【推荐2】Starting your morning with a good cup of coffee can be a great way to get an energy boost. But besides helping you get over your sleepiness, it turns out it might also be boosting your brain, too. A study out of the Krembil Brain Institute has found that drinking your coffee a certain way can actually reduce your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (阿尔茨海默氏症).

“Coffee consumption does seem to have some relation to a decreased risk of developing Alzheimer’s,” Donald Weaver, the study‘s co-author, said. “But we wanted to investigate which compounds (化合物) are involved and how they may affect age-related cognitive decline.”

The research was set out to investigate the connection between coffee consumption and a decreased risk of Alzheimer. The researchers decided to test the compounds found in different beans, including light roast, dark roast, and decaffeinated (无咖啡因的) coffee. The team discovered the beans contained phenylindanes, a chemical compound that prevents the buildup of proteins, known as beta-amyloid and tau, which are known to lead to Alzheimer’s. Since a longer roast leads to an increase in the amount of phenylindanes, the researchers concluded that dark roast coffee provided better protection against the Alzheimer’s.

The team also discovered levels of phenylindanes were as strong in dark roasted decaffeinated coffee as they were in a regular caffeinated dark roast. “The caffeinated and de-caffeinated dark roast both had identical function in our initial experimental tests,” Ross Mancini, one of the scientists, said in a statement. “So we observed early on that its protective effect could not be due to caffeine.”

“It’s the first time someone has investigated how phenylindanes interact with the proteins that are responsible for Alzheimer’s,” Mancini acknowledged that the findings show more research is needed. “The next step would be to investigate how beneficial these compounds are, and whether they have the ability to enter the bloodstream or cross the blood-brain barrier.”

【推荐3】Brain scans (扫描检查) taken during people’s playing table tennis indicated differences in how we would respond to human or machine opponents (对手). As the leader of her high school’s tennis team and someone who had played tennis in college for four years, Amanda Studnicki had been preparing for this moment for a long time.

All she had to do now was thinking small, like a table tennis ball. For weeks, Studnicki, a graduate student at the University of Florida, played against dozens of players on a table tennis court. Her opponents sported a science-fiction look, a cap of electrodes streaming off their heads into a backpack as they played against either Studnicki or a ball-serving machine. That cyborg (半机械人) look was vital to Studnicki’s goal: to understand how our brains react to the great demands of a high-speed sport like table tennis and what difference a machine opponent makes.

Studnicki and her advisor, Daniel Ferris, discovered that the brains of table tennis players react very differently to human or machine opponents. When faced with a ball machine, which is hard to predict, players’ brains became confused about the upcoming serve. However, when they were playing against a human opponent and could easily predict the serve, their neurons (神经元) worked together and seemed confident about their next action.

The findings have beneficial effects on sports training, suggesting that human opponents provide the realism that can’t be replaced with machine helpers. And as robots grow more common and advanced, understanding our brains’ response could help make our artificial companions more naturalistic.

Ferris suspects that the players’ brains were so active while waiting for robotic serves because the machine provides no cues of what they are going to do next. What’s clear is that our brains process these two experiences very differently, which suggests that training with a machine might not offer the same experience as playing against a real opponent.

【推荐2】When Hannah Lucas was 15 years old, she got ill. After careful examination, the doctor told her family that she had a disease called POTS. The disease makes it easy for her to pass out. Her classmates bullied（欺 凌）her. Finally，with the disease， classmates＇ bullying， and failing to pass courses，she felt really sorrowful and fell into deep depression（抑郁）.

Lucas wanted help but found it difficult to get it when she needed it most. “At that lowest moment in my life, I just wished that I had a button that I could press whenever I was not okay to notice my friends and family that I needed help,” Lucas says. One morning she tried to kill herself but failed. Her then 12-year-old brother Charlie was really sad after hearing the news and began to use his knowledge of computer programming to help her realize her dream.

One year later, Hannah's not OK app was born. “When you press the not OK button, whenever you're not okay, whatever that means for you, it sends a text to your five most trusted people with a message saying, 'Hey, it's me, and I'm not okay. Please call me, text me, and come and check up on me,' along with your position.”

"My parents once had a talk with me about college because they didn't think that I would be able to go," Lucas says. But her close friends and brother helped her rebuild confidence. Lucas has her goal set on college. And while she's still trying to find out what that will look like, she knows one thing: “Whatever I study, I want to change the world for the better," Lucas says.

【推荐3】There have been many attempts to create an all-plastic bike. However, most have never made it past the beginning stage. Igus, a Germany-based company of high-performance plastics, and Dutch start-up MTRL aim to change that with the igus:bike — the world’s first city bike crafted almost totally from recycled plastic.

Igus CEO Frank Blasé first got the idea while vacationing on a Florida beach. A conversation with workers at a rental company made him aware of the challenges of maintaining beach bicycles. The long-term exposure to sand, wind and saltwater caused the bikes to rust (生锈) rapidly. Many had to be replaced in as little as three months.

