【推荐1】There are so many expressions in American English that sound pleasant but are not.

“Face the music” is a good example. When someone says they have to face the music, it does not mean they are going to a musical performance or concert. To face the music means to accept the unpleasant results of an action.

Imagine a friend asks you to take care of her beautiful red sports car. She gives you the keys and says, “Thanks so much for watching my car while I’m away. But please do not drive it. It is an extremely fast car and you are not on the insurance (保险).”

But you do not listen. You want to show off to some friends and pretend the car is yours. So, you drive it around town one night. As bad luck would have it, you lose control of the car and drive it into a stop sign. The damage is severe. When your friend returns you must tell her what you have done and “face the music”.

The “music” here is the consequence or result of your actions. It could be losing her friendship or paying for repairs to her sports car or both. Whatever the music is, you must face it.

There are other American expressions that mean the same as “face the music”.

To “take your medicine” means to accept the results from something bad you have done. And if someone says, “You made your bed. Now lie in it.” He means you created a bad situation and now you will experience the results, or as we say in American spoken English, you must deal with it!

“Pay the piper” also means the same as “face the music”. But, that expression has its own very interesting beginning. We will talk about that on another Words and Their Stories.

【推荐2】Different cultures

The cultures of the East and the West really distinguish each other a lot.    1    

The origin of the eastern cultures is mainly from two countries: China and India Both of the two cultures are developed by rivers-the Yellow River in China and the Hindu River in India.    2    When the two mother rivers gave birth to the Eastern culture, another famous culture was brought up on the Mesopotamian Plain-the Mesopotamian Civillzation. This civilization later on developed into the cultures of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.    3    Like the Chinese culture, the European culture also crossed waters.When the Brtish settled down in America, their culture went with them over the Atlantic Ocean.So the American culture doen't distinguish from the European culture a lot.

    4    Take the language system for example. In the East, most languages belong to the pictographic language while the Westerm languages are mostly bused on the Latin system. Other causes like human race difference count well. But what's more, due to the far distance and the steep areas between the East and West, the two cultures seldom communicate until recent centuries. So they grew up totally in their own ways with almost no-interference(干扰)from the other.

The differences are everywhere.    5    But different cultures make the world of 21st century more colorful. The cultural gap should not be the obstacle(障碍) to the civilization of human being. It ought to be the motivation of our going farther.

【推荐2】Scientists based in Japan’s Osaka University have found a way to 3D print wagyu beef (the most expensive Japanese beef) in a lab — a step they believe will one day help make widely available and sustainably-produced cuts of cultured meat that closely resemble original products.

Using cells that they took from wagyu cows, the Japanese scientists set out to create a structure with the special feature seen in wagyu beef that makes it different from other cuts of beef. By isolating beef cells, the scientists organized how muscles, fat and other cells should be placed. The researchers then shaped these tissues (组织) into the form of a steak using a technique called 3D bioprinting (生物打印), where cell structures can be made to look like real tissues in living things. The researchers believe that the development could be a big step toward a sustainable future. Its origins from real meat also make it different from plant-based options.

“By improving this technology, it will be possible to not only reproduce complex meat structures, but also make subtle adjustments to the fat and muscle components,” Michiya Matsusaki, one of the project’s researchers, said excitedly in a statement. Michiya added that with these adjustments, more customers might one day be able to order a cultured cut of meat with the amount of fat they like, tailor-made to their tastes and health concerns.

Wagyu beef is known to be extremely expensive, with high-grade wagyu fetching prices of up to $200 per pound and adult cows selling for more than $30,000. In 2019, Japan’s wagyu exports reached a record high of $268.8 million in profits, up 20% from 2018.

While this might be the first cut of wagyu beef ever to be 3D-printed, other attempts have been made to bio-print steaks. In February this year, Aleph Farms and the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Israel Institute of Technology jointly bio-printed and cultivated a rib eye steak using real cow cells.

【推荐3】Every new parent knows that rocking can calm that uneasy baby when it’s time to take a nap. But the benefits of gentle movement may go beyond the baby stage. Because two new studies show that rocking also helps grown-ups, both human and mouse, get a good night’s sleep.

What should be no surprise is that movement can calm someone. Think of how many times you’ve fallen asleep on a train. But can motion really cause a nap, and make for a deeper sleep?

To find out, researchers invited 18 healthy volunteers for a sleepover. “So they came to the lab and slept one time on the motionless, normal bed. And one night where they got rocked.” said Aurore Perrault, a sleep researcher at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. “And what we find is that when compared to a motionless night, a whole night of rocking sleep has a beneficial effect not only on sleep beginning but also on sleep continuity. “Subjects who were rocked also did better on a memory test the next morning than the stiller sleepers.

In the second study, Kompotis, a student at the University of Lausanne, rocked a group of mice. “Whether rocking affects sleep in other species was never before discussed. So the main questions for our study were whether rocking affects sleep in mice and what is the possible system? ”

Kompotis placed the mouse cages on a platform that moved from side to side. Though mice were rocked four times faster than their human counterparts—a frequency of one back-and-forth per second, or 1 Hertz, worked best—the results were strikingly similar. “During rocking at 1 Hertz, time spent asleep increased, and mice fell asleep twice as fast as at still condition.” However, additional studies could allow the researchers to identify a new aim for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia (失眠).

If you want a good night’s sleep, you might think about adding a little swing to your night-time routine.