Buy Now, Pay Later Spending

Buy now, pay later(BNPL) spending is expected to rise to record levels this holiday season. With so many young “buy now, pay later” shoppers already in debt from this short-term financing tool not requiring interest, questions emerge: Why do these shoppers use such a tool? And what risks does it pose to their budgets in the months     1     (come)?

The many Generation Z and millennials (typically around 40 years and younger) tend to use this short-term financing,     2     allows them to buy items and pay for them over time. Offered mostly by financial technologies, BNPL allows these customers to pay back their purchases     3     interest and with the first payment usually made at checkout. The most common “buy now, pay later” plan is     4     customers make four equal payments and pay off the debt in six weeks. It’s been a lifeline for some people, such as a university student     5     weekly income is not big enough. “BNPL provides consumers with flexible payment options so they     6     manage spending,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. That is of great importance for many consumers, especially     7     with a tendency to purchase higher-cost items.

However, since BNPL     8     (appear), warnings from experts have come into our view. They have been indicating that it’s financially unhealthy to form such a spending habit. According to New York Federal Reserve economists, BNPL may encourage debt to increase over time,     9     (influence) a consumer’s ability to meet non-BNPL commitments, or users to over extend themselves. Users should also note that     10     interest is not charged on the loan, they’ll be hit with late fees for missed payments, which can add up quickly, says the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

3 . Antibiotics, which can destroy or prevent the growth of bacteria and cure infections, are vital to modern medicine. Their ability to kill bacteria without harming the patient has saved billions of lives and made surgical procedures much safer. But after decades of overuse, their powers are fading. Some bacteria have evolved resistance, creating a growing army of superbugs, against which there is little effective treatment. Antimicrobial (抗菌的) resistance, expected to kill 10 million people a year by 2050 up from around 1 million in 2019, has been seen as a crisis by many.

It would be unwise to rely on new antibiotics to solve the problem. The rate at which resistance emerges is increasing. Some new drugs last only two years before bacteria develop resistance. When new antibiotics do arrive, doctors often store them, using them only reluctantly and for short periods when faced with the most persistent infections. That limits sales, making new antibiotics an unappealing idea for most drug firms.

Governments have been trying to fix the problem by channeling cash into research in drug firms. That has produced only limited improvements. But there is a phenomenon worth a look. Microbiologists have known for decades that disease-causing bacteria can suffer from illnesses of their own. They are supersensitive to attacks by phages, specialized viruses that infect bacteria and often kill them. Phages are considered a promising alternative to antibiotics.

Using one disease-causing virus to fight bacteria has several advantages. Like antibiotics, phages only tend to choose particular targets, leaving human cells alone as they infect and destroy bacterial ones. Unlike antibiotics, phages can evolve just as readily as bacteria can, meaning that even if bacteria do develop resistance, phages may be able to evolve around them in turn.

That, at least, is the theory. The trouble with phages is that comparatively little is known about them. After the discovery of penicillin, the first antibiotic, in 1928, they were largely ignored in the West. Given the severity of the antibiotic-resistance problem, it would be a good idea to find out more about them.

The first step is to run more clinical trials. Interest from Western firms is growing. But it is being held back by the fact that phages are an even less appealing investment than antibiotics. Since they are natural living things, there may be trouble patenting them, making it hard to recover any investment.

Governments can help fun d basic research into phage treatment and clarify the law around exactly what is and is not patentable. In time they can set up phage banks so as to make production cheaper. And they can spread awareness of the risks of overusing antibiotics, and the potential benefits of phages.

5 . Paris has long been at the heart of the history of flight. It is where the Montgolfier brothers went up in the first hot-air balloon in 1783, and where Charles Lindbergh completed the first one-person transatlantic areophane journey in 1927. Next year, if all goes to plan, Paris will witness the birth of another industry________, when Volocopter, a German maker of electric aircraft, launches a flying-taxi service during the Olympic Games. At the Paris Airshow in June, Volocopter and some of its competitors displayed a new generation of________flying machines designed for urban transport.

The electrification of aviation (航空) has often been dismissed as a pipe dream, with batteries assumed too heavy a______for traditional fuel in an airborne vehicle. For longer journeys, that may well be true. Yet upstarts like Volocopter are betting that electrification can________a boom in demand for clean and quick air journeys over shorter distances.

