【推荐1】Back in the 1980s when monkeypox(猴痘)was still an extremely rare disease, scientists kept warning: Over time, the monkeypox outbreaks will increase. At that time, there were only about 50 monkeypox cases a year in West and Central Africa where people caught the disease mainly from direct contact with wild animals. Infection between humans was very limited. But in 2022, the world is facing the first international outbreak, with more than 5,000 cases reported in 44 countries within six months.

So how could the scientists know in the 1980s that monkeypox would grow in size and spread internationally?

Their warnings were based on the successful campaign against smallpox(天花), one of the deadliest diseases in human history, which killed up to 30% of the people infected. Thanks to a worldwide campaign, smallpox disappeared in the late 1970s. However, the end of smallpox opened the door for monkeypox to emerge.

Monkeypox, whose present version kills less than 1% of people infected, is closely related to smallpox. Having a smallpox infection-or a smallpox vaccine(疫苗)-offers really good protection against smallpox as well as monkeypox. Perhaps about 85% protection. But in the late 1970s, the world stopped vaccining people for smallpox. So over the past decades, human resistance to smallpox and monkeypox has dropped sharply.

“We’re actually at a point where our immunity against monkeypox is the lowest in thousands of years,” says Jo Walker of the Yale School of Public Health. Without some resistance against the disease, people are more likely to catch monkeypox from animals and spread it to someone else. So it is time that people who might come into contact with infected people were vaccined for monkeypox. Otherwise, it could become a permanent presence in the world, since every time there’s an outbreak the virus has a chance to figure out how to spread more quickly among people.

Indeed, this new outbreak in Europe may be a sign that the virus has changed-even if just a bit-and may be increasing its ability to spread among people.

【推荐3】Crohn’s disease is a constant source of trouble for sufferers. This long-term condition is commonly found in the small intestine (肠) and the symptoms can include stomachaches, joint pain and weight loss. A new study suggests that there may be a way to change the diet to take control of this difficult-to-treat disease.

One common cause of the condition, which affects as many as 780,000 Americans, is an overactive immune system that considers harmless gut bacteria as dangers and responds by producing inflammation (炎症). The new study suggests that a diet rich in health y fats and oil s such as coconut oil or cocoa butter may lead to specific changes in gut bacteria that could fight harmful inflammation.

Although the research was conducted on mice with a Crohn’s-like disease, the results are the first to show how high-fat diets can change gut bacteria to fight against inflammation, according to lead author Alexander Rodriguez-Palacios, PhD and Assistant Professor of Medicine at CWRU-M. In the study, the mice that were fed even a small amount of coconut oil or cocoa butter were found to have up to 30 percent fewer types of gut bacteria and less severe intestinal inflammation than those fed a typical diet. These findings suggest that there may be a beneficial Crohn’s disease diet that involves taking in “good” fats in normal amounts. Patients can substitute these good fats for other sources in their diets, Dr. Rodriguez-Palacios notes.

Humans and mice share many common genetic features, and by examining mice, scientists can gain valuable understanding about how humans function. However, humans may respond to dietary changes differently and in their own ways. For example, not all so-called good fats will work for all patients, Dr. Rodriguez-Palacios points out. He is hopeful that the diet could be beneficial to at least some patients, and it wouldn’t have the side effects and risks that come with medical treatments. “The trick now will be to really discover what makes a fat ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for Crohn’s patients,” he says.

【推荐1】It’s hard to imagine what Earth might look like in 2500. But a co-action between science and art is offering an unsetting window into how ongoing climate change might transform now — familiar land features into foreign landscapes over the following centuries.

These visualizations — of a dried-up Amazon rainforest and some other places — stress why researchers need to push climate predictions long past the habitual 2100, environmental social scientist Christopher Lyon and colleagues argued.

The effects of past and present greenhouse gas emissions will stay for centuries. To visualize what that future world might look like, researchers considered three possible levels — low, medium and high emissions as used in past reports — and predicted changes all the way to 2500.

For all but the lowest-mission assumption, which is roughly in line with limiting global warming to “well under” 2 degrees Celsius relative to preindustrial times as approved by the 2015 Paris Agreement, the average global temperature continues to increase until 2500, the team found. For the highest-emissions temperatures increase by about 2.2 degrees by 2100 and about 4.6 by 2500. That results in “major restructuring of the world’s eco-system”, they say.

The team then co-acted with James McKay, an artist and science communicator at the University of Leeds, to bring the data to life. Based on their predictions, McKay created a series of detailed paintings representing different global landscapes now and in 2500.

The goal of images is to visualize the future in such a way that it feels more urgent, real and close — and, perhaps, to offer a bit of hope that humans can still adapt. “To turn over the trend, we need to think about this problem as a global civilization,” Lyon says. “We wanted to show that, despite the climate people have moved into, people have figured out ways to exist in the climate.”

【推荐2】Three teachers were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. They tried to save their students from a gunman who they recognized as the son of a kindergarten teacher there. The three heroes who were murdered were Dawn Hochsprung, 47, school psychologist, March Sherlach, 56, and 27-year-old Victoria Soto, a young first grade teacher.

When the gunman Lanza began firing at the school in suburban (郊区的) Newtown, Connecticut, several other teachers were in a meeting with Mrs Hochsprung and Mrs Sherlach. Some teachers dived under tables, but Mrs Hochsprung and Mrs Sherlach never hesitated. They ran into the hallway to pull their students into their office. They bravely faced the danger and were murdered by the gunman.

When the gunman broke into the classroom of Grade One, Miss Soto sacrificed herself to save her students — throwing her body in front of the young children.

A tale of heroism came from an eight-year-old student who said a teacher pulled him from the hallway as bullets rang out. “I saw some of the bullets going down the hall that I was right next to and then a teacher pulled me into her classroom,” the boy told CBS News. His relieved mother agreed, saying that the teacher saved her son’s life.

The New York Times reports that twenty-eight people died in the shooting rampage (暴行), including twenty young children between the ages of five and ten. The gunman, Adam Lanza, took his own life finally.