科普环保类 知识点题库

B

    Women who own cats are more likely to have mental health problems and kill themselves because they can be infected by a common parasite that can be caught from cat litter, a study has found.

    Researchers found women infected with the Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) parasite(刚地弓形虫), which is spread through contact with cat waste or eating undercooked meat or unwashed vegetables, are at increased risk of attempting suicide.

    The study involved more than 45,000 women in Denmark. About a third of the world's population is infected with the parasite, which hides in cells in the brain and muscles, often without producing symptoms.

    The infection, which is called toxoplasmosis(弓形虫病), has been linked to mental illness, such as schizophrenia(精神分裂症), and changes in behavior.

    The study's senior author Doctor Teodor Postolache, an associate professor of psychiatry(精神病学) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the United States, said, “We can't say with certainty that T. gondii caused the women to try to kill themselves, but we did find a predictive association between the infection and suicide attempts later in life that deserves additional studies.”

    Doctor Albert Reece, vice president of medical affairs at the University of Maryland, said, “T. gondii infection is a major public health problem around the world, and many people don't realize they're infected.

    “Dr Postolache is a leading expert on suicide neuroimmunology(神经免疫学). Suicide is a critically important mental health issue. About one million people commit suicide and another 10 million attempt suicide worldwide each year. We hope that this type of research will one day help us find ways to save many lives that now end too early in suicide.”

    Dr. Postolache's research team at the University of Maryland was the first to report a connection between T. gondii and suicidal behavior in 2009. He is cooperating with researchers in Denmark, Germany and Sweden to confirm and investigate the way leading to this association.

    The T. gondii parasite thrives in the intestines of cats, and it is spread through their waste. All warm-blooded animals can become infected through contact with it. Humans can become infected by changing their infected cats' litter boxes, eating unwashed vegetables, drinking water from a polluted source, or by eating undercooked or raw meat.

    Not washing kitchen knives after preparing raw meat before handling another food item also can lead to infection. Pregnant women can pass the parasite directly to their unborn babies and are advised not to change cat litter boxes to avoid possible infection.

    Babies don't produce antibodies to T. gondii for three months after they are born, so the antibodies present in their blood represented infection in the mothers. The scientists studied Danish health patients to determine if any of these women later attempted suicide, including cases of violent suicide attempts which may have involved guns, sharp instruments and jumping from high places.

    The study found that women infected with T. gondii were one and a half times more likely to attempt suicide compared to those who were not infected, and the risk seemed to rise with increasing levels of the T. gondii antibodies.

    Dr Postolache noted limitations to the study, such as the inability to determine the cause of the suicidal behavior.

    The findings were published online in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

    Next time a customer comes to your office, offer him a cup of coffee. And when you're doing your holiday shopping online, make sure you're holding a large glass of iced tea. The physical sensation（感觉）of warmth encourages emotional warmth, while a cold drink in hand prevents you from making unwise decisions—those are the practical lesson being drawn from recent research by psychologist John A. Bargh.

    Psychologists have known that one person's perception（感知）of another's “warmth” is a powerful determiner in social relationships. Judging someone to be either “warm” or “cold” is a primary consideration, even trumping evidence that a “cold” person may be more capable. Much of this is rooted in very early childhood experiences, Bargh argues, when babies' conceptual sense of the world around them is shaped by physical sensations, particularly warmth and coldness. Classic studies by Harry Harlow, published in 1958, showed monkeys preferred to stay close to a cloth “mother” rather than one made of wire, even when the wire “mother” carried a food bottle. Harlow's work and later studies have led psychologists to stress the need for warm physical contact from caregivers to help young children grow into healthy adults with normal social skills.

    Feelings of “warmth” and “coldness” in social judgments appear to be universal. Although no worldwide study has been done, Bargh says that describing people as “warm” or “cold” is common to many cultures, and studies have found those perceptions influence judgment in dozens of countries.

