1 . Climate change, not human hunting, may have destroyed the thylacine(袋狼) , according to a new study based on DNA from thylacine bones.

The meat-eating marsupials (有袋动物) died out on mainland Australia a few thousand years ago, but survived in Tasmania, an island of southeast Australia separated from the mainland, until the 1930s. Until now, scientists have believed the cause of this mainland extinction was increased activity from native Australians and dingoes (Australian wild dogs).

Scientists behind the University of Adelaide study, which was published in the Journal of Biogeography on Thursday, collected 51 new thylacine DNA samples from fossil bones and museum skins. The paper concluded that climate change starting about 4,000 years ago was likely the main cause of the mainland extinction.

The ancient DNA showed that the mainland extinction of thylacines was rapid, and not the result of loss of genetic diversity. There was also evidence of a population crash in thylacines in Tasmania at the same period of time, reducing their numbers and genetic diversity.

Professor Jeremy Austin said Tasmania would have been protected from mainland Australia’s warmer, drier climate due to its higher rainfall. He argued that climate change was “the only thing that could have caused, or at least started, an extinction on the mainland and caused a population crash in Tasmania.”

“They both occurred at about the same time, and the other two things that have been talked about in the past that may have driven thylacines to extinction on the mainland were dingoes and humans. So the only explanation that’s left is climate change. And because that population collapse happened at the same time that the species went extinct on the mainland, our argument is there’s a common theme there and the only common theme is that there is this change in climate.”

2 . The Science of US Sleep Institute presents: All Nighter Emergency. So you couldn’t sleep last night.    1    , but you’ve got a long day of work. Don’t worry! Science can help!

First, don’t hit the nap button. Scientists say those extra tiny minutes of sleep don’t actually make you more rested.

Next, make sure you eat breakfast. Research suggests eating within an hour of waking up boosts your mood and cognition.    2    , it will give you a crash later. Stick to whole grains and protein. If you’re a coffee drinker, grab a single cup.

    3    . Bright, natural light raises your body temperature and raise your alertness. And don’t wear sunglasses. Scientists say even sun in your eyes can be helpful.

Once you are at work, do your toughest task first, because these first few hours are the most alter you are going to be all day.

Have another cup of coffee in the early afternoon, which is your drowsiest time of day.    4    . Caffeine lasts for about seven hours in your system, and you don’t want to mess up your next night.

Now you’re in the last part of work, do some simple busy work for the rest of the day. Research suggests sleep-deprived folks can’t focus for more than about ten minutes at a time, so just power through stuff like, replying to email, sorting files, and finally, get out of the office a little early if possible.    5    .

6 . These glasses can pick up whispered commands. They may look like ordinary glasses but they’re not. These trendy-looking glasses from researchers have a special ability-and it doesn’t have to do with nearsightedness. Fixed on the bottom of the frames are tiny speakers and microphones that can emit silent sound waves and receive echoes back.

This ability comes in handy for detecting mouth movements, allowing the device to detect low-volume or even silent speech. That means you can whisper or mouth a command, and the glasses will pick it up like a lip reader.

“For people who cannot vocalize sound, this silent speech technology could be an excellent input for a voice synthesizer,” a doctoral student said. The tech could also be used by its wearers to give silent commands to a paired device, like a laptop or a smartphone.

Here’s how EchoSpeech works. The speakers and microphones are placed on different lenses on different sides of the face. When the speakers emit sound waves around 20 kilohertz (near ultrasound), it travels in a path from one lens to the lips and then to the opposite lens. As the sound waves from the speakers reflect and separate after hitting the lips, their distinct patterns are captured by microphones and used to make “echo profiles” for each phrase or command. It effectively works like a simple, miniaturized sonar system (声呐系统).

“Because the data is processed locally on your smartphone instead of being uploaded to the cloud, privacy-sensitive information never leaves your control,” a professor noted. Plus, audio data takes less bandwidth to transmit than videos or images, and takes less power to run as well.