1 . It’s perhaps the world’s most famous underwater attraction that remained in film and in legend: the Titanic. But now experts say the ocean liner, once a wonder of the high seas, is falling to pieces.

Capt. Alfred McLaren, the scientist who in July led the most recent expedition to the ship’s underwater grave, said his team saw clear signs of the accelerating damage of the wreck (残骸). There was damage likely caused by rust and sea life, and the captain’s cabin had collapsed.

“I was absolutely astonished,” McLaren said.

Worse still, the fallen mast (桅杆) that crushed the ship’s deck is believed by many to be the result of an unapproved salvage (打捞) operation. “It was almost depressing to see how quickly she was getting worse,” McLaren says. “I would be really surprised if there’s very much standing up from the bottom, two decades from now.”

Ed Kamuda, who runs the Titanic Historical Society in Springfield, Mass., says adventure tourists — who pay $36,000 each to visit the wreck — are also contributing to the destruction of it.

“This is something I expected. I just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly,” Kamuda said. “People are going down just as an ego trip to say ‘I was there.’ All this takes a fare on the ship.”

The Titanic has sat at the bottom of the Atlantic since it sank after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage on April 14, 1912. More than 1,500 people died that night. The ship came to rest at the bottom of the freezing North Atlantic, more than 2 miles beneath the waves. The wreck was discovered in 1985, and since then it has been repeatedly visited by treasure hunters.

But still some scientists say those divers, and other thrill seekers are not necessarily to blame for the Titanic’s current problems.

Capt. Craig McLean of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration went on an expedition to the Titanic in June as part of a government study that is monitoring the condition of the ship. He says it’s unclear what part of the damage is from Mother Nature and which is from human nature.

“It’s too early and there isn’t enough evidence to put our fingers on anything,” McLean said.

Regardless, most agree there’s little that can be done for this most famous of wrecks. And soon, the mighty Titanic could well be lost again.

2 . People tend to cut corners and allow trusted workmates to do their work when working as a team. Now researchers have found that the same thing happens when humans work with robots.

Dietlind Cymek at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany and her colleagues designed an experiment to test whether humans would put in less effort when they think that their personal contribution to a task won’t be noticed.

In the experiment, the researchers asked a group of 42 people to examine images of circuit boards (电路板) for errors using a computer that tracked their work. Half of them looked at boards that had already been checked by a robot, and half were told that they were the only ones responsible for quality control.

People working in partnership with the robot caught fewer errors, after they had already seen that the robot had successfully flagged lots of errors.

The researchers say such teamwork could lead to a drop in motivation if individual effort isn’t visible and warn that there could be safety risks if teams of people and robots work on safety-related tasks in the same way.

Kathleen Richardson at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, says it is fine to use robots as long as they are effective, but that they should be considered tools rather than workmates or team members. “It just strikes me that workers think when a tool can do something, they let it,” says Richardson.

This is probably down to poor management style, in which individual work isn’t recognised. “I bet you if there was an motivation behind it, and if the humans could get extra pay for spotting errors in the circuit boards, then they’d put a bit more effort into it,” she adds.

5 . Carried by the wind, dust particles (微粒) from places such as the Sahara Desert can float halfway around the world before settling to the ground. As the plastics abandoned by humans break down into tiny pieces in the environment, they, too, travel through the atmosphere. Now scientists are a step closer to understanding how these microplastics travel in the globe — both locally and on long-distance flights.

Researchers spent more than a year collecting microplastics from 11 national parks and wilderness areas in the western U.S. They examined the particles that settled on dry days and those that fell along with rain or snow. In addition to making clear how microplastics move around, the results, published on Thursday in Science, reveal the seriousness of the problem: more than 1 million kilograms of microplastics — the weight of 120 million to 300 million plastic water bottles — fall on protected lands in the country’s western region each year.

The new findings add to scientists’ concern over microplastic pollution’s potential impacts on the environment and human health. “We’re not supposed to breathe in this material,” says Steve Allen, a microplastics researcher at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, who was not involved in the new study. “Plastics in the environment “carry all sorts of pesticides (农药), heavy metals and all the other chemicals that we’ve made over time,” he adds. “They’re going to carry them directly into our lungs.”

