berkshire-based firm Safe Training Systems helped the team construct a device for the South Africa trials, while Northumbrian, Severn Trent and United Utilities water companies are assisting with the UK project.

The next step for the Durban project will be to speak to non-governmental organisations about the device’s possibilities for the developing world and disaster aid.

CES 2011: The future of food is wireless in the store and in your home

by Courtney Boyd Myers

6th January 2011

http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/01/06/ces-2011-the-future-of-food-is-wireless-in-the-store-and-in-your-home/

Imagine being out in your car and suddenly having the urge to bake cookies. Do you have eggs at home? Do you have milk to drink with your cookies? An app on your phone tells you that you have 12 eggs, more than enough to make Tollhouse cookies but you are out of milk. It then gives you directions to the nearest supermarket that has your favorite brand of organic soy milk.

Once you get to the supermarket, imagine walking down the shopping aisle and being able to view in-depth product information at anything you look at- like nutritional information and expiration dates. The store manager also knows exactly how many boxes of which kind of cereal he has in his store. And when there are only 5 boxes of Cheerios left, the shelf senses this and wirelessly puts in an order for more.

Once you get home from the supermarket, you have to mix the ingredients together by yourself, but then the cookies are wirelessly baked for you. No oven, no stovetop required. Think electromagnetic induction powered cookie pans.

Everything I’ve just detailed is all possible. And it was demoed today by Fulton Innovation, the same company that also wirelessly powered a Tesla car. The wireless technology would be embedded on the supermarket shelf and in consumer’s homes to help manage and track inventory. The products are embedded with inductive ink and it’s the kind of ink that can be used on existing printing technology. This ink is part of eCoupled’s integrated wireless technology from Fulton Innovation, which also features a home monitoring system like in the photo below.

In the kitchen all food can be heated and controlled without wires. In fact, I saw soup heating up in its own container. Just by pulling a tab and placing the container on an eCoupled-enabled countertop, the contents will heat to a low, medium or high temperature, depending on the user’s preference.  They also offer a set of kitchen utensils like a magnetic saucepan that can be placed on any surface and cook food wirelessly. You can literally hold it in the palm of your hand while it’s cooking sauce and you won’t be burned. And while they don’t have specific prices yet, a Fulton rep said the technology isn’t even that expensive. The tech is more secure than RFID and they even say it’s safe for our brains because “it’s under a certain limitation in the magnetic field,” set by the U.S. and other national governments.

What do you think of a future of wireless food?

中文译文 （编译：Cathy）

Walking speed associated with survival in older adults

January 4, 2011

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-survival-older-adults.html

In an analysis that included data from 9 studies, having higher measures of walking speed among older adults was associated with increased length of survival, according to a study in the January 5 issue of JAMA.

"Remaining years of life vary widely in older adults, and physicians should consider life expectancy when assessing goals of care and treatment plans. However, life expectancy based on age and sex alone provides limited information because survival is also influenced by health and functional abilities," according to background information in the article. There are currently no well-established approaches to predicting life expectancy that incorporate health and function. Gait speed, or walking speed, has been recommended as a potentially useful clinical indicator of well-being among older adults.

Stephanie Studenski, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues conducted a study to assess the association of gait speed with survival in older adults and to determine the degree to which gait speed explains variability in survival after accounting for age and sex. The study included a pooled analysis of 9 participating studies (collected between 1986 and 2000), using individual data from 34,485 community-dwelling adults age 65 years or older with walking speed data available at the beginning of the study, followed up for 6 to 21 years. Participants had an average age of 73.5 years; 59.6 percent were women; and 79.8 percent were white. Gait speed was calculated for each participant using distance in meters and time in seconds. All studies used instructions to walk at usual pace and from a standing start. The walk distance varied from 8 feet to 6 meters. The average gait speed of the participants was 0.92 meters (3 feet) per second.

During the course of the study, there were 17,528 deaths. The overall 5-year survival rate was 84.8 percent; the 10-year survival rate was 59.7 percent. The researchers found that gait speed was associated with differences in the probability of survival at all ages in both sexes, but was especially informative after age 75 years. At this age, predicted 10-year survival across the range of gait speeds ranged from 19 percent to 87 percent in men and from 35 percent to 91 percent in women.

