【推荐3】Scientific research depends on far-sighted people who can think outside the box. Such research is key to our understanding of the universe, the development of physical science, and our ability to enjoy world-changing technology products.

One such far-sighted people is John B. Goodenough, now 97, who developed the lithium-ion battery (锂离子电池) in the 1970s. Now, decades after his important breakthrough, Goodenough enters history as the winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry of 2019. He shares the award with Akira Yoshino, 71, and M Stanley Whittingham, 77, who co-created the battery with Goodenough at the University of Oxford.

“Through their work, they have created the right conditions for wireless and fossil fuel-free society, and brought the greatest benefit to humankind,” said the Nobel Foundation.

Yet despite this rechargeable battery benefiting billions of people around the world every day, we too often take science for granted.

Indeed, the Nobel Committee - and even Goodenough himself - hadn’t seemed to appreciate the impact his research would have on future generation. “At the time we developed the battery, it was just something to do,” Goodenough told the Times Newspaper earlier this year. “I didn’t know what electrical engineers would do with the battery. I really didn’t anticipate cellphones, camera and everything else.”

As many have agreed - and Goodenough shows - the science of today is the technology of tomorrow. Goodenough’s invention is evidence of imagination being put to work for the greater good. For that, his research is good enough at last.

【推荐1】Marine Layer is an American clothing company that has recently earned an impressive qualification. It is the first in the world to take old T-shirts and transform them into brand new ones, using 100% recycled materials.    1     The collection was launched on April 28 to much fanfare in the eco-fashion world.

Re-spun shirts are made from old T-shirts that supporters have mailed to the company or dropped off in store.     2     Then they are cleaned using waterless technology, broken down, and woven into a colored cotton fiber. It is mixed with 50% recycled fiber to create the final yarn(纱).

    3     Interestingly, Recover has been recycling fabrics since the 1940s, when people were looking for a solution to clothing shortages during World War II. The yarn is sent to Los Angeles for milling and sewing, from where the finished shirts are distributed to Marine Layer’s 41 stores and online shops.

    4     Each shirt varies slightly in color. No water, chemicals, or dyes are used in production. Best of all, Marine Layer has no intention of stopping with its first Re-Spun collection. Customers are urged to keep sending in their old shirts using a prepaid mailer, and will get $5 credit for each one, up to a total of $25.

It’s exciting to see the great ways in which fashion companies are trying to reduce their environmental impact. This fabric recycling technology promises to revolutionize the industry and make good use of the 80 pounds of clothing that the average American throws away each year.     5    

【推荐2】Innovation (创新) comes from environments where ideas can connect.     1    ? This is the very question a new information chart from Top Masters looks to answer. According to the report, ground-breaking innovations have come despite the tragic effect of epidemics throughout history. This is a timely report because people are coming up with some innovative ideas to address many of the challenges brought on by COVID-19.

As epidemics go, the Black Death of the 1300s was extremely shocking.     2    . According to the report, it was responsible for changing the economic and social structure of Europe and the creation of a middle class.

There were other outbreaks of the plague in England later on. In 1592, London faced an outbreak that shut down theaters for six months. This led Shakespeare to start writing poetry to make a living.     3    . Another plague in 1606 also closed the theatres in London, and this time Shakespeare wrote King Lear and Macbeth.

In the US, the Boston smallpox epidemic of 1721 led 1o the spread of variolation (天花接种) which was responsible for reducing the death rate from 14% to 2%, as well as the first steps towards vaccines.     4    

COVID-19 is causing serious damage around the world. And although the death rate is nowhere close, the economic impact has been overwhelming. On the negative side, it has highlighted many of the shortcoming in the health-care industry as nurses and doctors battle the virus unfortunately under-equipped.

    5    . Today’s innovators are addressing ventilator (呼吸机)shortages by using 3D printers and designing simpler ventilators; distillers are producing hand sanitizer (消毒剂); companies are making washable and reusable masks; app are tracking the virus and fighting the spread of misinformation.

【推荐3】In a study published in Nature Machine Intelligence, researchers at Ohio State University show how artificial intelligence (AI) can follow clinical trials to identify drugs for repurposing, a solution that can help advance innovative treatments.

