Leather-making in Florence dates back hundreds of years to the 13th century. A look at leather craftsmen in Florence will help you know more about Italian leather.
The leather factory－PIEROTUCCI
Join a free tour of the factory and you'll get a deep dive into the process of making a handbag. After seeing what it takes to make a bag by hand, you'll no longer wonder why PIEROTUCCI prices come with two zeros at the end. And you'll know that if you do spend the money, the bag will last forever
The leather shoe store—STEFANO BEMER
STEFANO BEMER was famous for its hand-tailored shoes. The elegant store that sells shoes that cost hundreds，and in some cases thousands，of dollars is also where apprentices (学徒) learn their skills: visible in the front section of the store.
The leather school—Scuola del Cuoio
Walking into the courtyard of the Scuola del Cuoio feels a little like walking onto a mini college campus. You leave the busy street as you enter the historic building. The school specializes in making one-of-a-kind bags and in teaching paying students the secrets of high-quality leather working.
The bookbinding (书籍装订) store——Il Torchio
Il Torchio is a beautiful bookbinding store run by Erin Ciulla. If you ask Ciulla, she might take you to see the "guillotine", which is actually a very large, antique-looking machine that's used to cut large amounts of paper. Beyond binding with leather covers, Ciulla also covers books, journals, and photo albums in hand-made papers.
During the pandemic, Tokyo's lively Mejji University campus stood still. My students were restricted to their homes, appearing only as small figures on my screen during Zoom lectures on human-computer interaction. I spent the days in my lab, looking for ways to pass the time.
On a particularly bland day in 2020, I was recalling about how, before the pandemic, Tokyo used to be packed with people who had flown across the world to enjoy the exciting food scene. But now restaurants were empty and people longed for foods they once relished. I missed drinking wine in a bar, watching others enjoying their evenings. I wondered how I could contribute during these trying times. That's when an idea struck: why not create a device to bring the flavor of the world into people's homes?
In Japan, companies use taste sensors to monitor the quality of products. These devices measure the strength of the five basic tastes — salty, sweet, sour, bitter, umami — and assign each a value. It dawned on me that if taste could be quantified, perhaps it could also be recreated. I dissolved foods such as pizza and fries, measured how they rated, then made 10 liquid samples that each represented a taste. When copying the taste of food, it's like following a recipe; I combined the 10 liquid samples to reflect the taste sensor's measurements of the dissolved dish.
Taste the TV (TTTV), released in 2021, looks like a television screen — but you can lick it. Once the viewer selects a dish from the screen menu, an image of the food will appear, and above the screen a device containing my liquid flavor samples will spray in a combination that creates the taste of the chosen food. The spray then rolls films over the screen, and they can enjoy the taste of pizza without even biting into a slice.
My invention was received pretty well worldwide. My students and I would be interested in finding how else to challenge traditional ways of enjoying media, and we knew we wanted to expand on TTTV.
What are pillows really stuffed with? Not physically, but symbolically? The question occurred to me with the photos in the news and social media from the 50 cities around the world that staged public celebrations for International Pillow Fight Day. Armed with nothing more than bring-our-own sacrificial cushions, strangers struck heavily each other in playful feather from Amsterdam to Atlanta, Warsaw to Washington DC. But why? Is there anything more to this delightful celebration?
As a cultural sign, the pillow is deceptively soft. Since at least the 16th Century, the humble pillow has been given unexpected meanings. The Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu tells a famous story about a wise man who meets a depressed young scholar at an inn and offers him a magic pillow filled with the most vivid dreams of a seemingly more fulfilling life. When the young man awakens to discover that his happy 50-year dream has in fact come and gone in the short space of an afternoon's nap, our impression of the pillow's power shifts from wonder to terror.
Subsequent writers have likewise seized upon the pillow. When the 19th-Century English novelist Charlotte Bronte poetically observed "a ruffled (不平的) mind makes a restless pillow", she didn't just change the expected order of the adjectives and nouns, but instead she made unclear the boundaries between mind and matter — the thing resting and the thing rested upon.
