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After years of heated debate, gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. Fourteen wolves were caught in Canada and transported to the park. By last year, the Yellowstone wolf population had grown to more than 170 wolves.
Gray wolves once were seen here and there in the Yellowstone area and much of the continental United States, but they were gradually displaced by human development. By the 1920s, wolves had practically disappeared from the Yellowstone area. They went farther north into the deep forests of Canada, where there were fewer humans around.
The disappearance of the wolves had many unexpected results. Deer and elk populations — major food sources (来源) for the wolf – grew rapidly. These animals consumed large amounts of vegetation (植被), which reduced plant diversity in the park. In the absence of wolves, coyote populations also grew quickly. The coyotes killed a large percentage of the park' s red foxes, and completely drove away the park' s beavers.
As early as 1966,biologists asked the government to consider reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone Park.They hoped that wolves would be able to control the elk and coyote problems.Many farmers opposed the plan because they feared that wolves would kill their farm animals or pets.
The government spent nearly 30 years coming up with a plan to reintroduce the wolves. The U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service carefully monitors and manages the wolf packs in Yellowstone. Today, the debate continues over how well the gray wolf is fitting in at Yellowstone. Elk,deer,and coyote populations are down,while beavers and red foxes have made a comeback.The Yellowstone wolf project has been a valuable experiment to help biologists decide whether to reintroduce wolves to other parts of the country as well.
Today I went to Berkeley, near our old neighborhood. I was a bit surprised by the increased number of homeless (alternatively housed) people walking around. I remember there are more in certain areas. So the first man who asked me for money got all my single bills. So when the second man asked me two minutes later, I said I was out because I gave all I had to the previous person.
I was headed to the grocery store for a coffee and after I left the store I walked out to find him as he had asked me for something because he was hungry and I invited him to go into the grocery store with me.
When I asked him what he wanted to eat, he just asked for vegetable and rice. He talked about how much better the vegetables were as we waited for our number to be called. While we waited he told me that he had slept outside last night on the sidewalk, that it was not good, and that he had come from Rwanda and was alone.
He was a gentleman. When I asked if he wanted more he said, this bowl of food would last him the whole day.
I don't know what his circumstances were before he came to California, and wandering and begging on the streets could somehow be better because you just never know what had happened to him. He seemed like a kind soul who just needed some help like we all do. I am grateful I did a little to help him today.
Four people in England back in 1953, stared at Photo 51,It wasn't much—a picture showing a black X. But three of these people won the Nobel Prize for figuring out what the photo really showed –the shape of DNA The discovery brought fame and fortune to scientists James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. The fourth, the one who actually made the picture, was left out.
Her name was Rosalind Franklin.” She should have been up there,” says historian（历史学家） Mary Bowden.” If her photos hadn't been there, the others couldn't have come up with the structure.” One reason Franklin was missing was that she had died of cancer four years before the Nobel decision. But now scholars（学者）doubt that Franklin was not only robbed of her life by disease but robbed of credit by her competitors
At Cambridge University in the 1950s, Watson and Click tried to make models by cutting up shapes of DNA's parts and then putting them together. In the meantime, at King's College in London, Franklin and Wilkins shone X-rays at the molecule(分子). The rays produced patterns reflection the shape.
But Wilkins and Franklin's relationship was a lot rockier than the celebrated teamwork of Watson and Crick, Wilkins thought Franklin was hired to be his assistant .But the college actually employed her to take over the DNA project.
What she did was produce X-ray pictures that told Watson and Crick that one of their early models was inside out. And she was not shy about saying so. That angered Watson, who attacked her in return, “Mere inspection suggested that she would not easily bend. Clearly she had to to go or be put in her place.”
As Franklin's competitors, Wilkins, Watson and Crick had much to gain by cutting her out of the little group of researchers, says historian Pnina Abir-Am. In 1962 at the Nobel Prize awarding ceremony, Wilkins thanked 13 colleagues by name before he mentioned Franklin, Watson wrote his book laughing at her. Crick wrote in 1974 that “Franklin was only two steps away from the solution.”
No, Franklin was the solution. “She contributed more than any other player to solving the structure of DNA . She must be considered a co-discoverer,” Abir-Am says. This was backed up by Aaron Klug, who worked with Franklin and later won a Nobel Prize himself. Once described as the “Dark Lady of DNA”, Franklin is finally coming into the light.
