If English means endless new words, difficult grammar and sometimes strange pronunciation, you are wrong. Haven’t you noticed that you have become smarter since you started to learn a language? According to a new study by a British university, learning a second language can lead to an increase in your brain power. Researchers found that learning other languages changes grey matter. This is the area of the brain which processes information, It is similar to the way that exercise builds muscles.

Scans (扫描) showed that grey matter density (密度) in the brain was greater in bilinguals than in people without a second language.

“Our findings suggest that the structure of the brain is changed by the experience of learning a second language,” said the scientists. It means that the change itself increases the ability to learn.

Professor Dylan Vaughan Jones of the University of Wales, has researched the link between bilingualism and maths skills. “Having two languages gives you two windows on the world and makes the brain more flexible,” he said, “You are actually going beyond language and have a better understanding of different ideas.”

The findings were matched in a study of native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between the ages of two and thirty-four. Reading, writing, and comprehension were all tested, The results showed that the younger they started to learn, the better, “Studying a language means you get an entrance to another world, ”explained the scientists.

A brand is a name, word, sign, symbol, design, or a combination of these, intended to identify the goods or services of a company or a group of companies. Another purpose of a brand is to contrast one company from another. The most important skill of professional marketers is the ability to create, maintain, protect, and enhance the brands of their products and services. Branding has become so important that today hardly any company or product is without one. Therefore, brand management is an increasingly important element in marketing.

Brand power refers to the relative strength of a company’s brand in the minds of consumers, and can influence consumers’ choice of products. Brands are powerful to the extent that they give high brand loyalty and strong brand associations, name recognition, perceived quality and other assets to a company. A strong brand can be one of a company’s most important assets.

High brand power provides a company with many competitive advantages. A powerful brand enjoys a high level of consumer brand awareness and loyalty. Because consumers expect stores to carry the brand, the company has more bargaining power when negotiating with retailers. And because the brand name brings high credibility, a company with a strong brand can more easily launch new products with the same brand name.

Many companies use the advantage of a strong brand power strategically to expand their business. When a company introduces an additional item with a new flavour, form, colour or package size in a given product category and under the same brand name, it is called a line extension. Another strategy is called brand extension. This involves the use of a successful brand name to launch new or modified products in a new category, thereby employing brand recognition in order to increase sales of new products.

Brand recognition is certainly important. Because consumers often hold long-standing perceptions about brands, high brand power ensure a company continued sales of its products.

If you’re like most people, you’re too busy eating pizza to stop and consider how it arrived on your kitchen counter. Ponder it long enough, though, and you may find it curious that pies usually come in square or other boxes that are different from the round crust. So why don’t pizzas arrive in round cardboard boxes?

It’s mostly because the pizza industry doesn’t really care to disrupt the cardboard industry. Cardboard boxes are usually manufactured with edges (i.e. square or rectangular) because they can be made in one piece as well as neatly stacked (堆放).

The advantage of making a round pizza box would mainly be good-looking. It’s not going to saves pace over an edged box. In the case of frozen pizzas, stacking pies vertically runs the risk of them rolling out of place. It’s just bad pizza management.

Of course, there are exceptions. Many pizzerias offer sheet or Sicilian-style pizzas, which are served in a rectangular shape and better fit a rectangular box. And some chains have toyed with the conventional pizza bot shape. Domino’s has a six-sided design with tapered (锥形的) front edges intended to reduce the cardboard used and limit the company’s carbon footprint. (It also reportedly keeps the pizza from sliding around.)

Pizza wasn’t always served in square cardboard. In the 1800s, street sellers carried pies in portable metal containers that kept them warm. When pizza started rising in popularity in postwar America, pizzerias used a single piece of cardboard as support and then slipped the pie into a paper bag. Eventually, corrugated (波纹的) cardboard struck a fine balance between preserving heat without trapping too much moisture.

Will we ever see a complete rethink of the pizza box? Some people have tried. In 2010, Apple filed for a patent for a round pizza container with holes so moisture can escape. It’s used in the company’s food courts. Another company, World Centric, designed a compostable (可降解的) round box in 2018 that can be used to reheat pizza. A similar product was test-marketed by Pizza Hut in 2019. All of the designs boasted of keeping pizzas warmer and crispier for longer, but none have become commonly used.

For the most part, you’re still likely to encounter square boxes. Pizza is, after all, about finding comfort in the familiar.