Would a person born blind, who has learned to distinguish objects by touch, be able to recognize them purely by sight if he regained the ability to see? The question, known as Molyneux’s problem, is about whether the human mind has a built-in concept of shapes that is so innate(天生的) that such a blind person could immediately recognize an object with restored vision. The alternative is that the concepts of shapes are not innate but have to be learned by exploring an object through sight, touch and other senses.

After their attempt to test it in blind children failed, Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London and his colleagues have taken another attempt at finding an answer, this time using another species. To test whether bumblebees can form an internal representation of objects, they first trained the insects to distinguish globes from cubes using a sugar reward. The bees were trained in the light, where they could see but not touch the objects. Then they were tested in the dark, where they could touch but not see the globes or cubes. The researchers found that the bumblebees spent more time in contact with the shape they had been trained to associate with the sugar reward, even though they had to rely on touch rather than sight to distinguish the objects.

The researchers also did the reverse test with untrained bumblebees, first teaching them with rewards in the dark and then testing them in the light. Again, the bees were able to recognize the shape associated with the sugar reward, though they had to rely on sight rather than touch in the test. In short, bees have solved Molyneux's problem because the fact suggests that they can picture object features and access them through sight or touch.

However, some experts express their warnings. Jonathan Birch, a philosopher of science, cautions that the bees may have had prior experience associating visual and tactile(触觉的) information about straight edges and curved surfaces in the context of their nests, so it is not possible to eliminate the possibility that some of the cross-sensory concept is learned rather than innate.

4 . It’s almost spring, the time of year when the change in seasons could lead to some pretty fascinating cloud activity in the sky. NASA and the GLOBE Program are inviting you to take part in a citizen science cloud observation challenge. The GLOBE Program is an international science and education program that provides students and the public with the opportunity to participate in data collection and the scientific process.

From March 15 through April 15, citizen scientists of all ages can make up to 10 cloud observations per day using the GLOBE Observer app or one of the other data entry options (for trained GLOBE members). Challenge participants with the most observations will be congratulated by a NASA scientist in a video posted on the GLOBE Program’s website and on social media.

“The GLOBE Program is offering this challenge to show people how important it is to NASA to have citizen scientist observations: observations from the ground up,” said Marile Colon Robles, lead for the GLOBE Clouds team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “We’re going from winter to spring, so the types of storms will change, which will also change the types of clouds.

Researchers use, and value, this citizen science cloud data because it helps to validate data from Earth-observing instruments. Scientists at Langley work with a set of six instruments known as the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System(CERES)

Even though CERES’ instruments use advanced technology, it is not always easy for researchers to positively identify all types of clouds in their images. For example, it can be difficult to differ thin, wispy cirrus clouds(细小的卷云)from snow since both are cold and bright; even more so when cirrus clouds are above a surface with patchy snow(片状雪)or snow cover. One solution to this problem is to look at satellite images from a particular area and compare them to data submitted by citizen scientists on the ground.

“Looking at what an observer recorded as clouds and looking at their surface observations really helps us better understand the images that were matched from the satellite,” said Colon Robles.

You don’t have to be a cloud-gazing professional to participate. For those who want to be part of the challenge but don’t have a lot of experience identifying clouds, Colon Robles offers the following advice: “Just go outside.” The more clouds you observe, she said, the more comfortable you’ll be collecting data.

Fan Lihong, her parents and her daughter are standing along Madang Road in Shanghai, cups in hand. Many     1     in the line are doing the same. From afar, such a scene     2     seem reminiscent of water rationing. But these individuals are simply after a caffeine fix, with sustainability in mind.

“I have been using my own cups to buy coffee this year. Using my own cup is       3     convenient and cost effective－it also helps with environmental protection,” says Fan. Another customer     4     was waiting in a line outside Manner Coffee, Liu Shiyun, echoes the same sentiment. “A latte at Manner Coffee costs 15 yuan ($2.24). If I use my own cup to buy the coffee, I get 5 yuan discount and will save at least 100 yuan per month,” Liu says.

Manner Coffee, which operates over 100 stores across China, sells nearly 100,000 cups of coffee per day. Around half of their customers bring their own cups, according to Ning Yihan, marketing representative of Manner. We started to encourage consumers to bring their own non-disposable cups to Manner stores since the day we     5     (establish). We hope to contribute to environmental protection with our customers. It is very interesting and meaningful while you see all kinds of people bringing their own cups. There are Japanese-style izakaya store owners     6    (bring) beer mugs and security or sanitation workers with their thermoses,” she adds.