    To test the relationship between physical and psychological warmth, Bargh conducted an experiment which involved 41 college students. A research assistant who was unaware of the study's hypotheses（假设）, handed the students either a hot cup of coffee, or a cold drink, to hold while the researcher filled out a short information form: The drink was then handed back. After that, the students were asked to rate the personality of “Person A” based on a particular description. Those who had briefly held the warm drink regarded Person A as warmer than those who had held the iced drink.

    “We are grounded in our physical experiences even when we think abstractly,” says Bargh.

C

    The main aim is a fully autonomous car that gets rid of the cause of most accidents: the driver, Hodgson points out, ＂For the sake of safety, the faster you can remove humans, the better, even if there are unfortunately a few accidents from new causes. It's a question of balancing the number injured or killed by autonomous vehicles with the people whose lives are potentially saved.＂

    It's a theme that Elon Musk, head of electric car company Tesla Motors, has long supported. His company is determined to be the first to deliver a fully autonomous vehicle to consumers. Last year, Musk announced that Tesla's 2017 goal was ＂to do a demonstration ( 示 范 ) drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York...and have the car park itself.＂

    However, even Tesla admits that there are problems to overcome — the software needs further confirmation and the appropriate regulatory (监管的) approval needs to be in place. Indeed, recent crashes of Tesla vehicles and Google cars confirm that the software isn't ready yet.

    The UK government appears determined to encourage the development of autonomous vehicles. It's supporting four city trials, publishing the Modern Transport Bill to reduce red tape around their introduction and adapting the legal system to take into account issues such as insurance liability when a human isn't in control of a vehicle.

    The insurance industry is similarly keen to promote increasing autonomy in cars. As the Association of British Insurers (ABI) points out: ＂More than 90 per cent of road accidents are attributed to human errors.＂ This costs motor insurers a surprising £20 per day in claims.

    Scientists say we are all born with a knack for mathematics. Every time we scan the cafeteria for a table that will fit all of our friends, we're exercising the ancient estimation center in our brain.

    Stanislas Dehaene was the first researcher to show that this part of the brain exists. In 1989, he met Mr. N who had suffered a serious brain injury. Mr. N couldn't recognize the number 5, or add 2 and 2. But he still knew that there are “about 50 minutes” in an hour. Dehaene drew an important conclusion from his case: there must be two separate mathematical areas in our brains. One area is responsible for the math we learn in school, and the other judges approximate amounts.

    So what does the brain's estimation center do for us? Harvard University researcher Elizabeth Spelke has spent a lot of time posing math problems to preschoolers. When he asks 5-year-olds to solve a problem like 21+30, they can't do it. But he has also asked them questions such as, “Sarah has 21 candles and gets 30 more. John has 34 candles. Who has more candles?” It turns out preschoolers are great at solving questions like that. Before they've learned how to do math with numerals and symbols, their brains' approximation centers are already hard at work.

    After we learn symbolic math, do we still have any use for our inborn math sense? Justin Halberda at Johns Hopkins University gave us an answer in his study. He challenged a group of 14-year-olds with an approximation test: The kids stared at a computer screen and saw groups of yellow and blue dots flash by, too quickly to count. Then they had to say whether there had been more blue dots or yellow dots. The researchers found that most were able to answer correctly when there were 25 yellow dots and 10 blue ones. When the groups were closer in size, 11 yellow dots and 10 blue ones, fewer kids answered correctly.

    The big surprise in this study came when the researcher compared the kids' approximation test scores to their scores on standardized math tests. He found that kids who did better on the flashing dot test had better standardized test scores, and vice versa (反之亦然). It seems that, far from being irrelevant, your math sense might predict your ability at formal math.

    When one of your car tires goes flat, there are two things you can do, you can complain and change it or, if you don't have a spare, stand helplessly beside the road and hope someone comes to your rescue. Now comes a third choice, called Quickwheel. It is designed to get disabled motorists rolling again as quickly as possible.

Quickwheel is basically a tiny emergency trailer—complete with three tough little wheels of its own-- that supports the flat tire and enables the motorists to drive to a service station without losing much time or expending much energy. The product is made in the US. Company, Quickwheel Inc. of Greenwich, Connecticut. According to the firm's president, Robert Bockweg, the product meets each of the major worries that customers relate with flat tires: safe, lost time and physical labor.

