【推荐2】What happens when we experience emotions?

In brief, emotional responses have four parts. There is a bodily (physiological) response, an interpretation in the mind, feelings, and an effect on behaviour. These do not happen in any special order - they happen at the same time and affect each other.     1    

To understand the physiological response, imagine you are frightened by an aggressive, noisy dog. Your brain sends messages throughout your body. It does this by releasing a chemical called adrenaline, which the blood carries to other parts of the body. Then, the bodily sensations of being frightened begin. Blood drains from your stomach (giving a feeling we describe as a "knot in the stomach"). The blood vessels（血管）in the face become narrower (which makes you become white). Similar processes exist for other emotions.     2     This helps the person get ready for a fight.

The second aspect of emotion is interpretation in the ind of events and feelings. This is both conscious and unconscious. In fact, the more you think about the dog, the more frightened you become. Thinking like this sends both your feelings and your physical arousal to new heights.

    3     In one, the brain senses the body's state of arousal. The other comes from memories of your body's reactions in similar situations in the past. So, when you see the angry dog, your brain may remember your feelings from past experiences with angry dogs.

Finally, emotions can also affect behavior.     4     In this, the person either becomes aggressive or runs away. Responses may also include facial expressions and sounds, such as crying, screaming or shouting. There may also be gestures, such as waving arms.

【推荐3】When I first met Nao Junior, he was in his 40s and one of only nine members of his Indigenous(土著的) group, Great Andamanese, who still spoke the idiom of his ancestors. As a language specialist, I had researched more than 80 Indian languages. I was on the islands to document their Indigenous voices before they faded into whispers.

Words in this language consisted of two classes: free and bound. The free words were all nouns that referred to the environment and its inhabitants, such as ra for “pig”. They could occur alone. The bound words were nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs that always existed with markers indicating a relation to other objects, events or states. The markers came from seven zones of the body and were attached to a root word to describe concepts such as “inside”, “outside”, “upper” and “lower”. For example, the morpheme(词素) er-, which qualified most anything having to do with an outer body part, could be stuck to -cho to yield ercho, meaning “head”.

Just as a head, a bound word, could not conceptually exist on its own, the mode and effect of an action could not be divided from the verb describing the action. Great Andamanese had no words for agriculture but a great many for hunting and fishing, mainly with a bow and arrow. Thus, the root word shile, meaning “to aim”, had several versions: utshile, to aim from above; arashile, to aim from a distance; and eshile, aiming to make a hole with a sharp object.

The studies established that the language seems to be truly old in origin. In a multistage process of development, words describing diverse body parts had changed into morphemes referring to different zones and combined with content words to yield meaning. The structure alone provides an insight into an ancient worldview in which the macrocosm(宏观世界) reflects the microcosm, and everything that is or that happens inseparably connects to everything else.

【推荐1】All you need to know about the lunar sample taken back by Chang’e-5

China’s Chang’e-5 probe is on its way back to Earth, bringing with it about 2 kilograms of soil and rocks from the moon, which will be the first fresh lunar sample obtained by humanity since 1976.     1    

Where was the sample taken from?

The landing site of Chang’e-5 was Mons Rümker, a 70-kilometer-wide volcanic mound in the region known as Oceanus Procellarum ( Latin for “Ocean of Storms” ) on the moon’s near side — the vast, dark lava plains visible from Earth with the naked eye.     2     The lander shoveled up some surface material and also drilled a 2-meter-deep hole and scooped up soil and rock from inside it.

    3    

In the late 1960s and 1970s, the United States brought back to Earth 382 kilograms of lunar material from six moon-landing missions, while the former Soviet Union retrieved 300 grams over three missions.     4     Analysis of the samples suggests that volcanic activity on the moon peaked 3.5 billion years ago, then faded away, and stopped. But Mons Rümker, where Chang’e-5 collected its sample, may have erupted as recently as about 1.3 billion years ago and contain “the youngest mare basalt on the moon,” according to scientists.

How will the sample be handled?

In order to properly handle and study this precious material, China has built a lunar sample laboratory at the National Astronomical Observatory (NAO) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, dedicated to its storage, processing and analysis.     5     The lab has a special facility that will prevent the sample from being contaminated (污染) by the atmosphere and water on Earth.

【推荐2】Beatrice Finkelstein, as chief of the Food Technology Section of the Life Support Systems Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, bore responsibility for managing the nutritional needs of the astronauts. Her work in the field of space feeding was important in developing the equipment and techniques used in early space flight. Few, if any, female contributors played as important a role as she did during the early years of the U. S. crewed space program, and she deserves to be better remembered.

Finkelstein’s value to America’s space tasks went well beyond her technical contributions. She was frequently described in the popular press at the time as “the Nutritionist to the Astronauts”, as well as the proprietor or of “Bea’s Diner”, a restaurant designed to appeal to the public as a very friendly place.

In her role as nutritionist for the early space program, Finkelstein grew to know the astronauts well, as she communicated with them frequently. At times, she would step beyond her formal role as nutritionist, providing emotional and psychological support to the astronauts. On many occasions, she was one of the last people the astronauts communicated with before launch (发射), and there’s a lot of evidence that shows her friendship was a source of comfort during the stressful pre-launch activities.

The image of nutritionist Beatrice Finkelstein showed that the agencies that insured NASA’s successful space flights were staffed by smart women as well as smart men. Her role in America’s success in conquering space in the technical field of space feeding served as an example of the role women could and did play in the early space program.

【推荐3】The new member to the UAE's astronaut training program, the first female Emirati (阿联酋) astronaut, hopes that her mechanical engineering degree will be her ticket to the moon.

Nora AlMatrooshi and her fellow trainee astronaut Mohammad AlMulla were selected from 4000 highly qualified candidates to lead the nation’s 9.8 million citizens into space.

The two are looking forward to the laborious 30-month program ahead of them which has already begun with them getting their divers’ licences, picking up the Russian language and coaching for their many media interviews—and will move on to flight and weightlessness school at the Johnson Space Centre in Texas and eventually cruel survival training.

“They will need mechanical engineers to build a base on the moon,” says the 28-year-old, who represented her nation at the Mathematics Olympics and worked as an engineer at the National Petroleum Construction Company.

AlMatrooshi says she has dreamed of the stars since kindergarten, when her teacher set up the classroom as the Lunar surface and the five-year-old future astronaut constructed a cardboard moonbase. That early longing to explore space charted her degree choice.

“I actually went after it. I chose to study a degree in mechanical engineering because of a documentary I watched when I was in high school. It was about a group of astronauts going to the International Space Station and the role of the mechanical engineer was highlighted,” she say.

Leading big construction projects in the desert has helped equip the daughter of two academics—a PhD father and English teacher mother—for Lunar construction.

AlMatrooshi’s fellow trainee astronaut, UAE police helicopter pilot AlMulla, meanwhile says astronaut training has been “a big career change”.

“I spent 15 years qualifying to be a pilot, including training in Australia for my commercial pilot’s licence,” says the father of two. “As a pilot you get used to mastering everything—suddenly I’m changing my path.”

“I’m a big fan of SpaceX. The rockets and even the fancy space suits. And hopefully all four of us—and all the astronauts who come after us will get to be a part of future missions—perhaps even to the moon eventually.”