My father's reaction to the bank building at 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue in New York city was immediate and definite: "You won't catch me putting my money in there!" he declared, "Not in that glass box !"
Of course, my father is a gentleman of the old school, a member of the generation to whom a good deal of modern architecture is upsetting, but I am convinced that his negative response was not so much to the architecture as to a violation of his concept of the nature of money .
In his generation money was thought of as a real commodity (实物)that could be carried, or stolen. Consequently, to attract the custom of a sensible man, a bank had to have heavy walls, barred windows, and bronze（青铜） doors, to affirm the fact, however untrue, that money would be safe inside. If a building's design made it appear impenetrable（难以渗透的）, the institution（公共机构, 协会, 制度）was necessarily reliable, and the meaning of the heavy wall as an architecture symbol dwelt in the prevailing attitude toward money.
But the attitude toward money has, of course, changed. Excepting pocket money, cash of any kind is now rarely used; money as a tangible（切实，实在）commodity has largely been replaced by credit. A deficit (赤字) economy, accompanied by huge expansion, has led us to think of money as product of the creative imagination. The banker no longer offers us a safe: he offers us a service in which the most valuable element is the creativity for the invention of large numbers. It is in no way surprising, in view of this change in attitude, that we are witnessing the disappearance of the heavy-walled bank.
Just as the older bank emphasized its strength, this bank by its architecture boasts of imaginative powers. From this point of view it is hard to say where architecture ends and human assertion (人们的说法)begins.
People aren't walking any more—if they can figure out a way to avoid it.
I felt superior about this matter until the other day I took my car to mail a small parcel. The journey is a matter of 281 steps. But I used the car. And I wasn't in any hurry, either, I had merely become one more victim of a national sickness: motorosis.
It is an illness to which I had thought myself immune（免疫的）, for I was bred in the tradition of going to places on my own two legs. At that time, we regarded 25 miles as good day's walk and the ability to cover such a distance in ten hours as sign of strength and skill. It did not occur to us that walking was a hardship. And the effect was lasting. When I was 45 years old I raced—and beat—a teenage football player the 168 steps up the Stature of Liberty.
Such enterprises today are regarded by many middle-aged persons as bad for the heart. But a well-known British physician, Sir Adolphe Abrhams, pointed out recently that hearts and bodies need proper exercises. A person who avoids exercise is more likely to have illnesses than one who exercises regularly. And walking is an ideal form of exercise—the most familiar and natural of all.
It was Henry Thoreau who showed mankind the richness of going on foot. The man walking can learn the trees, flower, insects, birds and animals, the significance of seasons, the very feel of himself as a living creature in a living world, He cannot learn in a car.
The car is a convenient means of transport, but we have made it our way of life. Many people don't dare to approach Nature any more; to them the world they were born to enjoy is all threat.To them security is a steel river thundering on a concrete road. And much of their thinking takes place while waiting for the traffic light to turn green.
I say that the green of forests is the mind's best light. And none but the man on foot can evaluate what is basic and everlasting.
A new study says electronic toys are not helping babies learn.
"Even if companies are marketing them as educational, they're not teaching the babies anything at this time," said Anna Sosa the study's author.
Researchers listened to audio(声音的) recordings of parents playing with their babies aged 10 months to 16 months. The researchers compared the experiences when the children played with electronic toys, traditional toys such as blocks, or when the children looked at books. What they found is that parents talked less with their babies when the babies played with electronic toys.
Why is this important? Research shows that how quickly children develop language is often based on what they hear from parents. When the infants played with electronic toys, parents said little to their children. But with traditional toys, such as blocks, parents shared the names and descriptions of the animals, colors and shapes as their children played. There was even more information given by parents as their babies looked at the pictures in books.
Of course, there is no need for parents to throw out electronic toys, but they should look at their infants' play with such toys as entertainment, not a learning experience.
Toy Industry Association spokeswoman Adrienne Appell responded to the study. She said it is important that parents make time to play with their children. "Playing is a way that kids can learn so much, not only cognitive(认知的) skills, but social and developmental skills," she said. She added that play should be balanced, including time for just "make believe" activities, as well as traditional and electronic toys.
Let E-bikes Power New York's Transit Future
Providence, R. I., just became the 13th city to develop an electric-assisted bike-share system, which runs or is developing bike-share networks in cities across the United States. Ironically, the Brooklyn-based company cannot operate in its hometown of New York City,due to the wrongheaded ban on electric bicycles.