    To use it, motorists simply unfold the product to its fully extended position, set it in front of the disabled tire, drive the car onto the Quickwheel's ramp (斜板) and fix a special safety strap over the tire. The tire is then locked in Quickwheel's metal frame. Its three wheels do the rest of the work. According to Quickwheel Inc, its product can be driven “for miles” at the speed of up to 45 miles per hour “without any noticeable change in the vehicle's braking or steering operation”. The company also says that it can be used on just about any type of car, jeep, mini-van or trailer. (拖车)

    Bockweg says that Quickwheel will be sold first in the United States, at a price of 150 dollars. Sales agreements now being talked over should make the product ready for use in Japan, Canada and Western Europe in the near future.

    Earthquakes usually happen on the edges of large sections of the Earth's plates. These plates slowly move over a long period of time. Sometimes the edges, which are called fault lines, can get stuck, but the plates keep moving. Pressure slowly starts to build up where the edges are stuck and, once the pressure gets strong enough, the plates will suddenly move causing an earthquake.

    Generally before and after a large earthquake there will be smaller earthquakes. The ones that happen before are called foreshocks. The ones that happen after are called aftershocks. Scientists don't really know if an earthquake is a foreshock until the bigger earthquake occurs.

    Shock waves from an earthquake that travel through the ground are called seismic waves (地震波). They are most powerful at the center of the earthquake, but they travel through much of the earth and back to the surface. They move quickly at 20 times the speed of sound.

    Scientists use seismic waves to measure how big an earthquake is. They use a device called a seismograph (地震仪) to measure the size of the waves. The size of the waves is called the magnitude.

    To tell the strength of an earthquake scientists use a scale called the Moment Magnitude Scale or MMS (it used to be called the Richter scale). The larger the number on the MMS scale, the larger the earthquake. You usually won't even notice an earthquake unless it measures at least a 3 on the MMS scale. Here are some examples of what may happen depending on the scale:

    4.0-Could shake your house as if a large truck were passing close by. Some people may not notice.

    5.0-If you are in a car, it may shake. Glasses and dishes may rattle. Windows may break.

    6.0- Items will fall off shelves. Walls in some houses may crack and windows break. Pretty much everyone near the center will feel this one.

    7.0- Weaker buildings will collapse and cracks will occur in bridges and on the street.

    8.0- Many buildings and bridges fall down. Large cracks in the earth.

    9.0 and up- Whole cities flattened and large-scale damage.

    By the end of the century, if not sooner, the world's oceans will be bluer and greener thanks to a warming climate, according to a new study.

    At the heart of the phenomenon lie tiny marine microorganisms(海洋微生物) called phytoplankton. Because of the way light reflects off the organisms, these phytoplankton create colourful patterns at the ocean surface. Ocean colour varies from green to blue, depending on the type and concentration of phytoplankton. Climate change will fuel the growth of phytoplankton in some areas, while reducing it in other spots, leading to changes in the ocean's appearance.

    Phytoplankton live at the ocean surface, where they pull carbon dioxide(二氧化碳) into the ocean while giving off oxygen. When these organisms die, they bury carbon in the deep ocean, an important process that helps to regulate the global climate. But phytoplankton are vulnerable to the ocean's warming trend. Warming changes key characteristics of the ocean and can affect phytoplankton growth, since they need not only sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow, but also nutrients.

    Stephanie Dutkiewicz, a scientist in MIT's Center for Global Change Science, built a climate model that projects changes to the oceans throughout the century. In a world that warms up by 3℃, it found that multiple changes to the colour of the oceans would occur. The model projects that currently blue areas with little phytoplankton could become even bluer. But in some waters, such as those of the Arctic, a warming will make conditions riper for phytoplankton, and these areas will turn greener. "Not only are the quantities of phytoplankton in the ocean changing." she said, "but the type of phytoplankton is changing."