"Predicted years of remaining life for each sex and age increased as gait speed increased, with a gait speed of about 0.8 meters [2.6 feet]/second at the median [midpoint] life expectancy at most ages for both sexes. Gait speeds of 1.0 meter [3.3 feet]/second or higher consistently demonstrated survival that was longer than expected by age and sex alone. In this older adult population the relationship of gait speed with remaining years of life was consistent across age groups, but the absolute number of expected remaining years of life was larger at younger ages," the authors write.

The researchers also found that predicted survival based on age, sex, and gait speed was as accurate as predictions based on age, sex, use of mobility aids, and self-reported function or as age, sex, chronic conditions, smoking history, blood pressure, body mass index, and hospitalization.

The authors suggest there are several reasons why gait speed may predict survival. "Walking requires energy, movement control, and support and places demands on multiple organ systems, including the heart, lungs, circulatory, nervous, and musculoskeletal systems. Slowing gait may reflect both damaged systems and a high energy cost of walking."

The researchers write that there are a number of ways gait speed might be used clinically, including helping to identify older adults with a high probability of living for 5 or 10 more years, who may be appropriate targets for preventive interventions that require years for benefit. Gait speed might be used to identify older adults with increased risk of early mortality, perhaps those with gait speeds slower than 0.6 meter (2 feet)/second. "In these patients, further examination is targeted at potentially modifiable risks to health and survival." Also, gait speed might be monitored over time, with a decline indicating a new health problem that requires evaluation.

"The data provided herein are intended to aid clinicians, investigators, and health system planners who seek simple indicators of health and survival in older adults. Gait speed has potential to be implemented in practice, using a stop watch and a 4-meter [13 feet] course. From a standing start, individuals are instructed to walk at their usual pace, as if they were walking down the street, and given no further encouragement or instructions. The data in this article can be used to help interpret the results. Gait speed may be a simple and accessible indicator of the health of the older person," the authors conclude.

中文译文 （编译：Cathy）

On Our Radar: Bird Species at Risk From Wind Development, Group Says

By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF

December 31, 2010, 10:00 am

Associated Press（美联社 供图）

Whooping cranes are among the bird species likely to be at risk from rapid wind farm development, a conservation group says. 美洲鹤是受风力发电场影响的鸟儿之一

Rapid construction of wind turbines in the Midwest will put several iconic bird species at risk, a conservation group warns. “Golden eagles, whooping cranes and greater sage-grouse are likely to be among the birds most affected by poorly planned and sited wind projects,” said a spokeswoman for the American Bird Conservancy. [Omaha World-Herald]

Upwards of 250 billion microscopic pieces of plastic are adrift in the Mediterranean, recent sampling by a European environmental group suggests. The plastic bits are a hazard to marine life, as they are mixed with plankton and passed up through the food chain, the group’s report says. [Agence France-Presse]

A new study finds a high rate of birth defects in the Iraqi city of Fallujah and cites depleted uranium rounds, used by American forces there in 2004, as a possible cause, though no evidence has so far established a link. “We suspect that the population is chronically exposed to an environmental agent,” a toxicologist who co-wrote the study says. “We don’t know what that environmental factor is, but we are doing more tests to find out.” The American military denies leaving behind contaminants in the city. A separate World Health Organization study on Fallujah’s genetic health is scheduled to be conducted next year, but the city’s still-volatile security situation may limit its scope. [Guardian]

China will spend more than $30 billion on water conservation projects in 2010, a state news agency reports. The spending will be directed at improving irrigation to ensure grain security, and to combat drought and floods. Water shortages and natural disasters are already curtailing grain production in the country, driving food inflation, officials say. [Reuters]

 中文译文 

Incredible IceCube observatory built 8,000ft BENEATH the Antarctic ice designed to catch mysterious particles from space

By Niall Firth
Last updated at 10:33 AM on 23rd December 2010

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1341047/Incredible-IceCube-observatory-built-beneath-Antarctic-ice-designed-catch-mysterious-particles-space.html?ITO=1490

Deep beneath the ice of Antarctica, the world’s strangest observatory has finally reached completion.

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a gigantic telescope at the South Pole that is designed to detect elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos that travel through Earth at the speed of light.

Construction of the telescope ended last weekend although it has already been collecting data for several years.

Very little is known about neutrinos, but they are believed to carry information about the birth of our galaxy and the mystery of black holes.

