Macao is only forty miles from Hong Kong and it is easy to reach. You can get there by sea. It is an interesting place and it has a long history. Macao is part of China and most people living there are Chinese.

    The first Europeans in Macao came from Portugal. More than four hundred years ago the Portuguese went there to trade with China. Some settled and made their homes there. They built strong forts（要塞）to guard the city and the harbor. They also built churches, schools, hospitals and other places. Slowly the city grew. People from many other countries came to live and work in Macao.

    Today many people live in Macao. Some only go there to watch dog-racing or motor-racing or to gamble（赌博）with their money. But Macao is a quiet and peaceful place. It is pleasant just to walk around and look at the old buildings and forts. You feel you are back in the old days. Of course，some of the buildings are now in ruins. The Church of St. Paul has only the front wall with many steps leading up to it. But it is still interesting to see.

    When you are hot and tired, there are small cool gardens to rest in. When you are hungry, there are good restaurants with many kinds of food. Nearby are some islands, which are also nice to visit and are easy to get in. There are certainly a lot to see and to do in Macao.

    Finding time to read is an important part of developing reading and writing skills for all kids. And there are many easy and convenient ways to make reading a part of each day — even when it's tough to find time to sit down with a book.

    Car trips, waits in checkout lines and the doctor's office are all opportunities for reading. Keep books or magazines in your car, or backpack to pull out whenever you're going to be in one place for a while. Even if you can't finish a book, read a few pages or discuss some of the pictures.

    Encourage kids to bring favorite books and magazines along wherever you go. While it's attractive to provide electronic games and readers, be sure to alternate electronic media with plenty of opportunities to read traditional print books.

    Reading opportunities are everywhere you go. While riding in the car, for example, encourage kids to spot words and letters (on billboards, store signs, etc.), turning it into a game (“Who'll be the first to find a letter B?”).

    Even daily tasks like cooking can provide reading moments. Kids can assist you as you cook by telling you how much flour to measure. Give your child a catalogue to read while you sort through the mail. Ask relatives to send your child letters, e-mail, or text messages, and read them together. Help your child create letters or messages to send back to the relatives. These types of activities help kids see the purpose of reading and of print.

    Even when you're trying to get things done, you can encourage reading. While cleaning, for instance, you might ask your child to read a favorite book to you while you work.

    Make sure kids get some time to spend quietly with books, even if it means cutting back on other activities, like watching TV or playing video games.

    Most important, be a reader yourself. Kids who see their parents reading are likely to imitate them and become readers, too!

    We've reached a strange—some would say unusual—point. While fighting world hunger continues to be the matter of vital importance according to a recent report from the World Health Organization (WHO), more people now die from being overweight, or say, from being extremely fat, than from being underweight. It's the good life that's more likely to kill us these days.

Worse, nearly 18 million children under the age of five around the world are estimated to be overweight. What's going on?

    We really don't have many excuses for our weight problems. The dangers of the problem have been drilled into us by public ­health campaigns since 2001 and the message is getting through—up to a point.

    In the 1970s, Finland, for example, had the highest rate of heart disease in the world and being overweight was its main cause. Not any more. A public ­health campaign has greatly reduced the number of heart disease deaths by 80 per cent over the past three decades.

    Maybe that explains why the percentage of people in Finland taking diet pills doubled between 2001 and 2005, and doctors even offer surgery of removing fat inside and change the shape of the body. That has become a sort of fashion. No wonder it ranks as the world's most body ­conscious country.

We know what we should be doing to lose weight—but actually doing it is another matter. By far the most popular excuse is not taking enough exercise. More than half of us admit we lack willpower.

    Others blame good food. They say: it's just too inviting and it makes them overeat. Still others lay the blame on the Americans, complaining that pounds have piled on thanks to eating too much American­ style fast food.

    Some also blame their parents—their genes. But unfortunately, the parents are wronged because they're normal in shape, or rather slim.

