3 . It’s hard to say why, but it’s just true: Music is good for you. It can calm your spirit and help you vent (发泄) your anger.     1    . But there’s one surprising yet well-documented effect that has really surprised people. Music lessons are very good for language comprehension — and they might even be better than reading lessons.

    2    . But in this new study from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), researchers were able to see music lessons improve word comprehension right before their eyes. Led by Robert Desimone, the director of McGovern Institute for Brain Research, the team tested 74 children between the ages of four and five to see how their growing language skills were affected by piano lessons.

The 74 participants were divided into three groups.     3    . The other two had their weekly academic lessons supplemented with three 45-minute lessons per week — the first got piano lessons and the second took part in reading lessons.

What are the results? The ones who received a little extra learning every week outperformed those who just continued on with their normal studies.     4    . Perhaps even more surprisingly, the children who took the music lessons even outperformed the ones who took the reading lessons when it came to telling the difference between two words that were very similar.

“That’s a big thing for kids in learning language: being able to hear the differences between words,” Desimone said in a statement. “They really benefited from that.” To the researchers, the results point to one clear conclusion:     5    

4 . Here’s an idea whose time has come: A flu shot that doesn’t require an actual shot.

For the first time, researchers have tested a flu vaccine patch (疫苗贴) in a human clinical trial and found that it delivered as much protection as a traditional injection with a needle (注射针). Doctors and public health experts have high hopes that it will increase the number of people who get immunized (免疫的) against the flu.

Seasonal flu is responsible for up to half a million deaths around the world each year according to the World Health Organization. A team led by Georgia Tech engineer Mark Prausnitz has come up with another method that uses “microneedles”. These tiny needles are so small that 100 of them, arranged in order on a patch, can fit under your thumb. Yet they’re big enough to hold vaccine for three types of flu.

None of the study volunteers had serious side effects. The groups that got patches had mild skin reactions that were not seen in the regular needle group, while the volunteers in the regular needle group were more likely to experience pain. Overall, 70 percent of the volunteers who got vaccine patches said they’d rather use them again than get a traditional flu shot. The study authors declared it a success on all fronts.

The biggest beneficiaries (受益者) could be people in low-and middle-income countries, where flu vaccines are hard to come by. Reducing pain is nice, but other benefits—the patch costs less, is easier to transport, doesn’t require fridge, can be self-administered and doesn’t cause waste of needles—are even better.

“Microneedle Patches have the potential to become ideal candidates for vaccination programs,” wrote Katja Hoschler and Maria Zambon of Public Health England.

5 . It’s breathtaking to watch the delicate spring wildflowers come out from their blanket of leaves, bloom, develop and disperse (传播) fruit, all in a matter of a few short days or weeks.

Although they look fragile, these are tough little plants, each focusing its efforts on spreading its species. They have evolved to have a wide range of flower structures and colors, some with fragrances, attracting many different insect species to assist them in pollination (授粉).

There is one strategy that a surprising number of spring blooming native plants have evolved in common: seed dispersal by ants. As many as thirty percent of the spring flowering plant species in the forests of eastern North America have evolved to take advantage of this situation to benefit themselves. These species have evolved to provide food attached to their seeds to encourage ants to disperse those seeds. This food, called an elaiosome (油质体), is a specialized fat body whose chemical composition more closely matches that of the insects that ants prefer than it does that of a seed.

When a fruit opens to disperse its seeds, the elaiosomes are an instant attraction for ants. They take the seed with its attached elaiosome back to their nests for consumption there, but they just eat the elaiosome, their preferred food, and dispose of the seed on their trash pile. This tends to be an environment that is rich in nutrients, and will benefit the growth of the new plant. Just to make sure the ants don’t eat the seeds in addition to the elaiosome, some plant species have hard seed coatings that ants can’t really bite through.

This evolutionary adaptation is somewhat similar to the strategy of plants that have evolved to surround their seeds with fleshy fruits to attract birds to assist them with seed dispersal. Given the fact that there are fewer birds available in early spring to help with seed dispersal, it makes sense that the early blooming plants evolved to partner instead with the ants for this service.

