【推荐1】One swallow (燕子) may not make a summer but seeing or hearing birds does improve mental wellbeing, researchers have found.

The study, led by academics from King’s College London, also found that everyday encounters with birds boosted the mood of people with depression, as well as the wider population.

The researchers said the findings suggested that visits to places with a wealth of birdlife, such as parks and canals, could be prescribed by doctors to treat mental health conditions. They added that their findings also highlighted the need to better protect the environment and improve biodiversity in urban, suburban and rural areas in order to preserve bird habitats.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, tracked 1,292 participants’ everyday encounters with birds last year via a smartphone app called Urban Mind.

Over the course of two weeks, the participants, from the UK, Europe, the US, China and Australia, were required at random intervals to record how they were feeling, including whether they were happy or stressed, whether they could see trees, and whether they could see or hear birds.

The researchers found that participants’ average mental wellbeing scores increased when they saw or heard birds, including among those who disclosed they had been diagnosed with depression.

This beneficial effect also lasted beyond the moment of encountering birds, with higher levels of mental wellbeing noted by participants who did not see or hear birds the next time they recorded their mood.

However, this positive effect did not persist if the participants did not encounter birds during the subsequent assessment of their mood, which the researchers said indicated “a possible causal link effect of birdlife on mental wellbeing”.

Andrea Mechelli, professor of early intervention in mental health at King’s College London, said, “We need to create and support environments, particularly urban environments, where bird life is a constant feature. To have a healthy population of birds, you also need plants, you also need trees. We need to nurture the whole ecosystem within our cities.”

He added that the positive effect of bird encounters on people with depression was significant because many “interventions that help so-called ‘healthy people’ don’t work for individuals with mental health issues”.

Mechelli said, “We know exercise makes everyone feel better. But it’s incredibly challenging to motivate someone with depression to exercise. Whereas contact with bird life is something that, perhaps, is feasible.”

【推荐2】Six red wolf pups were born in the wild, which marks the first time these pups have been born in the wild since 2018.

Long ago, red wolves lived all through the US Southeast. But as the wolves were hunted, and as more and more land was taken over for cities, roads, and farms, the wolves began to die out. In 1973, a new law called the Endangered Species Act was passed. It was designed to protect endangered animals, like red wolves. At the time, there were only about 17 red wolves remaining in the wild.

The Red Wolf Recovery Program kept fourteen of those wolves in captivity to protect them. By 1980, red wolves were believed to be extinct in the wild. Luckily, the wolves did well in captivity, and their numbers continued to grow. Soon the the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) began releasing red wolves back into the wild. Between 1987 and 1994, 60 adult red wolves were released. Over time, those wolves spread out, paired up, and began to have pups. In 2008, there were 47 wild pups born. By 2012, red wolf numbers had hit a new high point of about 120 wolves in the wild.

Sadly, though, wild red wolf numbers began to drop again. Some wolves were shot and others were hit by cars. In 2018, a total of four pups were born in the wild. In 2019, 2020, and 2021, no wild pups were born at all. So the news that six pups were born in the wild this year is a huge boost. The good news isn’t an accident. Currently, there are over 240 captive red wolves in the recovery program. The FWS has released some captive wolves into the wild, and worked to pair these animals with wild wolves. The FWS has also taken pups born in captivity and had them raised by wild female wolves. With luck, they will have even more company next year.

【推荐1】For riders of the Lopifit, getting from A to B is as easy as putting one foot in front of the other, with its unusual design helping users to ride around by walking.

Designed by Dutchman Bruin Bergmeester, the electric walking bike called Lopifit is a mixture between a scooter (踏板车), an electric bike and a treadmill (跑步机).

According to Lopifit’s website, bike lover Bergmeester came up with the idea while training in the gym, wondering: “How can I use the treadmill outdoors? What about a treadmill on wheels?”

Four years ago the first Lopifit was created in the Netherlands, now the Lopifit firm is selling the bikes to several countries, including the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean.