    It's a similar story around the world, although people are relatively unlikely to have tried to lose weight. Parents are eager to see their kids shape up. Do as I say—not as I do.

    While Jennifer was at home taking an online exam for her business law class, a monitor a few hundred miles away was watching her every move.

    Using a web camera equipped in Jennifer's Los Angeles apartment, the monitor in Phoenix tracked how frequently her eyes moved from the computer screen and listened for the secret sounds of a possible helper in the room. Her Internet access was locked－remotely－to prevent Internet searches, and her typing style was analyzed to make sure she was who she said she was: Did she enter her student number at the same speed as she had in the past? Or was she slowing down?

    In the battle against cheating，this is the cutting_edge and a key to encourage honesty in the booming field of online education. The technology gives trust to the entire system，to the institution and to online education in general. Only with solid measures against cheating, experts say, can Internet universities show that their exams and diplomas are valid—that students haven't just searched the Internet to get the right answers.

    Although online classes have existed for more than a decade, the concern over cheating has become sharper in the last year with the growth of “open online courses.” Private colleges, public universities and corporations are jumping into the online education field. Spending millions of dollars to attract potential students, while also taking steps to help guarantee honesty at a distance.

    Aside from the web cameras, a number of other high-tech methods are becoming increasingly popular. Among them are programs that check students' identities using personal information, such as the telephone numbers they once used.

    Other programs can produce unique exams by drawing on a large list of questions and can recognize possible cheaters by analyzing whether difficult test questions are answered at the same speed as easy ones. As in many university classes, term papers are scanned against some large Internet data banks for cheating.

    French writer Frantz Fanon once said: ＂To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.＂ Since the world changes every day, so does our language.

    More than 300 new words and phrases have recently made it into the online Oxford Dictionary, and in one way or another they are all reflections of today's changing world.

    After a year that was politically unstable, it's not hard to understand the fact that people's political views are one of the main drives of our expanding vocabulary. One example is ＂clicktivism＂, a compound of ＂click＂ and ＂activism＂. It refers to ＂armchair activists＂ — people who support a political or social cause, but only show their support from behind a computer or smartphone. And ＂otherize＂ is a verb for ＂other＂ that means to alienate (使疏远)people who are different from ourselves — whether that be different skin color, religious belief or sexuality.

    Lifestyle is also changing our language. For example, ＂fitspiration＂ — a compound of fit and inspiration — refers to a person or thing that encourages one to exercise and stay fit and healthy.

    The phrase ＂climate refugee＂ — someone who is forced to leave their home due to climate change—reflects people's concern for the environment.

 According to Stevenson, social media was the main source for the new expressions. ＂People feel much freer to coin their own words these days,＂ he said.

    But still, not all newly-invented words get the chance to make their way into a mainstream (主流的) dictionary. If you want to create your own hit words, Angus Stevenson, Oxford Dictionaries head of content development, suggests that you should not only make sure that they are expressive (有表现力的) and meaningful, but also have an attractive sound so that people will enjoy saying them out loud.

    Native to America, the cane toad (癞蛤蟆) was introduced to Northern Queensland 70 years ago to control sugarcane beetles (甘蔗害虫). The toads failed in that duty but spread across Queensland and into neighboring northern areas.

    Now it calmly invades(侵略) the stats of Western Australia and New South Wales ( NSW). NSW wildlife experts fear the amphibians － which have poisonous backs that kill hungry predators (食肉动物) 一will have a terrible effect on native animals.

    Those fears may be about to be realized. Australia's leading government research body, the Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organization (CSIRO), forecasts that a rise in average temperatures will make NSW an ideal living place for the cane toads.

    Tony Robinson, head of CSIRO's Wildlife, Pests, and Diseases Program, said climate change is increasing the amount of suitable living place for the cane toads.

    “With climate change, the cane toads might go down as far as Sydney and some areas of Western Australia,” Robinson said.

