【推荐1】The word “syringe (注射器)” comes from the Greek word syrinx, meaning “tube”.

The first syringe was used in Roman times during the 1st century. It was mentioned in a journal called De Medicina as being used to treat diseases. Then, in the 9th century, an Egyptian surgeon created a syringe using a glass tube.

In 1650 Blaise Pascal invented a syringe as an application of fluid mechanics that is now called Pascal’s law. He used it for testing his theory about pressure.

An Irish physician named Francis Rynd made the first recorded subcutaneous injection (皮下 注射) in I844. Then shortly thereafter in 1853 Charles Pravaz and Alexander Wood developed a medical syringe with a needle fine enough to give an injection under the skin and treat nerve conditions.

In 1899 Letitia Mumford Geer of New York was issued with a patent for a syringe design that permitted the user to operate it one-handed. However, things got more interesting and advanced in 1946 when Chance Brothers in England produced the first all-glass syringe with an interchangeable barrel and plunger (筒和活塞). This was • revolutionary because it allowed the mass-sterilization (大规模消毒) of the different components without needing to match up the individual parts.

Shortly thereafter Australian inventor Charles Rothauser created the world’s first plastic disposable (一次性的) syringe at his Adelaide factory in1949. However, because the plastic used by Rothauser softened with heat, the syringes had to be chemically dealt with before packaging, which made them expensive. Two years later he improved syringes that can be dealt with by heat. Millions were made for Australian and export markets.

Then in 1956 a New Zealand inventor Colin Murdoch was issued with patents for a disposable plastic syringe. It was closely followed by the Plastipak-a plastic disposable syringe introduced by Becton Dickinson in1961. In 1974 African American inventor Phil Brooks received a US patent for a “Disposable Syringe”.

These days syringes are used, not only in the medical and health industry, but in various other areas too.

【推荐2】Every day on the respiratory (呼吸道) ward at one of Kyrgyzstan’s biggest hospitals, Aidai Temiraly kyzy, a 24-year-old nurse, puts on the music and leads her patients in the Kara Jorgo, the national dance of the central Asian country.

This involves a range of body movements and leaves everyone smiling — but Temiraly kyzy is not doing it for fun. The session is part of a treatment programme offered to people with COPD — a common, preventable and treatable lung condition.

COPD develops from midlife onwards; symptoms include breathlessness, a chronic cough, and tiredness. It is one of the top three causes of death worldwide, and 90% of deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Globally, there are 3 million deaths a year from COPD but this number is expected to rise to 5.4 million by 2060.

Treatment for COPD in many countries involves prescribing (开处方) oxygen, inhalers and antibiotics (抗生素), which patients have to buy. In Kyrgyzstan this can cost more than a monthly salary. Sooronbaev, director of the National Centre of Cardiology and his team started experimenting with pulmonary rehabilitation, a physical exercise programme designed in 2016 for people with lung conditions.

Over the years, the programme has expanded and now it is already in place in three hospitals. Added to lectures and patient support groups is a regime (体系) of physical exercise incorporating (融合) elements of volleyball, walking, cycling on exercise bikes and dance.

Dr. Azamat Akylbekov, a pulmonologist in Bishkek, has seen the transformative effect. “I remember one woman who was 63,” he says. “She cried because she had severe shortness of breath, coughed all the time and took a lot of strong antibiotics and inhalers. She was really depressed.”

She was invited to take part in the programme and the results surprised him. “Afterwards, she was like a flower — she smiled and her body language was more active. That sticks in my mind.”

Sooronbaev wants pulmonary rehabilitation to be available throughout the country from this year. Patients who have undergone the programme are being trained to teach others, and Sooronbaev and colleagues are due to speak at medical conferences to inform other healthcare professionals about their progress with the programme.

【推荐1】Scientists believed that if they could hit an asteroid(小行星)with an object travelling very fast, they could push the asteroid off the path it was on. So NASA came up with an experiment called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART.

Engineers built a box-shaped spacecraft that was about the size of a small car and weighed 570 kilograms and equipped it with a special camera and computers that would allow it to find and follow the asteroid they had chosen for the experiment.

Asteroids are rocky objects that move around the Sun. The smallest are the size of a large stone while some are up to 1, 000 kilometers in diameter (直径). The asteroid that was the target for this test is called Dimorphos, about 160 meters in diameter, or the size of a football stadium. It orbits (环绕) another larger asteroid, called Didymos. They are more than 7 million kilometers away from Earth and go around the Sun together, once every two years.

