【推荐3】Costa Rica’s jungles might seem an unlikely spot for a group of medics (医学工作者) to gather together. But struggling through this dense stretch of Central American wilderness, that’s exactly who you might encounter.

Trading medical instruments and lab-made medicines for rafts and snake venom, these medics come together under the guidance of World Extreme Medicine (WEM), an organisation training medical staff like nurses and doctors to work in the world’s most unstable and remote conditions.

Extreme medicine is a subdiscipline (分支) of medicine in which healthcare providers respond to crises in war zones, assist those left behind after humanity’s most horrific disasters, and conduct medicine not just on land, but also deep beneath the sea and even in outer space. While all medics need to think on their feet, Mark Hannaford, the founder of WEM, explains that for extreme medics, that need is heightened. Medics might treat a patient in the burning heat of a desert, on an ice-cold tundra(苔原), or stabilize a person at altitude or in the dark. Despite this, he says, “you don’t need to run a marathon with a backpack on every day to be an extreme medic. Physical fitness is not the challenge. The challenge is adequately preparing yourself for the environment you are going into.”

“You really have to take good self-care in these environments,” adds pre-hospital lead and extreme medicine trainer, Eoin Walker. In places like Costa Rica, he teaches medics skills in security, diet and wound closure etc.. But medics also learn to care for their own physical and mental health. “In the UK, we don’t have to remember to drink every hour, or clean and dry our feet, or look at our calorie content — but you do in that environment,” he says.

“People who live where disaster hits still have issues like diabetes, babies are still being born, people need medical treatment,” says Mark. And with more disasters set to strike, their needs will only increase. “Training extreme medics is becoming more important as we face environmental challenges like climate change,” he adds.

【推荐2】Recently, four professors of neuroscience were awarded the Brain Prize for their lifechanging contributions to the research on migraines(偏头痛), a disease previously not understood well.

Professor Michael Moskowitz from Harvard Medical School, Peter Goadsby from King’s College London, Lars Edvinsson from Lund University in Sweden, and Jes Olesen from Rigshospitalet, Denmark, were celebrated as the recipients of the Brain Prize, the world’s most distinguished award highlighting achievements in brain research. The Crown Prince of Denmark presented the four professors with a grand prize of roughly 1.5 million dollars on October 25 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Migraines remain one of the most serious and common neurological illnesses millions around the world suffer. Studies show that women are three times more likely to experience frequent and intense migraines than men, and symptoms can last up to 24 hours. Typically, these intense head-throbbing pains are also accompanied by vomiting(呕吐), dizziness and sensitivity to sound, light, and touch.

After over forty years of research, the four professors pinpointed the major cause — chemicals released within the brain. Previously, the main causes of migraines were thought to be stress, pressure or anxiety. In 1979, Professor Michael Moskowitz discovered that headaches occur when thin nerves are found in our head and face to interact with a highly-sensitive membrane(膜) surrounding our brain, releasing chemicals called neuropeptides. These chemicals can then cause the blood vessels in our head to expand and also send pain signals to the brain. Later, research by Professor Goadsby and Edvinsson revealed that the specific neuropeptide which plays the central role in causing the intense headache is calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP). Then, Professor Olesen’s work further confirmed that CGRP is indeed responsible for the pain, rather than a chemical produced in the brain as a result of the migraines.

The work by these scientists paves the way for developing more effective medicine. While past treatments can only temporarily stop the pain, scientists say that the newly developed drugs not only prevent migraines but also don’t cause the harmful side effects patients had to endure.

【推荐3】We’ve had weather forecasts for decades. Forecasting our near-term health is far tougher. Yet knowing early that we may be coming down with the flu could be very helpful. The good news is that wearable technology, such as smartwatches, is beginning to provide such information. The smartwatch-like systems contain sensors that collect data.

Jessilyn Dunn is a biomedical engineer at Duke University in Durham. Her team asked 49 volunteers to wear wristbands before and after they received a cold or flu virus. At least once per second, these wristbands recorded heart rates, body movements skin temperatures and more. After analyzing the data, Dunn’s team found that in nine out of very ten volunteers, there were signs of developing illness at least a day before symptoms (症状) appeared.

The early warning, says Dunn, can head off severe symptoms that otherwise would send some people into hospitals. And knowing you’re sick before you have symptoms can warn you to lie low so you can reduce the chance of spreading your disease.