Repurposing drugs is legal and not unusual. When doctors prescribe drugs that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for purposes different from what is printed on the labels, the drugs are being used “off - label”. Just because a drug is FDA - approved for a specific type of disease does not prevent it from having possible benefits for other purposes.

For example, Metformin, a drug that is FDA - approved for treating type 2 diabetes, is also used to treat PCOS (a disease of women), and other diseases. Trazodone, an anti - depressant with FDA - approval to treat depression, is also prescribed by doctors to help treat patients with sleep issues.

The Ohio State University research team created an AI deep learning model for predicting treatment probability with patient data including the treatment, outcomes , and potential confounders (干扰因素).

Confounders are related to the exposure and outcome. For example , a connection is identified between music festivals and increases in skin rashes (红疹). Music festivals do not directly cause skin rashes. In this case, one possible confounding factor between the two may be outdoor heat, as music festivals tend to run outdoors when the temperature is high, and heat is a known cause for rashes. When working with real - world data, confounders could number in the thousands. AI deep learning is well-suited to find patterns in the complexity of potentially thousands of confounders.

The researcher team used confounders including population data and co-prescribed drugs. With this proof -of-concept, now clinicians have a powerful AI tool to rapidly discover new treatments by repurposing existing medications.

【推荐1】Living by the forest may be romantic, but living in a city makes you more attractive to the opposite sex if you are a frog, at least.

Increasingly, recent studies have shown significant differences between urban animals and rural creatures from the same species —and this makes a lot of sense. Mankind is causing dramatic changes over a wide range of environments and many creatures are slowly adapting to urban conditions. Just recently, researchers found that some urban spiders are no longer afraid of lights; now, a new study reports that city life makes male frogs more attractive.

The authors, led by Wouter Halfwerk from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, compared the “chuck” calls of frogs living in both urban areas and forests near the Panama Canal. Previous research had found that creatures, such as birds, frogs, and grasshoppers sing or call differently in noisy urban areas, but it was unclear what the effects of these changes are.

“Urbanization can cause species to adjust their sexual displays, because the effectiveness of mating signals is influenced by environmental conditions,” researchers write in the study. “Despite many examples that show that mating signals in urban conditions differ from those in rural conditions, we do not know whether these differences provide a combined reproductive and survival benefit.”

Now, researchers found that urban frogs “sing” more often and use more complex calls than their rural counterparts. They then recorded these calls and played them back to female frogs in the lab. They found that 75% of the females were more attracted to the more complex urban calls.

It’s not exactly clear why this happens, though researchers suspect it has a lot to with how safe the environment is. While calling out can help you get a mate, it can also draw in predators. Since cities generally have far fewer predators, frogs are free and safe to let out their sounds. “It definitely shows that if you change the abundance of predators, parasites(寄生虫) and mates, that induces a strong evolutionary response,” says Halfwerk.

【推荐2】Commercial airlines alone contribute around3 percent of total global carbon emissions (排放). But the industry is actively looking for green solutions in the form of sustainable (可持续的) airline fuel, and in one case, that fuel may have had a previous life as your household food waste. In a study released this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers detail a method of transforming food waste into sustainable airline fuel.

Biomass, such as animal and food waste, can be transformed into biofuels, which are renewable liquid fuels made from organic matter. Derek Vardon, a senior research engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), says that their fuel worked as a mixture of 90percent conventional petrol airline fuel and10percent alternative airline fuel required by the industry currently. They also show they could push it to a70/30mixture with more time and testing available.

Major companies are eager to participate in sustainable airline fuel because some sustainable solutions, such as battery-operated commercial planes, just aren’t possible yet with current battery technology. A battery-powered plane would be too heavy to fly long distances, so fuel that works in the same way as the fuel we have is a simpler way to trade out emission-heavy fossil fuels.

Vardon says that because the wet waste used in the process would normally go to a landfill and break down to release greenhouse gases, the process of making and using sustainable airline fuel could actually have a negative carbon footprint when scaled up.

Commercial airlines are also on board to find an affordable and sustainable solution to the carbon-intensive process of air travel. Airlines are looking to hit aggressive sustainability goals by 2050, including decreasing net carbon dioxide emissions by50percent.