The bikes use a motor to support the treadmill, so using the bikes takes “no more effort…than a walk in the park”. As the rider walks, sensors (传感器) record the turning treadmill and kick the motor into gear (齿轮) to support the movement and set the wheels in action.

Lopifit’s bikes come with a heavy pricetag (价格标签), at $2,495 (£1,980) per bike. But bikers can choose their walking bike with a series of colours.

At present, the company is struggling to keep up with the orders from all over the world. Bruin Bergmeester, CEo of the company, says smiling : “Our goal is to make the electric walking bike available for as many people as possible. We want to change the way people move. We wish that everyone can benefit from a greener and cleaner way of transportation that naturally improves your health.”

【推荐2】He’s considered the father of the technological innovation, and apart from that, he was also known as a design perfectionist. There is no single executive or creator in the technology industry who is more creative and inspirational than him, and with that being said he was a one-in-billion creator.

On February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, United States, a baby named Steve Jobs entered the world. His parents’ inability to provide for him led to a difficult childhood, one in which he battled with his sense of self and felt constantly confused and unfulfilled. Nonetheless, who could have predicted that this person would cause such a dramatic shift in the information technology? The way Steve Jobs showed the world the new products and devices he was working on was truly out of this world, and that’s a big part of why he’s so beloved.

Steve Jobs was well-informed, but he was not a scholar. He possessed a high IQ but showed little enthusiasm for formal education. His main hobbies were playing tricks on people via phone and computer, goofing off with his best friends, and coming up with ground-breaking business concepts.

Steve Jobs’ philosophy on education is well-known at this point; he has stated publicly that he was only able to learn after leaving college. When Steve Jobs and his friend Wozniak were in their early 20s, they came up with the idea for the Apple Computer. Steve Jobs’ Volkswagen bus and Wozniak’s beloved scientific calculator were sold to finance the pair’s garage-based startup. Jobs and Wozniak have been given much of credit for democratizing the computer industry by making computers more user-friendly, portable, and affordable.

Wozniak envisioned a line of accessible and lightning-fast personal computers, and Jobs was put in charge of the company’s marketing and management. From the get-go, Apple sold the computers for up to $666. The unexpected greatness of their early success inspired them to develop more powerful machines. In the 70s, they accomplished what would become the company’s crowning achievement. Assembled by Apple, Inc. , the high-performance computer was an instant success in their home state of California, and its sales helped make Jobs a multimillionaire.

【推荐3】If you stand in front of a group of kids, and start stating facts and ideas about a particular topic, like common trees found in a forest, their eyes will probably become dull because they’ll get bored. There might be a few people with a particular interest in trees who remain attentive, but it’s likely that most will lose interest fairly quickly. But if you stand up in front of that same group of people and tell them a story, something different will happen.

Researchers have now quantified (量化) the emotional benefits of a well-told tale. “We know that stories can transport us to another world,” says Guilherme Brockington, the lead author of the new paper. Earlier research suggests that stories help children process and regulate their emotions — but it was mostly conducted in a laboratory, with subjects answering questions while lying inside MRI (核磁共振) machines. There are few studies on psychological effects of storytelling in more commonplace scenes, such as hospitals.

So investigators working in several hospitals split a total of 81 patients aged between four and eleven into two groups, matching them with storytellers who had a decade of hospital experience. In one group, the storyteller led each child in playing a riddle game. In the other, youngsters chose books and listened as the storyteller read them aloud. Before and after these sessions, the researchers let each child spit into a tube, then asked them to report their pain levels and conducted a free-association word quiz.

Based on the analysis of each tube of saliva (唾液), the researchers found children in both groups showed lower levels of the stress-related hormone (荷尔蒙) called cortisol and higher levels of oxytocin, a feel-good hormone. However, the cortisol levels of kids in the storytelling group were a quarter of those in the riddle group, and their oxytocin levels were nearly twice as high. Those who heard stories reported pain levels dropping almost twice as much as those in the riddle group, and they used more positive words.

Next, the investigators plan to study how long these effects last. For now, Brockington says the results indicate storytelling is a low-cost and extremely efficient way to help improve health outcomes.