    And why does that matter? Phytoplankton are the base of the food web. If certain kinds begin to disappear from the ocean, Dutkiewicz said, "it will change the type of fish that will be able to survive." Those kinds of changes could affect the food chain.

    Whatever colour changes the ocean experiences in the coming decades will probably be too gradual and unnoticeable, but they could mean significant changes. "It'll be a while before we can statistically show that the changes are happening because of climate change," Dutkiewicz said, "but the change in the colour of the ocean will be one of the early warning signals that we really have changed our planet."

    A butterfly's wings can have many jobs besides keeping the insect in the air. They may be called on to attract mates, to warn potential enemies to stay away, to do other animals or even to provide disguise(伪装).

    All of these roles, though, depend on their colouration-which is unchanging. This plays into the idea that butterfly wings are dead tissue, like a bird's feathers or a mammal's hair. In fact, that is not true. For example, in some species males' wings harbour special cells that release chemicals which attract females.

    Nanfang Yu, a physicist at Columbia University, in New York, has been looking into the matter. One of his interests is the optical (光学的) properties of biological materials. That has led him to study butterfly wings in more detail. And, in cooperation with Naomi Pierce, a butterfly specialist at Harvard University, he has now shown, in a paper published this week in Nature Communications, that butterfly wings are, indeed, very much alive.

    Initially, Dr Yu and Dr Pierce wanted to know how the insects keep their body temperatures up without their wings overheating. Unlike birds and mammals, butterflies do not produce enough internal heat to metabolize(新陈代谢). Instead, they rely on outside heat sources-usually the sun-to bring their bodies up to speed. But their wings, being thin protein membranes (膜), have a limited thermal capacity. Those wings can therefore overheat quickly if the insects are exposed to the sunlight too long, or, oppositely, can cool down too rapidly if they are flying through cold air.

In their experiments, the two researchers used a laser (激光) to heat up spots on the wings of dozens of butterfly species. When the temperature of the area under the laser reached 40℃ or so, the insects responded within seconds by doing things that stopped their wings heating up further. These actions included a butterfly turning around to minimize its exposure to the laser, beating its wings or simply walking away.

    Helping yourself to a cup of coffee may seem like a small, everyday thing. But it is not the case if you are quadriplegic (四肢瘫痪). Quadriplegics have lost the use of all four limbs. Thanks to a project organized by John Donoghue of Brown University, in Rhode Island, and his, colleagues, quadriplegics have hope.

    One of the participants in his experiments, a 58-year-old. woman who is paralyzed and unable to use any of her limbs, can now pick up a bottle containing coffee and bring it close enough to her mouth to drink from it using a straw. She does so using a thought-controlled robotic arm fixed to a nearby stand. It is the first time she has managed something like that since she suffered a stroke, nearly 15 years ago.

    Arms are more complicated pieces of machinery than legs, so controlling them via electrodes. (多波段电极) attached to the skin of someone's scalp (头皮) is not yet possible. Instead, brain activity has to be recorded directly. And that is what Dr Donoghue is doing. Dr Donoghue and his team have had small, multichannel electrodes implanted in the parts of the motor cortexes (运动皮质) of participants' brains associated with hand movements.

    Dr Donoghue and his team decoded signals from their participants' brains as they were asked to imagine controlling a robotic arm making present movements. The woman and other volunteers were then encouraged to operate one of .two robot arms by thinking about the movements they wanted to happen. When the software controlling the arms detected the relevant signals, the arms moved appropriately. The arm that the woman used to help herself to a drink is a lightweight device developed by DLR, German's Aerospace Centre, as part of its robotics, program.

    Dr Donoghue and his colleagues have thus shown that a mechanical arm can be controlled remotely by the brain of a person with paralysis. Controlling an arm that is attached to the individual's body will be trickier, but in time even that may be possible. In the meantime, a robotic arm attached to a wheelchair will be a real soon.

    It is difficult for doctors to help a person with a damaged brain. Without enough blood, the brain lives for only three to five minutes. More often the doctors can't fix the damage. Sometimes, they are afraid to try something to help because it is dangerous to work on the brain. The doctors might make the person worse if he operates on the brain.

