2 . To fight against the ballooning waistlines among people, several U. S. cities have instituted taxes on drinks with added sugar aiming to reduce consumption, but new research suggests these policies currently have one fundamental flaw.

The study found sugary drink only reduce purchasing if price tags at stores mention consumers are paying that tax when they buy the drink.

The research included a field study at two convenience stores in San Francisco, which currently has a tax on sugary drinks of 1 cent per ounce. Researchers varied the price tags placed on the sugary drinks over the eight-week study: one tag that simply said the price for the 12-ounce drink ($1.52) and one that had the price and the message “Includes SF Sugary Drink Tax”. All non-sugary drinks, which weren’t subject to the tax, simply had the price of the drink ($1.40).

The researchers compared sales of the drinks during the study period to the two weeks before the study began when the sugary drink tax was in effect but there were no price tags on any drinks. Results showed sales of sugary drinks weren't lower during the two weeks, compared to sales before the tax, indicating the tax itself didn't reduce purchases of sugary drinks.

The researchers then looked at the effects of the two different price tags. Results showed the share of sugary drinks purchased when the tags simply showed the price wasn’t significantly different from the two-week period before the study, but did decline slightly when the tags mentioned the price included the added tax.

In a separate online study, the researchers asked participants to estimate what the tax would be on a can of their favorite drink that cost $1.52. The average estimate was 40 cents — much higher than the 12 cents actually demanded in San Francisco. When told the tax was only 12 cents, they reported they’d still purchase the drink.

The findings suggest price tags should mention the tax but not the amount, for consumers tend to overestimate how much the tax is. “If cities want these policies to be effective, they need to regulate how sugary drinks are labeled at stores and they currently don’t do that,” said Donnelly, lead author of the study.

3 . With low or no-carbohydrate diets rising in popularity in recent times, the potato is now regularly overlooked in favour of other vegetables. In fact, research literature has previously indicated potatoes may have a detrimental effect on health, such as increasing the possibility of developing Type2 diabetes(糖尿病).

However, new research done by Edith Cowan University (ECU) has shown while potatoes may not have all the same benefits as some other vegetables, such as lowering risk of Type 2 diabetes, health issues associated with potatoes may actually be due to how people are preparing them and what they’re eating them with.

A recent analysis of this study led by Dr Nicola Bondonno from ECU’s Nutrition and Health Innovation Research Institute found people who consumed the most vegetables were 21 percent less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than those who consumed the least amount of vegetables. PhD candidate Pratik Pokharel carried out work on the analysis and said while potatoes didn’t have the same impact on Type 2 diabetes, they also didn’t have any negative effect.

“In Denmark, people consume potatoes prepared in many different ways. In our study, we could distinguish between the different preparation methods. When we separated boiled potatoes from mashed potatoes(土豆泥), fries or crisps, boiled potatoes were no longer associated with a higher risk of diabetes: They had a zero effect,” said Pokharel.

“In our study, people who ate the most potatoes also consumed more butter, red meat and soft drinks-foods known to increase your risk of Type 2 diabetes,” said Pokharel. “We should separate potatoes from other vegetables in regard to messaging about disease prevention but replacing refined grains such as white rice and pasta(意大利面食)with potatoes can improve your diet quality because of fibre and other nutrients found in potatoes.”

4 . As a child, Liu Wenwen didn’t like the suona, a “loud” traditional Chinese musical instrument, also an ancestral treasure of her family that was to become her career.

Liu says she felt ashamed. In the 1990s, people admired things that were modern and international. The suona was considered out of date. Her father’s family has performed with the suona for seven generations, while the tradition on her mother’s side of the family can be traced back to the early Qing Dynasty. Despite her unwillingness, she followed her parents to play the suona as early as 3 years old. Besides it, Liu has also learned traditional Chinese vocal music and dancing—skills that have improved her oral muscles and sense of rhyme, helping equip her to be a professional musician.

