1 . Amblyopia is the most common cause of vision loss in children. In all cases of amblyopia, there’s a stronger eye and a weaker eye, and it’s winner-take-all in the cortex (大脑皮层). The cortex learns to ignore the signal from the weaker eye. By ignoring the weaker eye, the brain doesn’t fuse (融合) images from both eyes. As a result, people with amblyopia can have trouble seeing in 3D.

In an attempt to solve this problem, doctors start treating patients with amblyopia at a young age, while their brain pathways are still developing. The children, usually under 7 years old, are often told to wear an eye patch over their strong eye to force the brain to rely on the weaker. But whenever the eye patch is removed, the competition can start over. For lasting improvement, new treatments need to teach the brain to stop suppressing (抑制) key visual cues coming from the weaker eye, says neuroscientist Dennis Levi of the University of California.

Now, several research teams are taking a new way that aims to get the brain to make better use of the information coming from both eyes, Several companies are working on treatments based on this new angle. One is called Luminopia.

Luminopia’s therapy involves having children watch videos through a virtual reality headset. As the children watch, the headset blocks out certain parts of the display for each eye, so the patients actually have to combine input from the two images to get the full video.

The company conducted a trial showing that children with amblyopia begin to see better on eye chart assessments after three months of one-hour sessions done six days a week, But they have yet to measure improvements in long-term effectiveness. It is believed that if people with amblyopia don’t learn to fuse signals from both eyes from a young age, they never will. So some scientists think attempting to treat adults, whose brains have suppressed signals from their weak eye for decades, is a lost cause.

2 . Rolland and Adeline are proud parents to nine beautiful children. Their youngest two, daughter Lanto, and son, Rindra, were both born with cleft lip (唇裂) conditions. In Madagascar, many families have never seen a cleft lip before, so it’s a condition often greeted with fear and misfortune in some rural communities.

However, the news of Lanto and Rindra’s cleft lip wasn’t much of a shock for Rolland and Adeline because Rolland’s cousin—a man in his fifties — had lived his entire adult life with an untreated cleft lip. Although seeing a relative with a cleft lip meant the family weren’t fearful of the condition, they knew the negative impact an untreated cleft lip can have on a person’s health and life. As all loving parents would, Rolland and Adeline wanted a better future for their children.

Rolland heard an advertisement on the radio about an Operation Smile surgical programme in Antsirabe, Madagascar. Finding out that Rindra and Lanto could have the cleft lip surgery they needed, for free, was a dream for the family. Unlike here in the UK, health services aren’t free in many parts of the world, and the costs of treatment — or even travelling to reach medical facilities — are out of reach for most families.

When Rolland and his children arrived at the patient village, they were surprised to see so many other families in the same position. After a thorough medical evaluation by medical volunteers, Lanto was found to be fit enough for surgery, and later got the new smile her parents had dreamed of for her. But, for younger brother Rindra, the journey to a new smile would take a little longer.

Operation Smile has provided hundreds of thousands of safe surgeries for children with cleft lip conditions worldwide. For more information about our work or to find out how you can help, visit www.operationsmile.org.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an ancient health care system in which patients     1     (treat) with natural plant, animal, and mineral remedies (药物). It is believed, for a person to be healthy,     2     yin and yang forces should be in balance. Imbalance causes illness or injury. TCM is about restoring the balance between yin and yang forces in     3     (patient). It has been a major part of traditional Chinese culture and continues to play     4     vital role in medical treatment in China today.

According to the World Health     5     (organize), nearly 80 percent of the world’s population depends for     6     (it) primary health care needs on medicines from plants and animals. This is especially true in countries where traditional Chinese medicines are     7     (wide) used.

Increasingly, however, modern medicines also contain substances     8     animals and plants. Given the growing populations, increasing wealth, and the spreading popularity of natural remedies throughout the world, the demand for these useful medicines and remedies     9     (rise) now. The rising demand,     10     (combine) with reduced habitat, has put a number of plant and animal species used for medicinal purposes at risk for many years.

For instance, TCM uses about 1,000 plant and 36 animal species, including the tiger, rhinoceros (犀牛), and sea horse, which are all in danger.