The DART spacecraft was sent up in November 2021 and then orbited the Sun for 10 months, following the path of Didymos and Dimorphos. Most of that time, Dimorphos was hidden by the sunlight reflecting off of the larger asteroid. On September 26, 2022, the spacecraft’s camera noticed Dimorphos for the first time and its navigation(导航)system began to guide it through space towards its target. About an hour later, it crashed into Dimorphos at more than 22, 500kilometers per hour.

Scientists studied the data and images of the asteroids for the next two weeks and found that the orbit of Dimorphos has shortened from 11 hours and 55 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes:a 32-minute change. While this may seem like a very small change, it shows that—if a dangerous asteroid was heading toward us—it would be possible to knock it off its course, keeping Earth safe. The chances of Earth actually being hit by an asteroid large enough to cause damage are very small.

【推荐2】China Media Group, the country’s state broadcaster, released the country’s top 4 science and technology news stories in 2021 on Monday.

1. China’s “artificial sun” sets new world record

China’s “artificial sun” nuclear fusion reactor in Hefei, capital of east China’s Anhui Province, has set a new world record after running at the temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds in May, laying the foundation for the country to build its own nuclear fusion energy station in the future. Click here to read more.

2. China’s first self-operated deep-water gas exploration platform starts production

China’s first self-operated 1.5-kilometer deep-water gas exploration platform, “Deep Sea No. 1,” started production on June 25. Located in south China’s Hainan Province, it is expected to supply 3 billion m³ of deep-sea natural gas each year to Guangdong, Hainan and Hong Kong. Click here to read more.

3. China Space Station now able to host long stay for astronauts

China’s unfinished space station has welcomed two groups of astronauts for months-long stay. The Shenzhou-12 crew, including three astronauts, entered the space station’s core module Tianhe in mid-June and lived there for three months till mid-September. The Shenzhou-13 crew, including a female astronaut and her two male coworkers, arrived at Tianhe in mid-October and will stay there for six months. Click here to read more.

4. China’s unmanned submersible explores deepest sea on Earth

China’s self-developed unmanned submersible “Haidou-1” has realized full detection exploration in Mariana Trench-the deepest point known on Earth-for the first time with a max diving depth of 10, 908 meters and a non-stop working time of over eight hours. Click here to read more.

【推荐3】Is it amazing to generate electricity by getting moisture(水汽)from the air surrounding you? Such devices, called MEG, have already been created with some regular items such as a piece of fabric. However, the researchers found it quite challenging with balancing and maintaining moisture content between where it shouldn’t be and where it is required to be.

To fix this problem, the team led by Tan Swee Ching from National University of Singapore created a new MEG.

One part of the fabric in their device is coated with a special gel(凝胶). This is what they called the wet region. The special water-absorbing gel is able to take in more than six times its original weight. This is the very thing used to harvest moisture coming from the air around. The other end of this device is the dry region, which doesn’t have the gel. They specifically designed the fabric this way to make sure that the area stays dry and that the water is trapped only in the wet region.

The wet-dry regions ensure water is maintained just in the wet area, even if this device is left in an open damp environment fora month. This demonstrates how effective the device is when it comes to maintaining its stable electrical output.

The MEG device also has immediate potential applications, one of which is to make a portable power source. “With this unique structure, the electric performance of our MEG device is significantly improved in comparison with the previous ones, thus making it possible to power many common electronic devices, such as health monitors and wearable electronics,” Tan said.

“The invention can be massively produced because it’s easy for factories to get their hands on commercially available raw materials. When it is perfected, many people can finally get their hands on this small, yet powerful tool that they can easily and readily apply in the devices used for their daily use,” Tan added.

【推荐3】NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has completed its first test flight, marking a major milestone for the agency’s efforts to explore the red planet. The 4-pound helicopter took off from the Martian surface on Monday, hovering (盘旋) for about 30 seconds before landing back down.

The flight was powered by four lithium—ion (锂离子) batteries, which were recharged using solar panels on the helicopter. Because of the distance between Earth and Mars, engineers had to program the flight ahead of time and wait for the results to come back, making the entire process autonomous.

“This is a Wright brothers moment,” said MiMi Aung, project manager for Ingenuity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “I can’t imagine what it took for Orville and Wilbur Wright to do their first flight, but I sure can tell you that the helicopter team poured their heart and soul into this and did everything they could imagine to make this successful.”

The helicopter was transported to Mars attached to NASA’s Perseverance rover (探月车), which arrived on the planet in February. Over the next few weeks, the team will test different sides of the helicopter’s capabilities, including up-and-down flights and flying longer distances.

The final goal of the mission is not only to show new technologies and gather more data on Mars, but also to pave the way for “searching missions” that can explore terrain that is inaccessible to rovers.

“This really sets the stage for us to introduce an aerial dimension (空中维度) to our exploration of planets in the solar system in the future,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.