The final Digital Optical Module (DOM) descends down a bore hole in the ice as it is deployed in the IceCube array, the world's largest neutrino observatory, built under the Antarctic tundra near the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station   最后一个数字光模块(DOM)沉入冰洞里，安装在”冰立方”这个世界上最大的微中子观测台阵列中。”冰立方”深埋于南极冻土之下，在美国阿蒙森-斯科特南极站附近

The IceCube array uses strings of sensors that are lowered down deep boreholes in the ice. The IceTop has two layers of detectors just below the surface. The Eiffel Tower is depicted, bottom right, to show the detector's size   “冰立方”利用一系列深埋在冰洞中的传感器进行探测。冰顶（IceTop）表层下面安装了两层的探测器。图中右下方是埃菲尔铁塔，通过对比，你就能知道”冰立方”有多么的庞大

Physicists think that they are born when violent cosmic events, such as colliding galaxies or distant black holes, occur at the very edges of the universe.

Able to travel billions of light years through space without being absorbed or deflected either by magnetic fields or by atoms, these mysterious high-energy particles could provide answers to some of the most fundamental questions about the universe.

But first you have to find them.

So scientists are using ice to watch for that rare occasion that a neutrino crashes into one of the atoms making up the molecules of water ice.

Matthias Danninger of Stockholm University assists in the deployment of the final Digital Optical Module 瑞典斯德哥尔摩大学的Matthias Danninger协助进行最后一个数字光模块(DOM)的调度

The giant telescope was built at an average depth of up to 8,000 feet beneath the Antarctic plateau at the South Pole.

The entire project cost $279 million, of which the National Science Foundation contributed $242 million towards it.

The final stretch of construction ended with the drilling of the last of 86 holes for the 5,160 optical sensors that are now installed to form the main detector.

The collision between a neutrino and an atom produces particles known as ‘muons’ in a flash of blue light called ‘Cherenkov radiation’. In the ultratransparency of the Antarctic ice, IceCube’s optical sensors detect this blue light.

The trail left in the wake of the subatomic collision allows scientists to trace the direction of the incoming neutrino, back to its point of origin, be it a black hole or a crashing galaxy.

The final module, signed by all the team, is readied for deployment   最后一个数字光模块已经做好进行安装的准备，实验小组所有的成员都在上面签上了自己的名字

However, it is more complicated than simply detecting muons.

For every muon created by a cosmic neutrino, a million more are produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere above the detector.

Therefore, to counter this interference, IceCube’s sensors are actually directed downwards, through the Earth’s core to the skies above the Arctic, to detect neutrinos as they pass through the planet.

As neutrinos are the only known particles that can pass through matter unobstructed, IceCube and AMANDA use the planet as a filter to select only the muons that result from collisions with neutrinos.

The elusive nature of neutrinos also dictates the positioning of the observatory. A neutrino telescope must be transparent enough so that light can pass through a widely spaced array of sensors, and dark enough to avoid interference from natural light.

It must also be deep enough to avoid interference from southern hemisphere cosmic rays.

The Antarctic ice fulfils all of these criteria.

Artist's impression of a 'Cerenkov light cone' passing through the IceCube telescope, left. IceCube will encompass AMANDA (yellow cylinder), right, a smaller neutrino detector. The coloured dots show where the passage of a neutrino has been detected by the modules as it passes through the array  左图：美术家对穿过”冰立方”望远镜的“切伦科夫光锥”的印象图。右图：”冰立方”将AMANDA（黄色圆柱）包围。彩色的点代表的是当微中子穿过”冰立方”时被数字光模块探测到的移动路径

The size of the observatory - a cubic kilometre of ice - is important because it increases the number of potential collisions that can be observed. 

In addition, the type of ice at the South Pole is perfect for detecting the rare collisions. Most ice contains air bubbles and other pockets that would distort measurements.

But at the South Pole, it's basically a giant glacier consisting almost entirely of water ice, meaning there are more atoms and so more chance of a neutrino collision.

Each of the round detectors are placed on a long string and lowered into holes in the ice that were drilled using a powerful hot-water drill that melted up to 200,000 gallons of ice per hole.

Each cable string has 60 sensors at depth with 86 strings making up the main IceCube detector.