It's a trick perhaps Bronte learned from the Renaissance philosopher Montaigne, who once insisted that "ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head". On Montaigne's thinking, intelligence and happiness confront each other forever in a pillow fight that only one can win.
With the words of Tang. Bronte, and Montaigne, we can perhaps more easily measure the attraction of the global pillow fight. Like a ritual of release, the annual international pillow fight amounts to a kind of cleansing, a brushing off of daily worries: an emptying of the world's collective mind. Rather than a launch-pad for weightless rest, the pillow is a symbol of heavy thought: an anchor that drags the world's soul down — one that must be lightened.
We often think about relationships on a scale from positive to negative. We are drawn to loving family members, caring classmates and supportive mentors. We do our best to avoid the cruel uncle, the playground bully and the jerk boss.
But the most toxic relationships aren't the purely negative ones. They're the ones that are a mix of positive and negative. We often call them frenemies, supposed friends who sometimes help you and sometimes hurt you. But ifs not just friends. It's the in-laws who volunteer to watch your kids but belittle your parenting. The manager who praises your work but denies you a promotion.
Everyone knows how relationships like that can tie your stomach into a knot. But groundbreaking research led by the psychologists Bert Uchino and Julianne Holt-Lunstad shows that ambivalent (矛盾情绪的) relationships can be damaging to your health — even more than purely negative relationships.
I had assumed that with a neighbor or a colleague, having some positive interactions was better than all negative interactions. But being cheered on by the same person who cuts you down doesn't reduce the bad feelings; it increases them. And it's not just in your head: It leaves a trace in your heart and your blood.
Even a single ambivalent interaction can cause harm. In one experiment, people gave impromptu speeches on controversial topics in front of a friend who offered feedback. The researchers had randomly assigned the friend to give ambivalent or negative comments. Receiving mixed feedback caused higher blood pressure than pure criticism. "I would have gone about the topic differently, but you're doing fine" proved to be more distressing than "I totally disagree with everything you've said."
The evidence that ambivalent relationships can be bad for us is strong, but the reasons can be harder to read — just like the relationships themselves.
The most intuitive reason is that ambivalent relationships are unpredictable. With a clear enemy, you put up a shield when you cross paths. With a frenemy, you never know whether Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde is going to show up. Feeling unsure can disrupt the body's calming system and activate a fight-or-flight response. It's unsettling to hope for a hug while also preparing for a likely quarrel.
Another factor is that unpleasant interactions are more painful in an ambivalent relationship. It's more upsetting to be let down by people you like sometimes than by people you dislike all the time. When someone stabs you in the back, it stings more if he's been friendly to your face.
If you thought that your child's academic performance is based solely on the number of hours spent studying, you're sorely wrong. And one of the major, mostly ignored, influencing contributors is physical health.
Physical activity and health can actually boost a person's ability to learn. According to a study, exercise can improve a child's cognitive abilities, health, and academic performance significantly. Regular aerobic exercise enhances the functioning of the hippocampus, the area of the brain involved in learning and verbal memory. Even the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal cortex—parts of the brain that control thinking and memory—are found to be in better health in those who exercise regularly than in the brains of those who don't exercise.
The effect of exercise on memory and thinking is both direct and indirect. Directly, regular exercise gives the ability to stimulate the release of growth factors, chemicals in the brain that affect the health of brain cells, as well as the survival of new brain cells. It will also reduce stress and anxiety.
Studies show that the added study length doesn't bring about the expected learning effects. Furthermore, the greatest cognitive benefits from physical education have been seen to come about when physical education is given either in the first half of the day or midday rather than at the end of the day. The benefits of exercise in terms of academic performance also apply to college students. According to a recent study in the North Carolina State, just an hour of exercise every week can bring about great changes.
