【推荐1】For years, animals have been used in the testing of medicine to make sure the products are safe to use for humans. A law that doesn’t require labs to test on animals any more has been signed recently. Before the new law was in place, the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required new medicine to be tested on animals before the labs could move on to test on humans. Companies were required to test their products on animals like a monkey or dog. This causes companies to test on tens of thousands of animals every yar. Now the new law lifts the requirement for animal testing.

According to Science, researchers have been wanting to move away from animal testing. Paul Locke, scientist and lawyer at Johns Hopkins University, told the website: “We have many important drugs that have been developed using animal tests. But as we get into some of these more difficult diseases, especially neurological (神经系统的) diseases, the animal models just aren’t serving us as well.”

The chief scientist of the FDA says that they want to try and get rid of (摆脱) all animal testing. “We support other methods that are backed by science and provide the necessary data showing whether products are safe and effective,” Namandjé Bumpus told Science. One of their choices is called “organs-on-chips (器官芯片)”. These are small chips that contain human cells (细胞). The chips are used to test the effects of medicine. They mimic certain human body functions. For example, they are very soft, there can be some kind of blood flow and they are physically active, just as our bodies.

Aysha Akhtar, a neurologist and president and CEO of the Center for Modern Sciences said: “The decision is still up to the FDA to decide whether the method is to be put into practice.” Anyway, Akhtar expects that new methods of testing will be used.

【推荐3】Like humans, being overweight can have consequences for our pet's health, both short term and long term. Studies have shown that overweight dogs do not live as long.     1     . There is a risk of killing your pet with kindness.

Using special calorie-controlled foods from the vet is usually the most effective way of losing weight and well worth considering.     2     . Many vets run weight control clinics providing regular check-ups. They are often free of charge, and help to ensure that the diet is working at the correct rate.

With calorie-controlled food from the vet, you will be advised how much to feed daily. Many dry diets come with calibrated scoops (带刻度的勺子) but it is easy to overfill these. You can reduce hunger by feeding two or three times a day, so long as you don't go above the daily recommended amount.     3    

Make a record of everything—including table scraps (剩饭) and treats—that your dog eats for a few days. This is often valuable in highlighting "extra". A dog that does not seem to eat much dog food probably still has an appetite for sausages!

Increasing exercise alone is not enough, although it is helpful. Start gradually, and be careful with how much you exercise elderly pets.     5     . Consult your vet right away if you notice your dog is limping or struggling with exercise. Try to take your dog out at least twice a day and increase the activity level at home as well.

【推荐1】The giant panda’s special black-and-white fur makes it one of the most recognizable animals on the planet. But why does it have this unique coloring? To hide from natural enemies, both in the snow and in the shadows, study lead author Tim Caro, a professor in the Department of Wildlife, Fish & Conservation Biology at the University of California, Davis, said in a new statement. Moreover, the large black circles around a panda’s eyes may help other pandas recognize it, the researchers said.

Understanding why the giant panda has such noticeable color has been a long-term problem to solve. To find out the answer, Caro and his colleagues looked at photos of pandas and 195 other carnivore(食肉动物) species, including 39 subspecies of bear. Then, they recorded the coloring on each area of those animals’ bodies, and compared them with areas of the panda’s body. “Compared with the previous studies, the breakthrough in this study was treating each part of the body as an independent area,” Caro said.

The research team tried to figure out the purpose of the dark-colored furry areas. After going through many comparisons, the researchers determined that the white parts of the giant panda help it hide in the snow. In contrast, its black arms and legs help it hide in the shadows, they said. The panda’s white-and-black coloring didn’t appear to be related to temperature regulation. Nor did they find evidence that the dark circles around a panda’s eyes helped to make them look cuter.

“This really was a great effort by our team, finding and scoring thousands of images and scoring more than 10 areas per picture from over 20 possible colors,” study co-author Ted Stankowich, an assistant professor of biology at California State University, Long Beach, said in the statement. “Sometimes it takes hundreds of hours of hard work to answer the simplest question: Why is the panda black and white?”

【推荐2】Hybrid workers take more exercise, get more sleep and eat healthier, according to a study conducted by IWG, a workspace provider.

A survey of 2,000 people who have become hybrid workers since the pandemic—meaning they spend only part of their week commuting (通勤) into a city-centre office—found that they now had more time for fitness, cooking and sleep.

