【推荐1】Philadelphia in the US passed a significant soda tax proposal that will levy (征税) 1.5 cents per liquid ounce on distributors.

Philadelphia’s new measure was approved by a 13-to-4 city council vote. It sets a new bar for similar initiatives across the country. It is proof that taxes on sugary drinks can win substantial support outside super-liberal areas. Until now, the only city to successfully pass and implement a soda tax was Berkeley, California, in 2014.

The tax will apply to regular and diet sodas, as well as other drinks with added sugar, such as Gatorade and iced teas. It’s expected to raise $410 million over the next five years, most of which will go towards funding a universal pre-kindergarten programme for the city.

While the city council vote was met with applause inside the council room, opponents to the measure, including soda lobbyists, made sharp criticisms and a promise to challenge the tax in court.

“The tax passed today unfairly singles out beverages — including low and no-calorie choices,” said Lauren Kane, spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association. “But most importantly, it is against the law. So we will side with the majority of the people of Philadelphia who oppose this tax and take legal action to stop it.”

An industry-backed anti-tax campaign has spent at least $4 million on advertisements. The ads criticized the measure, characterizing it as a “grocery tax”.

Public health groups applauded the approved tax as a step towards fixing certain lasting health issues that plague Americans. “The move to recapture a small part of the profits from an industry that pushes a product that contributes to diabetes, obesity and heart disease in poorer communities in order to reinvest in those communities will sure be inspirational to many other places,” said Jim Krieger, executive director of Healthy Food America. “Indeed, we are already hearing from some of them. It’s not ‘just Berkeley’ any more.”

Similar measures in California’s Albany, Oakland, San Francisco and Colorado’s Boulder are becoming hot-button issues. Health advocacy groups have hinted that even more might be coming.

【推荐1】A study of almost 2,700 children aged between seven and ten in 38 schools in Barcelona, Spain, first researches the impact of traffic noise on child cognitive development over time.

The children in the study are in a critical stage for the development of memory and attention skills, which are essential to learning. The research found that children exposed to about three times more traffic in the street than other children had memory development that was 23% slower and attention ability development 5% slower over a year.

Noise is the second most damaging environmental factor to health, after air pollution, and, for example, was already known to increase heart attacks in adults. The UN said that urban noise pollution was growing into a global public health threat, leading to 12,000 early deaths a year in the EU alone and affecting many cities.

But research on the impact of road noise on children was limited until now. “We do not understand that noise can actually be toxic (有害的) from a physical point of view,” said Dr. Maria Foraster, from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, who led the study. “We think that we adapt to it, but research has shown that we don’t completely — we still have a physiological (生理的) response.”

The research revealed that peaks of noise heard inside the classroom, such as the passing of loud trucks, had more impact than a higher average level of noise. It also found higher noise levels at school were more damaging than at home.

Prof. Iroise Dumontheil, at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, said, “This carefully designed study provides convincing evidence. Considering that many European children living in large cities are exposed to high road-traffic noise levels, this study has implications for public policy to reduce road-traffic noise near schools.”

The research follows previous work that showed higher levels of aircraft noise at school affected reading comprehension and cognitive development. Next, the authors said, they would like to see their findings replicated (复制) in different cities and towns, where schools may be built differently and windows opened more or less often.

【推荐2】The cost of everything — from fuel to food — seems to be rising around the world. So, growing our own food is a good way to save money.     1    . Here is some good news: There are many ways that home gardeners can save money while providing their plants with high-quality nutrients.

Consider cut grass. If you leave cut grass on the lawn, you may not need fertilizer. As grass breaks down, it releases nutrients into the soil.     2    . However, do not use fresh cut grass in garden beds. It will burn your plants. Just be sure to bury cut grass at least 25 to 30 centimeters deep. This will keep hungry wildlife from digging it up.

Compost (堆肥) is the best thing you can add to soil. To make your own compost, simply collect fruit and vegetable scraps (碎片). Do not add meat, dairy, or fats. You can keep the food scraps in a bowl in your kitchen.     3    . As the scraps break down, they add nutrients.

    4    . Are you someone who fishes? If so, you can use scraps from the fish you catch. If not, your local fish seller might give away — or sell at low cost — scraps and heads. Are you a fish owner? Plants can also be helped from used fish-tank water. This water is rich in nitrogen and other nutrients. Do you cook vegetables in water? If so, save it! The water is filled with vitamins and minerals that could help your garden. And water from boiled eggs is full of calcium.     5    . You can even use eggshells. Dry out the egg shells thoroughly. Then break them up into tiny pieces. Add the small pieces to your garden’s soil.

【推荐3】Improvements to energy efficiency, such as LED lights, are seen by many authorities as a top priority for cutting carbon emissions. Yet a growing body of research suggests that a rebound effect could wipe out more than half of the savings from energy efficiency improvements, making the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change even harder to hit.

A team led by Paul Brockway at the University of Leeds, UK, looked at the existing 33 studies on the impact of the rebound effect. First comes the direct rebound: for instance,when someone buys a more efficient car, they may take advantage of that by driving it further. Then comes the indirect rebound: fuel savings leave the owner with more money to spend elsewhere in the economy, consuming energy.

Although the 33 studies used different methods to model the rebound effect, they produced very consistent estimates of its impact, leading the team to conclude that the effect wipes out, on average, 63 percent of the anticipated energy savings.

“We're not saying energy efficiency doesn't work. What we're saying is rebound needs to be taken more seriously,” says Brockway.

The idea that increased efficiency may not deliver the hoped­for savings dates back to the Jevons paradox(悖论), named after the economist William Stanley Jevons, who, in 1865,observed that more efficient coal use led to more demand for coal.

If the rebound effect does prove to be as big as suggested, it means future global energy demand will be higher than expected and the world will need far more wind and solar power and carbon­capture technology than is currently being planned for.

But that doesn't mean nothing can be done to limit the rebound effect. One answer is to double down on energy efficiency and do twice as much to achieve the same effect.

【推荐3】Scientists have designed ways to “read” words directly from brains. Brain implants (植入物) can translate internal speech into external signals, allowing communication from people with paralysis (瘫痪) or diseases that steal their ability to talk or type. New results from two studies, presented on November 14 provide additional evidence of the extraordinary potential that brain implants have for restoring lost communication, says Leigh Hochberg, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“The new studies targeted internal speech, which requires that a person only think. Our device predicts internal speech directly, allowing the patient to just focus on saying a word inside his head and transform it into text,” says Sarah Wandelt.

Neural signals associated with words are detected by electrodes (电极) implanted in the brain. The signals can then be translated into text, which can be made an oral speech by computer programs.

Another approach presented at the meeting, led by neuroscientist Sean Metzger of the University of California, San Francisco and his colleagues, relied on spelling. The participant was a man called Pancho who hadn’t been able to speak for more than 15 years because of a disease. In this study, Pancho attempted to silently think code (代码) words, such as “alpha” for A and “echo” for E. By stringing these letters into words, he produced sentences such as “I do not want that” and “You have got to be kidding.” Each session would end when Pancho attempted to squeeze his hand thereby creating a movement-related brain signal that refused the decoding (解码).

With this system, Pancho produced about seven words per minute. That’s faster than the five words per minute his usual communication device makes, but much slower than normal speech, typically about 150 words per minute. The techniques will need to ger faster and more accurate to be useful. It’s also unclear whether the technologies will work for people with more serious speech disorders. “These are still early days,” Hochberg says.