Recent estimates put the pace of the toads' westward march at nearly 17 miles (27 kilometers) a year and slightly slower from north to south.

    “More southerly (南部的) cities, such as Melbourne and Adelaide, would likely remain too cold and dry to ever suit the toads,” Robinson noted, “but Perth could expect cane toads in five years' time.”

    Sydney could see their arrival in the next 20 years.

    Robinson said there is no method that will keep the toads under control.

    The cane toads already cover at least half of Queensland and most of the northern country. The toads are believed to number in the billions.

    A Venezuelan virus was tried in the 1990s but had to be given up after it was found to also kill native frog species. Scientists and governmental bodies believe a national approach is needed.

    The main threat the toads cause to species such as dingoes, and crocodiles is the poison contained in glands (腺) on each of their shoulders. The poison sprays out when the toads are threatened or handled roughly. The poison is made up of 14 different chemicals.

    Cane toads also compete, and usually win, the hunt for food and living space.

    "”If the government and other states combine resources, I believe we can achieve a very practical biological-control research program,” Bums said.

    When it comes to mental illness, many people often find it tough to get the help they need. This is especially true for young students making the transition(过渡) to college life.

    “Sometimes, students don't realize how hard it is to adjust to college,” said Laura Smith, associate dean of students at the University of Texas at Dallas. “You're not the big fish in your classes anymore; you have all kinds of personal stress; you're away from home. Dealing with these things is not easy.”

    Students who are going through these problems sometimes want to reach out. But if students don't feel comfortable seeking help, many feel that it's the responsibility of their university to help them.

    “I really wish that there was more importance placed on how counseling(咨询) centers help students,” said Comnie Trinh. “Counseling services are just as important as academics and sports.”

    Trinh, 27, graduated from Texas Woman's University in 2015. During college, she hosted various workshops on how to handle mental health conditions. Trinh used her own story to connect with students who might be facing similar problems. High academic pressures, cultural differences as an Asian American and stressful social situations stood out as some of the most common causes of Trinh's anxiety.

    It was only after years of personal problems that she could admit that reaching out isn't a sign of weakness.

    ”If you feel you can't connect with other people around you, you should address the issue without shame,” Trinh said. “You'll find that there are a lot of people out there who sincerely want to help you.”

    Does your local high school have a student newspaper? Only 1 in 8 of New York's public high schools has student newspapers – and many of those are published just a few times a year. A few more are online, which can leave out poorer schools.

    Rebecca Dwarka, an 18-year-old senior who works for her student paper said, “Facebook is the new way of finding out what happened. Nobody wants to actually sit down and read a whole article about it. This makes a 'whole article' sound a little like a long sentence in lonely places.”

    I am not nostalgic(怀旧的) about high school student newspapers and never worked for mine. I put out what was then called a personal magazine with a group of friends because we wanted to write about peace, war and rock 'n' roll without school officials warning us not to make jokes about the local officials.

    School newspapers are in decline(衰落) because students now find out what happened on social networking websites. This is a little discouraging because it proves that for millions of Americans, journalism is becoming a do-it-yourself thing. Every citizen can be a reporter.

    When something happens, we look for social media messages. Facebook posts and Tweets have become the means by which citizens and reporters can prove, deny, pass on stories and express opinions without the press' challenging, researching or slowing the message.

    But truly good journalism is a craft, not just a blog post. It requires seeing something carefully and it uses an eye for details to help prove a larger view. And even journalism that conveys an opinion tries to be fair. If school newspapers begin to disappear, I hope there are other ways for students to learn that.

    The Chinese invented paper in 105 A. D. They mixed the bark of a tree and rags (破布) with water, put a screen into the mixture, and lifted out a thin piece of wet paper. They dried the paper in the sun.

    The Chinese kept their secret of how to make paper until a war with Muslims in the ninth century. The art of papermaking soon spread throughout the Muslim world.

