1 . Each year more than 2,500 people die and 12,600 are injured in home fires just in the United States, with direct property loss because of home fires at about $7.3 billion. Every day Americans experience the horror of fires, but most people don’t understand fires.

To protect yourself, it is important to learn something about home fires.

In less than 30 seconds a small flame(火焰) can get completely out of control and turn into a major fire. It only takes minutes for thick black smoke to fill a house or for it to be in flames. Most deadly fires happen in the home when people are asleep. If you realize a fire, you won’t have time to take valuables because the fire spreads too quickly and the smoke is too thick. The fire uses up the oxygen you need and produces smoke and poisonous gases. Breathing even small amounts of smoke and poisonous gases can make you tired and sleepy, and short of breath. The smoke can cause you to be a deep sleeper before the flames reach your door. You may not wake up in time to escape.

Room temperatures in a fire can be 100 degrees at floor level and rise to 600 degrees at eye level. Breathing in this super-hot air will burn your lungs. It can melt (熔化) clothes to your skin. In five minutes, a room can get so hot that everything in it starts to burn at once.

Fires are bright at first, but quickly produce black smoke and complete darkness. If you wake up to a fire you may be blinded, confused about where you are or which direction you should go in and unable to find your way around the home you’ve lived in for years. Only when we know the true nature of fires can we prepare our families and ourselves.

Yours,

Li Hua

4 . On November 7, Lewis Pugh completed a one-kilometer swim in the freezing waters of King Edward Cove, off South Georgia in Antarctica. He was wearing only his swimming glasses, cap and Speedos!

Pugh is an advocate for our oceans and seas, working to protect these ecosystems with their large diversity of marine (海洋的) life. When asked why he doesn’t wear a wetsuit (防寒泳衣), Lewis says, “I ask world leaders to do everything they can to protect our oceans. Sometimes the steps they need to take are difficult and unpopular. If I’m asking them to be courageous, I must also be. Swimming in a wetsuit would not send the right message.”

It took Pugh about 19 minutes to complete the one-kilometer swim in Antarctica where the water averaged about 1. 6℃. He says that his body can only tolerate about 20 minutes in the freezing waters before it starts shutting down. As he swims, his body temperature steadily drops, which in turn causes his muscle control to drop, slowing him down. When he is done with his swim, his support team rushes him to a hot shower and it takes almost an hour for his body temperature to return to normal.

Doctors and Pugh caution that one must receive months of training to swim in such cold waters. Even expert swimmers who are unused to freezing water can drown within minutes because of the physical shock experienced by the body. Pugh says he trained for six months before this swim.

This is not the first time that Lewis has swum in dangerous conditions. In 2007, he swam one kilometer in the North Pole to draw attention to the melting Arctic ice due to climate change. In 2015, he swam in the Bay of Whales in Antarctica’s Ross Sea as part of his successful campaign to help set up a marine reserve there.

Notice

The Students’ Union

7 . Spending over a year in the bleak (荒凉的) Antarctica might change your brain for the worse, according to new research out this month. It seems to show that polar explorers who lived for 14 months at an Antarctica research station experienced brain shrinkage, likely as a result of their loneliness and boredom.

The study’s authors used MRI (核磁共振) to scan the brains of eight members of a team before they began a long stay at the German — run research station. During their mission, the team periodically took tests of their cognition and memory and provided blood samples that allowed the study authors to measure their levels of a protein important for brain health called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). When they returned, they had their brains scanned again.

Finally, compared to themselves before the mission, the explorers’ brains appeared to have less grey matter on average. The shrinkage was most apparent in the hippocampus, in area of the brain key to memory and cognition. Their average levels of BDNF also dropped during the trip and didn’t improve significantly even after one-and-a-half months back home.

The study’s findings, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, aren’t the first to suggest that long time of being separated can change the brain. But practically all of this work has involved animals, according to the researchers.

Of course, an eight-person study is small, so any of its conclusions should be taken with caution. Lead author Alexander C. Stahn, now a researcher at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, said that the effects on the hippocampus are likely temporary, provided the scientists returned back to a life filled with social interaction and interesting things to see.

Still, since people will continue travelling to and from Antarctica for long periods of time, the findings are definitely worth keeping in mind and exploring further. They might even prove relevant for the rare few people who might travel as far as Mars in the future — perhaps the only similarly scientific, months-long mission that would be even more lonely.