【推荐1】Are you at least 17 years old? Do you weigh more than 110 pounds? Do you consider yourself fairly healthy?

If you answered yes to all of these questions, you should be donating(捐赠) blood every two months. n my survey of my schoolmates, I found that only 50 percent of them have ever donated blood and that only 1 out of 13 of them donate regularly. The lack of blood donors is a serious problem that requires immediate action.

According to the American Red Cross Web pages, in the United States alone someone receives a blood transfusion(输血) once every three seconds. People who benefit from donations include cancer patients as well as babies. The need for blood never takes a vacation and neither should donors.

Let me tell you about Brooke, a three-year-old girl with cancer. Brooke has spent about half of her life in the hospital receiving treatments. Her treatment will require about 500 units of blood in total, of which only 250 units have been replaced. She still needs the other half of the total amount to continue her treatment. If she doesn’t receive this blood, she will not live to start kindergarten.

Examples like Brooke’s are becoming all too common these days, with only 1 in 20 Americans donating blood and this number keeps dropping each year. These facts are extremely worrying considering that nearly half of us here will need blood sometime in our lives.

You can now see the seriousness of the problem with the lack of blood donations. Fortunately， it is a problem that can be easily solved. Each and every one of you can be part of the solution. All you have to do is go to the nearest Red Cross and donate your blood.

【推荐3】When I was in middle school, a poisonous spider bit my right hand. I ran to my mom for help —but instead of taking me to a doctor, my mom set my hand on fire. After wrapping my hand with several layers of cotton, then soaking it in wine, she put a chopstick into my mouth, and ignited the cotton. Heat quickly penetrated the cotton and began to roast my hand. The pain made me want to scream, but the chopstick prevented it. All I could do was watch my hand burn —one minute, then two minutes— until mom put out the fire.

You see, the part of China I grew up in was a rural village, and at that time preindustrial. When I was born, my village had no cars, no telephones, no electricity, and even no running water. And we certainly didn’t have access to modern medical resources. There was no doctor my mother could bring me to see about my spider bite.

For those who study biology, you may have grasped the science behind my mom’s cure: heat deactivates(使失去活性) proteins, and a spider’s venom (毒液) is simply a form of protein. It’s cool how that folk remedy actually incorporates basic biochemistry, isn’t it? But I am a PhD student in biochemistry at Harvard, I now know that better, less painful and less risky treatments existed. So I can’t help but ask myself why I didn’t receive one at the time.

Fifteen years have passed since that incident I am happy to report that my hand is fine. But this question lingers, and I continue to be troubled by it. We have learned to edit the human genome(基因组) and unlock many secrets of how cancer progresses. We can control neuronal activity literally with the switch of a light. Each year brings more advances in biomedical research—exciting, transformative accomplishments. Yet, despite the knowledge we have accumulated, we haven’ t been so successful in distributing it to where it’s needed most. According to the World Bank, twelve percent of the world’s population lives on less than $ 2 a day. Malnutrition kills more than 3 million children annually. Three hundred million people are suffering malaria globally. All over the world, we constantly see these problems of poverty, illness, and lack of resources preventing the flow of scientific information. Life-saving knowledge we take for granted in the modern world is often unavailable in these underdeveloped regions. And in far too many places, people are still essentially trying to cure a spider bite with fire.

【推荐2】If you think English means endless new words, difficult grammar and sometimes strange pronunciation, you are wrong. Haven’t you noticed that you have become smarter since you started to learn a language?

According to a new study by a British university, learning a second language can lead to an increase in your brain power. Researchers found that learning other languages changes grey matter. This is the area of the brain which processes information. It is similar to the way that exercise builds muscles (肌肉).

The study also found the younger people learn a second language, the greater the effect is. A team led by Dr. Andrea Mechelli, from University College London (UCL), took a group of Britons who only spoke English. They were compared with a group of “early bilinguals” who had learnt a second language before the age of five, as well as a number of later learners. Scans showed that grey matter density (密度) in the brain was greater in bilinguals than in people without a second language. But the longer a person waited before mastering a new language, the smaller the difference was. “Our findings suggest that the structure of the brain is changed by the experience of learning a second language,” said the scientists.

It means that the change itself increases the ability to learn. Professor Dylan Vaughan Jones of the University of Wales, has researched the link between bilingualism and maths skills. “Having two languages gives you two windows on the world and makes the brain more flexible(灵活的).” he said. “You are actually going beyond language and have a better understanding of different ideas.”

The findings were matched in a study of native Italian speakers who had learnt English as a second language between the ages of two and thirty-four. Reading, writing, and comprehension were all tested. The results showed that the younger they started to learn, the better. “Studying a language means you get an entrance to another world,” explained the scientists.