    The Mayan Indians in Central America and Pacific Islanders also discovered how to make paper, but their knowledge never spread to the rest of the world.

    For centuries, all paper was made by hand. Rags were the main material. Then a French scientist discovered that people could make paper from wood, too. Finally, in the eighteenth century, a Frenchman invented a machine to make paper from wood.

    UK-based swimming pool manufacturer (制造商) Compass Pools has announced plans for the world's first 360-degree infinity (无限) pool. Titled Infinity London, the pool would contain 600,000 liters of water, and would sit at the top of a 55-story hotel.

    According to Compass Pools' plan, the pool would feature transparent (透明的) walls and floor, offering views across London's skyline and down into the hotel below. These walls would be made of cast acrylic, a material chosen to make sure that the material is completely clear.

    The main problem with designing the pool was how to make sure entry or exit from the pool without affecting the view. Speaking about this design, Compass Pools' technical director and designer Alex Kemsley explained，"Normally a simple ladder would suffice, but we didn't want stairs on the outside of the building or in the pool as it would spoil the view – and obviously you don't want 600,000 litres of water running down through the building either. The solution is based on the door of a submarine, coupled with a rotating spiral (螺旋的) staircase which rises from the pool floor when someone wants to get in or out."

    Take a look at early models of how the pool might look in the gallery above. At present, no contract has been made but building work could begin as early as 2020.

    I have been carrying a notebook and pen around with me since I was three. I practiced letters over and over because the act of writing was appealing. Once I could form words, I discovered the beauty of the sentence. The pages transformed into two- or three-line tales about dogs and horses and something else that interested me.

    Eventually, I began to understand what it was my heart longed for: to create words and stories. I wrote plays out of the adventures of my American Girl dolls and mimicked(模仿) the mysteries of Harry Potter. I scribbled(涂鸦) across margins in class notes and grabbed any magazine that caught my eye.

    I was 11 when I wandered into a Goodwill shop one afternoon with my mother. We searched for treasures and I discovered a row of old typewriters. Most were black, some electric and others manual(手动的), almost all behemoths(庞然大物). Many keys were yellowed with age, but they all shone up at me like magic. I spent long minutes opening cases, tapping keys, shifting rollers to hear that oh-so-delightful ping. At last, I came across a small tan case. Inside was a 1950s baby blue Smith Corona typewriter. I was instantly attracted.

    I begged my mom to buy it. Despite my puppy-dog eyes, we left without it. Months passed, and the typewriter left my mind. Christmas arrived with a usual number of presents, until we reached the last one: a tiny box behind the tree. Inside I found a typewriter tape, along with instructions to look under my brother's bed. With a scream I dashed for his room and found a familiar tan case hidden below.

    Within minutes, I had the baby blue beauty set up at our dining table and paper gathered. Growing up, I spent many hours pulling out the typewriter whenever I wanted to copy handwritten stories or needed inspiration. I dragged it with me when I moved from Illinois to Washington.

    My typewriter made my childhood dreams of being a writer feel real. Its well-worn keys stoked the creativity in my soul. The words I imagined went from the scribbled pages of notebooks to the print of the typewriter. It was as if I was turning these fantasies into published works all on my own.

    The Internet plays a big part in human life. We use it for work and pleasure. We use it to learn a new language. We find advice on it. We use it to connect with family and friends. We use it to stay in touch with events we care about. The list goes on and on.

    As far as the Internet being a part of our lives, well, that train has left the station. There is no going back to an Internet-free life. But can using the Internet too much be bad for our health? It might be, say researchers. A new study finds that heavy Internet use may be connected to high blood pressure in a young group: teenagers.

    The study results show that teens who spend at least 14 hours a week only online may cause high blood pressure, which makes their hearts and blood vessels (血管) work too hard. Over time, this extra pressure increases the risk of a heart attack. High blood pressure can also cause heart and other diseases.