Since their discovery in oceans in the 1970s, microplastics — which can be as large as a grain of rice or smaller than a particle of dust — have been found nearly everywhere researchers have looked: in cities, in Arctic snow, on remote mountaintops. Their presence in areas distant from the place where human live has pointed to them being carried by winds.

6 . I arrived in Idaho from California on my 28th birthday for my first Ironman triathlon (铁人三项), dreaming of this moment for years. When I was picking up my race ______ in the registration (登记) tent, Deborah Silva, a ______ volunteer, was quick to start a ______, asking if I had family to cheer me on. “No, came here ______,” I replied, and admitted my ______ in running and swimming. We talked a while, and I thought she was a wonderful volunteer.

The next day, on my way to the swimming pool, I heard, “Felix!” It was Deborah. It was such a surprise that she ______ me and said she would support me during tomorrow’s race, showing me a big handmade sign: “Go #176” — my race number.

On race day, Deborah and her family were at Mile 50 of the bicycle race, holding the ______ and cheering me on. It really lifted my spirits, ______ as I was one of the last athletes to complete the swim and was now dealing with 90-degree heat on the bike.

As if her being out there all afternoon wasn’t ______, after darkness had fallen and I was just finishing the race, there she was! “You did it!” she said. It was almost 15 hours since the race had begun. Yet she waited at the finish line to ______ me, give me a hug, and take photos so I’d never forget this day — the day I ______ the dream of doing my first Ironman.

Deborah made a complete ______ from a distant place feel welcome and she made this day memorable by going far beyond her ______ as a race volunteer, offering ______ to a young Californian. And sure enough, weeks later, I received my ______ in the mail.

7 . A person with a photographic memory could remember every detail of a picture, a book or an event many years later, but no one has proved that there are people who really have photographic memories. Yet, there are some people who do have amazing memories. For example, Daniel Tammet can remember the first 22,514 digits of pi (π) and Stephen Wiltshire can draw a detailed picture of a city from memory after flying over it in a helicopter. They are both good at remembering particular things for a limited time. As most of us do not have amazing memories like them, when memorising detailed learning materials, we simply need to focus on the important ideas and be curious about what we learn. Asking questions about what we learn also helps with memorisation. Another effective technique to remember things is to group similar ideas or information together so that they can be easily connected to things that are already known.

8 . The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study of 15-year-old school pupils’ scholastic performance in maths, science, and reading. A closer look at the reading tests shows the interesting fact that girls are outperforming boys in reading and that reading for enjoyment rather than simply for study or school work purposes has a positive impact on reading performance. The PISA study found that in all countries assessed (apart from South Korea), girls read for enjoyment more than boys. The study found that in all the countries assessed, just over half of boys (52%), but almost three-quarters of girls (73%) said that they read for enjoyment.

9 . A few years ago, I stood underneath a red overhanging cliff (悬崖) near my husband’s hometown, Carbondale, Colo. I was tied in, ready to climb.

Just as I was about to climb, nerves in my body said hello. That’s not good for any athlete.

Desperate, I painted a coat of confidence on my inner walls of doubt.

“You can do this,” I told myself determinedly. “If you believe, success is certain.”

I visualized myself at the top, celebrating.

It didn’t work. I fell near the top. Defeated, I lowered to the ground and realized, powerfully, that the desire to climb the route had kept me from doing it. My self worth was linked at that moment to my success or failure, and that set off a chain reaction: unnatural desire, pressure, performance anxiety, expectation, a mind fixed on the top but a body struggling below, bad decision-making, irregular movement, distraction, disappointment. All in that order, too.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I told myself that on my next attempt, success or failure was irrelevant. “Make one move at a time. That’s all.” I gave myself a pass from whatever would happen. Case closed.

It worked. I reached the top.

That moment got me thinking, and then researching. At some point, I described this experience for myself in terms of simple mathematics: When I added (determination, courage, self-confidence, desire), I failed. When I took away (the desire for success), my body moved with greater naturalness. I improved. I enjoyed it more as well, which, as an athlete of 30 years, I didn’t think was possible.

I discovered the power of subtraction (减法).

The French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote one of my favorite books Wind, Sand and Stars. In it, I found one of the smartest lines ever written on the human condition: “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing left to take away.”