【推荐1】Dopamine (多巴胺) is often considered as the source of pleasure. But that’s not quite what it does. Dopamine is what makes us desire things. And it’s that desire that gives us the motivation to get up and do things.

In fact, your brain considers something more important than others mainly depending on how much dopamine it’s expecting to get. If an activity releases a lot of dopamine, you’ll be motivated to repeat it, over and over. So which behavior releases dopamine? Any activity where you expect there’s a possible reward releases it.

And in today’s digital society, we are flooding our brains with unnaturally high amounts of dopamine on a daily basis, even if we don’t know it. Some examples of high dopamine behavior include: visiting social media websites, playing video games, etc.

And you might think, “Oh so what? It’s not like it’s harming me in any way.” But you’d be wrong. Our bodies have a biologically balanced system. Whenever an imbalance occurs, our body adapts to it. Basically, your brain gets used to having high levels of dopamine and those levels become your new normal. Thus, you develop a dopamine tolerance. This can be a huge problem because the things that don’t give you as much dopamine don’t interest you any longer. That’s why people tend to prefer playing video games or surfing the Internet, compared to studying or working on their business.

But it is possible to make doing difficult things feel easier. Separate yourself from the unnaturally high amounts of dopamine, or at least expose yourself to it far less frequently. Only then will normal, everyday, low dopamine activities become exciting again and you’ll be able to do them for longer. That’s why you might want to limit your phone and computer usage, along with other high dopamine-releasing behavior.

We are all dopamine addicts to a certain extent. And that’s a good thing because dopamine motivates us to achieve our goals and improve ourselves. But it’s up to you to decide where you’re going to get your dopamine.

【推荐2】Drug development is a risky and costly business. Many possibly effective drugs fail to cut the mustard during the experiments. One reason is that drugs which work on lab animals may not work quite so well in human tests. Being able to pick winners and losers as early as possible would save money, and the One Health Company thinks it may have found a way. It is offering to help medical groups test their cancer drugs on sick pets.

There are several benefits. By treating animals with existing cancers, it hopes to avoid a problem with modern animal research, which is that the “model” animals and diseases that are used to test drugs are not always good stand-ins (替身) for the natural illness. For example, mice used to test cancer drugs may have had their tumours (肿瘤) placed into their bodies, or their immune systems weakened with drugs.

Another plus is that pet owners tend to be great caretakers who are very knowledgeable about their four-legged friends and are likely to report even small changes in behaviors. Lab animals are checked far less often.

Perhaps the most useful aspect of using pets for drug experiments, however, is that there is no law on animals’ medical records. One Health has been able to get 98% of records on animals from hospitals—a number that is impossible for humans. That allows the company to find the right animals for a drug experiment.

Based on the benefits above, the company hopes that pets will prove useful in other diseases in addition to cancers. Horses, for example, seem to be good stand-ins for humans when it comes to arthritis (关节炎). Cats, meanwhile, may prove instructive in breast cancer research.

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【推荐3】Dogs, and sometimes cats, have long been used as support animals to help humans deal with various physical conditions, but ducks, not so much.

Daniel made international headlines after photos of him accompanying his human on an airplane were posted online. It’s uncommon that you can see a duck on an airplane. So it’s no surprise that he caught people’s eye-both those on the plane and those looking at his photos online. Mark, whose photos got the most attention, says that everyone on the plane was delighted to have such a lovely duck on board, and couldn’t stop taking photos of him.

Daniel is a support animal for his owner, Carla, who is recovering from stress disorder. In 2012, Carla adopted Daniel as a pet, but being involved in a terrible accident a year later, he became her support animal. She was a horse-and-carriage driver, when a car crashed into her carriage from behind, injuring the horse and her.

It took Carla four months to learn how to walk again, but apart from physical pain, she also had to deal with stress disorder. However, Daniel was there for her when she needed him. Carla wouldn’t be able to leave the house after the accident if it weren’t for Daniel. Since the accident, the duck has accompanied her everywhere, mostly on car rides. This time marked his first airplane flight. Carla had a letter from her doctor in which he states that it is in her best interest to have Daniel around as a support animal. She presented it to the flight crew so they allowed the duck on board.

Daniel is apparently smarter than your average bird, too. When he’s at home and he needs his diaper(尿布) changed, he just walks to the changing table. When he’s hungry, he walks to the refrigerator or to his feed bowl. “Some people have dogs. Others have cats. I have a duck,” Carla said “I hope more people can accept that a duck can make a very good, loving and loyal companion and support animal.”

【推荐1】As the commercialization of 5G accelerates in China, more companies are exploring what smart cities will look like in the 5G times.

US chip giant Intel Corp, for instance, is teaming up with partners such as China Unicom to build a 5G smart park in Nanjing, to offer a peek into the future of such smart cities.

The future smart city must be data-centric (以数据为中心) and intelligently interconnected. So how to better capture, transmit, store and analyze data will be the center of the future. Intel’s advantages can be found in its hardware and software solutions which can meet demands of multiple scenarios (多情景分析). The company will be devoted to opening cooperation, creating an innovative ecology and working with partners to create an intelligent future.

The company’s project, the Future Technological Smart Center in Nanjing, aims to gather a wide range of domestic and foreign partners around artificial intelligence, internet of things, 5G, cloud computing and other technological innovations to explore what future cities will look like. Intel said the Nanjing project is designed to build industry benchmarks, implement excellent solutions, and offer experience for the construction of smart cities and parks in the Yangtze River Delta region and even the entire country.

A Deloitte report said that China has already included the smart city initiative in its national strategy and made significant investments in these projects.

Both first-tier cities and small and medium-sized cities are home to smart city projects. The nation has formed many smart city groups across the eastern and southern coastal areas of China, Deloitte said.

Deloitte senior partner Ma Jionglin said in an earlier interview that China is one of the most active countries in the world in building smart cities. With advances in urban management and the increasing emphasis on the work and lifestyle of people, smart cities will be entering a new stage of development.

【推荐2】Portland, Oregon, just got another reason to call itself “Bike City USA”.

UPS has started a trial program to deliver packages there using an electric-powered bicycle. The environmentally friendly Cargo Cruiser is a tricycle with a large brown box on the back. Like any electronic bike, the Cargo Cruiser can be powered by foot, motor, or a combination of both.

UPS began testing e-Bikes in Hamburg, Germany, in 2012, but this is the first time the technology has been used for package deliveries in the United States.

The e-Bikes support UPS’s efforts to reduce its carbon emissions, ease urban noise levels, and improve air quality. The amount of energy to be saved by using e-Bikes hasn’t been quantified, but the test vehicle in Portland “will probably displace about two gallons of fuel every day”, said Scott Phillippi, UPS’s engineering manager.

Phillippi says that one e-Bike alone won't create a huge difference in UPS’s carbon emissions, but he describes it as “a piece of our overall strategy” as far as environmental impacts and efficiencies.

It also ties into the company’s broader strategy to settle a problem that troubles Portland and other cities around the world: traffic jam. According to UPS, traffic jam costs it hundreds of millions of dollars a year in additional operating costs. The time when the average UPS delivery truck is stuck in traffic is about 16 minutes a day, slowing its deliveries and increasing the company's carbon emissions.

The pilot program is in its early stages and already has hit its first stage: ice storms pulled trees and branches down all over the city, blocking bike lanes and making travel dangerous. How do e-Bikes deal with it?

If the trial proves successful, you may be able to see UPS delivery people wearing bike shorts in other places around the country, “Other cities have expressed some interest,” Phillippi said.