【推荐1】If you have a dog, you probably feel a strong bond with it. A recent study found that this bond may not only be important to kids, but also be important to dogs.

Researchers at Oregon State University studied the relationship between kids and dogs. To do the study, they recruited 30 young people aged 8 to 17, who have dogs to do an experiment. The kids were asked to bring their dogs to an empty room. In the room, a kid was asked to walk around the huge space, sometimes stopping or changing the direction. “And the dog was left to do whatever the dog wanted to do.” says Monique Udell, one of the study’s authors.

But most of the time, the dog didn’t do any of those things. Instead, it stayed close to its owner and moved similarly to its owner. The dogs did this far more often than you would expect them to do it by chance. What does this mean? Udell explains that this is a dog’s way of building a relationship with a human. “Dogs always stay close to kids, even though adults are usually the ones who feed and care for them. The kid may play a sibling(兄弟姐妹) role in the life of the dog,” Udell says. “This shows that the relationship between kids and dogs is of great importance to the dogs.”

So far, Udell’s team’s study has just focused on dogs. Udell wonders if the animal-human bond is important to other kinds of pets as well. Researchers say that more studies will be done.

【推荐1】Inspired by how dandelions (蒲公英) use the wind to distribute their seeds, a University of Washington team has developed a tiny sensor-carrying device that can be blown by the wind. It could provide unique insights for a variety of applications, including digital agriculture and monitoring climate change.

This system is about 30 times as heavy as a I milligram dandelion seed but can still travel up to 100 meters in a gentle wind, about the length of a football field, from where it is released. Once on the ground, the device, with at least four sensors, uses solar panels to power its onboard electronics and can share sensor data up to 60 meters away.

To keep things light, the team used solar panels instead of conventional batteries. The challenge is that without a battery the system can’t store a charge, which means after the sun goes down, the sensors stop working. In some cases, this might result in data losses. So the team included a capacitor, a device that can store some charge overnight.

To measure how far the devices would travel in the wind, the researchers dropped them from different heights, either by hand or by drone. One trick to spread out the device from a single drop point is to vary their shapes slightly so they are carried by the wind differently. “This is mimicking biology (仿生学), where variation is actually a feature, rather than a bug, ” said co author Thomas Daniel, a UW professor of biology. “Plants can’t guarantee that where they grow up this year is going to be good next year, so they have some seeds that can travel farther away. It’s like putting eggs in different baskets.”

With further improvements, the technology definitely has good prospects. “We can create devices that change shape as they fall, or facilitate some more mobility once they are on the ground to get closer to an area we’re curious about, ” said the lead author Shyam Gollakota, another UW professor.

【推荐2】Many Americans find silence uncomfortable while staying in a buffet(自助餐) or at a dinner. So in the United States there is a widespread practice of making “small talk” in certain social situations. Small talk deals with various topics superficially, simply for the sake of keeping a conversation going. The topics might include the weather, sports, college courses, clothing, food, etc. Small talk is especially useful at social gatherings when you meet someone for the first time, or when polite conversation is expected but no serious discussion is desired.

It is common but not necessarily expected that one knows someone in a group before engaging with him or her in conversation. However, at a party or other informal social gathering, a simple “May I join you?” and a self-introduction is normally sufficient to gain acceptance into a group and to join in a conversation. In some places, such as the lobby of a concert hall or theatre, a waiting room or a classroom, it is common for strangers to start a conversation even without an introduction.

Despite the informal phenomenon that is all over the US society, people in the States expect those whom they speak to to put aside whatever they are doing and listening. As a rule, the conversation distance between two people is at least two or three feet. Standing more closely will make many Americans feel uneasy.