Dr Sara Kayat, a General Practitioner (普通科医生) of National Health Service, said: “There is no doubt that hybrid working has facilitated some major health benefits. A balanced diet, physical activity and good quality sleep are the bedrocks of a healthy lifestyle.”

The study included people using local working centers and working from home. It found that the average hybrid worker was now getting 4.7 hours of exercise a week, compared with 3.4 hours before the pandemic, with the most common forms of exercise being walking, running and strength training.

They are also sleeping longer, with the additional time in bed each morning adding up to 71 extra hours a year.

Eating habits also reportedly improved, with 54 per cent saying they had more time to spend cooking nutritious meals during the week, and 46 per cent and 44 per cent eating more fruit and vegetables respectively.

Some 27 per cent said they had lost weight, and 66 per cent said their mental health was good because of the shift to hybrid working.

IWG said that demand for its workspaces outside city centres had grown by 36 per cent in 2022. Mark Dixon the company’s chief executive, said: “This study confirms what we have been seeing for a while now—how hybrid working is building and maintaining a healthier and happier workforce by reducing the need for long daily commutes.”

【推荐3】When all those May flowers start to show their heads out to say hello, you may see some familiar faces in your backyard. Many plants live and die within one growing season, so gardeners must replant them each spring. But others have developed to live year after year, so they can blossom again.

Many flowers are what we call annuals. Their entire life cycle—from seed to death—takes just one year. They might leave behind sleeping seeds, but the roots and leaves all fade away as-soon as the season is done. Then there are perennials, which can survive for years. Scientists believe these types of plants came first. They do no need to be replanted each season, but save some energy in themselves so that they can show again in the following season.

James Boyer, the vice president for children’s education at the New York Botanical Garden, says that annuals probably can survive in areas where there is little water. “Annuals are putting all of their chances into the reproduction basket,” Boyer explains. “All of the energy to make roots and shoots is just enough to create a big bloom. They will create enough seeds to continue the species. Perennials hide important parts inside protective buds to keep cells fresh until it’s time to bloom again. They devote a lot more of their fuel to keeping themselves alive than annuals do. Roots and leaves are repaired and regrow each year. Many eventually produce flowers, but it can sometimes take years. And in most cases, they’ll save enough energy to flower again in the following season.”

Whether a plant is a perennial or an annual can depend on where you plant it. Plants sold in cold areas that are named as annuals actually could be perennials in hot areas; in warm weather they can live for years, but a single cold winter will wrack them.

Boyer says that researchers are trying to study them. “If we could change corn into a perennial, we wouldn’t need to replant it every year, which destroys the soil and its ecosystem,” Boyer says. “It could change our agricultural system.”

【推荐2】We’re increasingly relying on automation and artificial intelligence in everyday life. But we still don’t quite trust robots and fear they will take our jobs.

Humankind has a complicated relationship with robots. On the one hand, we appreciate how they can do dangerous, repetitive work so we don’t have to. Robots don’t need vacations or medical insurance. And in areas such as agriculture, where farmers can’t find enough people to pick the produce, robots can shoulder some of those tasks. But polls (民意调查) show that the growing robotization of the planet makes us feel deeply agitated - and threatened.

Pew Research Center surveys found that more than 80 percent of Americans believed thạt by 2050, robots would do much of the work humans now do and about 75 percent believed that would make economic inequality worse. Across lines of race, age, and education, people who said automation has hurt workers outnumbered those who said it’s helped workers by two to one.

National Geographic sent David Berreby around the world to look at the present and future state of robots in society.

“Robots now deliver food in Milton Keynes, England, carry supplies in a Dallas hospital, disinfect (给……消毒) patients’ rooms in China and some European countries, and wander parks in Singapore, asking pedestrians (行人) to maintain social distance,” Berreby writes.

“It’s an unavoidable fact that we are going to have machines, artificial creatures; that will be a part of our daily life,” Carnegie Mellon University AI roboticist Manuela Veloso told Berreby. “When you start accepting robots around you, like a third species, along with pets and humans, you want to relate to them.”

A third species? That’s a new idea indeed. But were not there yet. So far, Berreby reports, robots can’t equal the human mind’s ability to do a lot of tasks, especially unexpected ones, and robots haven’t yet mastered common sense - all sill required to be a magazine editor.