    The Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan did the study. 335 young people, from 14 to 17 years old, took part in it. 134 of the teens were described as "heavy Internet users". And researchers found that out of these 134 teens, 26 had high blood pressure. The researchers said the study was the first to connect heavy Web use with high blood pressure.

    The lead researcher is Andrea Cassidy-Bushrow. She says, "Using the Internet is part of our daily life, but it shouldn't ruin (毁坏) us." Ms. Cassidy-Bushrow adds that it is important for teens to stop to have a rest regularly(有规律地) from their computers or smartphones and do some kind of physical activity. She also suggests that parents shouldn't let their children use the Internet for more than two hours a day, five days a week.

Online shopping is a type of remote transaction as it is a purchase agreement reached by two parties through the transmission of network information. The purchaser places an order and makes payment, and the seller is required to ship the merchandise within 24-48 hours. However, if the seller is out of stock, then the merchandise cannot be shipped on time, so the consumer faces the risk of having to wait for a long time. If there is a holiday, the merchandise tends to be delayed due to the logistics(物流) companies being busy. Moreover, your merchandise may be damaged during transportation or delivery process. Re-order or reshipment also takes time. Consumers are advised to avoid the peak of online shopping when purchasing fresh and urgently needed products. Close attention should also be paid to logistics information after payment.

Customers who shop online are required to register as a member on the corresponding shopping website. When registering, certain personal information is required. Some websites need your personal information such as your contacts and bank card account, otherwise you will not be able to complete the transaction. Some computer hackers may obtain your personal information through certain means, and illegally make use of the information to threaten your personal and property safety. At the same time, the development of the modern logistics industry may also let out your private information. When sending and receiving deliveries, you need to fill in the contact number of both parties to facilitate communication, which, however, may also compromise privacy.

Returning the products purchased online may be troublesome. The customer will get in touch with the seller to request a return when the quality or the description of the product received does not match the advertisement. The seller may refuse the return for various reasons. Even if the relevant authority steps in, there might be a lack of evidence and thus it may be concluded hastily. Since online shopping is a long-distance transaction, it is difficult to guarantee the after-sales service of some goods. Once the product breaks down in later use, it will be difficult to guarantee after-sales rights protection.

Old age may not sound exciting. But recent findings offer good news for older people and for people worried about getting older. Researchers found that people become happier and experience less worry after they reach the age of 50. In fact, they say by the age of 85, people are happier with their life than they were when they were 18 years old.

The findings came from a survey of more than 340,000 adults in the United States. The Gallup Organization questioned them by telephone in 2008. At that time, the people were between the ages of 18 and 85. The researchers asked questions about emotions like happiness, sadness and worry. They also asked about mental or emotional stress.

Arthur Stone in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stony Brook University in New York led the study. His team found that levels of stress were highest among adults between the ages of 24 and 25. The findings showed that stress levels dropped sharply (突然地) after people reached their fifties.

The study also showed that men and women have similar feeling patterns as they grow older.

However, women at all ages reported more sadness, stress and worry than men.

Researchers say they do not know why happiness increases as people get older. One theory is that, as people grow older, they grow more thankful for what they have and have better control of their feelings. They so spend less time thinking about bad experiences.

Professor Stone says the emotional patterns could be connected to changes in how people see the world, or maybe even changes in brain chemistry.

The researchers also considered possible influences like having young children, being unemployed or being single. But they found that influences like these did not affect the levels of happiness and well-being (幸福) related to age.

In this fast-developing world, it can be said that technology has killed culture and traditions. Radio was known as a stress reliever in the past, but the digitalization of music has done great damage to the radio industry. Radio stations no longer have a large audience that they once had. People can now easily download music from the Internet, or listen to it online.

In the technology-dependent era, George Oliver realized that it was nearly impossible to live a life without the Internet. If radio should be brought back and compete with the existing music streaming platforms, he has to take the radio online. On October 28, 2015, he founded Realmuzic.net.

