Honesty Carries Kindness

By morning, Fred knew what he had to do. He had not slept a wink but had sat in the corridor all night thinking. He stretched his body and went back to his room. His brother Gray was still asleep.

It was Saturday and there was no school. Fred’s mother asked him to do some shopping for her. On his way out, he glanced at his motorcycle which was parked at the side of the house. There was no hiding the broken front lamp and the dent (凹痕) and scratches (刮痕) on the side of the motorcycle. Fred took a deep breath and went to complete his shopping.

It was late morning before Fred was free to carry out his plan. He marched down the road to Mr. Green’s house. When he arrived and called out the usual greeting, Mrs. Green appeared at the doorway and greeted him warmly. She invited him in and served him tea and some cakes. Fred nervously asked to speak to Mr. Green. She told him that her husband was out but would be home very soon. Sure enough, the elderly man returned in ten minutes.

Fred cleared his throat a few times while his host waited patiently. Finally, he started to talk, admitting that he had come to take responsibility. “I’m so sorry. I was careless yesterday and knocked into your parked car in front of the post office,” said Fred.

Mr. Green looked at the 17-year-old youth, surprised. “So, you are saying that you dented my car and then ran away?”

Fred went red. He nodded. “I’m sorry for not telling you earlier. I was too frightened.”

The elderly man smiled and said, “but you’re not too frightened to acknowledge the mistake now?” Fred said with uncertainty, “I could not sleep last night thinking about it. I knew I had to do the right thing.”

Mr. Green was silent for a minute before saying in a kind voice, “you think that it is the right thing to cover up for your brother?”

Fred went pale, his eyes wandering.

Fred thanked Mr. Green for his kindness and what he had taught him.

One of my leachers once asked my class what our favorite memory was. My leacher asked for the moment in which “you fell the best; you fell that you had the world in the palms of your hand.” Some described amazing awards; other described winning a tournament. My answer, however, invited giggles and hesitant smiles. Why? Because I felt the best when I first learned how to ride my bike at thirteen. I didn’t mind my classmates’ stares and mockery, because I knew there was more to the story.

My elder sister and I shared a typical sisterly relationship: we couldn’t stand each other. I was an annoyance to her. Any sort of conversation we had usually ended up fighting. Gradually, I started to learn to be totally indifferent; perhaps the silent treatment would get more approval. I was wrong. We soon fell into a sad pattern. I avoided her, and she ignored me.   Deep inside, it hurt. So that was how it was between us. She was only a sister in name. I truly believed that we would forever be apart, two housemates without conversation, two strangers without warmth.

I still remember the day I learned to ride a bike. I had received the bike that Christmas, which was great, until I realized that I had no idea how to ride it. My mom had long abandoned any attempt to teach me. I had proven to be a frustrating student. I took it upon myself to learn, a little bit each day. It was no different. I was coming to the end of my daily one-hour torture(折磨). I was so frustrated that I threw my bike aside and began to cry.

I guess that was what caused my sister to come outside.

“I made it,” I shouted with excitement.

Would a person born blind, who has learned to distinguish objects by touch, be able to recognize them purely by sight if he regained the ability to see? The question, known as Molyneux’s problem, is about whether the human mind has a built-in concept of shapes that is so innate(天生的) that such a blind person could immediately recognize an object with restored vision. The alternative is that the concepts of shapes are not innate but have to be learned by exploring an object through sight, touch and other senses.

After their attempt to test it in blind children failed, Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London and his colleagues have taken another attempt at finding an answer, this time using another species. To test whether bumblebees can form an internal representation of objects, they first trained the insects to distinguish globes from cubes using a sugar reward. The bees were trained in the light, where they could see but not touch the objects. Then they were tested in the dark, where they could touch but not see the globes or cubes. The researchers found that the bumblebees spent more time in contact with the shape they had been trained to associate with the sugar reward, even though they had to rely on touch rather than sight to distinguish the objects.

The researchers also did the reverse test with untrained bumblebees, first teaching them with rewards in the dark and then testing them in the light. Again, the bees were able to recognize the shape associated with the sugar reward, though they had to rely on sight rather than touch in the test. In short, bees have solved Molyneux's problem because the fact suggests that they can picture object features and access them through sight or touch.

However, some experts express their warnings. Jonathan Birch, a philosopher of science, cautions that the bees may have had prior experience associating visual and tactile(触觉的) information about straight edges and curved surfaces in the context of their nests, so it is not possible to eliminate the possibility that some of the cross-sensory concept is learned rather than innate.

Lower Oxygen Levels Threaten Marine Life

Oxygen in the oceans is being lost at an alarming rate, with “dead zones” expanding rapidly and hundreds more areas showing oxygen dangerously exhausted, putting sharks, tuna, marlin and other large fish species at particular risk. Dead zones, where oxygen is effectively absent, have quadrupled(翻两番) in extent in the last half-century, and there are also at least 700 areas where oxygen is at dangerously low levels, up from 45 when research was undertaken in the 1960s.

The reasons behind this environmental collapse are multiple. Among all, pollutants generated by the industrial world have been the most destructive force to cause the unbalance, including a rising tide of plastic waste, as well as other pollutants. Seas are about 26% more acidic than in pre-industrial times because of absorbing the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with damaging impacts on shellfish in particular.

Low oxygen levels are also associated with global heating, because the warmer water holds less oxygen and the heating causes stratification(分层), so there is less of the vital mixing of oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor layers. Oceans are expected to lose about 3-4% of their oxygen by the end of this century, but the impact will be much greater in the levels closest to the surface, where many species are concentrated, and in the mid to high latitudes.

Another major cause for lower oxygen is intensive farming. When excess artificial fertilizer from crops, or wastes from the meat industry, runs off the land and into rivers and seas, it feeds algae(藻类) which bloom and then cause oxygen consumption as they die and decay.

The problem of dead zones has been known about for decades, but little has been done to tackle it. Now is high time to take actions and help the oceans function better.

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【推荐3】Researchers who use animals in psychological experiments must make every effort to minimize (最小化) discomfort, illness, and pain. And procedures that cause animals great suffering are permitted only when no other procedure is available. Moreover, there are federal regulations stating how animals art to be housed, fed. and preserved. Not only must researches try very hard to avoid causing physical discomfort, they are also required to promote the psychological well-being of some species of research animals, such as monkeys.

Why should animals be used for research in the first place? Is it really possible to learn about human behavior from the results of research employing rats and pigeons? The answer is that psychological research that does employ animals has a different focus and is designed to answer different questions than research that uses humans. For example, the shorter life span of animals (rats live an average of two years) allows researchers to learn about the effects of aging in a much smaller period than they could by using human participants. Moreover, some principles of behavior are similar across species, and so some basic behavioral phenomena can be studied more simply in animals. Finally, some studies require large numbers of participants that share similar backgrounds or have been exposed to particular environments—conditions that could not practically be met with human beings.

Research using animals has provided psychologists with information that has greatly benefited humans. For example, it provided the keys to noticing eye disorders in children early enough to prevent permanent damage

Despite the value of research with animal participants, the use of animals in psychological research is highly controversial. For example, some critics believe that animals have rights no less significant than those of humans, and that because animals are unable to agree to participation in studies, their use is not moral. Others object to the use of animals on methodological (方法论的) grounds, saying it is impossible to generalize from finding on nonhuman species to humans.