    Dr. Robert White, a famous professor and doctor, thinks he knows a way to help. He thinks doctors should make the brain very cold. If it is very cold, the brain can live without blood for 30 minutes. This gives the doctor a longer time to do something for the brain.

    Dr. White tried his idea on 13 monkeys. First he taught them to do different jobs, then he operated on them. He made the monkeys' blood go through a machine. The machine cooled the blood. Then the machine sent the blood back to the monkeys' brains. When the brain's temperature was 10℃, Dr. White stopped the blood to the brain. After 30 minutes he turned the blood back on. He warmed the blood again. After their operations the monkeys were like what they had been before. They were healthy and busy. Each one could still do the jobs the doctor had taught them.

    Pinocchio may be just a children's fairy tale, but Spanish scientists at the University of Granada recently investigated the so-called ''Pinocchio effect'' and found that our noses don't grow when we tell a lie, but actually shrink a bit.

    Dr. Emilio Gómez Milán and his team developed a lie detector test that used thermography to tell if people were lying, and found that whenever participants in their research were being untruthful, the temperature of the tips of their noses dropped up to 1.2℃, while the temperature of their forehead increased up to 1.5℃. Scientists also found that drop in temperature at nose level actually caused it to slightly shrink, although the difference is undetected by the human eye.

    ''One has to think in order to lie, which rises the temperature of the forehead, '' Dr. Gomez Milan explained the findings. ''At the same time we feel anxious, which lowers the temperature of the nose. ''

    For this study, researchers asked a number of 60 students to perform various tasks while being scanned by thermal imaging technology. One of these tasks involved calling a 3 to 4 minutes call to their parents, partner or a friend and telling a significant lie. Participants had to devise the lie by themselves during the call, and the thermal cameras picked up this ''reverse Pinocchio effect'' caused by the fluctuation (起伏) in temperature in the nose and forehead.

    Interestingly, the thermal lie doctor picked up the temperature difference in 80 percent of test subjects, which is a better rate of success than that of any modern lie doctor.

    ''With this method we have achieved to increase accuracy and reduce the occurrence of 'false positives', something that is frequently with other methods such as the polygraph (测谎仪),'' said Dr. Emilio Gómez Milán, who added that law enforcement interviewers could one day combine other lie detection technology with thermal imaging to achieve better results.

    The thermal lie doctor has been the most reliable in the world  10% more than the popular polygraph.

The Notre Dame (巴黎圣母院) fire has been put out, but its wooden roof have been largely damaged. The terrible accident causes a sudden sharp pain to people around the world, "What a pity that we cannot see the damaged parts of the wonder anymore."

But the good news is that there is at least one way of seeing them, namely via a video game called Assassin's Creed: Unity. In this game, the player can travel to one city after another and enter the buildings exactly like what they are in reality, and see Notre Dame as it was before the fire. In addition, with VR technology, which is already quite mature, one can even look around the undamaged Notre Dame as if it is still there. Maybe digital technology could help to better protect architectural cultural heritage (建筑文化遗产).

The idea of digitizing ancient buildings, making digital models of them so their data can be saved, dates back to the 1990s and the necessary technology has continued to advance since then. By scanning the ancient buildings with lasers, building 3D models with hundreds of images, as well as measuring (测量) everything precisely, engineers can make a copy as "same" as the real one.

As computers and smartphones are hugely popular, the digital replica or digital copy has great pratical value. First, it allows tourists to feel the cultural relics (文物) without touching them, which helps protect them. The virtual tour of Dunhuang Grottoes in Gansu Province is a good example of this as tourists can view the paintings without standing near them. Furthermore, it can make the digitized cultural relics more famous by spreading awareness about them via the Internet. In 2000, a virtual tour of the Great Wall became very popular at the Hannover World Expo, which increased the number of foreign tourists visiting it in the following years. Above all, it preserves all the information of the cultural relics. Even if the original ones are damaged one day, people can still know what they were like and can build a replica if desired.