Launching an online radio site and maintaining it was no easy job. George had to get his head into technology. He faced and overcame many challenges, and turned a deaf ear to those who always laughed at his idea. His passion for bringing back the golden times for radio was much stronger than any of these difficulties. George and his DJs team put in all their efforts, and used all their knowledge and every bit of energy to make this happen.

Just like any other business, Realmuzic.net began with a rough start. Not many people knew about this online radio station and were too absorbed in the new tech to turn to the radio-centric music streaming service. Giving up was not an option, so they decided to target the 80's and 90's kids with their nostalgic (怀旧的) playlists and carefully selected song collections that played 24/7 on Realmuzic.net. Their decision was right: they saw a huge increase in their site-visits. Their next step was to bridge the gap between younger generations and radio.

In today's throwaway society, it's all too easy to buy goods as and when we need them and simply bin them once they've served their purpose, and a surprising amount of perfectly usable stuff ends up as waste—and it's not just what we can see in the bin either.

When we throw away a product—be it a toy, a T-shirt or a tomato we're wasting more than the product and the money we spent on it, we're wasting all the effort that went into it growing it or mining the materials to make it, manufacturing it, packaging it for sale, and transporting it to the shop or to our door, for example, a cheeseburger has a carbon footprint of around 10 kg CO₂eq. That's 30 times higher than its weight. 98% of a cheeseburger's total carbon impact actually comes from its production. Its waste impact accounts for just 2%. Similarly, despite weighing just io9 grams on average, the waste footprint of a smartphone is more than 500 times higher at a massive 8o kg. I hat s including the waste generated in mining materials to make it, like precious metals, but doesn't even include emissions(排放) generated in the manufacturing process.

In Scotland, 80% of carbon footprint comes from all the goods, materials and services which we produce, use and often throw out after just one use. What's more, around half of those emissions are produced overseas in countries poorer and more polluting than Scotland. Not good news.

There are signs of hope. More and more people are beginning to realize how serious this waste is and to use that knowledge to inform our purchases. We need to face the wastefulness of our consumer culture, but we have a mountain to climb.

Today, methane (甲烷) is a central but under-appreciated part of the fight against climate change. Human activity releases far less methane than carbon dioxide, but methane packs a heavier punch. Over the course of20 years, a ton of the gas will warm the atmosphere about 86 times more than a ton of carbon dioxide. Chief among the reasons for methane emissions (排放) are the gassy output of raising farm animals ( cows release it most) , rice production ( certain environments involve micro-organisms that make it) and the fossil fuel industry( pipelines leak it) .

Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries, making it hard to reduce its concentrations. By contrast, methane has a half-life of roughly ten years. If new emissions can be cut to below the rate at which old emissions reduce, the concentration of methane remaining in the atmosphere will soon fall, slowing global warming.

A big step would be to stop millions of tons of methane from leaking out of fossil fuel industry each year. Natural gas operators will be able to sell more gas in exchange for an acceptable investment so as to monitor and repair leaks. The International Energy Agency estimates that 40% of methane emissions from fossil fuels can be cut at no cost for firms.

The harder task is to reduce emissions from agriculture, but even here farmers can draw on new ideas, including developing new forms of feed for farm animals, and changing how rice field is irrigated.

However, politicians and the public tend to ignore the effects of cutting methane emission. But dealing with the gas with the efforts of the ordinary people would have a large effect at a relatively low cost.

My husband and I used to think we had all we had ever wanted. A beautiful house, three healthy children and one more on the way, two cars, a couple of four-wheelers for entertainment—We really had it all and we loved it. Then, the market turned and my husband's job at a construction company was gone. The company was closing down forever.

We both started looking for jobs right away, but there weren't any to be found. With each passing day we were getting increasingly worried and we continued to work together in order to pull our family through. The more we pulled together, the closer we got. I felt feelings of admiration for my husband that I hadn't felt for years.

