【推荐2】Meng Wang is a professor of human genetics. She’s been doing experiments about one of the most exciting new areas of medicine — our microbiome (微生物群).

You can’t see it with the naked eye, but our microbiome is all over (and inside of) us. Recent studies show that it can influence how we behave and even how well we respond to different drugs. Wang says, “Sometimes our microbiomes make us sick, but on the other hand, they also play a very important role in keeping us healthy.”

Wang wanted to know whether our microbiome could influence aging. To test it, she decided to work with a kind of worm (虫子) that lives only two or three weeks. Her question was, what would happen if you changed a worm’s microbiome. Would it be able to live for longer?

Wang chose one of the types of bacteria (细菌) that lives inside a worm, changed its genes (基因) so as to make different varieties, and then fed this bacteria to the worms. Three weeks later — by the time they should have all died — she checked on them. To her excitement, she found that the worms had not died. Older worms usually act slowly. The ones with the new microbiomes, however, not only moved around more quickly in their old age, but were less likely affected by illness too.

Wang is now carrying out tests on mice to see whether changing their microbiomes can influence their lives in a similar way. There is a chance that one day we might take pills which do the same of us. How much longer could this possibly allow us to live for? “Personally, I think 100 is already a good number,” says Wang.

【推荐3】Handwriting notes in class might seem out of date as smartphones and other digital technology include every aspect of learning across schools. But a steady stream of research suggests that taking notes in the traditional way — with pen and paper or even tablet — is still the best way to learn, especially for young children, And now scientists are focusing on why.

The new research, by Audrey van der Meer and Ruud van der Weel at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), is based on a 2014 study. That work suggested that people taking notes by computer were typing without thinking, says van der Meer, a professor at NTNU. “It’s very attractive to type down everything that the lecturer is saying, she says. “It kind of goes in through your ears and comes out through your fingertips, but you don ‘t process the information.”

But when taking notes by hand, it’s often impossible to write everything down; student have to actively pay attention to the information and process it. This conscious (有意识地) action can make it easier to stay engaged and grasp new concepts.

Sophia Vinci-Booher, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the new study, says its findings are exciting and consistent with past research. “You can see that in tasks that really combine the motor and sensory systems together, such as in handwriting, there’s clear tie between this motor action being accomplished and the visual and conceptual recognition being created,” she says. “As you’re drawing a letter or writing a word, you’re taking this cognitive understanding of something and using your motor system to create it.”

That creation is then fed back into the visual system, where it’s processed again — strengthening the connection between an action and the images or words associated with it. It’s similar to imagining something and then creating it: when you materialize something from your imagination (by writing it, drawing it or building it), this reinforces the imagined concept and helps it stick in your memory.

【推荐1】Ice does all kinds of strange things on the Great Lakes: It forms perfect balls on the shore and piles up in ice tsunamis (海啸) when winds on the lake are violent in winter.    1    .

Ice volcanoes are not, of course, real volcanoes -it’s impossible for Earth volcanoes to spew(喷出) ice. These earthly ice volcanoes have three ingredients: water, freezing temperatures and rough waters.    2    -at least 32 F(0℃), or even “several degrees below freezing”, according to researchers at Michigan Tech University, and cold enough to form a sheet of ice along the edge of the water.

High winds out on the water create waves that break through the bottom of this shore-hugging ice, causing water to shoot up onto the surface of it.    3    The pile grows each time more water shoots up through it. In this way the ice forms a cone(圆锥体) around the hole, similar to that of a volcano.

    4    For starters, it has to be very cold, but also it must stay cold around the clock so the ice cone doesn’t melt. Finally, the winds out on bodies of water need to be creating waves forceful enough to shoot water up through the hole in the ice shelf.

When ice volcanoes happen, they're a sight to enjoy. But please don't climb on them -they’re hollow(中空的) and thus not as hard as the surrounding ice.    5    

【推荐3】You’ve probably heard of a hybrid(杂交物种)in films or books. The centaurs in the Harry Potter films are hybrids of human and horse.     1    

Hybridization occurs in both plants and animals.     2     What’s more, many plants that people eat, from strawberries to carrots, corn and potatoes, have been created by hybridization.

Cross-breeding(杂交)sometimes occurs when animals’ normal territory overlaps(部分重叠).     3     The grolar bear is a hybrid that happens when grizzly and polar bears mate. As the environment warms, grizzlies in Alaska and Canada wander further north, bringing them into contact with polar bears.

Artificial mixing often happens in zoos, where different species that don’t normally meet in the wild can be introduced to each other. Ligers(lion and tiger hybrids)are unlikely to occur in nature, because the only place that their habitats overlap is the Gir Forest in India.     4     Mixed species are more likely to be born with health issues than other animals. Most hybrids born in zoos are infertile, which means they are unable to have babies. However, many cross-breeds born in the wild, like the grolar bear, can have their own babies.

    5     “It’s part of the evolutionary process,” he says. Fertile hybrids can lead to the creation of a new species and increase the variety of living things.