【推荐1】It can be very difficult for people in wheelchairs to move around on beaches. Most beaches don’t have ways for disabled visitors to move around easily, or to get in and out of the sea safely.

Seatrac is a system that was designed to solve this problem. Seatrac is basically a chair on a moving ramp (坡道) that can smoothly carry a person down into the sea, where the person can either remain in the chair, enjoying the water or go for a swim. The Seatrac system can help the disabled, older people and pregnant (怀孕的) women.

The chair is operated by remote control. When the person is ready to get out of the water, the Seatrac system brings the chair back to the top of the slope. It’s even possible to take a shower in the Seatrac chair after going for a swim.

Seatrac was invented and developed in Greece. The idea for it came when one of the inventors Ignatios Fotiou, was talking with a friend who used a wheelchair. The friend said he enjoyed the sea but didn’t like having to be carried into the ocean as if he were “a bag of potatoes”.

Mr Fotiou realized that there must be a way to make it easier for wheelchair users to get into the water. Mr Fotiou worked with his partner and a professor at a Greek university to design the system. A wooden walkway allows wheelchair users to reach the Seatrac. The system is solar-powered. It doesn’t require outside power and can continue to run even if the electricity goes out. The Seatrac system can easily be packed up and stored when swimming season ends.

This summer, the Seatrac system is being used at over 220 beaches in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, and Latvia. The Seatrac service in Greece is being offered for free. The Greek government and the EU have helped pay for it, with local cities buying and managing the equipment. Greece’s government hopes that Seatrac will help attract more tourists to the country.

【推荐2】Self-driving cars are just around the corner. Such vehicles will make getting from one place to another safer and less stressful. They also could cut down on traffic, reduce pollution and limit accidents. But how should driverless cars handle emergencies? People disagree on the answer.

To understand the challenge, imagine a car suddenly meets some pedestrians in the road. It’s too late to avoid a crash. So the car’s artificial intelligence must decide whether to swerve(急转弯), To save the pedestrians, should the car swerve off the road or swerve into oncoming traffic:? What if such options :would likely kill the car’s driver?

Researchers used online survey to study people’s attitudes about such situations with driverless cars. Survey participants mostly agreed automated cars should be designed to protect the most people. That included swerving into walls to save a larger number of pedestrians. However, those same surveyed want to ride in cars that protect passengers at all costs-even if the pedestrians would now end up dying. Jean-Francois Bonnefon, a psychologist at the Toulouse School of Economics, and his colleagues reported their findings in Science.

“Automated cars can revolutionize transportation, says study coauthor Iyad Rahwan. But he adds, this new technology creates a moral (道德的) dilemma that could slow its acceptance.

Makers of computerized cars are at a loss for what to do next. Most buyers would want their cars to be programmed to protect them in preference to other people. However,   regulations might one day instruct that cars must act for the greater good. But the scientists think rules like this could drive away buyers, If so, all the potential benefits of driverless cars would be lost.

Compromises(妥协) might be possible, another psychologist, Kurt Gray says. He thinks if all driverless cars are programmed to protect their passengers in emergencies, traffic accidents will drop. Those vehicles might be dangerous to pedestrians on rare occasions. But they “won’t speed, won’t drive drunk and won’t text while driving, which would be a win for society. "

【推荐2】Some people think that success is only for those with talent or those who grow up in the right family, and others believe that success mostly comes down to luck. I’m not going to say luck, talent, and circumstances don’t come into play because they do. Some people are born into the right family while others are born with great intelligence, and that’s just the reality of how life is.

However, to succeed in life, one first needs to set a goal and then gradually make it more practical. And, in addition to that, in order to get really good at something, one needs to spend at least 10,000 hours studying and practicing. To become great at certain things, it’ll require even more time, time that most people won’t put in.

This is a big reason why many successful people advise you to do something you love. If you don’t enjoy what you do, it is going to feel like unbearable pain and will likely make you quit well before you ever become good at it.

When you see people exhibiting some great skills or having achieved great success, you know that they have put in a huge part of their life to get there at a huge cost. It’s sometimes easy to think they got lucky or they were born with some rare talent, but thinking that way does you no good, and there’s a huge chance that you’re wrong anyway.

Whatever you do, if you want to become great at it, you need to work day in and day out, almost to the point of addiction, and over a long period of time. If you’re not willing to put in the time and work, don’t expect to receive any rewards. Consistent, hard work won’t guarantee you the level of success you may want, but it will guarantee that you will become really good at whatever it is you put all that work into.

【推荐1】Today we know Antarctica as an extreme environment containing ice and snow. But new research provides evidence that the area had a rainforest in the past.

The researchers collected a piece of Earth sediment (沉积物) from under the seafloor off the coast of Antarctica. In the sediment, they discovered forest material that was estimated to be about 90 million years old. This would have been in the Cretaceous Period, when dinosaurs were the main land animals. The sediment was removed by scientists on the research icebreaker RV Polarstern in the Amundsen Sea near Pine Island Glacier.

Johann Klages is a geologist with the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research in Germany. He was the lead writer of a study on the findings, published in the journal Nature. He said the sediment was collected from a depth of about 30 meters below the ocean floor. Klages said an examination showed that the material didn’t form in the ocean.

The researchers estimate that the area — about 900 kilometers from the South Pole — had average yearly temperatures of about 12 to 13 degrees Celsius. During the warmest summer months, average temperatures likely reached between 20 and 25 degrees Celsius. The soil included fine dirt particles (颗粒) and hard clay (粘土), as well as substances linked to at least 65 different kinds of plants, the study found. Klages added that the plants included trees, ferns (蕨类) and flowering plants. While no animal remains were found, Klages said there were likely dinosaurs, flying reptiles and many insects in the environment.

The research represents new evidence of the major climate changes that Earth has experienced in the past—and is currently undergoing today. The soil in the sediment dates back to the planet’s warmest period of the past 140 million years, with sea level about 170 meters higher than today. The researchers said that the rainforest environment in Antarctica was especially surprising because each year, the area experiences a four-month polar night when there is no sunlight to fuel plant life. Klages said no ice sheets were present during the time, but seasonal snowfall was likely.

【推荐3】The confidence people place in science is frequently based not on what it really is, but on what people would like it to be. When I asked students at the beginning of the year how they would define science, many of them replied that it is an objective way of discovering certainties about the world. But science cannot provide certainties.

But doubt in science is a feature, not a bug. Indeed, the paradox (悖论) is that science, when properly functioning, questions accepted facts and yields both new knowledge and new questions—not certainty. Doubt does not create trust, nor does it help public understanding. So why should people trust a process that seems to require a troublesome state of uncertainty without always providing solid solutions?

As a historian of science, I would argue that it’s the responsibility of scientists and historians of science to show that the real power of science lies precisely in what is often perceived as its weakness: its drive to question and challenge a hypothesis (假设). Indeed, the scientific approach requires changing our understanding of the natural world whenever new evidence emerges from either experimentation or observation. Scientific findings are hypotheses that encompass the state of knowledge at a given moment. In the long run, many of them are challenged and even overturned. Doubt might be troubling, but it impels us towards a better understanding; certainties, as reassuring as they may seem, in fact hold back the scientific process.

A more realistic understanding of how science works can contribute to a better comprehension of the decisive role of doubt and skepticism in the scientific process. Indeed, science is not a linear (线性的) path leading from one success to another, but rather a constant reevaluation of hypotheses. Failures are part of the scientific process and should be taught along with successes.