5 . A gene variant (变体) that causes the “alcohol flush (脸红)” reaction increases the risk of heart disease by causing inflammation of blood vessels (脉管), especially in drinkers. Around 8 percent of the world’s populations has a gene variant called ALDH2*2 that impairs the body’s ability to break down alcohol and causes unpleasant symptoms such as flushing soon after people drink. Now, researchers have shown why this change also raises the risk of heart disease.

“We are trying to understand why ALDH2*2 is associated with a higher risk of coronary arte (冠状动脉) disease at a cellular (细胞的) level,” says Hongchao Guo at Stanford University in California.

The ALDH2*2 gene encodes one version of the enzyme (酵素) alcohol dehydrogenase (脱氢酶), which breaks down the toxic acetaldehydes (乙醛) produced when alcohol is metabolized (代谢), and also mops up other harmful substances known as free radicals.

The gene variant also impairs the growth of new blood vessels. “That means that when there is a heart attack, when there is a need of blood vessel growth, carriers have less ability to generate new blood vessels,” says Guo.

The team found that an existing diabetes (糖尿病) drug called empagliflozin may reduce these harmful effects in people with ALDH2*2 who drink a lot of alcohol. But for Wu, the take-home message is clear. “If you’re missing this enzyme, try not to drink,” he says. “If you drink consistently, you are at much higher risk of heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and cancer.”

Given its many negative consequences, there has been debate about why this change spread and became common, today being found in more than a third of people of cast Asian origin.

“My only explanation is that if you are missing this enzyme, you tend to drink less and there’s therefore less chance of you becoming alcoholic,” says Wu.

6 . For those of us who grew up watching Star Trek, exploring space has been about discovering strange new worlds. And there are plenty of worlds to explore in time, but we still need major technological advancements to reach planets that are light years away.

What we are doing in space today is providing unbelievable benefits right now, right here on Earth. From space, we can monitor, manage and care for our planet. Satellite-based sensors show us the short- and long-term effects of human activity on our environment. Many companies are using their interest in space to help solve problems here, from using hyperspectral imaging(高光谱成像), which enable us to map vegetation(植被) and rain forests, to microsatellites that provide global connectivity for the network of things.

My company, OneWeb, is focusing on what I believe is one of the world’s most important issues: the need for equal access to the Internet. The Internet has become our economic lifeblood. And yet, nearly half of the world’s population doesn’t have Internet access. Space is playing a key role in bridging this digital divide. OneWeb is launching 1,980 satellites to help bring Internet access to people everywhere, and our first production satellites are already flying in space and have shown very high download speeds.

Fiber and cable Internet access technologies already cover most financially viable(可行的) major cities. Similarly, these regions will also be the first to be served with 5G. Poor communities are the last to get connected, and without connectivity, those communities have no chance to lift themselves from poverty. OneWeb’s satellites will reach every community in the world and enable equal access to the Internet for the world’s less developed places.

Fifty years from the day when man first walked on the moon, we are still only approaching the possible. There will be tens of thousands of new satellites, space stations and factories in the coming years to bring advancements in communications, scientific research, monitoring the earth, exploring space and more. This is exciting, but we must take action carefully.

8 . The Art Institute of Chicago

Visitor Information

Museum Hours

Members: The first hour of every day, 10 a.m. —11 a.m., is reserved for member-only viewing.

Monday—Wednesday Closed

Thursday: 11 a.m.—8 p. m.

Friday—Sunday: 11 a.m.—5 p. m.

Audio guides can be rented at the admission counter, audio counter and outside some special exhibitions. The guide is free to visitors with visual or hearing disabilities.

With the digital interactive JourneyMaker, you can build custom family guides based on your child’s interests-from superheroes to strange and wild creatures. Start your museum journey in the Family Room of the Ryan Leaning Center, and make your visit to the Art Institute an adventure for the whole family.

Your personal, pocket-sized guide to the collection, this new iOS app features podcast-style audio tours, location-aware technology, access to the digital member card, and so much more. Download it today from the App Store.

We encourage you to take pictures of the collection and special exhibitions for personal use. Signs indicate the few works that are not allowed to be photographed due to a lender requirement.

