Word: spending
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Known as invasive non-indigenous species, such garden mainstays as garlic mustard or Japanese barberry are often cultivated for their beauty and hardiness. Green-thumbed Americans spend $9 billion a year on plants, flowers and trees, but what so many avid gardeners don't know is that by introducing an unfamiliar species to their local topography, they could be triggering a domino effect of significant environmental damage. Though most of the thousands of non-indigenous plants on the market are harmless, the few varieties that cause trouble have sprouted in every corner of the U.S. landscape...
...What developers didn't count on, though, was stingy consumers. Despite the country's rapid economic gains, the average citizen has little to spend on frills. Per capita annual income remains below $2,000. The average household saves more than 25% of its pay, in contrast to Americans, who in recent years have tended to spend more than they make. Just 4% of Chinese have credit cards, and purchases using plastic average less than $1,000 a year per cardholder. By Western standards, Chinese consumers simply have not yet begun to spend. As a result, "less than a handful...
...with the right mix of shops. Alan Liu, Shanghai-based managing director of Colliers International's North Asia practice, says most try to attract upscale brands. "Everyone thinks they need Prada, Gucci, Fendi in every project, even smaller ones," Liu says. "Well, the vast majority of customers won't spend their money on upmarket products like that." Indeed, at Beijing's Shin Kong Place recently, office worker Zhang Ting, 28, called the center's many high-end international brands "prohibitively expensive." While hundreds of local office workers like Zhang crowded the downtown mall's basement food court, few ventured upstairs...
...which ones are salvageable. Most will pass the test: 95% will be cleaned or otherwise refurbished. Then, with a handful of new parts added to the mix, the engine will be reassembled. After it's passed strict tests to ensure it meets standards, the "remanufactured" engine will spend another four to five years in service before it's ready for another makeover. Thanks to remanufacturing, its life could total 45 years. Welcome to Caterpillar's Remanufacturing Services plant in Shrewsbury, England, where dead vehicle parts are resurrected...
There's good reason to spend so much time and money--Dawn carries a $446 million price tag--getting to Ceres and Vesta. The composition and reflectivity of the bodies suggest they were formed within the first 3 million years of the solar system's life, whereas Earth was something of a late arrival, coming along about 27 million years later. A close look at Ceres and Vesta, then, is a close look at a local cosmos that our planet wasn't even around to see. "These two objects are our best opportunity for going back into time," says Christopher...