The Analysis of Friendship with Robin Dunbar

Friendship is the single most important thing that affects our psychological and our physical health and well-being. It’s also very expensive because, if we want friendships to work for us, we have to invest a lot of time in keeping them. In this online talk, Robin Dunbar will explain how our brains create friendships for us.

About the speaker:

Robin Dunbar is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford. He spent the first half of his career studying the social behavior of monkeys and antelopes in Africa, and the second half studying humans. He has published 400 science journal articles. Besides, he has contributed to many radio and TV science documentaries, and has written a dozen popular science books.

What’s included in your ticket:

● Live lecture lasting 60 minutes including Q&A with Robin Dunbar On-demand access to a recording of the lecture and Q&A for 12 months Booking information:

● This online event will start at 6 p. m. on Thursday 21, October 2021 and will last for one hour. Access to a recording of the event will be available to ticket purchasers for the 12months following the live event.

● A ticket costs you thirteen dollars. We’ll email you a confirmation immediately after purchase. You’ll receive a separate email with a link to access the event auditorium (礼堂) before the event. Please note that each link is unique and shouldn’t be shared.

● New Scientist Ltd reserves the right to change the event and its line-up, or cancel the event. In the unlikely event of cancellation, all tickets will be fully refunded. New Scientist Ltd won’t be responsible for any additional expenses caused by ticket holders in relation to the event.

The process of aging is of particular concern for Americans. This concern is not only related to the likelihood of increasing your chances of coming down with diseases such as heart disease and diabetes(糖尿病), but more importantly, to the loss of your eyesight. As we age the chance that we will develop age-related vision conditions and disorders increases.

Therefore, many people believe that it’s very hard, if not impossible, to improve your vision naturally as you get older due to concerns that the visual system begins to deteriorate at that stage of life. These people also believe they’re stuck with their glasses or contacts for life. So the question is: can aging prevent you from improving your vision naturally?

The answer to that question is no. While aging is inevitable(无法避免的)，when it comes to improving, protecting and preserving your precious eyesight, there are things you can do to reduce or slow the negative effects of aging on the visual system. For instance, you can take preventive steps in terms of nutrition and eye exercises that can reduce the negative effects of aging on the eyes.

These simple-and-easy-to-perform techniques make the visual system stronger therefore helping you to improve your vision. They also improve the focusing power of the eyes through vision training eye exercise techniques. Additionally, eye exercises can improve blood flow and circulation to the visual system therefore improving your eyesight. The question is: can these eye exercises help improve vision even in older people? Well, the answer to this question is yes.

According to a scientific research study performed by the National Institute on Aging, elderly adults can quickly improve their vision with a branch of eye exercises called Perceptual Training. Perceptual Training relates to the ability to improve various visual skills by exposing a person repeatedly to activities involving all kinds of stimuli(刺激物). This improves the way the brain processes visual information by strengthening the connection between the brain and eyes.

Stephen Warren, study leader at the University of Washington, has been on the case of the green icebergs for more than 30 years. He first took samples from one of these green hunks of ice in 1988, near the Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctic. Most glacial ice occurs in shades of white to brilliant blue. The bluer the ice, the older it is. Typically, compression (压缩)from accumulating layers of snow pushes air bubbles out of the ice, reducing the scattering of white light. The compressed ice absorbs most of the light except for blue, creating the blue color seen in the hearts of icebergs and glaciers.

The green ice was similarly bubble-free, and yet it looked green instead of blue. Warren and his team soon found that the green ice came not from glaciers, but from marine ice. That's the ice from the undersides of floating ice shelves.

At first, the team thought that organic material in the marine ice was causing the green color. But further research showed that the green marine ice didn't have a higher — than — usual amount of organic impurities. Now, a new study finds that a different sort of impurity may be the root cause of the green ice. Warren and his colleagues report that the marine ice at the bottom of the Amery Ice Shelf has 500 times more iron than the glacial ice above.

This iron comes from the rocks under the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which are turned into fine powder as glaciers move over them. The icebound iron oxidizes (氧化)as it contacts seawater. The resulting iron oxide particles take on a green color when light scatters through them. When icebergs break off the larger ice shelf, they carry this iron-rich ice with them. It's like taking a package to the post office. The iceberg can deliver this iron into the ocean far away, and then melt and deliver it to other living things that can use it as a nutrient.

A Chinese spacecraft flew down through the Martian sky on Saturday, May 15, 2021, becoming the country’s first probe (探测器) to land on a planet other than Earth. The lander,     36     (carry) a Mars rover, touched down at its pre-selected landing area in Utopia Planitia, a vast plain on the northern hemisphere of Mars, at 7:18 am, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced.

“The Mars landing of the Tianwen-1 mission is a total success,” Zhang Kejian, head of the CNSA, announced.

Tianwen-1,     37     consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, was launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan Province on July 23, 2020. After     38     journey of nearly seven months through space, the spacecraft entered the Mars orbit in February, 2021,     39     spent about three months surveying potential landing sites. In the early     40     (hour) of Saturday, the spacecraft began to fall from     41     (it) parking orbit, and the entry capsule containing the lander and the rover     42     (separate) from the orbiter around 4 am. After flying for some time, the entry capsule entered the Mars atmosphere, initiating the     43     (risky) phase of the whole mission.

At about 100 meters above the Martian surface, the craft hovered (盘旋)    44     (identify) obstacles and measured the slopes (坡度) of the surface. Avoiding the obstacles, it selected a     45     (relative) flat area and fell slowly, touching down safely with its four legs.