【推荐1】◆The Necomimi

◆The ostrich pillow

There are times when you're so tired that nothing is better than taking a short sleep. Whether it's being stuck at the office or on a long bus ride or at the library, the pillow is designed to put the wearer in soft supportive cushioning in any resting position. The strange-looking pillow has a hole in which to put your head, and a mouth hole designed to allow its wearer to breathe easily. It also has two side holes where you can store your hands. It is now being sold online for $99.

◆The Hovding bike helmet

◆The treadmill desk

Another study suggests that meeting the recommended amount of physical activity requires more exercises than walking. It's also recommended that treadmill speeds should be limited to around 2 miles per hour or less to make sure they can be used safely while working.

【推荐3】When a laptop or smartphone battery starts losing its power, the only options are to buy an expensive replacement or just keep it plugged in all the time. But a woman Mya Le Thai may have found the solution to this problem.

Thai was frustrated that the batteries for her wireless devices degraded (退化) over time, until they failed to charge fully. She did not like having to keep her laptop connected to an electrical outlet to keep it powered on. So, she decided to do something about that problem. At first, she and her team at UC Irvine thought about inventing a new battery. But as they experimented, Thai discovered something that might permit lithium-ion (锂离子) batteries to last forever.

Lithium-ion batteries power most wireless devices. Over time, the batteries lose the ability to hold a charge. Most of these batteries have a lifespan of about 7,000 charging cycles before they die. One of the reasons lithium-ion batteries degrade is their use of nanowires to carry electricity. Nano wires are extremely thin. A human hair is thousands of times thicker, for example. Nano wires are extremely efficient carriers of electricity, which makes them useful in batteries.

But, Thai had a theory — the nanowires might last longer if covered with a gel (凝胶). She and her team tested this theory. “It was a long process and a lot of work,” Thai said. The team tried many coverings for the wires. PMMA, a type of plastic, was one of them. The nanowires were coated with PMMA and cycled through charging 200,000 times. The PMMA-coated nanowires showed no evidence of damage. The results suggest that batteries could last forever without losing charging ability.

Thai hopes to continue her research to understand why this gel works so well and to see if any other gel could create better results and she is enjoying the publicity about her discovery. She said she never expected her research to get media coverage. “It’s kind of cool,” she said. “I’m really glad people are showing interest in my work and not just in the work itself; but also in technology and energy.”

【推荐2】Donna Strickland is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Professor Strickland is one of the recipients (接受者) of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 with Gerard Mourou, her PhD teacher at the time. They published this Nobel-winning research in 1985 when Strickland was a PhD student at the University of Rochester in New York state. Together they paved the way toward the most intense laser pulses ever created.

Professor Donna Strickland is only the third woman ever to have won the Nobel Prize in Physics. She and her fellow winners were honored for what the Nobel Committee called groundbreaking inventions in laser physics. Professor Strickland found a pioneering way to use lasers as very precise drilling or cutting tools. Millions of eye operations are performed every year with these sharpest laser beams.

“How surprising do you think it is that you’re the third woman to win this prize?”

“Well that is surprising, isn’t it? I think that’s the story of Maria that people want to talk about —that why should it take 60 years? There are so many women out there doing fantastic research, so why does it take so long to get recognized?”

Physics still has one of the largest gender(性别) gaps in science. One recent study concluded that at the current rate it would be more than two centuries until there were, equal numbers of senior male and female researchers in the field.

The last woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics was German-born Maria Goeppert Mayer for her discoveries about the nuclei of atoms. Before that it was Marie Curie, who shared the 1903 prize with her husband, Pierre. This year winners hope that breaking this half century hiatus (间断) will mean the focus in the future will be on the research, rather than the gender of the researcher.

【推荐3】A city without cars would be very strange, right? But Venice is such a city.

Venice is in the north-east of Italy. It wasn't built on land, like Beijing or Shanghai, but on more than 110 islands. Sea water is everywhere around the city.

Even so, travel isn't difficult. The waterways have always been the best way to get around. There are 117 waterways and more than 400 bridges that can guide you where you want to go. People in Venice move from place to place by boat.

Water makes the city special, but it is also a big problem. Sometimes tourists will have such strange experiences. One moment they walk across the Rialto Bridge, and there's nothing special. But when they come back to the bridge an hour later, it's underwater and everyone is wearing rain shoes.

Once, people used too much underground water. This made the city get lower little by little. Now the city has gone down by 23 centimetres. Another problem is the rising sea water. The temperature has risen over the years. This has made the ice of the Arctic Ocean melt. Every year, high water hits the city in autumn and winter. When a lot of water comes, more than half of the city is underwater.

Scientists are trying different ways to stop the city from getting even lower. The Italian government has asked some of Italy's biggest companies to build the MOSE project, which was planned to be built under the sea water to stop the rising water. Anyway, this project is helping solve the problem.