In many major cities in the U. S. and abroad, e-bikes are flourishing and helping to solve major urban challenges. Stockholm is adding 5, 000 e-bikes to its bike-share system. UPS is delivering packages in Hamburg using electrically-assisted cargo tricycles. And San Francisco's DoorDash food delivery service has found e-bikes to be the best mode to navigate heavy traffic and limited parking.
In striking contrast, New York City insists e-bikes are banned under law. More than 900 e- bikes were seized and more than 1, 800 summonses（召回）were issued by the New York Police Department in 2017,following Mayor de Blasio's decision to limit e-bike usage, despite the fact that no data or records exist to show e-bike-related safety incidents.
Who does the e-bike restriction hurt? The e-bikes seized in 2017 primarily belonged to food delivery workers, who are immigrants from Asia and Latin America. New Yorkers love their delivery: A new study from the New York City Department of Transportation found that more than half of city residents receive food deliveries at least a few times per month."
In fact, the top three neighborhoods for e-bike summonses-the Upper East and West Sides and East Midtown-also consisted of more than 70% white residents. It's difficult to divorce the penalty of workers of color from the predominantly white, rich neighborhoods to whom the meals are delivered.
It is true that the rush to maximize delivery numbers leads to higher speeds and potentially dangerous biking. To that end, the city should improve and enforce safe cycling and expand bicycling infrastructure to ensure safe passage for cyclists and pedestrians.
Outside New York, cities and companies are finding that e-bikes are convenient, have low carbon footprints and require less space than cars on city streets. As New York City seeks to improve traffic, better air quality and encourage active modes of transportation, it is confusing that a mode that checks all of those boxes would be outlawed.
The city must stop pedaling backwards on both workable transportation modes and the racially-charged policies surrounding them. It is time for New York City to embrace e-bikes as the very useful, worker-enabling, convenient and environmentally-forward mode that they are.
Do you often feel tired? Is it really because of the large amount of mental work you do? Here is an astonishing and significant fact: Mental work alone can't make us tired. It sounds absurd. But a few years ago, scientists tried to find out how long the human brain could labor without reaching a stage of fatigue (疲劳). To the amazement of these scientists, they discovered that blood passing through the brain, when it is active, shows no fatigue at all! If we took a drop of blood from a day laborer, we would find it full of fatigue toxins(毒素) and fatigue products. But if we took blood from the brain of an Albert Einstein, it would show no fatigue toxins at the end of the day.
So far as the brain is concerned, it can work as well and swiftly at the end of eight or even twelve hours of effort as at the beginning. The brain is totally tireless. So what makes us tired?
Some scientists declare that most of our fatigue comes from our mental and emotional attitudes. One of England's most outstanding scientists, J.A. Hadfield, says, “The greater part of the fatigue from which we suffer is of mental origin. In fact, fatigue of purely physical origin is rare.” Dr. Brill, a famous American scientist, goes even further. He declares, “One hundred percent of the fatigue of a sitting worker in good health is due to emotional problems.”
What kinds of emotions make sitting workers tired? Joy? Satisfaction? No! A feeling of being bored, anger, anxiety, tenseness, worry, a feeling of not being appreciated —— those are the emotions that tire sitting workers. Hard work by itself seldom causes fatigue. We get tired because our emotions produce nervousness in the body.
If a woman has an extra piece of cake，don 't blame it on greed, blame it on her brain.
Scientists have found that women's brains react to food very differently — and much more strongly — than men' s. Academics found that decades of dieting pressure on women and advertising have programmed certain parts of the female brain to react strongly when faced with any kind of food. Men，on the other hand, are not usually as obsessive (着迷的）about what they eat.
Dr. Rudolf Uher and his colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry in King's College London used brain scanning technology，known as functional magnetic resonance imaging ( FMRI)，to look at the brains of eighteen men and women.