Other countries around the world have also set their eyes on reducing the use of disposable paper cups and encourage people     7     (use) more environmentally friendly options. For example, Ireland’s environment minister announced in November 2019 that consumers who use disposable cups will by 2021 be subjected     8     a “latte tax”. It was also reported that the United Kingdom uses 2.5 billion disposable paper cups a year, almost     9     of which are recycled. For this reason, British legislators have called for a tax on paper cups     10     they believe that manufacturers of these products should pay more.clothing.

7 . Is Climate Change Consuming Your Favorite Foods?

As the increased amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, heat stress, longer droughts(干旱), and more intense rainfalls linked to global warming continue to upset our daily weather, we often forget they also impact the quantity, quality, and growing _________ of our food. Many foods have already _________ top spots on the world's "endangered foods" list, indicating their possibility to become _________ within the next 30 years.

To start with what is _________ in many people's lives we are disappointed to find that coffee plantations in South America, Africa, Asia, and Hawaii are all being threatened by rising air temperatures and irregular rainfall patterns, which invite disease to _________ the coffee plant and beans. The result? Significant _________ in coffee output.

And coffee's culinary (烹饪的) cousin, cacao (aka chocolate),is also suffering stress from global warming's rising temperatures. But for chocolate, it isn't the warmer climate alone that's the problem. Cacao trees actually _________ warmer climates as long as that warmth is paired with high humidity and sufficient rain. _________, the problem is that the higher temperatures projected for the world's leading chocolate-producing countries are not expected to be _________ by an increase in rainfall. Therefore as higher temperatures take more moisture from soil and plants, it's __________ that rainfall will increase enough to make up for this loss.

Another notably nutritious plant, peanut grows best when it gets five months of continuous warm weather and 20 to 40 inches of rain. Anything __________ and plants won't survive. That isn't good news when most climate models agree that the climate of the future will be one of the __________, including droughts. The world has already caught a glimpse of peanut's future fate when last year a serious drought across the peanut-growing Southeastern U.S led many plants to die. According to a financial report, the __________ spells (时期) caused peanut prices to rise by as much as 40 percent!

Finally, in the world of sea, as air temperatures rise, oceans and waterways absorb some of the heat and undergo warming of their own. The result is the __________ in fish population. Warmer waters also encourage vicious marine bacteria, like Vibrio, to grow and cause illness in humans. And that satisfying “crack” you get when eating crab could be __________ as shellfish struggle to build their calcium carbonate (碳酸钙) shells, a result of ocean acidification.

New Path to Plastics

A crucial component could come from existing carbon sources.Ethylene (乙烯)is the world's most popular industrial chemical.Consumers and industry demand 150 million tons every year, and most of it goes into countless plastic products, from electronics to textiles.To get ethylene, energy companies crack hydrocarbons (碳氢化合物)from natural gas in a process that requires a lot of heat and energy,    1     to climate change - causing emissions.

Scientists recently made ethylene by combining carbon dioxide gas, water and organic molecules (分子)on the surface of a copper catalyst (催化剂)inside an electrolyzer - a device that uses electricity to drive a chemical reaction.The    2    , described last November online in Nature, could point the way toward using carbon dioxide as feed-stock for chemicals and potentially fuels, helping to reduce     3    on fossil fuels and to put a dent in industrial carbon emission.

The discovery grows out of work published last year by University of Toronto engineer Ted Sargent, describing a similar process that used more electricity and was less     4    overall.So Sargent says he     5    out researchers at the California Institute of Technology who are "black belts in molecular design and synthesis."

Caltech chemists Jonas Peters and Theodor Agapie and their colleagues experimented with organic molecules to add to the copper catalyst.An arylpyridinum salt turned out to be the Goldilocks molecule, Sargent says it formed a water-insoluble (不溶于水的)film (薄膜)on the copper that     6    the carbon dioxide so its molecules reacted most efficiently with one another, without slowing down the reaction.The result was more ethylene, with fewer by-products such as methane (甲烷)and hydrogen.

Still, the process must become even more efficient before it can be commercially     7    and use carbon scrubbed or captured from facilities such as coal-or gas -burning power plants.Lower energy costs, already    8     with renewable energy sources such as wind, could also help make it more     9    .

"This is a(n)     10    breakthrough," says Randy Cortright, a senior research advisesr at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., who was not involved in the study.This result, he says, is "something that a lot of people are going to pay attention to, and they're going to be able to build on."