5 . In the 19th century, an Arab physician known as Ibn Zuhr conducted some animal research to assess the surgical procedures that could be applicable to humans. Since then, animal testing has been considered to be the most efficient way to develop new drugs. New medical treatments and drugs are tested on animals first to determine their effectiveness or safety levels before they are finally tested on humans. However, it remains controversial whether it is morally right or wrong to use animals for medical or commercial experiments.

The use of animals for medical purposes is seen to be necessary by many scientists. Researchers usually begin their trials using rats. If the tests are successful, further tests are done on monkeys before using human beings. For testing, such tiered (分层的) rounds are important because it reduces the level of error and any negative side effects. Some argue that animal testing has contributed to many life-saving cures and treatments and that there is no adequate alternative to testing on a living, whole-body system. Moreover, there are regulations for animal testing that limit the misuse of animals during research, which serves as evidence that animals are well taken care of and treated well instead of being intentionally harmed.

However, some other experts and animal welfare groups have opposed such practice, terming it inhumane and claiming it should be banned. According to Humane Society International, animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force-feeding, radiation exposure, operations to deliberately cause damage and frightening situations to create depression and anxiety. They also hold the view that animals are very different from human beings and therefore make poor test subjects. Drugs that pass animal tests are not necessarily safe. Animal tests on the arthritis (关节炎) drug Vioxx showed that it would have a protective effect on the hearts of mice, yet the drug went on to cause more than 27,000 heart attacks before being pulled from the market.

It’s safe to say that using animals for tests will continue to be debated in many years to come. Despite the benefits of animal testing, some of the animal welfare organizations’ concerns need to be addressed with adequate regulations to ensure that animals are treated humanely.

9 . For decades, scientists thought of the brain as the most valuable and consequently most closely guarded part of the body. Locked safely behind the blood-brain barrier, it was broadly free of the harm of viruses and the battles started by the immune system (免疫系统). Then, about 20 years ago, some researchers began to wonder: is the brain really so separated from the body? The answer, according to a growing body of evidence, is no.

The list of brain conditions that have been associated with changes elsewhere in the body is long and growing. Changes in the makeup of the microorganisms in the digestive system have been linked to disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. There is also a theory that infection during pregnancy could lead to brain diseases in babies.

The effect is two-way. There is a lengthening list of symptoms not typically viewed as disorders of the nervous system, but the brain plays a large part in them. For example, the development of a fever is influenced by a population of nerve cells that control body temperature and appetite. Evidence is mounting that cancers use nerves to grow and spread.

The interconnection between the brain and body has promising implications for our ability to both understand and treat illnesses. If some brain disorders start outside the brain, then perhaps treatments for them could also reach in from outside. Treatments that take effect through the digestive system, the heart or other organs, would be much easier and less risky than those that must cross the blood-brain barrier.

It also works in the opposite direction. Study shows mice have healthier hearts after receiving stimulation to a brain area involved in positive emotion and motivation. Activation of the brain reward centre — called the ventral tegmental area (VTA) — seems to cause immune changes that contribute to it. Working out how this happens could help to destroy cancers, enhance responses to vaccines and even re-evaluate physical diseases that, for centuries, have not been considered as being psychologically driven.

10 . With the widespread use of smartphones, emojis(表情符号)have become a popular medium for expressing emotions and ideas. Researchers now believe these expressive symbols can play a significant role in medicine, increasing the response rate of health surveys(调查).

Scientists say that employing emojis in healthcare communications has several benefits, such as general recognition across diverse populations. So the study authors strongly support the use of emojis to bolster communication between patients and physicians.

“By promoting more effective communication between patients and care providers, as well as between physicians themselves, an emoji-based language system with a common agreement of meanings can be developed,” says Professor Kendrick Davis, who is an associate professor at the UCR School of Medicine. The professor has been working on creating an emoji-based measurement system for the past two years. And he has even conducted a study using emojis to measure health among college students.

Davis further explains that a significant part of medical communication includes surveys, which are often areas of communication breakdown. “Surveys are usually passed to patients in a variety of different stages of their care. But many surveys are explained with language that can introduce an obstacle. This is where emojis, which are friendly and widely used, come into play by replacing survey language that can be hard for some patients to understand,” he says. The authors also point out that while effective communication is important for successful treatment and care, certain health conditions such as brain injury can cause major obstacles. In such cases, emojis could be helpful.

However, Davis also acknowledges the importance of qualitative(定性的)methods. He expresses an interest in partnering researchers whose methodologies are heavily qualitative.