1 . We might think of our eye color as one of our defining physical features, as personal to us as the shape of our nose. But, surprisingly, our eye color doesn’t always remain constant throughout our lives.

Evidence suggests whether a baby’s eye color changes or not depends a lot on the color itself. One study led by American researcher Cassie Ludwig tracked 148 babies born at a hospital in California,recording their iris (虹膜) color at birth. Over half of the babies were born with brown eyes, and less than one-third with blue. Two years later, the researchers found of the 40 blue-eyed babies in the study, l1 had brown eyes by the age of two, three had hazel (浅赤褐色的), and two had green. Of the 77 brown-eyed newborns, almost all (73) still had brown eyes at the age of two.

But why do blue eyes change more? The answer may be found in the fact that when the babies’ eyes did change color, they tended to become darker, not lighter. In Ludwig’s study, one-third of the babies’ eyes changed color in their first two years, with the most common change being eyes becoming darker. The trend towards darkening may be due to the build-up of a protective pigment (色素) in the irises — but more on this later.

Such relatively common, healthy color change is mostly limited to early childhood. In another study in the US, which tracked more than 1,300 twins from babyhood to adulthood, eye color usually stopped changing by the age of six. Among non-identical twins, eye color was more likely to change than among identical twins.

Sometimes color changes can be seen in hair in newborns throughout childhood. “Some babies are born with blonde hair, but they’ve got quite dark brown hair when they become older,” says Australian researcher David Mackey. “That’s probably because the pigment in your hair can increase gradually over time. “It may be a similar story for eye color,” he suggests, with greater quantities of pigment — the main pigment in the eyes is melanin (黑色素) — building up in the months or years after birth.

2 . Theatre Camps & Classes in Vancouver

Beach House Theatre

We have a group of creative and talented theatre industry members whose productions offer the campers a cultural, artistic experience at Crescent Beach. The purpose of setting the production in the area is to inspire the artistically minded youth and to expose theatre-goers to the special beauty of the beach.

Place des Arts

Classes and private lessons run from September to June or during fall (Sep-Dec), winter (Jan-Mar) and spring(Apr-Jun) sessions for all ages and skill levels. Experience music, visualarts, literary arts and theatre arts with us. We also offer art camps for children during the spring break and over the summer. All classes and lessons are taught by highly skilled working professionals. Class sizes are based on the needs of the content.

CFA

Our goal is to raise joyful children through performing arts. We believe that an actual professional theatre production is the best platform for the children to best experience performing arts. Every year, we produce a grand children’s musical production and we do not charge the children while there’s a huge production cost behind (professional tech, lighting, sound, sets, costumes, make-up, production meetings etc).

H. R. MacMillan Space Centre

We bring the wonders of space to Earth. Through creative programming, exhibits and activities, our goal is to inspire interest in the fields of Earth science and space science. Lean back in your seat and you’ll experience planets, meteor showers, black holes, galaxies and various other wonders. With its shows and content being updated all the time, there is something for everyone in the centre.

3 . It was long theorized that people make decisions based on integrated global calculations that occur within the frontal cortex(额叶皮层) of the brain, which is considered the seat of higher-order thinking. However, Yale researchers have found that three distinct brain circuits from the frontal cortex connecting to different brain regions are involved in making good decisions, bad ones, and determining which of those past choices to store in memory.

The study of decision-making in rats may help scientists find the roots of flawed decision-making common to mental health disorders such as addiction, the authors say. They used-a new tool to manipulate(操纵) brain circuits in rats while they were making choices between actions that led to them receiving rewards or no rewards. If the rats made the right decision, one that ended in a reward, one of the brain circuits was activated, but another was activated if the rats made the wrong choice and received no reward. The third circuit stored past experiences and decisions to help the rats with future choices.

Stephanie Groman, lead author of the research says, “A comparison would be deciding on a restaurant for dinner. For instance, without the ‘good choice’ circuit you may not return to the restaurant with good food and without the ‘bad choice’ circuit you might not avoid the restaurant with bad food. The third ‘memory’ circuit is crucial in making decisions such as whether to return to the restaurant after receiving one bad meal after several good ones.”

Changes in these circuits may help explain a typical feature of addiction—why people continue to make harmful choices even after repeated negative experiences. The Yale researchers previously showed that some of the same brain calculations were disrupted(扰乱)in animals that had taken methamphetamine. “Because we used a test that is similar to those used in studies of human decision making, our findings have direct relevance to humans and could aid in the search for novel treatments for substance abuse in humans,” Groman said.

