【推荐1】Every woman dreams of receiving a huge, sparkling and priceless diamond. Now scientists have discovered the largest diamond in the universe.

But it’s well beyond the reach of the most lovestruck men — 50 light years to be precise. Space scientists revealed that they had discovered a ten billion trillion trillion carat gem. Measuring 2,500 miles across and weighing five million trillion trillion pounds, the rock was found on Valentine's Day buried in the core of a white dwarf star in the constellation Centaurus.

“It’s the mother of all diamonds,” said Travis Metcalfe, who led the team of researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in America.

“You would need a jeweller’s loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond.” Named Lucy, after the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, the rock has sent a ripple of excitement through the scientific world.

The largest diamond found on earth was the 3,106-carat Cullinan. It was cut into nine major stones, including the 530-carat Star of Africa, now a part of the Crown Jewels. Diamonds were first discovered in India more than 2,800 years ago. The Ancient Romans believed that the stones were splinters of stars that had tumbled to earth.

In Ancient Egypt, diamonds were symbols of eternity and were used in funeral rites. In the Middle Ages, men wore them to symbolize their courage and virility. The tradition of giving them as love tokens dates from 1477, when Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave a diamond ring to Mary of Burgundy.

【推荐1】When people wanted to find their way to a place in the past, they used to have to buy a map. They don’t have to do that any more. Now they can either buy a GPS or go online and maps for just about anywhere.

In this an improvement? Perhaps , but   some people think some of the online companies are going too far , because they have been sending out cars with photographic equipment on their roofs , to photograph every street and house in the country.

One of these cars arrived on a Wednesday morning in the quiet English village of Broughton. The camera was on a metre-high stick on top of the car and could see over walls and into people’s gardens. Some of the villagers came and stood around the car, and asked the driver and photographer to go away. Reporters quickly arrived on the scene, and soon the event was news all over the country.

Of course, the online company in question says that it is simply collecting information that people on the Internet want. But the villagers feel differently. ‘We used to have privacy in this country—now companies just come and take photographs of our homes without even asking .’

said one villager. ‘It is not right .We mustn’t let this happen. We mustn’t lose our right to live privately.’

There is , of course, no law to prevent people from taking photographs of houses, so the villagers cannot go to court. But many people are asking the question: ‘OK, it’s legal, but is it right?’ This is a question that won’t go away very…

【推荐2】An unusual experiment in Botswana suggests that painting eyes on the rear (臀部) ends of cows may help protect them from large predators (食肉动物) like lions. Protecting cows could also end up protecting the lions from angry farmers.

Large predators like lions are under pressure. Much of the land they used to roam (徜徉) has been taken over by humans. Many are hunted illegally. One serious threat to large predators comes from farmers, who often shoot or poison them after losing farm animals for their attacks.

This has long been a problem in the Okavango Delta. Some parts of the Okavango are protected, but there are also many small farms in the area, with between 6 and 100 cows. Lions are the biggest threat to cattle in the area. At night, farmers normally keep their animals in closed areas protected from predators. But in the daytime, when many predators are most active, the cattle are allowed out to eat grass.

Scientists from the University of New South Wales wondered if painting pictures of eyes on the cows' rear ends might protect them. The idea isn't as strange as it may sound. There are many examples of animals such as butterflies or fish using fake “eyes” to protect themselves.

Working with over 2,000 cows 8 on 14 different farms in the Okavango area, the scientists tested their ideas in a four-year study. The researchers separated the cows into three different groups. They painted large eyes on the rear ends of one group of cows. The second group got simple Xs. The final group got nothing.

The eyes worked very well. Of the 683 cows with eyes painted on them, none were killed in the four-year period. Cows with nothing on their rear ends didn't do so well. Fifteen of the 835 cows with bare backsides were killed. The scientists were surprised to learn that even Xs seemed to give the cows some protection. Only 4 of the 543 cows with Xs were killed.

【推荐3】New research has found that even if you give up smoking, the damage it has done to your genes (基因) will stay there for a much longer time.

In the research,a team of US scientists studied the blood of 16,000 people. Among them, some were smokers, some used to smoke, and the rest were non-smokers. Scientists compared their genes and found that more than 7,000 genes of smokers had changed—a number that is one-third of known human genes.

According to NBC News, both heart disease and cancer are caused by genetic changes. Some people may have had the changes when they were born,but most people get them in their day-to-day lives while doing things like smoking.

When you stop smoking,a lot of these genes will return to normal within five years. This means your body is trying to heal (治愈) itself of the harmful effects of smoking. But the changes in some of the genes stay for longer. They can stay for as long as 30 years. It’s almost like leaving a footprint on wet cement (水泥)-it will always be there, even when you’ve walked away and when the cement becomes dry.

Although the study results may make people unhappy, there is a bright side: the findings could help scientists invent medicine to treat genetic damage caused by smoking or find ways to tell which people have heart disease or cancer risks.