The IceCube lab on the Antarctic tundra near the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Scientists have been building the observatory for the past five years   “冰立方”深埋于南极冻土带之下，在美国阿蒙森-斯科特南极站附近。科学家们过去五年一直在修建这个观测站

 中文译文   (翻译：Cathy)

Dubai International Boat Show 2011 to be Held From 1-5 March

 http://elitechoice.org/2010/12/25/dubai-international-boat-show-2011-to-be-held-from-1-5-march/

The maritime tradition of Dubai has a long history. The sea has been a blessing for Dubai. It provides Dubai not only with food but the pearling industry and access to expanded trade links. With the growth of the leisure industry in Dubai the international boat show here has also gained in popularity and importance. Hence, once again the Dubai International Boat Show 2011 is all set to showcase varied boats luxury yachts and Dubai dhow cruises to the guests.

The 2011 show will be the 19th edition of the boat show in Dubai. The show will be held from 1st to the 5th of March at the Dubai International Marine Club, the most prestigious yacht club of Dubai. The Dubai World Trade Center, which has almost 30 years of organizing exhibitions, is organizing the boat show. Dubai International Boat Show offers its exhibitors a stage to display their products, supplies and services to trade buyers and private consumers.

The guests coming to Dubai are recommended to take dhow dinner tour of Dubai. One World Travels is a reputed travel company of Dubai and arranges top class dhow cruise tours. They offer various packages keeping in mind various needs and requirements of the guests.

迪拜2011国际游艇展

翻译：Cathy

迪拜国际游艇展是一项历史悠久的海上盛事。美丽的海洋是大自然对迪拜的馈赠。海洋不仅为迪拜奉上美味的海产，还有闪闪的珍珠以及不断扩大的贸易网络。随着休闲服务业在迪拜的蓬勃发展，迪拜国际游艇展也变得越来越受欢迎，其重要性也日益凸显。如今，迪拜2011国际游艇展已经做好准备再次为游客们奉上各式各样的豪华游艇，以及迪拜三角帆船之旅。

迪拜2011国际游艇展是在迪拜举行的第19届游艇展，将于明年3月1日～5日在迪拜最负盛名的迪拜国际海运俱乐部举行，而组织活动则会由拥有30年展会组织经验的迪拜世贸中心负责。迪拜国际游艇展为参展商们提供一个向企业买家及私人客户展示其游艇及配套产品、服务的舞台。主办方还会力邀客人们参加迪拜三角帆船晚宴之旅。负责安排这次顶级三角帆船之旅的是迪拜享誉全球的旅游公司One World Travels，公司会因应客人们不同的需求而提供不同的旅游套餐。

Solar-Powered Hornet Found; Turns Light Into Electricity

In an animal kingdom first, insect's "skin" pigments convert sunlight into energy.

The oriental hornet's colors contain power-producing pigments (file picture).Photograph by Blickwinkel, Alamy

这种亚洲的大黄蜂的外骨骼含有能发电的色素（资料图片）。摄影：Blickwinkel, Alamy

By Matt Kaplan for National Geographic News

Published December 21, 2010

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101221-solar-power-hornet-science-animals/

The oriental hornet has built-in "solar cells" that generate electricity from sunlight—a first in the animal kingdom, according to a new study.

Scientists already knew that the hornet species, for unknown reasons, produced electricity inside its exoskeleton, according to study leader Marian Plotkin of Tel-Aviv University.

Plotkin's late mentor Jacob Ishay made the discovery after observing that the insect is active when the sun is most intense—unusual for hornets.

Plotkin and colleagues recently went a step further by examining the structure of the hornet's exoskeleton to find out how the electricity is produced.

Their research revealed that pigments in the hornet's yellow tissues trap light, while its brown tissues generate electricity.  Exactly how the hornets use this electricity is still not entirely understood, Plotkin noted.

"When I was running my experiment, people told me it was never going to work," she said. "I'm so happy at the results."

While solar cells using human-made substances are usually 10 to 11 percent efficient at generating electricity, the hornet's cells are only 0.335 percent efficient. For instance, the hornet still gets the vast majority of its energy from food.

But that's hardly the point, Plotkin said.

"We've seen solar harvesting in plants and bacteria, but never before in animals."

Hornet Pigment a Solar Power Source

The team found that many of the hornet's brown tissues contain melanin, the pigment that protects human skin cells by absorbing damaging ultraviolet light and transforming it into heat.

A structural analysis of the brown tissues also uncovered grooves that capture light by channeling rays into the tissues and breaking them apart into smaller rays.

