【推荐1】To address the plastic pollution troubling the world’s seas and waterways, Cornell University chemists have developed a new polymer (聚合物) that can degrade (降解) when exposed to ultraviolet (紫外线的) radiation, according to the research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

“We have created a new plastic that has the mechanical properties required by commercial fishing gear. If it eventually gets lost in the water environment, this material can degrade on a realistic time scale,” said lead researcher Bryce Lipinski, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University. “This material could reduce persistent plastic accumulation in the environment.”

Commercial fishing contributes to about half of all floating plastic waste that ends up in the oceans. Fishing nets and ropes are primarily made from three kinds of polymers, none of which easily degrade. “While research of degradable plastics has received much attention in recent years,” Lipinski said, “obtaining a material with the mechanical strength comparable to commercial plastic remains a difficult challenge.”

Coates and his research team have spent the past 15 years developing the new plastic called isotactic polypropylene oxide, or iPPO. While its original discovery was in 1949, the mechanical strength of this material was unknown before this recent work. The high isotacticity and polymer chain length of their material makes it different from previous plastics and provides its mechanical strength.

Lipinski noted that while iPPO is stable in ordinary use, it eventually breaks down when exposed to UV light. The change in the plastic’s composition is evident in the laboratory, but “visually, it may not appear to have changed much during the process,” he said, “The rate of degradation is light intensity-dependent, but under their laboratory conditions, the polymer chain lengths degraded to a quarter of their original length after 30 days of exposure.”

Lipinski and other scientists want no trace of the polymer to be left in the environment. He notes there is precedent for the biodegradation of small chains of iPPO which could effectively make it disappear and ongoing efforts aim to prove this.

【推荐2】For years, the U.S. has experienced a shortage of registered nurses. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that while the number of nurses will increase by 19 percent by 2022, demand will grow faster than supply, and that there will be over one million unfilled nursing jobs by then.

So what’s the solution? Robots.

Japan is ahead of the curve when it comes to this trend. Toyohashi University of Technology has developed Terapio, a robotic medical cart that can make hospital rounds, deliver medications and other items, and retrieve records. It follows a specific individual, such as a doctor or nurse, who can use it to record and access patient data. This type of robot will likely be one of the first to be implemented in hospitals because it has fairly minimal patient contact.

Robots capable of social engagement help with loneliness as well as cognitive functioning, but the robot itself doesn't have to engage directly—it can serve as an intermediary for human communication. Telepresence robots such as MantaroBot, Vgo, and Giraff can be controlled through a computer, smartphone, or tablet, allowing family members or doctors to remotely monitor patients or Skype them, often via a screen where the robot's ''face'' would be. If you can't get to the nursing home to visit grandma, you can use a telepresence robot to hang out with her. A 2016 study found that users had a ''consistently positive attitude'' about the Giraff robot's ability to enhance communication and decrease feelings of loneliness.

A robot’s appearance affects its ability to successfully interact with humans, which is why the RIKEN-TRI Collaboration Center for Human-Interactive Robot Research decided to develop a robotic nurse that looks a huge teddy bear. RIBA (Robot for Interactive Body Assistance), also known as ''Robear'', can help patients into and out of wheelchairs and beds with its strong arms.   On the less cute and more scary side there is Actroid F, which is so human-like that some patients may not know the difference. This conversational robot companion has cameras in its eyes, which allow it to track patients and use appropriate facial expressions and body language in its interactions. During a month-long hospital trial, researchers asked 70 patients how they felt being around the robot and “only three or four said they didn't like having it around.”

It's important to note that robotic nurses don't decide courses of treatment or make diagnoses (though robot doctors and surgeons may not be far off). Instead, they perform routine and laborious tasks, freeing nurses up to attend to patients with immediate needs. This is one industry where it seems the interaction of robots will lead to collaboration, not replacement.

【推荐3】On a farm in England, Gavin and Alice Munro are taking sustainability (持续性) to the next level: they harvest trees which they grow into chairs.

The couple have a furniture (家具) farm in Derbyshire where they are growing 250 chairs and 50 tables. It is their answer to what they see as the inefficient (效率低的) process of cutting down mature trees to create furniture.

“Instead of growing a tree for 50 years and then cutting it down and making it into smaller and smaller bits ... the idea is to grow the tree into the shape that you want directly. It’s like a kind of 3D printing,” said Gavin.

Part of the inspiration for the idea came when Gavin was a young boy. He found an overgrown bonsai tree (盆景树) which looked like a chair.

The 44-year-old man began experiment in 2006. In 2012, Gavin and Alice set up the company Full Grown. Within several years, the couple developed the most effective way to shape a tree without limiting its growth. They guide shoots (新枝) heading in the right direction, rather than forcing them the wrong way against their natural growth.

The average chair takes six to nine years to grow and another year to dry out. The labor and time involved in producing the organic pieces mean they do not come cheap. Chairs sell for￡10,000 each and tables for￡2.500 to £12.500.

