【推荐2】When you think about a deadly animal, you may think of a shark, a lion, or even an elephant. However, the truth is that the deadliest animal in the world is much smaller and more annoying.     1    And it feeds on human blood, transporting numerous diseases from one person to the next. Figure it out, yet? Yes, it's the mosquito.

The numbers don't lie: According to the World Health Organization, more than 725, 000 people worldwide are killed by mosquito-borne diseases each year. These diseases include malaria(疟疾） dengue fever, yellow fever, and encephalitis,     2    "Being able to adapt easily to new environments is one of the reasons why mosquitoes are the most deadly, "Bums Blackwell, an expert in pest control said.

    3    Mosquitoes have learned to lay eggs in as little as a few small drops of water and each female mosquito can lay between 50 and 500 eggs once. Their populations also reach the highest point at different times in different areas all over the world, making it nearly impossible to avoid being bitten    4    

In areas where there' re too many mosquitoes, local authorities try to control the population through routine pesticide(杀虫剂）applications. "We should protect ourselves by avoiding places where there is too much water, "said Bernard Cohen, MD, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.     5     Wear bug repellent(驱虫剂）that contains DEET(up to 30 percent)when heading outdoors, and reapply it about every four hours.

【推荐3】Alzheimer’s disease is a major national health problem. Nearly 2 million Americans over the age of 65 have Alzheimer’s disease. It is a leading cause of death among the elderly. But Alzheimer’s disease is not confined （限于） to the aged. There may be a million or more people under the age of 65 suffering from the disease.

At one time, people suffering from the disease were said to be “getting old”. The disease was thought to be a natural part of growing old, but it is now known that Alzheimer’s disease strikes young and old alike. It is an organic （器官的） disease, that destroys brain cells.

Alzheimer’s disease affects the patient’s memory, speech, and movement. In the beginning stages of the disease, the patient may seem slightly confused. He may have trouble speaking, and then the patient’s memory begins to fail. He may forget dates, numbers, names and plans.

As the disease progresses, the patient may not recognize family and friends. These symptoms（症状） often cause terrible anxiety in the patient. He may feel lost and frightened. Sometimes the patient reacts with wild and bad behavior.

In the last stages of the disease, the patient may not be able to take care of himself. He may have lost the ability to speak and walk.

Scientists don’t know exactly what causes Alzheimer’s disease. It may be caused by a virus （病毒）.It may be caused by a poisonous substance（物质） in the environment. At present, there is no cure for the disease. But there are ways to slow its progress. Exercise and physical treatment can help the patients of this disease.

【推荐1】Midway through The Matrix, Cypher feasts on an enormous steak, well aware that his reality is not real, part of a digital program telling his brain that the steak is a construction and that it is “juicy and delicious”. Two decades after the movie made its first appearance, something unexpected arises: The future of reality will not only be virtual but also synthetic (合成的). Cypher’s future meal will be a physical one, synthesized from animal cells.

And the synthesis goes beyond dinner. Starting with components from the natural world, scientists are learning to engineer microorganisms and build biocomputing systems. However, biology has a tendency to evolve in unexpected ways.

Synthesized meat is one case in point. The driving forces behind the meat movement are practical. It has been estimated that cultured (培育的) meat would require 7 to 45 percent less energy and produce 78 to 96 percent less greenhouse gas than conventional animals farmed for consumption. But once we’re able to synthesize meat, theoretically, we’ll have the capability to culture meat from any animal, even those we’d never consider eating today, like dolphins or chimpanzees, which will pose a new regulatory challenge for us.

Using synthetic biology, we can even edit and rewrite life, the technology of which is already in use. In 2021, scientists in some countries announced they had grown monkey embryos injected with human stem cells. Here comes the situation worth considering: such a monkey-human hybrid will demonstrate qualities that are somewhere between humans, on which experimentation isn’t allowed, and animals, which are often raised specifically for research. How will we decide when an animal becomes too human?

Depending on where you stand, the synthetic realities land somewhere between “really exciting” and “critically concerning”. As individuals, we undertake a shared responsibility to make good choices about this coming synthetic technology.

【推荐2】Siri is a virtual assistant, applied to electronic devices with the ability to recognize humans' speech, answer questions, make recommendations and so on. Ask Siri if she's a woman. Go ahead; ask about her gender. She'll tell you that she' s "genderless". So are many other virtual assistants. But, man, do they ever sound a lot like women? Yes. Culturally, we think of them as ladies, too.

If we advocate gender diversity in other areas of daily life, why does our tech sound so female? It would be easy to blame male designers. Perhaps it's influenced by science fiction. But the biggest reason rests in social science. “Research indicates there's likely to be greater acceptance of female speech,” says Karl MacDorman, an associate professor at Indiana University who specializes in human-computer communication. MacDorman and his team played male and female voices to people of both genders, and then asked them to identify which they preferred. They reported that both women and men said male voices sounded seemingly indifferent, in comparison.

Why do we have such prejudice? Stanford University communication professor Clifford Nass says that people tend to consider female voices to be helpful for them to solve their problems by themselves, while they view male voices as those from authority figures who tell them the answers to their problems.

This finding suggests that companies will make a better impression on a broader group of customers with a woman's voice — but not just any voice. It has to be based on a brand's personality. Greg Pal, vice president of business development at Nuance Communications, Inc. insists that some brands choose male speakers. He turned on his iPhone and pulled up the Domino's Pizza app, which has an assistant, Dom. He sounded like his high school English teacher — educated. That's right for a brand attempting to appeal to guys ordering pies before the big game.

As voice technology improves, though, designers say diversity will too. Many devices already let you customize a voice interface (界面). Siri can become a sir as you want it — if you take the time to reprogram it.

【推荐3】During the outbreak of novel coronavirus, cities are locked down and borders are closed. Science, on the contrary, is becoming more open. And this "open science" is already making a difference.

Soon after the epidemic started in China, a research team from Fudan University in Shanghai successfully sequenced （测定序列）the DNA of the virus. But they didn't keep the information to themselves. Instead, they placed the sequences on GenBank, an open-access data platform, so researchers around the world could download them for free and start studying the virus.

Due to this openness, pharmaceutical （制药的）companies across the globe are now able to work simultaneously （同时地）to develop a vaccine. “There may be room for multiple different vaccines for different purposes and different age groups,”, Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security in the US, told Al Jazeera. "The                    bigger menu we have of vaccines, the more resilient （有适应力的）we'll be against coronavirus outbreaks in the future.”

Major drug companies around the world are also sharing their study results. Remdesivir, a drug originally developed by US company Gilead Sciences to treat Ebola, is found to be promising in fighting against the novel coronavirus. Currently, two trials of the drug are already underway in China, and the results might be available as soon as April, according to The Verge.

This openness in science is going to be even more critical in the future. “With climate change, increasing globalization, and population shifts, epidemics will not go away, and might even become more frequent," Dan Barouch, a Harvard Medical School professor, told Harvard Magazine.

He said, "No one group can do everything. It has to be a coordinated （合作的）approach. But I do think that the world has a greater sense of readiness this time to develop knowledge, drugs, and therapeutics （疗法）very rapidly.”

Every epidemic is indeed a crisis, but it can also be a learning opportunity. One redeeming （补偿的）factor of the COVID-19 outbreak is that it is helping science adapt for the better.