The brown tissues "are a lot like a light trap—only one percent of the light that strikes is reflected away," said Plotkin, whose study appeared in the December issue of the journal Naturwissenschaften.

The hornet's yellow tissues contained the obscure pigment xanthopterin, which gives butterfly wings and mammal urine their color.  

When the team isolated xanthopterin in a liquid solution, and then placed the solution inside a solid solar cell electrode, a type of conductor. When the scientists shed light on the electrode, the pigment in the solution generated electricity.

"Fabulous" Hornet Study Needs Comparison

Entomologist Chris Lyal at London's Natural History Museum called the study a "fabulous investigation."

"I'd love to see a comparison with the [exoskeleton] structure of other hornets that do not appear to be gathering energy from the sun. In theory, other hornets should have exoskeleton layers that look very different," said Lyal, who was not involved in the study.

It's also possible other insects have similar electricity-generating abilities, Lyal added.

"For instance, I remember coming across the Apollo butterfly in the Pyrenees, which basks in the sun before flying—presumably absorbing solar radiation," he said.

"I wonder how different the hornet tissues actually are from those of that butterfly."

10 Amazing Success Lessons from Michael Jordan

Written by Mr.SelfDevelopment 

October 14, 2010

原文地址：http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/10-amazing-success-lessons-from-michael-jordan/ 

Michael Jordan is a former American professional basketball player, active businessman, and majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats, National Basketball Association (NBA) team.

Jordan was extremely instrumental in popularizing the NBA around the world in the 1980s and 1990s.

His biography on the NBA website states, “By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time.”

It takes a very special person to become the greatest basketball player of all time, so today I want to talk about 10 success lessons from Michael Jordan.

1. Make It Happen                       

 “Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.”

In order to succeed you’re going to have to kick down the door and make it happen on purpose. You’re not going to “luck up” and succeed, success won’t come with the passage of time. If you’re going to succeed, you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves, put your head down, and make it happen at all costs.

2. Passion

“Even when I’m old and grey, I won’t be able to play it, but I’ll still love the game.”

You must have passion in order to succeed. If success is to be yours, it will be yours while you are following your passion. You won’t succeed doing something you despise, you won’t even succeed doing something that you like doing, you will succeed when you do what you love, what you’re passionate about.

3. Try

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”

How can you succeed if you never try? How can you go to your grave knowing that you never tried? You may not know what paths will work best for you, the only way to discover the right path, is to try. Try and try, until you discover your difference. Try until you learn where you can be a success.

4. Work

“I’m not out there sweating for three hours every day just to find out what it feels like to sweat.”
If success is to be yours, you can rest assured that you’re going to have to work at it. To be the best you have to give your best. You have to work harder than the rest. While people are resting you have to be working. Success is a game, you have to play hard, you have to out-smart the competition, you have to put in the work. Jordan said, “I’ve always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come.”

5. Fail

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Never fear failure; fear not trying, fear not giving your best, fear losing focus, but never fear failure. Failure is the path to success. Failure is the sign that you’re headed in the right direction.

To succeed twice as fast, fail twice as much. Fail often, fail daily, and soon you will succeed. Jordan said, “I’ve never been afraid to fail.”

6. Go Around

“If you’re trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I’ve had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

Obstacles are what prepare you for success. How can you go to the 10th grade unless you pass the 5th grade? The 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grades are obstacles to the 10th grade. They are there to keep you out until you’re “ready” to proceed. They are there to ensure you don’t arrive prematurely; they are there to ensure that when you arrive, you are ready. Obstacles aren’t a bad thing; they’re the training grounds to success.

7. The Mind
“My body could stand the crutches but my mind couldn’t stand the sideline.”
If you go there in your mind, it’s only a matter of time before you go there in body. You have to see it; if you can see it, if you can perceive it, then you will find a way to get it. The question is “How bad do you want it?” If you don’t “want it,” you won’t get it! If you can live without it, you will. To succeed you have to be hungry; you have to thirst for success.

8. Perspective
“Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation.”
Every negative situation contains the seed for a great outcome, but you must recognize it. To succeed you must turn negative situations into positive ones. You can’t focus on the negative, you must see the positive, it’s the only way up the ladder of success.

You must see the positive, you must become positive, in order to experience success.