A. There are loads of benefits of physical exercise.
B. In fact, good grades are a result of multiple factors.
C. As a consequence, it can boost our behaviour and thinking ability.
D. Additionally, getting enough exercise will improve sleep quality and mood.
E. Other forms of exercise like balance exercises do boost the cognitive performance of the brain.
F. The benefits of exercise during the school day exceed those coming from increasing class time.
G. Thus, physical activity should be seen as more a core educational concern than an insignificant option.
In our discussion with people on how education can help them succeed in life, a woman remembered the first meeting of an introductory science course about 20 years ago.
The professor 1 the lecture hall, placed upon his desk a large jar filled with dried beans (豆),and invited the students to 2 how many beans the jar contained. After 3 shouts of wildly wrong guesses, the professor smiled a thin, dry smile, announced the 4 answer, and went on saying, "You have just learned an important lesson about science. That is: Never 5 your own senses."
Twenty years later, the woman could guess what the professor had in mind. He 6 himself, perhaps, as inviting his students to start an exciting 7 into all unknown world invisible (无形的) to the eye, which can be discovered only through scientific 8 . But the seventeen-year-old girl could not accept or even 9 the invitation. She was just 10 to understand the world. And she believed that her firsthand experience could be the 11 . The professor, however said that it was 12 . He was taking away her only 13 for knowing and was providing her with no substitute (替代). "I remember feeling small and 14 ," the woman says, "and I did the only thing I could do. I 15 the course that afternoon, and I haven't gone near science since."
Getting angry could help you achieve your goals, a new research suggests. Often (perceive) as a negative emotion, anger can actually be powerful (motivate) for people to meet challenging targets in their lives. It is useful in achieving more challenging goals, does not appear to be linked to easier tasks.The finding also suggests emotions that are often considered negative,such as anger, boredom, or sadness, can be useful.
Lead author Heather Lench, a professor at Texas A and M University, USA, stated that people often believed a state of happiness was ideal, and the majority of people regarded the pursuit of happiness as a major life goal." The view that positive emotions are perfect for mental health and well being (be) noticeable in psychological accounts of emotion, but many researches suggest a mix of emotions, including negative emotions like anger, result in (good) outcomes." She added that the functionalist theory of emotion suggests that all emotions, good or bad, are reactions events within a person's environment and serve the purpose of alerting that person to important situations that require actions.
In the study researchers conducted experiments (involve) more than 1,000 people, and analyzed survey data from more than 1,400 respondents. The researchers found that anger increased effort towards attaining a desired goal, (frequent) leading to greater success and the effects of anger in encouraging people to reach for and achieve their goals were specific to situations the goals were more difficult to realize.
Marco stared at the blank canvas (油画布) spreading out before him, its stark whiteness almost laughing at his sudden lack of inspiration. He was in his final year of high school, and his art portfolio (画集) was fast approaching its due date in a week. This canvas was meant to be his masterpiece, the crown jewel of his collection, but all his ideas seemed to escape the moment he stood before it. "What's wrong with me? What should I do?" Marco murmured to himself.
Having grown up in the bustling city of New York, Marco had always found beauty in the chaos. The harshness of roaring cars, the colorful palette of street art, the symphony of diverse tongues and the odd behaviors of the passengers-all served as inspirations for his art. Yet, now, when it mattered most, he found himself lost.
Upset and distressed, Macro walked out, longing to run across something unexpected. Unaware of the duration of his wandering through the streets of the city, Marco chanced upon a small, hidden park he had never noticed before. It was a pocket of quiet amid the urban uproar, which attracted Marco immediately. An old man sat on a bench, feeding pigeons that flocked around him in a dance of fluttering wings.
The old man noticed Marco's thoughtful gaze and gestured him over. They struck up a conversation aimlessly as if they had been old friends for a long time. In their talk, everything was full of interest from life to art. At last Marco confided (倾诉) his artistic block to the old man. The old man listened intently before offering a piece of wisdom. And then, the old man stood up slowly and patted Marco's shoulder softly. "Sometimes, the best inspiration comes from the places we least expect. Look beyond what you see." The gentleman said in all earnestness.
要求: 1. 续写词数应为 150 左右; 2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
The next day, Marco returned to his canvas.
……
The time presenting his portfolio came soon.
相应位置作答。