【推荐1】Antarctic blue whales have been perceived again in the sub-Antarctic, island of South Georgia. An international team of researchers discovered the animals five decades after whaling (捕鲸业) nearly caused them to disappear forever. “The ocean resources at South Georgia were heavily developed during the early 20th-century industrial whaling,” says lead author Susannah Calderan, an ecologist with the Scottish Association for Marine Science.

Antarctic blue whales were plentiful in the area until whaling began there in 1904, kicking off the beginning of industrial whaling in the Southern Ocean. While hunters originally focused on species that could be easily caught, like the humpback whale, the focus quickly moved to the blue whale. Between 1904 and 1973, 345, 775 Antarctic blue whales were killed in the Southern hemisphere (半球) and in the northern Indian Ocean. Around South Georgia, blue whale catches were reported year-round without stopping. Between 1904 and 1971, industrial whaling caused 42, 698 blue whales’ death, blue whales almost disappeared in these areas.

Researchers studied all Antarctic blue whale data from the last three decades. They examined sightings (目睹) from scientific surveys collected by observers on ships, as well as opportunistic. Sightings reported by sea men and ship passengers to South Georgia. They also examined acoustic (声音的) recordings of blue whales.

They found that whale surveys from ships off South Georgia resulted in just one blue whale sighting between 1998 and 2018. But more recent surveys suggest better news. A survey in February of 2020 found nearly 60 blue whale sightings, and several acoustic detections (探测). A total of 41 blue whales have been recognized through photos from South Georgia between 2011and 2020.

“Their return is very meaningful, as it was widely thought that blue whales at South Georgia might have been hunted beyond a point where they could recover, and. might never be seen again in great numbers at South Georgia,” Caldera n says. “Our research shows that, populations can recover even from very low levels if they’re given enough protection.”

【推荐1】They give us paper and fuel, as well as vital ecological services — like cleaning the air, storing carbon and providing habitat. We’re talking about trees, of course. But changes in the environment largely caused by humans appear to be causing great transformations in trees around the world.

In a new study, scientists reviewed global research on trends in tree seedlings, growth and death. They combined those data with an analysis of deforestation (森林砍伐). And they found that worldwide, older trees are dying at a higher rate than in the past due to factors like rising air temperature, wildfires, drought and pathogens (病原体).

“And most of the drivers of this decrease in large, old trees, such as rising temperatures, severe droughts, wildfires, windstorms and deforestation are all — although variable across the globe — generally increasing. And so both the loss has already occurred, but we expect more continued loss of big, old trees,” said Nate McDowell, an earth scientist at Pacific Northwest National Lab, who was one of the study’s authors.

“So if we have an increasing rate of death, particularly of the larger, older trees, what’s left are the younger trees. So that’s why, on average, through the loss of bigger, older trees, our forests are becoming younger and shorter.”

This trend is a problem because old trees are vitally important. “For sure, the increase in death does limit the carbon storage of an ecosystem and can force the system to become a carbon source to the atmosphere. The second reason we care is from a biodiversity perspective: Old trees tend to house a higher biodiversity than young forests do. And the third reason is linked with beauty: As a society, we care about these trees. We have national parks named after these big trees. So there’s a personal reason for people to care about this as well,” McDowell added.

【推荐2】Dyslexia (失读症) is a reading and writing disability characterized by difficulties in reading and spelling, and for some readers to understand what they have read. Experts say dyslexia affects about five to ten percent of the population of the United States. Researchers have long known that people with dyslexia write or read words and letters backwards in the wrong order.

But a new study shows that people with dyslexia may have trouble redirecting (重新传入) their attention between senses, from seeing something to hearing something. Vanessa Harrar of Britain's University of Oxford led the study. She reported the findings in the journal Current Biology. The study suggests that dyslexic people may have trouble moving quickly from what they read to what they hear. Doctor Harrar calls this a sluggish shifting of attention across the senses.

''So, if you are trying to read something and then trying to listen to somebody who's reading aloud and you're trying to follow along with what they are reading, they have to switch their attention from hearing what they are saying to looking at the piece of paper and back again. '' said Harrar.

She found that people with dyslexia were just as fast as the others when they saw only a picture or heard only a sound. But the dyslexics had a slower reaction time when they heard a sound and saw a picture at the same time.

Doctor Harrar feels like playing action video games could help dyslexic people shift from seeing to hearing more quickly. She adds that images in video games force the eyes to move and focus quickly.

''Video game types of things pop out of here and there, they move your eyes around the screen quickly in response to things quite quickly, and the more you play a video game the faster you get that kind of thing. So the video game is really training the attention system to move quickly, '' said Harrar.

The study also shows that dyslexic people have the most difficulty going between what they saw and what they heard, this may have an effect on how dyslexic children are taught how to read. When children learn the alphabet, they usually see the letter first and then hear the sound, or they see and hear the letter at the same time. The study shows that dyslexics might learn more quickly if they hear the sound of a letter or word first before seeing it.