It wasn’t until 2008 that she first found suona music beautiful. That was when she entered the Shanghai Conservatory of Music to learn the instrument more systematically from Liu Ying, a professor and top player. “The music played by the professor is just amazing, and different from what I had heard before,” she says.

She loves exchanging ideas about suona playing techniques with her students. “It’s wonderful to see the younger generation carrying on this cultural tradition.” Liu Wenwen said she is pleased to see the suona regain popularity among young people, sometimes combined with jazz, opera and other art forms. This has stopped its decline in the 1990s. Her name, when mentioned on China’s social media platforms, often is followed by a video of her live performance at a concert in Sydney, Australia. Westerners were amazed by the loud, unfamiliar instrument and its colorful music. “I felt my hard work had paid off. I trained for over 20 years, probably just to win cheers and applause for traditional Chinese music on the international stage”.

6 . If you ask 100 people what subjects they wish they had been taught in school, there is a chance that the vast majority of them will complain about the lack of personal finance education. In my case, I did learn a bit about financing while in school — just not in the classroom. One of my earliest lessons on the basics of budgeting came from an unlikely source: the cafeteria.

My lunch budget was a set amount each week. Without a plan, it would be all too easy to blow through the budget long before meeting all expenses. Therefore, my very first budgeting lesson was to make a budget well. A bit of simple arithmetic (算术) helped me determine exactly how much money I could spend each day if I wanted to actually have lunch all week.

Besides, my school had relatively diverse lunch offerings. You could not only get the common hot school lunch but also find many other foods of varying attractions. As far as I was concerned, what attracted me most was the ice cream. Unfortunately, I couldn’t blow my daily lunch budget on ice cream. And I’d already figured out that splurging early in the week made for a rough time for the rest of the week. Hence, I learned my second important budgeting lesson: save for a goal. Because of this lesson, when Friday rolled around, I would have just enough left over for a wonderful lunch and the highly desirable ice cream.

Nowadays, my budget is a bit more complicated than the lunch budget in the past. Although I no longer have to save my pennies for a frozen treat, budgeting my money today uses the exact same skills I learned all those years ago. Actually, whether you’re budgeting for school lunches or credit card bills, the basics remain the same. And it’s never too early — or too late — to learn how to make a proper budget.

9 . Hibernation (冬眠) is a classic topic of science fiction. In movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, or Passengers, crew members are put into a state of sleep to take year-long journeys to space. Now a new study from Washington University has shown that human hibernation may soon become a reality.

The research team carried out tests on rats — animals that do not naturally hibernate. They first identified a group of neurons (神经元) in a deep brain region, which were found to be involved in controlling body temperature during hibernation. They showed that, in mice, these neurons could be stimulated using ultrasound (超声波), which was delivered through a helmet without causing an injury.

When receiving the ultrasound, the mice showed a drop in body temperature of about3°C, and their heart rates fell by about 47%. When the ultrasound system was switched off, they woke up again. The result was “surprising and fascinating”, said Hong Chen, a professor who led the work.

Researchers are also trying to determine how to harness the power of hibernation to help humans. They believe that it could be key to addressing health conditions like heart disease, and Alzheimer’s. Furthermore, hibernation’s ability to slow aging, which was observed in bats, could benefit space exploration, enabling longer missions with less food requirements. Research in animals also suggests that bodies of hibernating astronauts might lose less bone and muscle, making them fit and ready to start challenging exploration soon after they wake up.

By unlocking the secrets of this remarkable process, researchers may uncover ways to improve human health, as well as gain new insights into the natural world. Therefore, the exploration of hibernation is an exciting area that is sure to yield numerous benefits in the years to come.

The scientists now plan to look at how lowered body temperature might affect the cognitive abilities of humans. “Our next experiments will test working memory in monkeys. This is important because while astronauts physically hibernate as they fly into deep space, their brain still needs to be working,” said Chen.