9. Loyalty and Responsibility
“The game is my wife. It demands loyalty and responsibility, and it gives me back fulfillment and peace.”
Success demands loyalty and responsibility! Are you loyal to your duties, do you faithfully complete the critical tasks that are requisite to your success?

Are you consistent? To succeed, you must be loyal to your passion; you must give it your all.

10. Expectations

“You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.”

Jordan said, “If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome.”

In life you will get what you accept and what you expect. What are you expecting? What are you accepting? When you change the answers to these questions, you will change your life.

迈克尔·乔丹教你的10件事

翻译：Cathy

迈克尔·乔丹是前美国职业篮球员、活跃的商人，还是NBA球队夏洛特山猫的大股东。

上世纪八九十年代，乔丹极大地推动了NBA在全世界范围内的推广流行。

NBA网站上乔丹的个人简介是这样写的：毫无疑问，迈克尔·乔丹是史上最伟大的篮球运动员。

能成为史上最伟大的篮球运动员的人肯定是一个与众不同的人，那今天我就来谈谈从乔丹身上学到的10样东西。

1. 令它发生

“有的人希望它发生，有的人期待它发生，有的人令它发生。”

要成功，你就要加倍地努力，并且有意识地令“成功”发生。你不会因为 “走运”而成功，成功也不会随着时间的流逝来到你的身边。要成功，你就得卷起袖子，埋头苦干，不惜一切代价令“成功”发生。

2. 激情

“即便到了我头发花白的时候，不能再打篮球了，但我依然热爱篮球这项运动。”

要成功，你就得有激情。如果你听从内心激情的指引，就会走向成功。如果你干的是连自己都瞧不起的事情，你不会成功；如果你干的是自己喜欢的事情，你也不会成功；只有当你干的是自己热爱的、注入了激情的事情的时候，你才会成功。

3. 不断尝试

“我能忍受失败，因为每个人都会在某些事情上遭受失败。但我不能忍受不去尝试。”

你不去试试的话，怎么会成功呢？你怎能什么都不尝试就躺进坟墓里？你可能不知道哪条道路对你而言是最好的，而找对路的唯一办法就是尝试。尝试，尝试，再尝试，直到你发现自己与众不同的地方。尝试，尝试，再尝试，直到你找到自己能够成功的领域。

4. 埋头苦干

“我每天在那儿流3小时的汗水并不是为了知道流汗的滋味。”

要成功，你一定得埋头苦干。付出越多，收获越多。你必须比其他人更加地努力，别人休息的时候你得继续苦干。成功就像一场比赛，你得努力比赛，得在竞争中成长，得埋头苦干。乔丹说：“我一直相信，有汗水就会有成绩。”

5. 不怕失败

“在我的职业生涯中，我有9000多次失败的投篮，我输了将近300场比赛。其中有26场比赛，我当时深信自己能够投进那致胜的一球但最终失手了。我遇到了一次又一次的失败，而这恰好是我成功的原因。”

永远不要害怕失败。不要害怕去尝试，不要害怕全力以赴，不要害怕失去兴趣，并且永远不要害怕失败。失败铺就了通往成功的道路。失败表明你正走向正确的道路。

要将奔向成功的速度提高一倍，就得将失败的次数增加一倍。常常失败，天天失败，那你就离成功不远了。乔丹说：“我从不害怕失败。”

6.越过障碍

“你想到达某地，路上肯定会遇到障碍。我曾经遇到障碍，每一个人都曾经遇到障碍。但障碍不会阻挡你前进的脚步。如果你的前方是一堵墙，不要折返，不要放弃。想办法翻过墙头，或者穿墙而过，又或者干脆绕过它。

障碍使你做好迎接成功的准备。如果你连5级考试都还没通过，怎么能去考10级考试呢？5级、6级、7级、8级以及9级的考试都是参加10级考试的障碍。它们的存在就是为了使你在准备好之前不能参加10级考试。障碍的存在意义在于使你不会过早地成功，同时也确保当你成功的时候，你已经做好充分的准备了。障碍不是坏事儿，它们是成功的训练场。

7.心向往之

“虽然拄着拐杖，我的心思却在比赛场上。”

如果你的心思在比赛场上，那你的人也迟早会站在比赛场上。你必须看到它，如果你看得到它、感受得到它，你就能找到通往它的道路。问题是“你有多想得到它？”如果你不想得到它，你将不会得到它！如果你可以没有它，那没有它你依然会活得好好的。要成功就得有渴望，对成功的渴望。