That's why it was so hard for me to watch him blame himself for ou present situation. I continually asked him to stop but he seemed to want to punish himself for not having a job.

Finally, one afternoon I pulled him aside and said, "We have four healthy children and each other. That's what's important. That makes you a rich man. "

"But what if we lose the house? They will hate me—you'll hate me, "he replied.

I smiled at him and put my hands on both sides of his face to make him look me in the eye. "No matter where we live I will be happy—as long as I have you, "I smiled again as I realized that I wasn't just saying that. In all the struggling together I had found that deep love for him that I had on the day we said "I do".

I could see his shoulders and neck relaxed. He held me close and we were able to talk and plan and dream together in a way that we hadn't for quite some time. It was a turning point for us as a couple and a family.

We are still struggling for our better life, but I consider us well-off because we have something that money can't buy and no one can take away from us.

The Intelligent Transport team at Newcastle University have turned an electric car into a mobile laboratory named "DriveLAB" in order to understand the challenges faced by older drivers and to discover where the key stress points are.

Research shows that giving up driving is one of the key reasons for a fall in health and well-being among older people, leading to them becoming more isolated(隔绝) and inactive.

Led by Professor Phil Blythe, the Newcastle team are developing in-vehicle technologies for older drivers which they hope could help them to continue driving into later life.

These include custom-made navigation(导航) tools, night vision systems and intelligent speed adaptations. Phil Blythe explains: "For many older people, particularly those living alone or in the country, driving is important for preserving their independence, giving them the freedom to get out and about without having to rely on others."

"But we all have to accept that as we get older our reactions slow down and this often results in people avoiding any potentially challenging driving conditions and losing confidence in their driving skills. The result is that people stop driving before they really need to."

Dr Amy Guo, the leading researcher on the older driver study, explains, "The DriveLAB is helping us to understand what the key points and difficulties are for older drivers and how we might use technology to address these problems.

"For example, most of us would expect older drivers always go slower than everyone else but surprisingly, we found that in 30mph zones they struggled to keep at a constant speed and so were more likely to break the speed limit and be at risk of getting fined. We're looking at the benefits of systems which control their speed as a way of preventing that.

"We hope that our work will help with technological solutions(解决方案) to ensure that older drivers stay safer behind the wheel."

Food picked up just a few seconds after being dropped is less likely to contain bacteria than if it is left for longer periods of time, according to the findings of research carried out at Aston University's School of Life and Health Sciences. The findings suggest there may be some scientific basis to the "5-second rule"—the belief about it being fine to eat food that has only had contact with the floor for five seconds or less. Although people have long followed the 5-second rule, until now it is unclear whether it actually helps.

The study, undertaken by final year Biology students and led by Anthony Hilton, Professor of Microbiology at Aston University, monitored the transfer of the common bacteria from a variety of indoor flooring types(carpet, cement floor etc. )to toast, pasta, a biscuit and a sticky sweet when contact was made from 3 to 30 seconds. The results showed that: Time is a significant factor in the transfer of bacteria from a floor surface to a piece of food; and the type of flooring the food has been dropped on has an effect, with bacteria least likely to transfer from carpeted surfaces and most likely to transfer from cement flooring surfaces to moist(湿的) foods making contact for more than five seconds. Professor Hilton said:" Consuming food dropped on the floor still carries an infection risk as it very much depends on which bacteria are present on the floor at the time. "

The Aston team also carried out a survey of the number of people who employ the 5-second rule. The survey showed that: 87% of people surveyed said they would eat food dropped on the floor, or already have done so. 55% of those who would eat or have eaten food dropped on the floor are women. 81% of the women who would eat food from the floor would follow the 5-second rule. Professor Hilton added, "Our study showed that a surprisingly large majority of people are happy to consume dropped food, with women the most likely to do so. But they are also more likely to follow the 5-second rule. "