6 . Retired Army Col. Farrell Patrick taught computer science at West Point during the 1970s and then at two private universities through the 1990s, so he isn’t surprised by the progress technology has made over the decades. But when the 91-year-old got his first virtual reality (VR) experience recently, he was amazed.

Sitting in a conference room at John Knox Village, Patrick sat up straight as his eyes and ears experienced what it would be like to be in a Navy fighter jet flying off the Florida coast. John Knox Village was one of 17 senior communities around the country that participated in a recently published Stanford University study.

During the study, the seniors were picked from seven-minute virtual experiences such as riding in a tank, watching stage performances, playing with dogs and cats or visiting places like Paris or Egypt. The participants wore headsets that gave them 360-degree views and sounds, making it seem like they had been all but dropped into the actual experience.

The study, working with the company Mynd Immersive, found that almost 80% of the seniors reported having a more positive attitude after their VR session and almost 60% said they felt less isolated socially. The enjoyment lessened somewhat for older respondents whose sight and hearing had deteriorated (恶化). Those who found VR less enjoyable were also more likely to dislike technology in general.

The company has worked on the biggest complaints the seniors in the study had about VR—the headsets were too heavy and the heat they generated made the seniors’ foreheads sweat. The new headsets weigh about six ounces (189 grams) instead of a pound (454 grams). Besides, they have a built-in fan for cooling, and the videos aren’t as jumpy.

Patrick says he hopes to live to 100 because he believes the next five years will see momentous changes in VR. Still a technology enthusiast, he believes the cost of systems will drop dramatically and become part of everyday living, even for seniors.

9 . Most able-bodied people take their ability to perform simple daily tasks for granted — when they reach for a warm cup of coffee, they can feel its weight and temperature and adjust their grasp accordingly so that no liquid is spilled. People with full sensory and motor control of their arms and hands can feel that they’ve made contact with an object the instant they touch or grasp it, allowing them to start moving or lifting it with confidence.

But those tasks become much more difficult when a person operates an artificial arm, let alone a mind-controlled one.

In a paper published in Science, a team of bio engineers from the University of Pittsburgh describe how adding brain stimulation that generates tactile (触觉的) sensations makes it easier for the operator to use a brain-controlled robotic arm. In the experiment, combining vision with artificial tactile feedback cut the time spent grasping and moving objects in half, from 20.9 to 10.2 seconds.

Study participant Nathan Copeland, who was left with limited use of his arms after a car crash, is the first person in the world who was implanted with tiny electrode arrays (电极阵列) in his brain. Arrays allow him to not only control the robotic arm with his mind, but also to receive tactile feedback.

In a series of tests, where Copeland was asked to pick up and move various objects from a table to a raised platform, providing tactile feedback through electrical stimulation allowed him to complete tasks twice as fast compared to tests without stimulation.

“Even though the sensation isn’t natural, that never bothers me,” said Copeland.

“When even limited and imperfect sensation is restored, the person’s performance improved in a pretty significant way. We still have a long way to go in terms of making the sensations more realistic and bringing this technology to people’s homes, but the closer we can get to recreating the normal inputs to the brain, the better off we will be,” said Robert Gaunt, co-senior author of the study.

10 . Feeling unhappy, depressed or lonely could speed up the ageing processes more than smoking or even certain diseases, researchers have suggested. While everyone has an age based on their date of birth — their “chronological age”, they also have what is known as a “biological age”, based on the ageing of the body’s functions, influenced by gene is, lifestyle and other factors. Studies have previously suggested the higher the biological age, the higher the risk of various diseases, and the risk of death.

Now researchers say they have created a digital model of ageing, revealing the importance of psychological health. “Your body and soul are connected — this is our main message,” said Fedor Galkin, a co-author of the study and lead scientist at the Hong Kong startup Deep Longevity.

“We demonstrate that psychological factors, such as feeling unhappy or being lonely, add up to 1.65 years to one’s biological age,” they write. While Galkin said the figure is an estimate, not least as the model assumes that different feelings such as hopelessness or fearfulness are independent of each other, the study highlights the importance of psychological state in how fast we age.

“Taking care of your psychological heath is the greatest contributor that you can have to slowing down your pace of ageing,” he said. The team also report that people who smoke are predicted to be 15 months older than their non-smoking peers, while being married reduces biological age by around seven months. People living in rural areas are predicted to be almost five months older than their urban peers.

“But,” he said, “it is unlikely that isolation and loneliness are truly worse risk factors for health than smoking because the study only looked at data collected at one point in time. The researchers did not follow up participants to show that those with psychological distress actually aged more rapidly,” he said. “It will be important in the future to test whether these predictions are fulfilled by repeating testing over a number of years.”