The igus: bike was uncovered at a German trade show. It can be left outdoors in all weathers and does not require lubricant oil to reduce friction (摩擦) between parts. Since it does not attract sand, dust or dirt, the bike can be cleaned with a garden water pipe in seconds. Currently, 90 percent of the igus:bike is made using plastic. This includes the bicycle’s hard but lightweight frame, bearings, pedals, and wheel rims.

The igus:bike will also help reduce the world’s plastic pollution. The company says a single adult bike gives new life to about 35 pounds of single-use plastic that would have entered our landfills or waterways. For example, the first prototypes were made from old fishing nets. MTRL says it is planning to set producing facilities near plastic landfills around the world.

“From ocean plastics to plastics from other sources, the igus:bike has what it takes to become a high-tech environmental product,” says MTRL co-founder Benjamin Alderse Baas.

The plastic bikes are expected to come onto the market in early 2023. An adult model, made from recycled plastic, will cost about €1,400. A slightly cheaper version made using new plastic and an electric bike are also in the works. Igus also plans on sharing its technology with other bicycle producers. “We want to enable the bicycle industry to produce plastic bikes,” says Blasé.

【推荐1】UN Chinese Language Day is celebrated annually on April 20. The event was set up by the UN Department of Public Information in order to get equal use of all six of its official working language throughout the organization.

The first Chinese Language Day was celebrated in 2010 on the12th of November. But since 2011, the date has been the 20th of April. It’s because Chinese Guyu, which is the 6th of 24 solar terms in the traditional Chinese calendar, usually just begins around the date, April 20. Guyu is important to Chinese people. Each year they will celebrate Guyu in memory of the person: Cangjie, who was believed to create Chinese characters. There’s a story that when Cangjie created Chinese characters, it rained millet(粟)；Guyu in some way means “rain of millet”.

The Chinese Language Day for 2021 is especially to help people learn about Chinese characters based on symbols. In the building of the UN in New York, three events, which were organized by an organization connected to the UN, focused on three types of Chinese characters based on symbols. The three events were, a guided tour of the Liangzhu Museum, a language class on Dongba words, and a lecture on the history of Chinese characters. The three events were held from April 19 to 21, 2021.

Chinese was allowed to be an official language of the United Nations in 1946. However, in the early years, Chinese was not commonly used in the work of the United Nations. The situation improved after the restoration (恢复) of the lawful rights of the People’s Republic of China in the United Nations in 1971. And in 1973, the General Assembly(联合国大会) included Chinese as a working language. Then more and more UN offices and work members work with the Chinese language.

【推荐2】LONDON(AP)—Thousands of Britain’s iconic red phone boxes will be protected from removal under new rules, the U. K. ’s telecommunications regulator said Tuesday. The public payphone boxes may look like out—of—date relics in an age of common smartphones, but regulator Ofcom said they can still be a“lifeline”for people in need.

The regulator is proposing rules to prevent 5, 000 call boxes in areas with poor mobile coverage from being closed down. It said that phone booths in areas considered accident or suicide hotspots, and those that have had more than 52 calls made from them in the past 12 months, would also meet the criteria.

Ofcom said there are still around 21, 000 phone boxes across the country, and that almost 150, 000 calls to emergency services were made from phone boxes from May 2019 to May 2020. Some 45, 000 calls were also made to other helplines like the Samaritans.

“Some of the call boxes we plan to protect are used to make relatively low numbers of calls. But if one of those calls is from an unhappy child, or an accident victim or someone trying to kill himself, that public phone line can be a lifeline at a time of great need, ”said Selina Chadha, Ofcom’s director of connectivity. “We also want to make sure that people without mobile coverage, often in rural areas, can still make calls, ”she added.

BT Group, formerly British Telecom, says nearly half of the phone boxes in the U. K. have been removed due to the growth of the mobile phone industry. It said even if a phone box is scheduled for decommission, it can be adopted by its local community under a plan that lets governments or organizations buy the call box for just￡1. So far more than 6, 000 booths have been converted to mini community libraries, art galleries or storage units for life—saving public defibrillators(心脏除颤器).

【推荐3】Since vacation season is over, it’s time to start thinking about ways to improve your travel literacy — your ability to get around without looking like a foolish tourist — before your next trip.

Read a book.

The right travel book can educate and inspire. “Good writing helps me to look at my surroundings with new eyes,” says Martha Merritt, dean of international education at the University of Richmond. A book about travel is not necessarily a travel guidebook. It can simply be a book — fiction or nonfiction — about a place.

Find your attractive group on social media.

That’s what Tiffany Burnette, who runs a design company in Philadelphia, does between trips. She spends time on Facebook’s travel groups connecting with new friends and learning new travel skills.

Learn a language.

“I spend 15 to 20 minutes each day working on my basic language skills so that I can at least show respect,” says Jeff Wilson, the host of “Real Rail Adventures” on PBS, “Phrases like ‘please,’ ‘thank you,’ counting and asking basic travel questions.” Michelle Williams, who has traveled to more than 50 countries, says, “An app like Duolingo is a great way to improve your language skills before you travel.”

While these tools could make you a smarter traveler, only one thing is guaranteed to improve your travel literacy. You have to get out of your seat. You can start your journey by visiting your travel agent from the United States Tour Operators.