Did you ever wonder how your Spring Beauty managed to pop up in new locations in your lawn or garden? Thank an ant!

8 . What’s Happening?

Your guide to the best place to go in town

Beautiful exhibition from some of the best young photographers working today.

Stamford Hall, June 20th-30th

Free

Tonight’s movie at the Young People’s Film Clab is the last of the series starring the Oscur-winning actor Johnny Depp. It’s the wonderful Pirates of the Caribbean!

Starts 6:30 pm. Tickets £3

More than 20 bands (乐队) play their best songs in a competition to win a great prize: a place in the national and the chance to record a CD.

Stretford Student: Centre, 6pm

Tickets £10 and £7.5

Come and see the amazing “SDG” at the Atlas Centre. Twenty-four dancers aged between 11 and 18 show off their skills in street dancing for you.

Starts 7 pm.

Tickets £15

The final performance (演出) of Shakespeare’s Romeo end. Juliet is tonight. This is your last chance to see this wonderful play. Don’t miss it.

Starts 8 pm. Tickets £9, £7and £5.50

9 . Dogs may understand more than they show. Pet dogs’ brains displayed neural (神经的) signs of surprise when their owners showed them an unexpected toy. The findings, published March 22 in Current Biology, suggest that dogs create mental concepts of objects.

“Anyone who has ever interacted very much with a dog probably is not surprised to know that dogs understand what your speech is referring to, especially when it contains common objects,” says Ellen Lau, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland in College Park. But some people may assume that this “understanding” is a simple reaction to the sound of the word.

Marianna Boros, a neuroscientist at Lorand University in Budapest, recruited 27 pet dogs and their owners. The team asked the owners to bring five familiar toys and other objects to the lab. Researchers stuck electrodes (电极) to the dogs’ heads and gave them two tasks: lie on the floor and stay awake.

Every so often, a dog would hear a recording of its owner saying things like, “Kun-Kun, look, the ball!” The dog’s owner was on the other side of a wall with a window covered by the curtains. Just after the recording played, the curtains were opened, showing the owner holding a toy — the ball or a different toy, such as a rope.

Just after seeing an unexpected object, an electrode monitoring (监测) brain activity picked up a larger-than-normal signal. This signal indicates surprise, the team says, and suggests that the dog had already formed a mental concept and expectation of the ball after hearing that word. In fact, the signal was especially strong for a mismatch involving words that the dogs knew very well. “That suggests that it is really about understanding and knowledge of the word,” Boros says.

10 . Are aliens trying to contact Earth? Six new mysterious blasts (爆炸) of radio energy are detected from deep space. While the source of the waves remains unknown, some suggest the mysterious bursts of energy could be a sign of alien life trying to contact us. The waves were detected by researchers from McGill University in Montreal.

The detection follows 11 previously recorded outbursts from the same location, called FRB121102. This is the only known repeater of fast radio bursts (FRBs). Despite there being a number of FRBs from the site, the origin of the bursts is an ongoing puzzle to researchers.

But the researchers say that the repeated outbursts imply that whatever is causing the radio bursts is not a one-time event, such as an explosion or collision. Instead, they say that flares (耀斑) from a young neutron star (中子星) are a promising candidate.

Previously when waves have been detected, astronomers have also asked SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) to take a closer look at whether they could be a message from aliens. But it is unclear whether the McGill researchers will ask SETI to help this time.

If there are any intelligent alien life forms out there, Stephen Hawking thinks we’re playing a dangerous game by trying to contact them. The physicist believes if aliens discovered Earth, they would likely want to conquer and colonize our planet.

”If aliens visit us, the outcome could be much like when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans, “he said in an interview.

But co-founder and former director of the SETI Institute, Jill Tarter, doesn’t think this will be the case. She argues any aliens who have managed to travel across the universe may be friendly and peaceful.

“The idea of a civilization which has managed to survive far longer than we have... and the fact that the technology remains an aggressive one, to me, doesn’t make sense,” she said.