【推荐1】When traditional treatments fail to help patients with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD强迫症)，an implant that shocks the brain with electrical pulses (脉搏) just might, a new research review shows. It found that the treatment — known as “deep brain stimulation,^” or DBS — can oiler significant relief to as many as two-thirds of such patients.

“OCD involves forced and bothersome thoughts that the individual cannot silence, and repetitive behaviors performed to reduce the anxiety.” said study author Dr. Sameer Sheth, a professor of neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine. Examples of OCD include repeated handwashing, ordering and arranging, repeating words in one’s head, and checking and double-checking.

Enter DBS for the brain. “It consists of a stimulator typically put under the skin in the upper chest and connected to an electrode (电极).”Sheth said. “The electrode is placed in specific regions in the brain, aiming that by restoring activity in these areas to a more balanced state, DBS settles the symptoms of OCD．”

To find out whether it works, Sheth’s team reviewed the findings of 31 studies conducted between 2005 and 2021. Altogether, the studies included 345 adult OCD patients, at an average age of 40. The review showed that after a treatment period of about two years, DBS had produced obvious symptom improvements in two-thirds of the patients. Significant depression relief was also owed to DBS treatment. About one in five patients experienced at least one serious side effect of DBS. Still, Sheth stressed that the upside is hard to ignore. He added, “there is actually little risk of DBS for appropriately selected patients.”

“Since the DBS electrodes are placed in the brain regions contributing to OCD, it is not a surprise that it works.” said Dr. Gopalkumar Rakesh, a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. “Although it’s not a brand-new treatment, DBS really is in the more-research-needed stage of development. So I would say that the results of this study point to the need for even more research to determine which patients would really adjust to that treatment to have the greatest benefit.”

【推荐1】New research links outdoor air pollution — even at levels considered safe — to an increased risk of diabetes (糖尿病) globally, according to a study from the VA St. Louis Health Care System. The findings raise the possibility that reducing pollution may lead to a drop in diabetes cases in heavily polluted countries such as India and less polluted ones such as the United States.

Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases, affecting more than 500 million people worldwide. The main drivers of diabetes include eating an unhealthy diet, having a sedentary lifestyle and obesity, but the new research indicates the extent to which outdoor air pollution plays a role.

“Our research shows a significant link between air pollution and diabetes globally,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. “We found an increased risk, even at low levels of air pollution currently considered safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). This is important because many industry lobbying (游说) groups argue that current levels are too stringent and should be relaxed. Evidence shows that current levels are still not sufficiently safe and need to be tightened.”

While growing evidence has suggested a link between air pollution and diabetes, researchers have not attempted to quantify that burden until now. “Over the past two decades, there have been bits of research about diabetes and pollution,” said Al-Aly. “We wanted to thread together the pieces for a broader, more solid understanding.”

The researchers also found that the overall risk of pollution-related diabetes tilted (倾斜) more toward lower-income countries such as India that lack the resources for environmental mitigation systems and clean-air policies. For instance, poverty-stricken countries facing a higher diabetes-pollution risk include Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea and Guyana, while richer countries such as France, Finland and Iceland experience a lower risk. The US experiences a medium risk of pollution-related diabetes.

【推荐2】As cultural symbols go, the American car is quite young. The Model T Ford was built at the Piquette Plant in Michigan a century ago, with the first rolling off the assembly line (装配线) on September 27, 1908. Only eleven cars were produced the next month. But eventually Henry Ford would build fifteen million of them.

Modern America was born on the road, behind a wheel. The car shaped some of the most lasting aspects of American culture: the roadside diner, the billboard, the motel, even the hamburger. For most of the last century, the car represented what it meant to be American—going forward at high speed to find new worlds. The road novel, the road movie, these are the most typical American ideas, born of abundant petrol, cheap cars and a never-ending interstate highway system, the largest public works project in history.

In 1928 Herbert Hoover imagined an America with “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Since then, this society has moved onward, never looking back, as the car transformed America from a farm-based society into an industrial

The cars that drove the American Dream have helped to create a global ecological disaster. In America the demand for oil has grown by 22 percent since 1990.

The problems of excessive (过度的) energy consumption, climate change and population growth have been described in a book by the American writer Thomas L. Friedman. He fears the worst, but hopes for the best.

Friedman points out that the green economy (经济) is a chance to keep American strength. “The ability to design, build and export green technologies for producing clean water, clean air and healthy and abundant food is going to be the currency of power in the new century.”

What has the use of cars in America led to?

【推荐3】You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the ocean — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.

At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168, 000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.

In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10, 000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.

Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.

【推荐1】The world’s only captive (圈养) brown giant panda, Qizai, has been taking more exercise in preparation for the upcoming breeding (繁育) season. He is encouraged to stand up by keepers who place food on the end of a stick held just out of his reach. Panda experts believe that strengthening the giant animal’s legs will improve his ability to breed successfully.

The world’s first brown panda was discovered in 1985 in the Qinling Mountains. All photographs of wild brown pandas were taken in the area, which they were named after. The Qinling giant panda, first recognized in 2005, is a subspecies of giant panda. As well as its brown and white fur, it has a smaller and rounder skull and a shorter nose than the more familiar Sichuan giant panda.

Qizai, whose name means the seventh son, was found as two-month-old cub, weak and alone, by researchers in a nature reserve in the Qinling Mountains. For his safety, the researchers took him to the nearby Shanxi Rare Wildlife Rescue Centre where he was given medical treatment and fed on milk from other pandas.

There are 1, 864 giant pandas in the wild, according to World Wildlife. They live mainly in bamboo forests high in the mountains of south-west China, mostly in Sichuan province, but they can also be found in Shanxi province, where Qizai is from. He was previously thought to be the only living brown panda in the world until a wild panda with the same colour pattern was spotted roaming in a nature reserve in Shanxi in March, 2018. Up to now spotting brown pandas in the wild has taken place no more than ten times, all of which were in the central Qinling Mountains.

【推荐2】For Canaan Elementary’s second grade in Patchogue, N.Y., today is speech day, and right now it’s Chris Palaez’s turn. The 8-year-old is the joker of the class. With shining dark eyes, he seems like the kind of kid who would enjoy public speaking.

But he’s nervous. “I’m here to tell you today why you should … should…” Chris trips on the “-ld,” a pronunciation difficulty for many non-native English speakers. His teacher, Thomas Whaley, is next to him, whispering support. “…Vote for …me …” Except for some stumbles, Chris is doing amazingly well. When he brings his speech to a nice conclusion, Whaley invites the rest of the class to praise him.

Which of the following best describes Whaley as a teacher?

【推荐3】By day, Robert Titterton is a lawyer. In his spare on stage beside pianist Maria Raspopova — not as a musician but as her page turner. “I’m not a trained musician, but I’ve learnt to read music so I can help Maria in her performance.”

Mr Titterton is chairman of the Omega Ensemble but has been the group’s official page turner for the past four years. His job is to sit beside the pianist and turn the pages of the score so the musician doesn’t have to break the flow of sound by doing it themselves. He said he became just as nervous as those playing instruments on stage.

“A lot of skills are needed for the job. You have to make sure you don’t turn two pages at once and make sure you find the repeats in the music when you have to go back to the right spot.” Mr Titterton explained.