【推荐2】Recently, scientific research suggests that mental health disorders affect up to 35 percent of top athletes at some stage of their careers. This can range from tiredness and eating disorders to depression and anxiety. The causes can be highly varied, with studies pointing to a range of contributing factors from poor sleep to selection pressures and early retirement due to injury.

American Simone Biles is widely considered to be the greatest gymnast (体操运动员) in the United States. When the Tokyo Olmpics began, she was expected to win five gold medals. But on July 27th, she pulled out of the team final. She made the choice after having trouble landing her vault (跳跃) in the competition’s first round. Later she said her mind was not in the right place to let her safely perform the difficult moves she is known for. In other words, her mind was not letting her body do what it needed to do. Cameras caught her telling her trainers during the team final, “I just don’t trust myself.”

Biles is not the only Olympian in recent months to talk about the pressure and mental effects of competing at the highest level. Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka lost in the second round of Olympic competition. She said she felt extreme pressure to win for Japan, where the Olympics are taking place.

Few coaches and officials in sports have an expert understanding of mental health and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) also recognizes that there is a great need for practical assessment tools that can be used by medical professionals and anyone looking after athletes to protect athletes’ mental health.

“Mental health issues should be discussed more openly in sport, because athletes are always concerned about selection, and they want to appear as strong as possible,” Scientific Director Dr Richard Budgett says. “But in the end this may have negative effects, so we need to recognize the symptoms so that athletes can get proper management and help when they need it.”

Step inside most modern cars and instead of all the dials and switches that used to clutter the dashboard (仪器板) you are likely to find it dominated by a touchscreen. Often there is more than one screen, and some are bigger than those on a laptop. But, though convenient, touchscreens can also be dangerous distractions.

    1     They recruited two groups of 20 drivers. One consisted of regular users of Google’s Android Auto while the others were supporters of Apple CarPlay. Each participant completed three 15-minute journeys along a set virtual route using the laboratory's sophisticated driving simulator. On one of these trips they had to carry out tasks using only the touchscreen, which included navigating to a restaurant, playing a particular song on Spotify (a music service), changing radio channels, getting the system to read out a text message, and making a “hands-free” telephone call.    2     The third journey was a control, with no assigned tasks.

Whenever a red bar flashed on the windscreen the researchers measured how long it took a driver to react by pulling the indicator stalk (柄) to flash the car's lights.     3     Though the difference might be less than a second, at motorway speeds this would result in an increased stopping distance of up to 25 metres.

Dr. Kinnear was, however, surprised by the amount of time drivers' attention was diverted by the series of glances needed to operate the screen. Among the worst outcomes were a mean of 20 seconds of cumulative glances using Android Auto to play a song on Spotify, and of 16 seconds to set up the route to a restaurant with CarPlay.     4    The researchers thus believe voice-activation is a safer alternative that should be encouraged, though the software needs to be improved.

【推荐3】In a new study with 22 pairs of identical twins, Stanford Medicine researchers have found that a vegan diet improves cardiovascular (心血管) health.

Although it’s well-known that eating less meat improves cardiovascular health, diet studies are often hampered by factors like genetic differences, upbringing and lifestyle choices. By studying identical twins, however, the researchers were able to control genetics and limit the other factors, as the twins grew up in the same households and reported similar lifestyles.

The trial consisted of 22 pairs of identical twins. The study authors selected healthy participants without cardiovascular disease and matched one twin from each pair with either a vegan or omnivore (杂食) diet. The vegan diet was entirely plant-based, including no meat or animal products while the omnivore diet included chicken, fish, eggs and other animal-sourced foods.

During the first four weeks, a meal service delivered 21 meals per week. For the remaining four weeks, the participants prepared their own meals. The participants were interviewed about their dietary intake and kept a record of the food they ate. 43 participants completed the study.

“Our study used a generalizable diet accessible to anyone, because 21 out of the 22 vegans followed through with the diet,” said Christopher Gardner, a professor in the Stanford Prevention Research Center. “This suggests anyone who chooses a vegan diet can improve their long-term health in two months, with the most change seen in the first month.”

The researchers found the most improvement over the first four weeks of the diet change. The participants with a vegan diet had significantly lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (脂蛋白胆固醇)   levels, which are associated with improved cardiovascular health than the omnivore participants. The vegan participants also showed approximately a 20% drop in fasting insulin (胰岛素) —a higher insulin level is a risk factor for developing diabetes. The vegans also lost an average of 4. 2 more pounds than the omnivores.

“Based on these results, most of us would benefit from going to a more plant-based diet,” Gardner said. But that doesn’t mean going completely vegan. Adding more plant-based food into your diet is the key to better heart health.