You are welcome to use your phone to take pictures, text, and use the museum’s app-anything that does not disturb other visitors. If you need to make a phone call, please do so in a non-gallery space.

Art Institute visitors can drop off their cars at the Modern Wing entrance (159 East Monroe Street) and walk right into the museum. The valet service is available daily from 10:30 a. m. until one-half hour after closing.

Adult: $ 32

Student: $ 26

Child (aged 13 and under): Free

Help us protect the collection-please do not touch the art.

9 . Caffeine (咖啡因) is linked to lower body mass index (BMI) and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes (糖尿病). Genetic differences in how people metabolise (代谢) caffeine may influence how overweight they are, but this doesn’t mean drinking more coffee will make you slimmer.

Genetic evidence indicates that higher levels of caffeine in a person’s blood may be linked with lower weight. But people shouldn’t assume that drinking more coffee will be a route to weight loss, says Dipender Gill at Imperial College London, who helped carry out the study. Caffeine is the most widely used psychoactive (对精神起作用的) substance, with many people consuming much coffee or caffeinated soft drinks a day.

Numerous studies have previously suggested that caffeine consumption is linked with lower weight. But these were mainly observational studies, which recorded people’s health and their caffeine consumption, making it hard to know if caffeine caused the effects or just correlated with them. Gill’s team used an alternative approach, looking at genetic differences in how quickly people break down caffeine to mimic (模仿) the effects of giving different amounts in a random trial.

There are two genes that affect people’s ability to break down caffeine, meaning that after consuming the same amount of it, people with different variants would have different levels of it in their blood. Gill and his colleagues analysed data from several previous studies that recorded people’s DNA and tracked their health. They included nearly 10,000 people in total, although most included only people of European ancestry.

The studies didn’t analyse blood samples, but previous work has shown that those who break down caffeine more slowly have higher levels of it in their blood on average — even though they tend to drink less coffee. The team found that people genetically predisposed (有倾向的) to have higher caffeine levels had a lower BMI, a measure of a person’s weight in relation to their height; lower fat mass; and a lower likelihood of having type 2 diabetes, a condition linked with being overweight.

“We know that caffeine affects metabolism (新陈代谢) and how energetic someone is. It makes sense that there might be an association,” says Benjamin Woolf at the University of Bristol, UK, who also worked on the study. Gill says people shouldn’t change their drinking habits based on these results — and that people wanting to lose weight should be especially wary of consuming milky and sugary coffee drinks. “A lot of caffeinated drinks are quite calorific,” he says. “Caffeine can have other harmful effects, including effects on sleep and heart function.”

10 . Robert Chmielewski has had quadriplegia (四肢瘫痪) since his teens. Sensors implanted (植入) in his brain read his thoughts to control two robotic arms, which helps him to perform daily tasks. Now he can use one robotic arm to control a knife and the other a fork.

Modern technology can reach inside someone’s head and pull out what he is thinking. Maybe he intends to move a robotic arm or type something on a computer screen. Such thought-controlled devices can help people who aren’t able to move or perform different tasks and promote the well-being of the disabled.

Decoding (解码) thought usually requires placing sensors directly on or in someone’s brain. Those implanted sensors can catch the electrical signals passing between the person’s brain cells, or neurons. Such signals carry messages that allow brains to think, feel and control the body.

Using brain implants, researchers have picked up electrical signals in the brain linked to certain words or letters. This has allowed brain implants to transform thoughts into text or speech on a computer. Likewise, brain implants have transformed imagined handwriting into text on a screen. Implanted sensors have even allowed scientists to turn the signals they caught that are associated with a song in someone’s head into real music.

In a recent study, scientists decoded full stories from people’s brains using MRI scans (磁共振成像扫描). This did not require any brain implants. But building the thought decoder did require many hours of brain scans for each person. What’s more, the system only worked on the person whose brain scans helped build it and only when that person was willing to have their mind read.

So devices that might let someone secretly read your mind from across the room are still a long, long way off. Still, it’s clear that mind-reading tech is getting more advanced. As it does, scientists are thinking hard about what it would mean to live in a world where not even the inside of your head is completely private.