Time is the biggest problem to architectural heritage. Maybe we will have better technologies in the future，but the digital technology offers a practical way to preserve architectural cultural heritage at the moment.

Music is said to be a universal language. But for Chase Burton, a deaf filmmaker from Texas, music has always been a profoundly different experience.

"When I was a kid, I'd lie on the floor above our garage so I could feel the vibrations from my brother's band rocking out below my body," the 33-year-old told CNN. "That was one of the first times I began building a relationship with music."

In 2016, his ability to experience music changed dramatically, thanks to California-based technology company Not Impossible Labs.

It designed a vibrating suit that enables deaf people to "feel" music through their skin. Consisting of a body harness, ankle and wrist straps, the device translates audio into a range of vibrating pulses that are felt at 24 contact points. Burton has been testing the suit for four years.

The sound hits different parts of your body, said Burton. "Maybe it will strike me down in my ankles first. And then I'll start to feel the vibrations in my back. And then I'll feel some pulsations in my wrist."

The creators want to extend the tactile musical experience beyond the deaf community. In 2018, they gave out 150 of the wearables at a rock concert in Las Vegas where half the audience members were deaf and half were hearing.

Since then, Not Impossible Labs has been working to improve the technology and says it's ready to go to market soon. Eventually, the creators want the device to become a consumer product, accessible to all. The company's talent and business development director, Jordan Richardson, told CNN that the technology could be incorporated into live sports broadcasts, video games, theme parks or museum installations. The newest digital streaming movie releases could have built in 'vibe-tracks' to 'feel' the movie. He said. "We truly think that anything that has an audio element can also have a vibrational experience associated with it as well."

Facial recognition algorithms are getting better at recognizing faces in masks, according to data published on Tuesday by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). Using independent testing of more than 150 separate facial recognition algorithms, the new report suggests masks may not be as big a problem for facial recognition systems as initially thought.

When NIST first examined masks' effect on facial recognition in July, it found that algorithms weren't great at identifying faces with masks. But the pandemic has given developers plenty of time to focus on the mask problem, and NIST's data shows that facial recognition algorithms are getting better at working with masked faces. “Some developers have submitted algorithms after the pandemic showing significantly improved accuracy and are now among the most accurate in our test," the report reads. NIST's public ranking for facial recognition tests bears out this claim. Eight different algorithms now hold false rates below 0. 05 percent.

The authors note a number of limitations to the study. NIST researchers did not employ actual images of masked fates. Instead, they applied masks digitally to ensure consistency across the sample. As a result," we were not able to pursue a thorough simulation of the endless variations in color, design, shape, texture, bands, and ways masks can be worn," the report notes. The digital mask was a blue surgical mask covering the full width of the face, but testers noted that performance varied considerably depending on how high the mask was placed on the face.

At Englands University of Plymouth, Professor Eduardo Miranda has been programming pairs of robots to compose music. Miranda's robots have simple " vocal cords" (声带)and are programmed to sing and to listen to each other. The robots' unique warbling sounds (颤音) do not perfectly match the human voice, but each machine is exactly sharing music with the other in a new and unique way.

Each robot is equipped with speakers, software that mimics the human voice, a mouth that opens as it "sings," a microphone for ears, and a camera for eyes. The robots also move. Miranda hopes that by studying his robot vocalists, he can discover something about how and why humans create, perform, and listen to music.

When the robots sing, first one robot makes six random sounds. Its partner responds with more sounds. The first robot analyzes the sounds to see if their sequences (序列)) are similar. If they are, it nods its head and commits the sounds to memory, and the second robot notices and "memorizes" the musical sequence, too. If the first robot thinks the sounds are too different, it shakes its head and both robots ignore the sounds. Then the process continues.

Miranda set up an experiment in which he left the two robots alone in his study for two weeks. When he returned, his little warblers had, by imitating each other, not only shared notes but combined them. The product of their cooperation was far from symphonic, but the robots had begun to combine the notes into their own self-developed "songs".

With the help of his warbling robots, one of Miranda's goals is to create music that no human would ever compose. Miranda believes the robots are ideal for this purpose because they would not be influenced by any existing musical styles or rules.