The main form of a flying taxi under________, called an electric vertical (垂直的) take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, is expected to carry up to four passengers plus a pilot. Powered by batteries, it is predicted to be both quiet enough to reduce complaints in crowded cities, and fast: capable of up to 300kph, enough to comfortably________a car, especially the one stuck in traffic. And optimists believe the absence of traffic in the sky will also make eVTOLs well-suited to ________ operation. They could prove handy for transporting goods, too. That vision has inspired________predictions. For example, Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, estimates global spending on eVTOLs could hit $1,000 billion by 2040!

Regardless of the above________expectations, challenges remain. One problem is technical certification, which is turning out to be a(n)________process as aviation regulators work on an entirely new form of aircraft. Late last year, due to regulatory delays and some other factors, Joby, a Silicon Valley startup, was forced to________its launch by one more year until 2025. Many have even longer to go. The bigger question is — is the business of flying taxis_______practicable? EVTOLs currently range in price from $1 million to $ 4 million. Some believe that their cost may come down as the industry develops. Brian Yutko of Wisk, a maker backed by Boeing, says that flying-taxi rides will be accessible to________in the near future. And Joby promises that its fares will be comparable to catching a common taxi. ________, there is an opposite belief that eVTOLs are likely to remain expensive. Some studies suggest the cost could end up as high as $7 per kilometer, many times a regular taxi fare. That means, even without a pilot, flying taxis may remain a convenience________only to a lucky few.

Let’s expect plenty more experiments with electric aircraft in the years ahead.

6 . Every summer, as a child, I spent with my parents the annual family holiday, flying away from our home in the West Midlands to their birthplace in Ireland.

I enjoyed it, but once, I behaved differently and left home. Package tours and long-distance flights became my idea of a holiday. I then went and ran into an Englishman who also came of Irish stock, and we both felt the urge to renew our knowledge of Ireland.

It was important for us to discover something different from our childhood visits. So that’s how we came to drive along the winding St John’s Point Peninsula (半岛) in Donegal, part of Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way, to visit a unique part of the 20th-century history — the Donegal Corridor.

When anyone drives to the point where the land runs out, he sees giant white stones fixed firmly in green grass spelling out “EIRE” and “70”, while the Atlantic wind fiercely blows across the headland and the ice-white waves smash into the rocks below. The meaning behind the stones? They date back to the Second World War when St John’s Point was number 70 in a total of 83 Look Out Points (LOPs), observation stations set up and maintained by Ireland all around its coast.

There lies a bit of curious UK-Ireland history. Although Ireland was officially neutral during the war, the Battle of the Atlantic was being fought close to Irish shores, and these LOPs, staffed by local volunteers known as Coast watchers, passed on information on activities connected with the sea and weather fronts to London.

At St John’s Point, we were standing right under the Donegal Corridor, a long narrow area of airspace in which Ireland ensured safe passage during World War II to planes in the RAF (Royal Air Force) from bases in the UK-governed North of Ireland. The stone markings acted as reference points to aircrews.

Standing on this rough area of land surrounded by the wild and windy ocean brought home to us the conditions in which the Coast watchers and aircrews in the RAF cooperated in a shared history.

I revolted against my family tradition that summer, and I fulfilled my aim of discovering something new and absorbed all Donegal has to offer: empty golden beaches, mysterious ancient stone circles, folk music and crafts, and tasty food. I had fallen in love with Ireland all over again.

7 . Social Masking

Amanda is always an expert at working the room. She would adopt the manner of the people around her to fit in while hiding her true personality. This is social masking, the process of hiding your natural way of interacting with others so you can feel accepted.     1    Instead, they are hoping to fit in with everybody else. Social masking is a set of learned pattern-matching behaviors, movements and actions where you try to be normal to fit in rather than stand out.

    2    People all wear certain social masks in order to get through some tricky life situations with confidence, according to Dr. Tara Quinn-Cirillo. And some experts even think social masking is built in all human beings at a physical level, adding that something in our brain gives indications of how to essentially stay safe and not stick out.

In a world that often tells us to just be ourselves, you might wonder why we are still dependent on these social masking behaviors. “Social masking happens because we as a species want to be included,” says Tara. “It has been a tribal thing of being together rather than being on our own, from a historical perspective.     3    ”

There is a huge difference between naturally identifying with someone and consciously social masking.    4    Social masking, on the other hand, involves a conscious effort to change your personality to suit your surroundings. It typically involves depressing your natural urges and changing your personal interests to fit the crowd.