【推荐1】Women Whose Inventions Changed Life

Rachel Zimmerman — Blissymbol Printer （1984）

At the age of 12, Zimmerman invented the Blissymbol Printer, which helps people with physical disabilities communicate via symbols that get translated into written language. What began as a project for a school science fair ended up competing at the World Exhibition of Achievement of Young Inventors. Zimmerman now works at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she develops innovations combining space technology and assistive intelligence.

Olga De Gonzalez-Sanabria ——Long Cycle-Life Nickel-Hydrogen Batteries （1987）

Director of the Systems Management Office and the highest-ranking Hispanic at NASA Glenn Research Center, Gonzalez-Sanabria played a critical role in the development of the "Long Cycle-Life Nickel-Hydrogen Batteries" which helped enable the International Space Station power system. She has since won the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.

Ann Tsukamoto — Stem Cell Isolation （1991）

Tsukamoto and her colleagues were the first scientists to identify and isolate （分离） blood-forming stem cells. Patented in 1991 --- the first of 12 patents related to her research --- Tsukamoto has furthered her research and thanks to her, bone marrow transplants （骨髓移植）have saved the lives of thousands of people battling blood cancer

Donna Strickland — Chirped Pulse Amplification （2018）

The third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, Strickland, along with Dr Gerard Mourou of France, has significantly advanced the science of lasers （激光）.They developed a technology for creating short, powerful laser pulses. The technique, called Chirped Pulse Amplification, has been used in corrective eye surgeries.

【推荐2】A team of researchers at ETH Zurich have the perfect long-lasting solution to our fog problem. They have developed a very thin and gold-based coating that can turn sunlight into heat, which can be applied to glass and other surfaces to prevents them from fogging. The special coating is developed using titanium oxide and gold particles. It uses infrared radiations from the sunlight and creates a heating effect that is powerful enough to keep fog away from the surface of an object. The coating mainly uses heat to stop fogging. The coating uses a large part of the infrared radiation, which causes it warm up to 8 ℃. Before that, products like anti-fogging sprays create a very thin film of water on the surface to remove fog. The problem with such surfaces is pollution. Along with water, the sprays also attract dirt, dust, oil, and various other dirty things, and just a little dirt on the surface makes it useless. However, the new coating prevents water.

Besides, the coating is thinner, which makes it more vitreous and move more easily. It is heated quickly and requires no additional energy source. Gold might be expensive during the day, but the researchers stress that their coating requires so little that the material costs low.

However, although this product can work at very low levels of solar irradiation, it does depend on a certain amount of light. The researchers will develop the coating further for other applications. In the process, they will study whether other metals work just as well as gold. There is no need to worry about that this would cause a car or a building to heat up more in the summer. Hopefully, this pioneering product will soon be sold on the market.

【推荐3】Getting stuck in a traffic jam is one of the most boring problems for people living in big cities. The fact that you’re moving so slowly leads to stress, anger and the wish that your car could just fly over the traffic like an airplane.

Soon, however, that wish could come true. On May 8, US car-renting company Uber showed off what it described as “the transportation mode of the future: on-demand air transport,” reported ABC News.

According to Nikhill Goel, head of products for Uber Air, the company’s air taxi service may start test flights in the US cities of Dallas and Los Angeles, as well as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, as early as 2020. If everything goes according to plan, passengers will be able to fly to work by 2023.

When the Olympics comes to Los Angeles in 2028, Uber “expects to have hundreds, if not thousands, of its airplanes in the skies.” Goel told Newsweek.

So what would Uber’s flying vehicles be like?

They are small, electric airplanes that take off and land up and down, they give off zero emissions (排放) and are quiet enough to operate in cities.

Just like an airplane, the vehicles will have fixed wings to help them glide. But while a helicopter has just one big fixed rotor (螺旋桨), Uber’s vehicles will have many rotors, which will help increase fuel efficiency (效率) while reducing emissions and noise.

Because of these fixed wings and many rotors, Uber’s flying taxis “should be quieter and safer than a helicopter.” reported ABC News .