Runners who encounter visual and auditory (听觉的) distractions (分心) may be more likely to suffer leg injuries, according to a research by the Association of Academic Physiatrists in Las Vegas. Runners often seek distractions from the task at hand. Whether it is music, texting, daydreaming, taking in the sights, or propping a book up on the treadmill (跑步机), more often than not a distraction is welcome. But, researchers from the University of Florida have recently discovered that those distractions may lead to injury.

Daniel Herman, MD, PhD, assistant professor at University of Florida, and his team conducted a research on the effect of visual and auditory distractions on 14 runners to determine what effect, if any, these distractions would have on things such as heart rate, how much a runner breathes per minute, how much oxygen is consumed by the body, the speed in which runners apply force to their bodies, and the force the ground applies to the runners' bodies when they come in contact with it.

The runners were all injury free at the time of the study and ran 31 miles each week. Dr. Herman's team had each participant run on a treadmill three separate times. The first time was without any distractions. The second time added a visual distraction, during which the runners concatenated on a screen displaying different letters in different colors with the runners having to note when a specific letter-color combination appeared. The third time added an auditory distraction similar to the visual distraction, with the runners having to note when a particular word was spoken by a particular voice.

When compared to running without distractions, the participants had faster application of force to their left and right legs, called loading rate, with auditory and visual distractions. They also experienced a increased amount of force from the ground on both legs, called ground reaction force, with auditory distractions. Finally, the runners tended to breathe heavier and have higher heart rates with visual and auditory distractions than without any distractions at all.

"Running in environments with different distractions may unfavorably affect running performance and injury risk." explains Dr. Herman. "Sometimes these things cannot be avoided, but you may be able to minimize potentially cumulative (累积的) effects. For example, when running a new route in a chaotic environment such as during a destination marathon, you may want to skip listening to something which may require more attention-like a new song playlist."

Dr Herman's team will continue to investigate the potential relationship between distracted running and leg injuries, and any effect this relationship has on different training techniques that use auditory or visual clues.

An online supermarket company—Ocado in the UK, has recently showed a robotic hand that can pick fruits and vegetables！

When an embryo (胚胎) is in the womb, the very first sense it develops is touch. The sense of touch is also the one that lasts the longest-as we get older and our vision and hearing begins to weaken, touch still remains. Humans use their touch to protect themselves, to create emotional relationships with other people, and to experience pleasure. Can you imagine life without it?

The sense of touch comes from a network of nerve endings and special touch receptors on the surface of the skin. While there are different kinds of touch receptors (感受器), they help us judge pressure, texture and vibrations (震动), They are located in our fingertips, palms, soles of our feet, face, lips and tongue.

When we touch something, the mechano—receptors perceive the touch and through a network of nerves, send signals to the brain. This informs the brain about the location of the touch, the amount of force used, and the speed at which it was used.

Several different techniques have been tried in the past to create such a robotic hand-using three fingers. But this latest design by SoMa copies the human hand. The gripper (夹具) is made up of flexible materials which grasp onto the thing based on its size and shape. Then air pressure is used to control the movement of the robotic fingers to pick objects safely and without causing damage.

The next step would be for the robot to judge how ripe the fruits and vegetables are, and apply pressure accordingly. Members of the research team are currently working on adding computerized vision to the robots, so that they can see what they are gripping.

Does all this mean robots can replace people? According to Ocado, it helps improve productivity by removing some of the repetitive tasks done by humans.

A sustainable (可持续的) neighborhood in the Dutch town of Nieuwkoop is leaving on the welcome light for bats. And if all goes well, they'll never even notice it.

The neighborhood, based on research showing that light-shy bats are impacted by white and green light, but not red, uses street lighting that features specialized bat- friendly LEDs.

This particular network of lights shines with a somewhat strange red color. To light-sensitive nocturnal (夜间活动的) creatures, however, this specialized red light preserves the night conditions important to their well- being.