The volunteers were given images of food to look at, as well as food to taste. Their brain reactions were observed by the scientists. They found that the female brains reacted much more strongly than those of males. The same reaction did not happen when they were shown non-food images. The team believe this means women think more about food than men tend to. Dr. Uher said, “This could be related to biological differences between men and women. But the more likely explanation is that women have a more complicated reaction to food because of social pressure. ”
Professor Carey Cooper，psychology and health professor at Lancaster University，said，“for centuries women have had a providing role — preparing and cooking food for their families. And it's part of that role to make sure the food is safe. They will therefore be much more sensitive to food than men are, and I would not be surprised if that was now built into their DNA. If the female brain react to food because it historically has developed neural (神经的）pathways to do this, then food will be the way they express their stress. Food actually，is a comfort for women. ”
But other experts have said that more research must be done before the results can be proved. American scientist Angelo del Parigi of the John B. Pierce Laboratory in New Haven, Connecticut, said, “Looking at an FMRI alone cannot make sure whether the stronger reaction in women is due to innate (天生的）differences or a learned process. ''
Most people who fly on passenger planes in the United States do not lose their luggage. Even if the luggage is lost, usually it is only delayed. Most "lost" luggage is found in a few days. Airlines search for the owners of unclaimed(未认领的) bags for up to three months. But when the owners cannot be found or the bags are not claimed, they are sold to a store in the small city of Scottsboro, in the southern state of Alabama.
About one-half of one percent of all luggage passing through US airports is unclaimed. Many of the missing bags, and what is in them, are sold at the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Seven thousand items arrive at the store every day. Tom Barnes, who was shopping at the store said, "I can go into any of the large shopping centers, like the international malls. I can walk through there for an hour and come out with three items. But I come into this store, and then I come out with my car full of stuff."
Brenda Cantrell, who works at the store, said, "The Unclaimed Baggage Center is the only store in America that buys and resells unclaimed baggage from the airline industry. You would be surprised at all the jackets, eyeglasses, neck pillows, blankets, laptops, Kindles, iPads, and you know, all kinds of expensive electronics."
The store says it once sold a container for flowers for $80 that was found to be worth $18,000. And it says a painting it sold for $25 was later found to be worth $25,000.
The store buys the luggage from the airlines. It does not examine the things inside them before buying them. Only about half of the items in the bags are suitable for sale at the store.
Some people say it is not fair to the owners of the lost passage to sell their goods. Customer Daniel Martin is not one of them, saying, "I feel the airport may try to find the people that lose the things. If they've tried and they can't get a hold of them, it's better than throwing them away or just letting them rot in a warehouse somewhere."
America's latest superhero Austin Perine, who calls himself President Austin, is now taking the country by storm. But he is not a typical superhero. Two things set him apart: He doesn't fight human enemies, but hunger and homelessness. Also, he's only four years old.
Our superhero's origin story started from the day when TJ Perine, his father, took Austin to the Firehouse Ministries, a local shelter that provides housing, food and other services for the homeless. As they drove by the building, they saw a group of 25 homeless men standing on the street corner. That day, Austin used his allowance to buy each man a sandwich and handed the food out himself with his slogan, “Don't forget to show love!”
After he returned every week for five weeks in a row, word of Austin's kindness spread through social media. Austin and TJ could feed 25 to 50 people at a time before, and now, thanks to community support, they can feed 800 to 2,000 people.
But Austin isn't merely filling stomachs. He has been improving the lives of the homeless people he meets. On that first trip to Firehouse Ministries, TJ and Austin talked to a poor man named Raymont. The respect Austin showed for him touched 41-year-old Raymont, who regained his confidence in life and finally found a job with the help of TJ. All that was made possible because a little boy took the time to care.
Austin's passion has become his family's calling. After raising money through a GoFundMe page, Audrey, TJ's mother established the nonprofit Show Love Foundation, dedicated to fighting homelessness. She now serves as president, and TJ oversees public relations for the foundation full time. They offer medical and mental health care as preventive steps against homelessness.
As for President Austin, he continues to give out food, smiles, and his inspirational message of love. “It makes me feel like I'm saving the day,” he said proudly.
Exactly five years ago, on New Year's Eve, I was invited to a children's ball by a man high up in the business world, who had his connections, his circle of acquaintances, and his close friends. So it seemed as though the children's ball was merely an excuse for the parents to come together and discuss matters of interest to themselves, quite innocently and casually.
