2 . Plastic, which is now common, contains endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or EDCs (内分泌干扰物), that has been linked to increased risk of many chronic diseases. Parental exposure to EDCs, for example, has been shown to cause metabolic (新陈代谢的) disorders, including obesity and diabetes, in the later generations.

Led by Changcheng Zhou, a professor of biomedical sciences in the School of Medicine at the University of California, the researchers investigated the impact of fathers’ exposure to a phthalate called dicyclohexyl phthalate, or DCHP (邻苯二甲酸二环己酯), on the metabolic health of first generation (F1) and second generation (F2) in mice. Phthalates are chemicals used to make plastic more durable.

The researchers found that fathers’ DCHP exposure for four weeks led to high insulin (胰岛素) resistance and impaired insulin signaling in F1. The same effect, but weaker, was seen in F2 .

“We found fathers’ exposure to EDCs may have intergenerational and transgenerational detrimental effects on the metabolic health of their later generations, ”Zhou said. “To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to demonstrate this.”

In the case of fathers’ exposure in the study, intergenerational effects are changes that occur due to direct exposure to a stressor, such as exposure to DCHP of fathers (F0 generation) and his F1 generation. Transgenerational effects are changes passed down to later generations that are not directly exposed to the stressor (for example, F2 generation).

“This suggests that fathers’ DCHP exposure can lead to sex-specific transgenerational effects on the metabolic health of their later generations,” Zhou said.

Zhou stressed that the impact of exposure to DCHP on human health is not well understood, even though DCHP is widely used in a variety of plastic products and has been detected in food, water, and indoor particulate matter.

“It’s best to minimize our use of plastic products,” Zhou said. “This can also help reduce plastic pollution, one of our most pressing environmental issues.”

3 . Face blindness, a mystifying condition that can trick us into believing we recognize people we’ve never met or make us fail to recognize those we have, has been previously estimated to affect between 2 and 2.5 percent of people in the world.Now, a new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the VA Boston Healthcare System is providing fresh insights into the disorder, suggesting it may be more common than currently believed.

Published in February 2023 in Cortex, the study findings indicate that as many as one in 33 people may meet the criteria for face blindness, or prosopagnosia (面孔失认症).“This translates to more than 10 million Americans,” the research team said.

The study found similar face-matching performance between people diagnosed with prosopagnosia using stricter vs looser criteria, suggesting that diagnostic criteria should be expanded to be more inclusive. That could lead to new diagnoses among millions who may have the disorder but don’t realize it.

The study results are based on a web-based questionnaire and tests administered to 3,341 individuals.First, the researchers asked participants whether they experience difficulties recognizing faces in their everyday lives.Then they administered two objective tests to determine whether they had difficulties learning new faces or recognizing highly familiar famous faces.

The results showed that 31 individuals out of the 3,341 had major prosopagnosia, while 72 of the 3,341 had a milder form. The researchers also observed that there were no neatly divided separate groups of people with poor or good ability to recognize faces. Rather, the ability to recognize faces appeared to lie on a continuum (连续体).

Finally, the researchers compared face-matching scores among people with prosopagnosia diagnosed using different criteria and found that using stricter diagnostic cutoffs did not correspond with lower face-matching scores.

In the new study, the researchers provide diagnostic suggestions for identifying mild and major forms of prosopagnosia based on guidelines for major and mild neurocognitive disorders in the DSM5, the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

6 . Nature and culture are often seen as opposite ideas. What belongs to nature cannot be the result of human activities and, on the other hand, cultural development is achieved against nature. However, this is not the only opinion on the relationship between nature and culture. Studies in the development of humans suggest that culture, whether taken as an effort against nature or a natural effort, is part of the development of the human species (物种).

Several modern writers saw the process of education as a struggle (斗争) against human nature. We are born with wild natures, such as eating and behaving in a disorganized way or acting selfishly. Education uses culture as a way to get us out of our wildest natures; it is thanks to culture that the human species could learn to adapt (适应), progress and raise itself above and beyond other species.

Over the past century and a half, however, studies in the history of human development have shown that the formation of culture is part of the biological adaptation. Consider, for example, hunting. It seems to be an adaptation, which allowed humans to move into new and different areas, opening up the opportunity to change living habits. At the same time, the development of weapons (武器) is related to that adaptation — from rocks and stones to a set of hunting tools, and from hunting tools to rules relating to the proper use of weapons. Hunting also seems to be responsible for a whole set of bodily abilities, such as balancing on one foot. Just think of how this very simple thing is closely related to dance, a key expression of human culture. It is then clear that biological development and cultural development are closely tied.

The transmission of culture seems to be directly related to what’s in our blood. Just as snails carry their shell, so do we bring along our culture. However, culture is also passed on among people of the same times or among people belonging to different populations. We can learn how to make jiaozi even if we were born from Russian parents in Paris just as we can learn how to speak English even if none of our family or friends speaks that language.

8 . For humans, adapting to (适应) climate change will mostly be a matter of technology. More air conditioning, better-designed houses and bigger flood defenses may help reduce the effects of a warmer world. However, animals will have to rely on changing their bodies or their behaviour.

In a study done by Trends in Ecology & Evolution, a team led by Sara Ryding, a PhD at Deakin University, in Australia, shows that is already happening. And climate change is already changing the bodies of many animal species, giving them bigger beaks (鸟喙), limbs and ears.

In some species of Australian parrot, for example, beak size has increased by between 4% and 10% since 1871. All that is nicely in line with evolutionary theory (进化论). “Allen’s rule”, named for Joel Asaph Allen, who suggested it in 1877, holds that warm-blooded animals in hot places tend to have larger appendages (附肢) than those in mild regions.

Such increase in an animal’s surface area helps it release (释放) extra heat. For example, being richly gifted with blood vessels, and not covered by feathers, beaks make an ideal place for birds to release heat.

It seems clear that the world of the future is not just going to be hotter than humans are used to. These animals living in it will look different, too. Studying a larger range of animals will help figure out what is exactly happening. Much of Ms Ryding’s data is about birds, however, with less information available for other animals.