8.积极心态

“将消极境地转化成积极境地。”

每一个消极境地都埋着能结出甜美果实的种子，但你先得辨别出这颗种子。要成功，你就得将消极境地转化成积极境地。你不能光看到事物消极的一面，还得看到其积极的一面，这是踏上成功之梯的唯一途径。

想品尝成功的果实，你必须看到事物积极的一面，你必须变得积极。

9.忠诚与责任心

“篮球是我的另一半。她要求我忠于她，对她负责，而她则回赠我成功与内心的平静。

成功需要忠诚与责任心！你忠于自己的职责吗？你是否忠实地完成了成功路上必须完成的艰巨任务？

你是否对她忠贞不渝？要成功，你必须对自己的激情保持忠诚之心，付出你的所有。

10.不断突破

“在做某事之前，你得先想想你期望得到什么。”

乔丹说：“如果你止步于别人——尤其是那些不看好你的人——对你的预期，你永远不会突破别人对你的期望值。”

生命中，你可以选择固步自封，也可以选择不断前进。你期望得到什么？你止步于得到什么？如果你的答案变了，你的人生也会随之改变。

Asia finance agency affirms ‘11 outlook

Development Bank lifts ‘10 estimate for developing Asia to 8.6%

By V. Phani Kumar, MarketWatch

Dec. 7, 2010, 3:19 a.m. EST

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/asian-development-bank-affirms-11-outlook-2010-12-07

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- The Asian Development Bank Tuesday retained its growth estimate for 45 developing Asian economies at 7.3% in 2011, while raising its forecast for this year to 8.6%.

In a report released Tuesday, the Manila institution raised its 2010 growth estimate for 45 developing nations across Asia and the Pacific from the 8.2% forecast made in September.

But the ADB said the expansion rate will ease in 2011. The “weaker outlook for the global economy, coupled with the phasing out of fiscal and monetary stimulus within the region, means economic growth in the region should moderate next year,” it said.

The 67-member ADB describes itself as being dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth that is environmentally sustainable, and to regional integration. In 2009, it approved $16.1 billion in financing operations.

“The 2010 upgrade was in large part due to the faster-than-expected growth in the [People’s Republic of China], which ADB now sees at 10.1% this year. That is higher than its previous forecast of 9.6% in September. ADB still expects the PRC economy to expand 9.1% in 2011,” said an ADB statement.

The ADB said average growth in emerging East Asia is likely to be 7.3% in 2011 after the region is estimated to have grown 8.8% in 2010.

“The V-shaped recovery has run its course in emerging East Asia and the challenge for the region is to put in place national policies that will translate swift recovery into long-term growth,” said Iwan Azis, head of ADB’s office of Regional Economic Integration, which prepared the report.

中文译文    (翻译：Cathy)

10 Habits to Develop for Financial Stability and Success

http://zenhabits.net/10-habits-to-develop-for-financial/

Just like any goal, getting your finances stable and becoming financially successful requires the development of good financial habits. I’ve been researching this topic extensively in the last few years in my quest to eliminate debt, increase my savings and increase financial security for my family. I’ll talk more about these habits individually, but wanted to list them in a summary (I know, but I’m a compulsive list-maker).

