2 . Rachel Maclean’s toy shop on Ayr high street appears like any other in a town centre at first sight. Step inside and you will notice that familiar promotional entreaties (恳求) are backwards: Don’t Buy Me, Nothing Must Go. Everything is upside down and nothing is for sale.

Matilda Coleman, six, picked up one of the toys—a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Disney princess(公主), and turned her upside down. Underneath the skirt was a pale-faced witchy (女巫的) version. The girl liked it, and then was confused that the toy wasn’t available to buy. Maclean’s work playfully breaks the grasp that consumer culture has on modern minds.

“What art can do best is to make you look at things that you’re very used to in a different way,” said Maclean (b.1987), a Glasgow-based multi-media artist who has rapidly established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in the UK. “Sadly the decline of our city centres is something that is common these days, so I want to bring people into a space where they can reflect on it in a fun way.”

“When the shop first opened, everyone was interested in finding out what it was,” said Parker, a local teenager. “It has lots of different themes about identity, consumerism, capitalism, but they are silent messages and everyone has different thoughts about it.”

Maclean has taken over this former butcher’s shop in Ayr as part of Jupiter Plus, a new arts and education initiative, which aims to reluyenate empty high street shops in towns and cities in Scotland with free art exbibitions and workshops for young people. People’s immediate joy at seeing something happening in here is abivious and it drives conversations about how they remember the high street and how the space could be used again.

3 . Goldfish may seem like simple creatures swimming in a glass tank, but they possess a rather complicated navigation system, as discovered by researchers at the University of Oxford Led by Dr. Adelaide Sibeaux, the study aims to shed light on our understanding of how fish, and potentially humans, estimate distances using what could be described as an internal GPS.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Sibeaux and colleagues report how they created a tank in their experiment with 2cm-wide black and white vertical stripes (条纹) on the walls, connected by similar stripes across the floor. The team trained nine goldfish to swim a set distance of 70cm and then return to their starting point when waved at. The experiment aimed to investigate how the fish would estimate this distance without any gestures, under different patterns.

Over multiple trials, the goldfish averaged a swim distance of 74cm, give or take 17cm, when presented with the vertical 2cm-wide stripes. However, when the stripe pattern was altered to either narrower vertical stripes, checked patterns, or horizontal stripes, the fish’s behavior changed significantly. Narrower vertical stripes led them to overestimating the distance by 36%, while horizontal stripes resulted in highly inconsistent estimations.

According to the researchers, the goldfish appeared to be using an “optic (光学的) flow mechanism” based on the visual density of their environment. They kept track of how frequently the vertical pattern switched between black and white to estimate how far they had traveled. The study suggests that different optic flow mechanisms are used by mammals, including humans, based on angular (有角度的) motion of visual features. The study implies that the use of visually based distance information could have emerged early in the evolutionary timeline.

“This study is novel because, despite knowing that fish respond to geometric information regarding direction and distance, we don’t know how they estimate distances,” Professor Colin Lever, although not involved in the study, said, “it’s exciting to explore fish spatial mapping because fish navigation evolved earlier and better than most mammals.”

6 . A growing body of research suggests that the gut microbiome (消化道菌群) could play a major role in a rising chronic disease that makes us physically weaker. The illness, which is commonly called chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), is characterized by intense fatigue, gastrointestinal (胃肠道的) issues, muscle pain, and cognitive challenges such as headaches and difficulty concentrating, among other symptoms. It often follows a viral infection which can lead to a “disruption” in a balanced gut ecosystem. Actually, an increasing number of Americans have been the sufferers since the outbreak of COVID-19.

Two recent studies published in Cell Host &Microbe point to changes in the microbiome as a possible cause of CFS. Research groups at Columbia University and the Jackson Laboratory performed detailed analyses of the microbes in stool (粪便) samples from patients with CFS and compared them to healthy controls.

The two groups found similar bacteria species were less present in CFS patients compared to control patients. They focused on bacteria that produce butyrate, a fatty acid involved in regulating metabolism and the immune system. “Butyrate plays several roles in directing the body’s response to infections, while also protecting the barrier between the intestine (肠) and the circulatory system, regulating genetic changes in cells, and more,” says Brent Williams, lead author on the Columbia study. Williams and his colleagues extensively analyzed the role of butyrate in CFS patients’ guts, even identifying a correlation between low levels of bacteria that produce this acid and more severe symptoms.

Parallel findings from the Jackson Laboratory team suggest the bacteria that produce butyrate could be used to diagnose CFS. Previous research has identified microbiome issues in CFS patients, but the new findings help clarify which microbes could be related to the illness.

More research on butyrate-producing bacteria and other species identified in the studies is necessary to investigate these potential biomarkers of CFS, the authors say. If the findings are replicated, specific gut bacteria could be used to diagnose the illness, which is currently identified based on symptoms alone.

The findings additionally point toward possible treatments, such as probiotics or microbiome-focused diet adjustments—though patients who have been sick for long periods may require drugs that alleviate the damage done to their metabolism or immune system.

7 . Many years ago, I was living with my best friend and we had many happy moments together. But there was one night that ________ our lives forever.

On the night of November 25, 2011, I got into a fistfight with my best friend in our kitchen. It all started because I was trying to help him. He was drinking a lot, arguing with everyone and ________ himself from others by keeping silent most of the time. This had been going on for weeks and finally I decided it was time for a(an) ________ I told him that he needed to stop drinking so much and tried to ________ his alcohol and he got angry and started ________ with me. It was scary, but by the end of the night, we were able to calm down and talk to each other.

