【推荐1】Conner Sessions’s decision to combine his love of science and animals nearly destroyed him. After graduating from the University of Washington (UW), Seattle, in 2016, he took a job as an animal technician, someone to clean and feed mice, pigs, dogs, and other creatures used in biomedical research at the university.

Sessions had grown up around farm animals and considered himself an animal lover. That became his Achilles’ heel. During his work, he raised the puppies from birth, sometimes tube feeding those that had trouble nursing. And then he was required to euthanize (使安乐死) massive numbers of them—more than 13,000 a year. The work eventually helped the research, but he couldn’t shake feelings of anxiety, sadness and regret.

Sessions began to struggle with a heavy depression and guilt. Yet he didn’t feel like he could talk to anyone about it. Instead, Sessions found himself sneaking into the employee locker room and crying.

Sessions’s condition also strikes a shocking number of lab animal workers. Yet few of them want to talk about the problem. Unlike doctors, they aren’t just surrounded by pain and death—they ‘re often the ones causing it.

That’s made those in this field loath to reach out for help. At best, friends and family don’t understand what they do, or why. At worst, animal rights groups viewed them as murderers. Institutions avoid discussing the problem, often hidden from public view in university basements, for fear of attracting negative attention to their animal research programs. So those who tend to lab animals have largely suffered in silence.

Some at UW are trying to change this. A small group of volunteers has launched a program called Dare 2 Care. Dare 2 Care set up a “crisis” phone line and email for those who are struggling, hoping to make the university’s invisible population feel seen instead of hiding themselves in the shadows. Yet it’s unclear whether their approaches will help.

【推荐3】Does it feel like you are forever chasing (追逐) a rainbow? That happiness is just around the corner but when you step forward, you find that the things that once can make you happy no longer make you happy like before?     1     We, humans, tend to behave this way, which essentially limits our ability to be happy. There is a cool name for this phenomenon — the hedonic treadmill (享乐适应症).

    2     To put it simply, a hedonic treadmill is our tendency to maintain a relatively stable level of happiness, despite undergoing major life changes.     3     In other words, humans have this unique tendency to return to a set happiness level after some time.

We often tell ourselves that if we achieve a certain something, we will finally be happy.     4     The moment we reach our goals, we experience a brief phase of satisfaction. And then we set our eyes on the next big prize. Thus begins our cycle of constant longing and traversing (穿梭) on the hedonic treadmill.

When unchecked, this eventually becomes an endless cycle that always limits our ability to be happy.     5    

【推荐1】White sand beaches of the Cocos Islands, which are known as a splendid tourist destination surrounded by greenish blue water, have now been filled with wastes like abandoned plastic water bottles, toothbrushes and cigarette lighters.

Jennifer Lavels, a marine scientist, went to these tropical islands with her research team. Knowing that lots of beaches were polluted by plastic wastes, the team conducted a careful scientific examination on the coast, only to find the problem caused by pieces of trash humans left was worse than expected.

Not all plastics are to blame. They are necessary in places like hospitals and airplanes , and make our vehicles lighter and more efficient. However , other plastics, especially disposable(一次性的) plastics , account for the growing mess on the beaches. Islands all over the world are jammed with plastics. And the Cocos Islands are no exception.

It requires the greatest effort of all time to control plastic pollution in modern society. No matter how tall the hurdles are , something has to be done.

Apparently, demand for disposable plastics must be reduced greatly. “Why don't we carry around bags that we can use over and over again?” asked Richard Gross, a chemist who researches innovative ways to make more sustainable plastics. “Let's carry about reusable lunch boxes. We should understand how serious the situation is.”

Although it is important for individuals to make an effort to avoid using disposable plastics, it is also generally believed that only with international rules can such a deep- rooted, common, and worldwide disaster be tackled.

However, the U.N, which engages in dealing with accelerating climate change and public health crises , obviously isn't paying enough attention to calling for international action on plastic pollution. As a result, billions of plastic products will still be produced every year, many of which will end up in the ocean.

Nowadays, fish are eating plenty of plastics, and people eat those fish. It remains unrevealed how it will affect human health, but clearly the amount of plastics used has increased many times in the last several decades, and if this tendency goes on , by 2050 an enormous amount of carbon will be released into the already carbon-saturated

【推荐2】The amount of sea ice surrounding Antarctica has reached its lowest level since modern records began, for the second year in a row. Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats on the ocean’s surface around the planet’s polar regions. It forms at much lower sustained temperatures than freshwater ice does, at around-1.8 degrees Celsius. Sea ice builds up during the winter until it reaches its maximum extent, and then melts (融化) away in the spring and summer until it reaches its minimum extent.

In Antarctica, where summer and winter are relative to the Northern Hemisphere, sea ice normally reaches its maximum extent in September when sea ice covers around 7 million square miles. At its minimum extent at the end of February, historically only around I million square miles remains. Last year the minimum sea ice extent was less than 772, 000 square miles, the lowest total since scientists began recording sea ice extent with satellites in 1979. On 21 February this year, that number had reduced to just 691, 000 square miles, which is roughly 40 per cent less than the average between 1981 and 2010.

The record-breaking minimum was expected after an extraordinarily hot January which was the seventh-warmest since records began 174 years ago. “By the end of January, we could tell it was only a matter of time until the record was broken,” said Will Hobbs, an Antarctic sea ice expert at the University of Tasmania and the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership. Antarctica’s minimum sea ice extent will likely continue to decrease in the coming decades as global temperatures rise as a result of human-caused climate change and more multiyear ice, which acts as a seed for new ice growth, melts away.

Sea ice is crucial for polar predators(捕食性动物) such as penguins in Antarctica and polar bears in the Arctic, which use the ice as a platform for hunting. But the sea ice also helps stabilise ice on Antarctica. “Lower sea ice extent means that ocean waves will pound the coast of the giant ice sheet，further reducing ice shelves around Antarctic,” said Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

【推荐3】Night light from street lamps and phones change the body clock, therefore weakening the body’s ability to control blood sugar levels and raising the risk of diabetes (糖尿病) by more than a quarter, new research has found.

The research was based on almost 100,000 men and women in China who were exposed to artificial light while it was dark outside. Those exposed the most were 28 per cent more likely to develop this condition because of the interference (干预) the light had on the body’s production of melatonin (褪黑激素) which affects our sleep patterns.

Evidence is growing that 24/7 lifestyles are seriously damaging our health by interfering with the production of melatonin. Long-time exposure to residential outdoor artificial light was linked to a rise in blood sugar levels. It was also associated with poorer function of the cells which control blood sugar.

Lead author Dr. Yu Xu, of Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai, said, “Despite over 80 per cent of the world’s population being exposed to light pollution at night, this problem has gained limited attention from scientists until recent years.”

The study estimated more than nine million cases of diabetes in Chinese adults can be attributed to it. A total of 98,658 participants underwent interviews to provide medical, household income, education, way of life, and family history information. Body weight and height were measured to calculate BMI, and blood samples were taken to obtain levels of both fasting and after-meal glucose (葡萄糖).

Participants were assigned an average artificial outdoor light exposure level for the location using satellite images. They were divided into five groups based on highest to lowest exposure. On average, for every 42 people living in regions with the most light pollution, there was one more case of diabetes.

Dr. Xu said, “Exposure to artificial light at night is a common environmental risk factor in modern societies.” More than 99 per cent of people in the US and Europe live under light-polluted skies. Earth’s 24-hour day-night cycle has resulted in most organisms, including humans, having an inbuilt circadian (昼夜的) timing system, but light pollution has been found to change the circadian rhythm of insects, birds and other animals, resulting in early death and loss of biodiversity.