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Make savings automatical. This should be your top priority, especially if you don’t have a solid emergency fund yet. Make it the first bill you pay each payday, by having a set amount automatically transferred from your checking account to your savings (try an online savings account). Don’t even think about this transaction — just make sure it happens, each and every payday.
2. Control your impulse spending. The biggest problem for many of us. Impulse spending, on eating out and shopping and online purchases, is a big drain on our finances, the biggest budget breaker for many, and a sure way to be in dire financial straits. See Monitor Your Impulse Spending for more tips.
3. Evaluate your expenses, and live frugally. If you’ve never tracked your expenses, try the One Month Challenge. Then evaluate how you’re spending your money, and see what you can cut out or reduce. Decide if each expense is absolutely necessary, then eliminate the unnecessary. See How I Save Money for more. Also read 30 ways to save $1 a day.
4. Invest in your future. If you’re young, you probably don’t think about retirement much. But it’s important. Even if you think you can always plan for retirement later, do it now. The growth of your investments over time will be amazing if you start in your 20s. Start by increasing your 401(k) to the maximum of your company’s match, if that’s available to you. After that, the best bet is probably a Roth IRA. Do a little research, but whatever you do, start now!
5. Keep your family secure. The first step is to save for an emergency fund, so that if anything happens, you’ve got the money. If you have a spouse and/or dependents, you should definitely get life insurance and make a will — as soon as possible! Also research other insurance, such as homeowner’s or renter’s insurance.
6. Eliminate and avoid debt. If you’ve got credit cards, personal loans, or other such debt, you need to start a debt elimination plan. List out your debts and arrange them in order from smallest balance at the top to largest at the bottom. Then focus on the debt at the top, putting as much as you can into it, even if it’s just $40-50 extra (more would be better). When that amount is paid off, celebrate! Then take the total amount you were paying (say $70 minimum payment plus the $50 extra for a total of $120) and add that to the minimum payment of the next largest debt. Continue this process, with your extra amount snowballing as you go along, until you pay off all your debts. This could take several years, but it’s a very rewarding process, and very necessary.
7. Use the envelope system. This is a simple system to keep track of how much money you have for spending. Let’s say you set aside three amounts in your budget each payday — one for gas, one for groceries, one for eating out. Withdraw those amounts on payday, and put them in three separate envelopes. That way, you can easily track how much you have left for each of these expenses, and when you run out of money, you know it immediately. You don’t overspend in these categories. If you regularly run out too fast, you may need to rethink your budget.
8. Pay bills immediately, or automagically. One good habit is to pay bills as soon as they come in. Also, as much as possible, try to get your bills to be paid through automatic deduction. For those that can’t, use your bank’s online check system to make regular automatic payments. This way, all of your regular expenses in your budget are taken care of.
9. Read about personal finances. The more you educate yourself, the better your finances will be.
10. Look to grow your net worth. Do whatever you can to improve your net worth, either by reducing your debt, increasing your savings, or increasing your income, or all of the above. Look for new ways to make money, or to get paid more for what you do. Over the course of months, if you calculate your net worth each month, you’ll see it grow. And that feels great.

    中文译文   (翻译：Cathy)

Audi A6L first in luxury car complaint ranking list

By Amanda Zheng  From Gasgoo.com

November 26, 2010

http://autonews.gasgoo.com/china-news/audi-a6l-first-in-luxury-car-complaint-ranking-lis-101126.shtml

Shanghai November 26 (Gasgoo.com) The Audi A6L was ranked first in the "luxury car complaint ranking list" conducted by China Securities Journal and the car complaints network (vehicle 3.15) during November 18-24. Other luxury cars that made the list include the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Subaru forester and Jeep Compass, etc.. 

Shanghai Securities News reported that the Audi A6L had a total of 27 complaint cases during the period with focus on the gearbox, pumps, headlights, insufficient engine oil and other core problems. While up until now, Audi has not yet addressed these problems or issued a recall. The luxury brand sold 150,000 vehicles in the Chinese market in 2009, and is expected to break the 200,000 sales mark this year.

Moreover, the Volvo S Series kicked the Mercedes-Benz S-class out of the top ten with 16 complaints; Great Wall Motors, with 251 complaint cases, surpassed Dongfeng Nissan’s 249 complaints to come in sixth place.

Great Wall Motor got 17 more complaint cases than it did last time due to a slew of quality issues with its Teng Yi C30 car, such as reduction of components, air conditioning and refrigeration problems, occurrence of abnormal sound/shaking ( when the engine is cold), and other common problems.

Below is the "top ten luxury car complaint ranking list" conducted during November 18-24:

1. Audi A6L 27 

2. BMW 5 Series 23

3. Audi A4L 20

4. Mercedes-Benz C-Class 19 

5. Jeep Compass 18 

6.  BMW 3 Series 17

7. Mercedes-Benz E-Class 16 

8. Volvo S Class 16 

9. Crown 15

10. Subaru forester 14

Additionally, Changan Ford, which received 626 complaint cases between November 18th and 24th, took first place on the "top 10 automaker complaint ranking list", followed by Shanghai GM with 459, Geely Auto with 443, Shanghai VW with 409, FAW VW with 336, Great Wall Motor with 251, Dongfeng Nissan with 249, Chery Auto with 233, Souteast Motor with 228 and FAW Toyota with 206.

中文译文   (翻译：Cathy)