Held from Nov 5 to 10 in Shanghai, the third China International Import Expo (CIIE) became “a perfect platform for promoting international innovation and cooperation”, People’s Daily noted. Let’s take a look at two of them.

Portable kayak

Lightweight equipment is what all sport lovers desire. At the CIIE, the French sporting goods company Decathlon launched its portable kayak ITIWIT X500. According to the company, the kayak measures 380 cm in length and 65 cm in width when inflated (充气). When not in use, it can be folded up to the size of a backpack. It consists of five independent air chambers. Even if two of them don’t work, the kayak floats are enough for sports enthusiasts to return to the shore safely.

Mind-reading ping-pong robot

Like ping-pong but afraid of criticism from your coach? The sixth generation of the Forpheus ping-pong robot from Japanese tech company Omron may help you. The robot has a robotic arm that can imitate humans. It can actually live up to the feeling of playing against a real opponent. At the same time, it can use sensors and five cameras to work out where you are and how you’re moving. After analyzing your abilities, it can adjust its own playing level to match yours. The robot “pursues harmony of humans and machines by patiently teaching us how to play ping-pong”, noted The Verge.

I’ve been taking time this week to smell the roses. I bend over in my neighbors’ front yard, check that nobody is watching, then bury my head in the flowers.

I’ve also been walking into bakeries and walking around without buying anything.

After having surgery on my broken nose 18 months ago, I haven’t been able to smell or taste things. This week, however, my nose is back in business.

I’ve been fascinated by smells, and it’s given me a new way of thinking. Smell is just one of the little bits and pieces that make life enjoyable, but which we often ignore. I remember once, when my son was 5 months old, I was carrying him down the street. Wind swept through and almost tipped us over. He threw his little head back and giggled (傻笑). He’d never felt the wind on his face. When is the last time I laughed at the weather?

The first time I ate bacon, I rushed home to my parents, determined that we ate this deliciousness at every meal. My father smiled and agreed.

Do you recall when you learned that the voice actors of Mickey and Minnie Mouse were married in real life? Do you enjoy sleeping in new, clean bed sheets?

We don’t write postcards about the small things. We don’t frame them in photographs.

They aren’t that great or grand, but without them, life is altogether too loud. These quiet experiences give us a chance to enjoy the simple fact of being alive.

As my sense of smell returns to me, it’s like I’m smelling things for the first time. They’re full of memories and magic. Food tastes better, and the air is indeed sweet. I know what the poets mean now. It almost makes my broken nose worthwhile. Now, I am waiting for this bandage to come off. There’s an itch (痒) I can’t reach!

Louise Gluck has been no stranger to awards over her long and storied career, since her first publication in 1968. In 1993, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection of poems, The Wild Iris. And on Oct 8 she became the 16th woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature with the Nobel prizes first awarded in 1901.

Gluck was honored “for her unmistakable poetic voice that, with plain beauty, makes individual existence universal”. Often said to be an autobiographical poet, drawing from her life, “she is not to be regarded as a confessional poet (告白派诗人). Gluck seeks the universal,” Nobel Committee Chair Anders Olsson said in a statement.

Gluck, 77, the author of 12 poetry collections, has been able to turn her life experiences into universal themes covering life, loss, and loneliness. Because of this, readers have often found her poetry to be “dark”. However, there is much more than darkness in her voice, as noted by Olsson. “It is straightforward and a voice full of humor and biting wit,” he said.

For example, in her poem Snowdrops, she uses the coming of spring after winter to show rebirth of life after death. She leads readers down a depressing path only to reconnect with the light at the near end. At the conclusion of the poem, readers are left to feel the “raw wind of the new world” as they watch a new spring. This is often the case in Gluck’s poetry, being able to feel joy even after not having done so for a long time.

When her work Faithful Virtuous Night received a National Book Award for Poetry in 2014, a judge for the award went on to say, the collection comes from “a world where darkness blurs (使模糊) ordinarily sharp edges around the oppositions of our lives－loss and renewal, male and female, the living and the dead”.

Although she’s already a well-known writer, experienced in exploring pain and healing, Gluck did feel honored to be given the Nobel award. However, when asked what the prize means to her, the poet responded by saying, “It’s too new... I don’t know really what it means.” Her only hope is that she can continue her daily life.

From the moon to Mars, scientists have been hunting for alien life in the solar system for decades.

However, Venus was not regarded as an ideal place because of its hot temperature and dry atmosphere. But a recent discovery of traces of a gas in the clouds of Venus has excited astronomers, as it may serve as a potential sign of life.

On Sept 14, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada announced that scientists have detected phosphine (磷化氢) in the clouds of Venus. Phosphine is a colorless, poisonous gas that has a smell of garlic. Though poisonous, it is viewed as a possible sign of life because on Earth the gas is made by microorganisms that live in oxygen-free environments.

“I was very surprised, in fact,” astronomer Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales and lead author of the research, told MSN. “There is a chance that we have detected some kind of living organism in the clouds of Venus.”

This layer of clouds is about 48 kilometers above the Venus surface, with its temperature ranging from 30 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit (about -1 to 93 ºC). Scientists have concluded that if life exists on Venus, the clouds are likely the only place where it would survive.

Scientists went through every possibility that could have led to the formation of phosphine gas in Venus’ clouds, including volcanoes, lightning strikes, small meteorites (陨石) falling into the atmosphere. But they ruled all of them out. It was concluded that there is no explanation for the existence of this gas in Venus’ clouds, other than the presence of life, USA Today reported.

Although the detection of phosphine is not solid evidence for life, this finding is great enough to change scientists’ view on Venus, which is thought to be a completely inhospitable (不适合居住的) planet.