However, the service still has a long way to go before it’s ready to accept passengers, for example, to avoid any possible accidents. Uber is working with NASA to study air traffic control problems connected with low-flying aircraft. But just as Dubai’s Mayor Betty Price said, “This program is revolutionary and future-oriented (面向未来的).”

【推荐1】Have you ever wondered why people drive on a different side of the road? It might seem strange that U. K. drivers stay on the left, but they’re not the only ones.     1    

Originally, almost everybody traveled on the left side of the road. However their way of transport was quite different from today:     2     For Medieval swordsmen on horseback, it made sense to keep to the left to have their right arms closer to their enemies. Getting on or off was also easier from the left side of the horse, and safer done by the side of the road than in the center.

    3     Things changed in the late 1700s when large wagons pulled by several pairs of horses were used to transport farm products in France and the United States. In the absence of a driver’s seat inside the wagon, the driver sat behind the left horse, with his right arm free to use his whip to keep the horses moving. Since he was sitting on the left, he wanted other wagons to pass on his left.     4    

The British Government refused to give up their left-hand driving ways, and in 1773 introduced the General Highways Act, which encouraged driving on the left.

When Henry Ford unveiled his Model T in 1908，the driver’s seat was on the left, meaning that cars would have to drive on the right hand side of the road to allow front and back passengers to exit the car onto the roadside.    5     And this is highly unlikely to change.

【推荐1】Dragon Head-raising Day: time for a haircut

China is a country with many colorful days and festivals. Dragon Head-raising Day (the Longtaitou Festival) is one of them.

This special day is on the second day of the second month in the Chinese lunar calendar (阴历). It stands for the start of spring and farming. This year, the day fell on February 21.

The dragon is important in Chinese culture. We Chinese people call ourselves the “descendants (传人) of the dragon”. Therefore, people celebrate Dragon Head-raising Day with many customs about dragons.

On the day in ancient times, people put ash in the kitchen. This was to “lead the dragon into the house”. People believed that with the help of the dragon, they could have a good harvest in autumn.

Also, people eat special foods on that day. The foods are usually named after the dragon. For example, people eat “dragon whisker (须)” noodles and dumplings called “dragon teeth”.

Today, many customs have faded away. But one that has remained is to have hair cut. It is said that a haircut during the first lunar month may bring bad luck to the mother’s brothers. So many people have their hair cut on Dragon Head-raising Day.

【推荐2】There is more that comes with older age than greying hair and wrinkled skin When humans reach their later years, they favour more established friends and their social circle is reduced.

Now, for what appears to be the first time, scientists have seen the same behaviour in another species. Twenty years of observations of chimpanzees (猩猩) reveal that older males choose to hang out with their long-term friends at the expense of other relationships.

The researchers studied 78, 000 hours of observations made between 1996 and 2016 that followed the social interactions of 21 male chimpanzees between the ages of 15 and 58 years old. They classified the chimps’ relationships depending on the amount of time they sat with others and groomed (梳毛) them. They then rated the various pairings as mutual (相互的) friendships, where both chimps seemed to enjoy the relationship; one-sided friendships, where one chimp was more keen to be friends than the other; and non-friendships, where neither chimp showed interest in the other.

When the scientists looked at the patterns of friendships, they found that the older chimps had more mutual friendships and fewer one-sided friendships than younger chimps. Another feature seen in older humans was also spotted in the chimps. As the males got older, their levels of aggression (挑衅) tailed off, meaning they started fewer fights and tended to intimidate others in their group less often.

The observations have left the researchers puzzled. According to an idea in psychology known as socioemotional selectivity theory, or SST, older humans prefer more positive relationships because they are aware time is running out. But many animal experts argue that chimpanzees lack the human sense of mortality (死亡), suggesting something else is driving the behaviour.

Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford, said in humans, the decline in social circles with age is due to declining social motivation to get out and meet people combined by lack of opportunity. In chimpanzees, as older males compete less for mates, they may focus on close, reciprocal (互惠的) relationships with trusted partners, she said.