However, these systems aren’t yet ready for the real world, notes virologist Stacey Schultz-Cherry. “This is exciting but also very preliminary (初步的),” says Schultz-Cherry. “Much more work is needed before this approach can be rolled out on a larger scale.” One challenge is that many infections (感染) have analogous symptoms. Actually, besides viruses, many other things also lead to signs of a cold or the flu. Examples, Schultz-Cherry notes, include food poisoning and seasonal allergies (过敏反应). Likewise, heart rates also respond to things that have nothing to do with infections. Examples include exercise and scary movies.

Researchers expect continued improvement in prediction accuracy (准确性). Future models will show signs of developing illness. And researchers will adjust those models by analyzing how well they predict effects on thousands of people.

【推荐2】A popular short video series titled “Escape From the British Museum” has attracted millions of viewers and caused a renewed call to send unlawfully taken relics back. The three-part series tells the story of a jade teapot that comes to life and starts a journey from the British Museum back to China.

In the story, the jade teapot transforms into a young woman and escapes from the museum. She meets a Chinese journalist named Zhang Yong’an in the United Kingdom and begs him to take her back to China. Upon returning home, she not only travels across the country but also carries “letters” written by other artifacts in the museum to their respective families in China.

Inspiration for the series came from a netizen’s suggestion to create a cartoon series where artifacts come to life and return home for Chinese New Year. Zhang turned this idea into a video and spent three months researching the British Museum and crafting the storyline.

The videos have deeply moved netizens, with scenes like “writing brushstrokes(笔画) on English newspapers” and intense dialogues among the artifacts striking a chord. Many netizens expressed their desire for cultural artifacts overseas to return home with dignity and honor.

The British Museum houses about 23,000 Chinese artifacts from the Neolithic Age to the present. These include paintings, prints, jades, bronzeware and so on. Some artifacts were collected during periods of unrest in China between the late 19th and early 20th centuries when British forces invaded Beijing twice.

The jade teapot featured in the video series is not a traditional cultural relic but created by Chinese modern jade artist Yu Ting. Yu expressed satisfaction with the. attention his work has received among young people and the enthusiasm for traditional culture shown through numerous comments. On the release of the video series, the British Museum announced the loss of several items, including gold jewelry and gems, believed stolen or damaged.

The creator of the series, Zhang Jiajun, expressed gratitude for the love the series has received and hopes that more attention would be paid to the issue of cultural relics located overseas.

【推荐3】Our internal body clock has such a great impact on sporting ability that it could change the chances of Olympic gold, say researchers. The team at the University of Birmingham showed performance times varied by 26% throughout the day. Early risers reached their athletic peak around lunchtime, while night owls were the best in the evening.

The body clock controls everything in a daily rhythm. Some aspects of sporting ability were thought to peak in early afternoon but a study in the journal Current Biology suggests each competitor’s sleeping habits have a powerful impact.

They took 20 female hockey players and asked them to perform a series of 20 meters runs in shorter and shorter times. And they did it at six different times of day between 07:00 and 22 :00. The results showed a peak performance in late afternoon, but then the scientists looked separately at early-type people, late-type people and those in the middle.

This time the gap between the best and worst times was 26%, and a far more complicated picture emerged: Larks-or early risers-peaked at 12:00；Intermediate types peaked just before 16:00；Owls-or late types-peaked not long before 20:00.

Lead researcher Dr Roland Brandstaetter told the BBC News website, “Athletes and coaches would benefit greatly if they knew when the best and most suitable performance time was.” He said a 1% difference in performance would be the difference between the fourth place and a medal in many Olympic events. Body clocks can be adjusted. Jet lag is when you feel uncomfortable before adjusting to a new time. “So if you’re an early type in a competition in the evening, you could adjust sleeping times to the competition,” Dr Brandstaetter said.

Dr Brandstaetter said this provided an important lesson for talent-spotting. “It takes place more or less in adolescents, but we know half of them are owls, yet almost all cases of talent-spotting are during the school hours,” he said.

“That is when they are in the range of 70%-80% of peak performance, so we are missing out on a huge number of high performers by testing at the wrong time of day.” Commenting on the findings, Dr Thomas Kantermann, from the University of Groningen and the scientific manager of the Chrono City project in Germany, told BBC, “The study adds to our understanding about the importance of body clocks and internal time in physical performance. “Only by taking internal time into account can true and fair assessments of human performance become possible.”