I was an outsider, and as I had no special matters to express, I was able to spend the evening independently of the others. There was another gentleman present who had just stumbled upon (偶然遇到)this affair of domestic happiness，just like me. He was the first to attract my attention. His appearance was not that of a man of noble birth. He was tall, rather thin, very serious, and well dressed. Obviously he had no heart for the family celebration. The moment he went off into a corner by himself, the smile disappeared from his face, and his thick dark brows knitted into a frown. He knew no one except the host and showed every sign of being bored to death, though bravely keeping the role of thorough enjoyment to the end. Later I learned that he was a provincial, had come to the capital on some important business, had brought a letter of recommendation to our host, and our host had taken him under his protection, not at all with love. It was merely out of politeness that he had invited him to the children's ball.
They did not play cards with him .They did not offer cigars. Thus , my gentleman , not knowing what to do with his hands , spent the evening stroking his whiskers(胡须). His whiskers were really fine, but he stroked them so eagerly that one got the feeling that the whiskers had come into the world first and afterwards the man, in order to stroke them.
Science has a lot of uses. It can uncover laws of nature, cure diseases, make bombs, and help bridges to stand up. Indeed science is so good at what it does that there's always a temptation(诱惑) to drag it into problems where it may not be helpful. David Brooks, author of The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, appears to be the latest in a long line of writers who have failed to resist the temptation.
Brooks gained fame for several books. His latest book The Social Animal, however, is more ambitious and serious than his earlier books. It is an attempt to deal with a set of weighty topics. The book focuses on big questions: What has science revealed about human nature? What are the sources of character? And why are some people happy and successful while others aren't?
To answer these questions, Brooks surveys a wide range of disciplines(学科). Considering this, you might expect the book to be a dry recitation of facts. But Brooks has structured his book in an unorthodox(非常规的), and perhaps unfortunate, way. Instead of introducing scientific theories, he tells a story, within which he tries to make his points, perhaps in order to keep the reader's attention. So as Harold and Erica, the hero and heroine in his story, live through childhood, we hear about the science of child development and as they begin to date we hear about the theory of sexual attraction. Brooks carries this through to the death of one of his characters.
On the whole, Brooks' story is acceptable if uninspired. As one would expect, his writing is mostly clear and, to be fair, some chapters stand out above the rest. I enjoyed, for instance, the chapter in which Harold discovers how to think on his own. While Harold and Erica are certainly not strong or memorable characters, the more serious problems with The Social Animal lie elsewhere. These problems partly involve Brooks' attempt to translate his tale into science.
You've probably heard such reports. The number of college students majoring in the humanities (人文学科) is decreasing quickly. The news has caused a flood of high-minded essays criticizing the development as a symbol of American decline.
The bright side is this: The destruction of the humanities is, finally, coming to an end. No more will literature, as part of an academic curriculum, put out the light of literature. No longer will the reading of, say, "King Lear" or D.H. Lawrence's "Women in Love" result in the annoying stuff of multiple-choice quizzes, exam essays and homework assignments.
The discouraging fact is that for every college professor who made Shakespeare or Lawrence come alive for the lucky few, there were countless others who made the reading of literary masterpieces seem like two hours in the dentist's chair.
The remarkably insignificant fact that, a half-century ago, 14% of the undergraduate population majored in the humanities (mostly in literature, but also in art, philosophy, history, classics and religion) as opposed to 7% today has given rise to serious reflections on the nature and purpose of an education in the liberal arts.
Such reflections always come to the same conclusion: We are told that the lack of a formal education, mostly in literature, leads to numerous harmful personal conditions, such as the inability to think critically, to write clearly, to be curious about other people and places, to engage with great literature after graduation, to recognize truth, beauty and goodness.
Literature changed my life long before I began to study it in college. Books took me far from myself into experiences that had nothing to do with my life, yet spoke to my life. But once in the college classroom, this precious, alternate life inside me got thrown back into that dimension of my existence that bored me. Homer, Chekhov and Yeats were reduced to right and wrong answers, clear-cut themes and clever interpretations. If there is anything to worry about, it should be the disappearance of what used to be an important part of every high-school education: the literature survey course, where books were not academically taught but thoroughly introduced—an experience unaffected by stupid commentary and useless testing.
The literary classics are places of quiet, useless stillness in a world that despises (鄙视) any activity that is not profitable or productive. Literature is too sacred to be taught. It needs only to be read.
Soon, if all goes well and literature at last disappears from the undergraduate curriculum—my fingers are crossed—increasing numbers of people will be able to say that reading the literary masterworks of the past outside the college classroom, simply in the course of living, was, in fact, their college classroom.
