【推荐1】“I felt so much more confident after I had my plastic surgery--liposuction(脂肪抽吸) .” said Wu, now a 30-year-old model and entrepreneur(企业家) based in Beijing. In the 16 years since that first surgery, Wu claims to have had over 100 ones, costing an unbelievable 4 million yuan. She is now a well-known advocate of the industry and has opened two beauty clinics offering plastic surgery in Beijing, and Wu’s potential market is huge.

A growing number of Chinese women are using plastic surgery to achieve bigger eyes, high cheekbones, narrow noses and skinny legs. Like Wu, many are seeking to imitate a beauty ideal inspired by elements of Japan’s comics, South Korea’s K-Pop and Western culture.

In 2014, more than 7 million Chinese people had plastic surgery, according to the China Association of Plastics and Aesthetics. Just three years later, data collected by Shanghai branch of Frost & Sullivan consultants suggested the figure was closer to 16.3 million.

According to experts interviewed by CNN, the trend in plastic surgery in China is partly due to a series of apps like So-Young and GengMei, which allow potential patients to view before and after photos, book surgeries and even apply for credit to pay for them.

“In China, it is very difficult to find reliable information on clinics, especially in smaller cities,” explained Tony DeGennaro, co-founder of Dragon Social, a Chinese market intelligence agency. “People no longer trust the search results offered by Baidu, following several medical scandals(丑闻) involving the platform, so these new apps have taken over as unofficial directories of surgeons.”

Despite the difficulties in choosing suitable clinics, a variety of people are crazy about plastic surgery, making the industry larger and larger.

【推荐2】Emerging economies struggled to grow through the 2010s and pessimism covers them now. People wonder how they will pay debts during the COVID-19 and how they can grow rapidly as they did in the past in an era of deglobalisation (去全球化).

The freshest of many answers to this issue is the fast-spreading digital revolution. The digital revolution is already as progressive in emerging economies as developed ones. Among the top 30 nations by income from digital services as a share of gross domestic product(GDP), 16 are in the emerging world. Indonesia, for example, is further advanced by this measure than France or Canada. And since 2017, digital income has been growing in emerging countries at an average annual pace of 26 percent, compared with 11 percent in the developed ones.

How can it be that poorer nations are adopting common digital technologies faster than the rich? One explanation is habit and its absence. In societies filled with physical stores and services, customers are often comfortable with them and slow to abandon the providers. In countries where people have difficulty even finding a bank or a doctor, they will jump at the first digital option that comes along. Outsiders have a hard time grasping the impact digital services can have on underserved (服务不足的)populations. Nations lacking in schools, hospitals and banks can quickly bridge these gaps by establishing online services. Though only 5 percent of Kenyans carry credit cards, more than 70 percent have access to digital banking.

It’s early days, too. As economist Carlota Perez has shown, tech revolutions last a long time. Innovations like the car and the steam engine were still transforming economies half a century later. Now, the fading era of globalisation will limit the number of emerging markets, but the era of rapid digitisation has only just begun. This offers many developing economies a revolutionary new path to catch up with the living standards of the developed world.

【推荐3】Stress used to be an almost unknown word, but now that we are used to talking about it, I have found that people are beginning to get stressed about being stressed.

In recent years, stress has been regarded as a cause of a whole range of medical problems, from high blood pressure to mental illness.

But like so many other things, it is only too much stress that does you harm. It is time you considered that if there were no stress in your life, you would achieve little. If you are stuck at home with no stress, then your level of performance will be low. Up to a certain point, the more stress you are under, the better your performance will be.

Beyond a certain point, though, further stress will only lead to exhaustion, illness and finally a breakdown. You can tell when you are over the top and on the downward slope, by asking yourself a number of questions. Do you, for instance, feel that too much is being expected of you, and yet find it impossible to say no? Do you find yourself getting impatient or annoyed with people over unimportant things?... If the answer to all those questions is yes, you had better control your stress, as you probably are under more stress than is good for you.

To some extend you can control the amount of stress in your life. Doctors have worked out a chart showing how much stress is involved in various events. Getting married is 50, pregnaney 40, moving house 20, Christmas 12, etc. If the total stress in your life is over 150, you are twice as likely to get ill.

【推荐1】St Andrews & the Fishing Villages of Fife

An ancient university, breathtaking medieval(中世纪的) ruins, and old fashioned coastal villages: explore all this and more on our adventure through Fife.

【推荐2】Ever imagined that your simple T-shirt could cool you down by up to 5°C on hot summer days? Thanks to a recent discovery, the possibility is getting closer. The amazing invention aims to offer real relief to people eager to feel comfortable and fresh in the outdoors on hot days.

Its inventors, engineers Ma Yaoguang of Zhejiang University and Tao Guangming of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, took a completely innovative approach. They designed a special textile (纺织品) that can absorb body heat and re-emit (重发出) its energy into space as mid-infrared radiation. This textile cools both the objects and their surroundings through a technique known as radiative cooling. This means that even when it looks like you are wearing regular shirt, you are actually wearing a device that works like a mirror.

Research conducted at Stanford University in 2017 had already managed to cool the wearer by 3°C, but this previous trial was limited. So researchers still need to test the new approach to determine how effectively the new fabric cools while the wearers are standing or walking, and not directly facing the sky, like in their trials. They also need to examine and measure how well it works when T-shirts are not in close contact with the skin.

Inventors Ma and Tao are now looking out for textile manufacturers and clothing brands that are interested in using their fabric. They estimate that the new material will increase clothing manufacturing costs by just 10 percent. “We can make it with mass production which means everybody can get a T-shirt and the cost is basically the same as their old stuff.” Tao said.

So if you are an athlete or simply someone that has to deal with the extremely high temperatures, be patient because your days of feeling hot and bothered may be coming to an end!