Four years ago, we asked ourselves: what if we could create a shopping experience with no waiting in lines and no checkout? Or could we create a physical store where customers could simply take what they want and go? Our answer to those questions is Amazon Go, where you could experience the idea of “just walk out shopping”.

Amazon Go is a new kind of store with no checkout required. We created the world’s most advanced shopping technology, so you never have to wait in line. With our “just walk out shopping” experience, simply use the Amazon Go app to enter the store, take the products you want, and go! No lines, no checkout.

Our checkout-free shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion(融合), and deep learning. Our “just walk out technology” automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves and keeps track of them in your virtual cart. When you’ve done shopping, you can just leave the store. Shortly after, we’ll charge your Amazon account and send you a receipt(收据).

We offer delicious ready-to-eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack choices made fresh every day by our on-site chefs and favorite local kitchens and bakeries. Our selection of foodstuff ranges from bread and milk to cheeses and locally made chocolates. You’ll find well-known brands we love, plus special finds we’re excited to introduce to customers. For a quick home-cooked dinner, pick up one of our chef-designed Amazon Meal Kits, and you can make a meal for two in about 30 minutes.

Our 1,800-square-foot shopping space is conveniently compact(紧凑的), so busy customers can get in and out fast. It is located at 2131, 7th Ave, Seattle, WA, on the corner of 7th Avenue and Blanchard Street. All you need is an Amazon account, a supported smart phone, and the free Amazon Go app.

Amazon Go is now only open to Amazon employees in our testing program, and will be open to the public soon.

Why Do People Blink Their Eyes?

People blink(眨眼) their eyes tens of thousands of times every day. Scientists have long believed blinking was an involuntary movement and served mainly to keep the eyeballs wet. But a new study suggests it has a more important purpose.

An international team of scientists from the University of California at Berkeley studied the blinking of human eyelids. The journal Current Biology published their findings. The team said they found that blinking “repositions our eyeballs so we can stay focused” on what we are seeing. They said that when we blink our eyelids, the eyes roll back into their sockets—the bony area that surrounds and protects the eyes. However, the researchers found the eyes don’t always return to the same position. They said this causes the brain to tell the eye muscles to reorganize our eyesight.

Gerrit Maus is the lead writer of the report. He serves as an assistant professor of psychology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Maus said, “Our eye muscles are quite sluggish(迟缓的) and imprecise, so the brain needs to constantly adapt its motor signals to make sure our eyes are pointing where they’re supposed to. Our findings suggested that the brain measures the difference in what we see before and after a blink, and commands the eye muscles to make the needed corrections.” The researchers said that without such corrections our surroundings would appear unclear and even jumpy. They said the movement acts “like a Steadicam(摄影稳定器) of the mind.”

The researchers said they asked volunteers to sit in a dark room while staring at a small dot on a flat surface. They used special cameras to follow the volunteer’s blinks and eye movements. After each blink, the dot was moved one centimeter to the right. The volunteers did not notice this, but the brain did. It followed the movement and directed the eye muscles to refocus on the dot. After the dot was moved in this way 30 times, the volunteers’ eyes changed their focus to the place where they predicted it would be.

Professor Maus said, “Even though participants did not consciously register that the dot had moved, their brains did, and adjusted with the corrective eye movements. These findings add to our understanding of how the brain constantly adapts to changes, commanding our eye muscles to correct for errors in our bodies’ own hardware.”

Everyone knows that if a dog’s ears are up and its tail is wagging vigorously, it is definitely pleased to see you. but now scientists using a robot have found that the way dogs use their tails is more complicated than we thought, and that dogs which wag them to the left may he more friendly. The animal psychologists discovered that when real dogs approached a life-sized robot dog, they were less cautious about it when it was wagging its tail to the left, while if it was wagging its tail to the right, far fewer dogs approached it in a confident manner.

In the first experiments, 56 percent of the animals approached the model without hesitation when the tail was wagged to the left, while only 21 percent did so in the other situation. When the researchers excluded (排除) owners from being present, the result were: 31 percent of the dogs approached continuously when the tail was wagging to the left, while only 18 percent did so when it was on the right.

Animal psychologist Roger Mugford said it added to the growing evidence that does were even more complicated communicators than the animals more closely related to man such as monkeys. He said, “We know that dogs, in a sense, have languages, but it is more complicated because it is not just them wagging their tails, but also giving out chemical displays.”

He adds, “The research confirms earlier studies suggesting that dogs, like humans, had a left-side preference. If you are going to present a signal to a dog, it is sensible to put it on your left-hand side because that is where dogs, unlike most other animals, tend to look. It is another example of the similarity between dogs and humans. They are a lot more human than we give them credit for.”