I thought alcohol ________ was his main problem. But he was just using alcohol to ________ himself through. He was lonely, heartbroken and struggling to connect with people. So during the Christmas season a few weeks later, I gave him a ________ that I didn’t even know I had.

That Christmas my friend didn’t have any place to go, so I invited him home to my parents’ house in Lancaster. They ________ cleaned up our guest room for him and even bought him some Christmas gifts. I’ll never forget the night we arrived at my home. My parents were already ________, but my mom had prepared dinner for us, baked some cookies and left us a note. My parents are known for their ________, so I wasn’t surprised by this warm welcome. But when my friend read my mom’s note and saw all that she had prepared, he broke down and cried. That’s when I ________ how much I took my loving family for granted.

That year my friend and I both received gifts that we would ________ forever. I gave him the gift of a warm, loving, safe place to spend Christmas. And he gave me the gift of a new ________ on life. If I hadn’t shared my home with him, I wouldn’t have understood how ________ I am.

8 . Alarming levels of dangerous chemicals known as Perfluorinated Alkylated Substances (PFAS) were discovered in food packaging at a number of well-known fast-food restaurants and grocery store chains, a new report found. The report comes more than two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, when the public has relied heavily on takeout and grocery deliveries.

Often called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment, PFAS are used in food packaging to prevent grease (油脂) and water from soaking through food wrappers and cups. PFAS can also be found in the ink used to print logos and instructions on food containers.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls exposure to PFAS a “public health concern”, citing that the human-made chemicals can harm the immune system and reduce a person’s resistance to infectious diseases.

Regulatory limits for how much PFAS food packaging should contain can vary greatly. For instance, a new law in California set the limit at less than 100 ppm. “Compared to America, Denmark sets a much lower regulatory limit of 20 ppm with great success,” said Xenia Trier, an expert at the European Environment Agency. “It does work to set limits and enforce them. PFAS do migrate from the paper into the food. Even though it was not 100%, we still saw considerable transmission. In general, transmission from packaging to food is increased as the temperature of the food rises. It is the same with the time spent in wrapping materials.” Trier told NBS, one of the major American mass-media companies.

In response to the issue, Whole Foods became the first grocery chain to publicly commit to remove PFAS from takeout containers and bakery paper. Many other companies followed suit. Experts say people who want to avoid PFAS in their takeout and food delivery packaging should favor companies that have promised to remove the chemicals. “As soon as you receive your takeout, you’d better take food out of the container immediately, and never reheat food in its original container. Instead, remove your food and heat it in ceramic (陶瓷的) or glass containers.” Trier said.

9 . As a boy, John Kerr wanted to be a park ranger (护林员). ________, he spent four decades at a public broadcasting’s station in Boston. He ________ at the age of 65 without any particular post-career goal in mind.

After several lazy weeks, he drove to visit his family by Yellowstone. On the way he ________ stopped at the Yellowstone Park Foundation, which raised funds for the national park. As it happened, the foundation was ________ people to educate park guests on wolves. Kerr ________ for an internship (实习).

To say that Kerr stood out in the intern crowd is a massive ________. Most interns were college and even high school students. But, in a sense, he had been ________ for this since his youth. His outdoor adventures with his grandfather had given him a love of ________, and he once volunteered at the local fire department on ________ calls.

From his internship, he ________ a ranger sooner, educating park visitors, making for safe ________ between guests and animals, and responding to medical emergencies. He ________ his job of what he describes as one in the most beautiful places, and moments when he treats a visitor to an ________ look at one of the park’s wolves or bears through his telescope, an ________ that can move visitors to tears.

“These are ________ and all-too-rare moments,” recalls Kerr. “I never forget them.”

10 . Five years ago, Meredith Arthur, a 45-year-old San Francisco resident, arrived at a neurologist appointment. She spoke a mile a minute, explaining why she thought it might hold clues to her neck pain, frequent dizziness and headaches. “I was presenting my inexpert case to an expert, who stopped me and said, ‘I know what’s wrong. You have generalized anxiety disorder.’”

Arthur is one of the 40 million American adults who experience an anxiety disorder—the most common form of mental illness—every year. Its major factor is the uncertainty about situations in daily life.

“I describe anxiety as a future-oriented emotional response to a perceived threat,” says Joel Minden, PhD, a clinical psychologist. “We anticipate that something bad will happen. Maybe we have evidence. Maybe we don’t. But we have a belief that something catastrophic might occur.”

Almost immediately, Minden says, your sympathetic nervous system kicks into high gear. This leads to the release of adrenaline and cortisol, two of the crucial hormones (荷尔蒙) that drive your body’s fight-freeze-flight response and cause anxiety’s physical symptoms. Your heart races, your blood pressure rises, your pupils dilate, you get short of breath.

Meanwhile, cortisol curbs functions that your brain considers non-essential: It affects immune system responses and suppresses (抑制) the digestive system, the reproductive system, and growth processes. This was helpful for our ancestors trying to outrun tigers but is not so much when you can’t stop struggling with the problem whether you might have caught COVID-19 when the guy behind you in line at the grocery store coughed.

Anxiety can show itself in many ways. You might perceive something as threatening even when it isn’t or go to great lengths to avoid uncomfortable situations. You might constantly overthink plans or spend all of your time creating solutions to worst-case scenarios. Maybe you feel indecisive and fear making the wrong decision. Or you might find yourself restless, nervous, and unable to relax.

The good news is that anxiety is very manageable with some combination of medication, therapy, and lifestyle adjustments.