【推荐3】Three minutes of looking at red light once a week may help our eyesight, new research suggests. The findings show that red light might be a cheap and easy treatment for declines in color vision as we get older.

Last year, researchers from University College London did a study on red light therapy (疗法). 24 healthy volunteers, aged between 28 and 72, were asked to look at red light for three minutes every day for two weeks. Tests later found that the eyesight of people over the age of 40 improved.

To test the possible weak points of their therapy, they did a new study this year. Instead of using the light every day, they used it once a week. The new study included 20 volunteers, aged between 34 and 70, all with healthy vision. Some received red light therapy in the morning, and others received it in the afternoon. They were then tested on their color vision up to a week later.

On the whole, those who got the treatment in the morning showed a 17% improvement in their color vision, even a week later. Those who got the treatment in the afternoon did not have any improvement.

“We’ve found that one single exposure (暴露) to red light in the morning can greatly improve declining vision,” said lead author Glen Jeffrey.

The findings do support their earlier work, and they might make the treatment more practicable, since a once-weekly treatment is easier to stick to than a daily one. But the team’s promising results are still drawn on small numbers of healthy volunteers. Larger studies would be needed to show the benefits of red light therapy.

“In the near future, a once-a-week three-minute exposure to deep red light could be done while making a coffee or listening to a song, and such a simple thing could change eye care and vision around the world,” Jeffrey said.

Given its low cost (as little as $15) per device, and simplicity, the team is excited about the future of their therapy.

【推荐2】Holidays

【推荐1】Three French students，using the name “Obvious”， have produced the first artwork created mainly by a computer program to be sold at auction (拍卖). Using artificial intelligence (AI)，Obvious created 11 portraits (肖像画) of an imaginary family they called Belamy.

Obvious used 15,000 real portraits to train an AI program which has two parts.One part tries to create pictures that look real.The other part judges the work.If the portrait doesn’t look real enough，the first part goes back and changes its decisions until it comes up with a better picture.These decisions are controlled by an algorithm (计算程序). The students made many choices，helping guide the AI’s decisions.But even so，the painting is “signed”by the algorithm，instead of the students.

On October 25，Obvious’s picture，Edmond de Belamy，was sold at auction at Christie’s in New York.The final price for Edmond de Belamy was $432,500—about ten times more than Christie’s expected.

This is not the first AI artwork，just the first one sold at auction.In fact，many people are not impressed with the portrait.“The work isn’t interesting，or original，”says 19­year­old Robbie Barrat.He should know.He wrote much of the program that created the pictures.

But he doesn’t like the idea of Obvious selling the picture.He thinks it’s too simple and gives a bad idea of what real AI artists are doing.He points out that he created many pictures like these over a year ago.

Obvious doesn’t hide the fact that it used Mr.Barrat’s work，or even that its portrait is not the best AI artwork ever.Pierre Fautrel of Obvious said，“...the goal of our project was to do something that was simple enough for...my mother or brother to understand.”

Obvious got the attention of Christie’s by selling another work，Le Comte de Belamy，for over $11,000 in February. One reason Christie’s chose to auction Obvious’s work is because AI art is unusual now.In the future it will be much more common.

【推荐3】In 2015, researchers from Australia's Deakin University published one of the first studies measuring food's physical effect on the left hippocampus(海马体), a seahorse-shaped brain region crucial for memory, learning and decision making. It is also one of the first areas to shrink in people with dementia(痴呆). 252 people filled out diet surveys and then underwent scans that measured their brains. Four years later, they returned for another scan.

The study found that the left hippocampus was heftier in the healthy eaters than in the unhealthy ones, regardless of age, sex, weight, exercise habits or general health. The average difference was 203 square millimeters, nearly one third of a square inch. Sounds small, but that's room for a lot of extra brain cells. And strong new evidence showed that eating the right food and skipping the wrong stuff could help protect against declines in thinking and memory that lead to dementia.

"Plant-based diets may protect against memory decline and dementia," says lead researcher Claire McEvoy, RD. How is the power food working with your brain cells? Animal and test-tube experiments suggest that vitamins and fatty acids found in the plant food help new cells make copies of DNA when they divide and multiply. Meanwhile, the high-fat and the high-sugar processed food harms brain cells by leaving brain tissue damaged by free radicals (自由基). This may hold back brain plasticity, making the processed food an especially big threat for the developing brains of kids.

While food emerges as an important brain protector, experts say brain supplements (补充剂)aren't all that effective. These pills and capsules may contain many ingredients. But actually, studies show that they do not activate brain cells in a significantly positive way. "Let the buyer be aware of it," says David Hogan, MD, a specialist at Calgary University.