We all need to eat. So, meals could be a chance to stop what we're doing and spend time with the people in our lives. A recent study from a team of South Korea suggests that eating together has many good effects on children and teenagers while frequently eating alone may lead to poor eating habits and poor food choices. People who eat alone more than twice a week have a greater risk of developing high blood pressure.
There are benefits of family dinners on children and teenagers.
In 2014, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) looked at data from nearly threequarters of the world's countries. Among its findings is the fact that students who share a main meal with their families are less likely to hate school. Children who eat a main meal with their families are also less likely to take drugs (毒品).
In the report, titled" The Importance of Family Dinners (VIII)," researchers say that teens who have frequent family dinners are more likely to say their parents know a lot about what's going on in their lives.
Another study from the University of Montreal finds that children who eat with their families experience longterm physical and mental health benefits. These children are physically in better shape and drink fewer sugary soft drinks. These children also seem to have better social skills and are less violent.
One of the researchers, Pagani, involved in this study is a professor at the university. She says that mealtimes with parents possibly provide young children with firsthand social events, which helps them have better communication skills.
China successfully sent the 52nd and 53rd satellites of its domestically developed BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS)—the last two medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites for the BDS-3 constellation (星座)—into space on Monday, marking the completion of the global navigation system's core constellation deployment (部署) and this year's BDS satellite launch campaign.
Launched from Xichang Satellite Launch Center, Sichuan Province, on board a Long March-3B carrier rocket with an Expedition-1 upper stage, the two satellites were injected into planned orbits after more than three hours' flight.
Since the first BDS-3 satellite was launched on November 5, 2017, China has conducted 18 BDS satellite launch missions, successfully sending 30 into their planned orbit, setting a national record for highest mission frequency and success rate.
In-orbit tests will be carried out before the two MEO satellites are commissioned (正式委托). By then the core constellation for the Chinese global navigation satellite system will be successfully completed.
Wang Ping, chief designer of the BDS-3 system, said that the hybrid constellation design, in which three groups of satellites—the Inclined Geo Synchronous Orbit (IGSO), MEO and geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO)—work in concert in different orbits, was an exclusive BDS innovation and a world first. "Existing global navigation satellite systems, such as the US GPS and Russia's GLONASS, only have a MEO satellite constellation," said Wang.
The MEO satellites, in orbit 20,000 kilometers above Earth, are a special type of satellite providing global service, while the IGSO and GEO satellites, in an orbit 360,000 kilometers above Earth, mainly enhance regional service quality, according to Wang. That explained why completion of the MEO constellation was significant, marking the completion of the core network for BDS-3, meaning a stable BDS-3 global coverage without weak points has been carried out.
Feedback shows that the BDS service quality was already comparable to GPS since the end of 2018, and after completing BDS-3, "We will be as good as any GNSS." Wang said.
The cognitive health and development of boys may be affected by their mothers' body mass index (BMI) (体重指数) while pregnant with them, according to research from Columbia University and the University of Texas at Austin.
The study, which was published in the journal BMC Pediatrics on Friday, observed 368 subjects from low-income African American and Dominican women during the second half of their pregnancies, and then evaluated their children three and seven years later. Researchers found that the sons of women whose BMIs indicated that they were overweight or obese when they became pregnant were more likely to show less developed athletic skills as 3-year-olds and lower intelligence as 7-year-olds compared to boys whose mothers were at" normal" weights during pregnancy.
Among boys, the study found, mothers' overweight and obesity connected with IQ scores between 4. 6 and almost 9 points lower than those of boys whose mothers' weights were in the" normal" range before pregnancy. Researchers did not observe the same phenomenon among daughters whose mothers had been obese.
"These findings aren't meant to shame or scare anyone," Elizabeth Widen, assistant professor of nutritional sciences at UT Austin and one of the study's co-authors, said in a press release." We are just beginning to understand some of these interactions between mothers' weight and the health of their babies."
Why mothers' obesity appeared to affect childhood IQ was unclear but earlier research has suggested that there is a relationship between a mother's diet and her child's later IQ, according to Columbia University. Researchers did not control for what the mothers ate, the press release noted.
The study's authors wrote that because childhood IQ has been shown to be an indicator of later success in life, studying how a mother's obesity could affect the IQ of her child is worthwhile.