"Bats don't see red light as particularly bright, "said Maurice Donners, a senior scientist at Signify, which designed the new streetlights. "So if you have certain bat species that are really avoiding light, I think the obvious thing to do is use red light which is visible to us, but is much less visible, or perhaps even invisible, to bats.

The motivating factor behind using the new streetlights came after Nieuwkoop decided to create a new neighborhood of 89 homes near a nature reserve for rare and threatened species, which was also home to many light-sensitive bats. To reduce the impact the new community would have on the bats 'nocturnal feeding habits without compromising the safety of local people, developers reached out to Signify to find out more about the use of the bat-friendly lights.

The bat-friendly lights in Nieuwkoop are networked and have energy-saving features like dynamic dimming (调光) and scheduling. Additionally, people there can also request changes in brightness to individual lights outside their homes. As an added bonus, the red lights also don't attract insects.

"When developing our unique housing program, our goal was to make the project as sustainable as possible, while preserving our local bat species with little impact on their living place, "Guus Elkhuizen, a city council member, said. "We've managed to do this and kept our carbon footprint and energy consumption to a minimum. I'm so proud."

Babies appear to know how to help those in need, according to researchers who studied signs of altruism in almost 100 children.

Researchers who wanted to see whether children would give up their food to a stranger without encouragement found the kids did just that — even when they were hungry.

The scientists recruited 96 19-month-old children. During the experiments, a child and a researcher sat across from each other. In the control group of the first set of experiments, researchers threw a piece of fruit onto a plate where they couldn't reach, but the child could. They then waited. In contrast, researchers in the test group pretended to drop the fruit on the plate, then tried and failed to reach it. This signaled to the child that the adult wanted the food.

Among the control group, only 4 percent of the children gave the piece of fruit to the researchers, compared with 58 percent, or over half, in the test group.

Next, the team explored if children would still be generous when it was at a cost to themselves. The first set of experiments was repeated with a separate group of kids before their lunchtime, when they were likely to be hungry. Similarly, 37 percent of the test group handed over their fruit, compared with none in the control group.

The experiments were repeated four times. Researchers got similar results each time. Babies with siblings(兄弟姐妹) and babies from Latino or Asian families shared more of the fruit, the team also found.

Carter Morgan, lead professor of the study, said, "We often think of babies as selfish. But here we find that they are willing to help others even when it comes at some 'cost' to the self."

Addressing why children with siblings or from certain cultural backgrounds were more likely to share their fruit, Morgan said, "We believe this partly reflects what social psychologists call 'interdependence', which stresses on the importance of interpersonal connections and adjusting to others. These social experiences that shape attitudes towards sharing appear to have an effect very early in life."

Do you find it difficult to put down your mobile phone? If yes, you're not alone. These days, many people suffer from the stress of FOMO (fear of missing out). They reach for their mobile phones when they wake up in the morning, and for the rest of the day, they constantly scroll down (向下滚动) the timelines of their social media apps to get the latest updates.

Despite the convenience smartphones bring, many people struggle with their digital habits. As Sameer Samat, US tech Company Google's vice president of product management, said in his speech at the 2018 Google I/O developer conference on May 8th,70 percent of people don't want to spend so much time on their phones. This is why during the conference Google introduced an app called Dashboard for the new version (版本) of its Android operating system. This new app includes well-being functions that aim to help users manage the time they spend on their digital devices.

It all starts with a bird's-eye view. Dashboard allows users to look at all the details of their phone habits. For example, a user can see how many times they've unlocked their phone and how many times they've checked their social media apps, as well as how much time they spend on each app every day.

Once the users see this information, they'll be able to make some changes. With the App Timer function, users can set a time limit for how long they can use each app for every day. After they've reached the limit, they won't be able to launch the app until the next day.

But even if users become more mindful of their usage, they're still likely to be drawn in by notifications (通知). This is where the Shush feature comes in. It automatically (自动地) silences incoming calls and notifications when a user puts their phone face down.

If people truly want to make full use of their free time instead of losing hours using their smart phones, these new functions are just one way of doing that. After all, who needs to use an app to stop you from using other apps when the easiest answer would be just to use your willpower?