Throwing away unwanted food has become a big issue in the world. While some of us throw away unwanted items, people in other parts of the world face food shortages and are starving. It's a shocking fact that a third of the world's food is wasted each year, which is enough to feed a billion hungry people.
You may think supermarkets are the main contributors to this mountain of food. After all, they do desert stuff that is past its sell-by-date and they often refuse to sell fruits or vegetables that are in the wrong shape or look damaged. They've also been criticized for encouraging customers to buy more than they need through promotions such as “buy one and get one free”.
But the biggest culprit for creating food waste is us human beings. In Europe, an incredible 53% of food waste comes from households, which results in 88 million tons of food waste a year. So instead of filling our bellies, our food is filling up landfill sites.
In Denmark, a woman called Selina Juul has been working hard to solve this problem. She moved from Russia many years ago and was amazed to see the abundance of food available in the supermarkets. But despite so much availability, she found that people were buying more than they needed and throwing too much away.
She convinced some supermarkets to stop selling their items in bulk (大量) so that people bought only what they needed. She produced a leftover cookbook and set up an education program in schools, which has helped create a significant 25% reduction in food waste.
Clearly, we need to think twice when we buy something in supermarkets or online, and when we're at home we should make the most of the food we have — using recipes that use up our leftovers or even sharing our remaining food with our friends and neighbors.
You are on your way to a concert. At a crossroad, you see a group of people, all staring at the sky. Without even thinking about it, you stare upward, too. Why? In the middle of the concert, someone begins to clap and suddenly the whole room joins in. You do, too. Why?
Social proof determines that people feel they are behaving correctly when they act the same as other people. In other words, the more people who follow a certain idea, the better or truer we consider the idea to be. An experiment carried out by the psychologist(心理学家) Solomon Asch shows how peer pressure can influence common sense. A subject is showed a line, and next to it three lines - one shorter, one longer and one of the same length as the original one. He must show which of the three lines similar to the original one. If the person is alone, he gives a correct answer. Now, five unknown actors enter the room. One after another, they give wrong answers. And in one third of cases, the subject will answer incorrectly to match the other people's responses.
Why do we act like this? Well, in the past, following others was a survival method. Suppose that one day 5, 000 years ago, you were travelling with your hunter friends. Suddenly, they all ran away. What would you have done? Would you have stood still, weighing up whether what you were looking at was a lion or something that just looked like a lion? No, you would have run, too. We are generations of those who copied others' behaviors. This is so deeply rooted in us that we still use it, though it offers few survival advantages today.
Social proof is the evil behind many things. The advertising industry, for example, often makes use of it. Therefore, be doubtful whenever a company says its product is "the most popular". Remember British novelist W. Somerset Maugham's words, "If 50 million people say something foolish, it is still foolish. "So should we always follow the crowd?
The 20th-century philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer considered the encounter between the viewer and a work of art to be a dynamic relationship. Meeting a work of art made in the past involves a reaction, an actual event, in the present. Coming across the same work of art later will set up another event, another reaction, in which the artwork will be, as it were, activated afresh by the intellect and emotions of the viewer. When we interpret a work of art, we are teasing out（梳理）its possible meanings in the moment；but those meanings will change, depending on the viewer and the time.
Extend this thought into the world of the museum and it becomes clear that these institutions are not simply about the past. They are, necessarily, about the present. Paintings and sculptures of all kinds become meaningful in the"now"of their being viewed and considered. They shape us as we dig out new depths from them.
In a more purely functional manner, museums are increasingly embracing their capacity to be actors in the present worlds of their communities-rather than simply repositories（存储库）of things of the past, and gatherers and protectors of collective memories.
An example is Derby's Museum of Making, which both respects the city's history of manufacturing and aims to develop skills and inspire new acts of creativity. That in itself is nothing new, of course:part of the purpose of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London was to encourage innovation in design and manufacturing. But the Museum of Making takes things a step further-hosting, for example, sessions for teachers and educators on creating environments conducive to creativity, and"maker challenges"for teenagers. In so doing, it bridges the gap between museum and educational institution.
It is a welcome change. Museums, often in the teeth of terrible loss of income thanks to COVID-19 closures, are increasingly becoming ethical actors, as heavily invested in conversations about the kind of places communities want to be as what they once were. It should go without saying that they need to be properly supported to do this, by the government and local authorities. As the effects of COVID-19 continue to bite, the work of reimagining museums and communities is more important than ever.
