Don't you just hate it when you have to take an important phone call and you're surrounded by potential eavesdroppers(潜在偷听者)? You either have to whisper or go outside to keep the conversation private, which is not good. Now Hushme aims to fix this problem by muffling your voice and making you look like Bane in the film Batman.

    Hushme is a strange high-tech mask(口罩)that blocks the sound of the wearer's voice so that people nearby can't hear what is being said. It connects to your phone via Blucetooth and comes with a pair of earphones. When you get a private call, all you have to do is put the mask on and it will do the rest. The pair of thick pads over your mouth does a good job of muffling your voice, but to ensure nothing gets through. Hushme also has speakers that play a variety of sounds when you speak.

    The Hushme mask, which comes in a variety of colors, can be worn around the neck, like a regular pair of earphones, and attaches in front of your mouth thanks to a couple of very powerful magnets(磁铁). It's not yet clear how comfortable speaking with this Bane-like mask over your mouth really is, or how effective its speech muffling ability is, so we know so far is that it makes you look strange. The sound choices for covering your voice currently include wind, ocean, rain, birds, monkey, but new ones could be added in the future.

    Advertised as the “world's first voice mask for mobile phones'. Hushme was showed at CES. At the becoming of this year. Its makers plan to sell it by the end of this year. It will cost about $200.

    In the rush to get to school, you drop a piece of toast on the floor. Do you throw it away or decide it's still OK to eat? If you're like most people, you eat it. Maybe you follow the “5-second rule”, which says foods are safe to eat if you pick them up within 5 seconds after dropping them. But you might want to think again. Scientists now say that 5 seconds is all it takes for foods to become polluted with enough bacteria to make you sick.

    Bacteria can cause many kinds of illnesses. Some kinds of bacteria can grow on food. If you eat foods on which these bacteria are growing, you can become sick.

    One of these food-borne bacteria is Salmonella. It makes 1.4 million people sick every year. Salmonella is often found in raw eggs and chicken. Cooking kills these bacteria, which is why it is so important to cook eggs, chicken, and other foods thoroughly.

    But how long does it take these bacteria to pollute food? A team of scientists in South Carolina did an experiment. First, they placed an amount of Salmonella on three surfaces: wood, tile, and carpet. They placed a piece of bread and a piece of sausage on each surface for 5, 30, or 60 seconds. After just 5 seconds, both the bread and the sausage picked up enough bacteria to make you sick.

    So, forget the 5-second rule. If your toast drops on the floor, throw it away and get another piece of clean toast. And next time, be careful not to drop it!

    Andreea, 18, from Romania, sent a photograph of the view from her window and included a brief (简短的）apology: “Sorry, this picture is plain and boring. No one would like it.”

    At home in New Jersey, US, Coreen Burke, 16, clicked on the same image in her inbox. She saw a village with its old houses, and a distant chimney puffing smoke.

    “Isn't this amazingly different from my country?” she thought to herself.

    Burke saw potential in that photo. She posted it to her blog, Outside My Window，which features a daily snapshot (快照）of someone's window view from different people around the world.

    The concept (理念）is simple: We can all relate to the act of staring through a pane of lass (一块玻璃)，onto the scene on the other side,

    “Maybe if we understood the way people from all over the world live,” she added, “we would get along better than we have been lately.”

    On the sit，Can see Frederic's window in the south of France, looking out on sailboats anchored in a tranquil  harbor(宁静的港湾).0r Virginia's view in Canada, a winter scene with trees laced in white.

    Like most high school students, Burke has yet to travel the world. But she hopes to someday collect many stamps in her passport,starting in Greece and India. In the meantime, however, she's devoting herself to her website.she posted the first window view from Switzerland, a sunset captured (拍摄）by an 18-year-old.Then others came flowing in by email, up to seven a day, from as far as Kazakhstan and Indonesia.

    Contributors are marked on a map on her bedroom wall: A blue dot indicates (表示）their country and a pink dot shows their city, if they provide it. The most responses have come from Europe - Estonia, Poland, Italy, Germany and Sweden, to name a few. She is crossing her Angers that she 11 receive a photo from Africa or Antarctica, which are unrepresented so far.

    And while Burke's become a cyber crusader (斗士）for appreciating the beauty outside our own windows, it will probably come as a surprise to learn that she doesn't actually have a window in her own bedroom. But with the views out of other people's she can enjoy whenever she wants to, she surely doesn't mind.

    Chinese researchers say they have come up with a simple way to find out a person's biological age —how much the body has aged physically – through a urine (尿) test.

    Their findings will help researchers conduct numbers of ageing studies and even predict a person's risk of age-related diseases, according to a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Ageing Neuroscience.

    Another paper by researchers at the Beijing Hospital and the West China Hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan province, said on Tuesday that people aged at different rates due to changes in their genetic make-up and their environment.

    Chronological age – which is based on one's birth date —was not an exact measure of biological age so a more exact method was needed, the team said.

    Ageing is driven by the lifelong gradual accumulation(积累) of a broad variety of molecular (分子) faults in the body's cells. The team said they had identified a matter 8-oxoGsn that indicated increases in oxidative (氧化性) damage in urine as people's bodies aged.

    Cai Jianping, a co-author at the Beijing Hospital, said: “As we age, we suffer increasing oxidative damage and so the levels of oxidative matters increase in our body.” The team tested the levels of 8-oxoGsn in urine samples from 1,228 Chinese people aged two to 90 and concluded the marker helped accurately determine the stage of biological ageing in adults.

    They had previously found that 8-oxoGsn levels also increased with age in the urine of animals such as mice.

    The team has also developed a rapid analysis technique called ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography(层析法), which can process up to 10 urine samples an hour, according to the study.

    Scientists dug up human remains from the Stonehenge dating back to about 5,000 years ago. To our surprise, people journeyed far to get to the Wessex site. These men and women potentially played a huge role in the construction of Stonehenge.

    The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, reveals that a number of people buried at the Wessex monument originated from West Wales, which is also the source of the bluestones used in Stonehenge's early construction.

    According to a report from the University College London, scientists from Oxford and Belgium came together to analyze 25 of the burials dug in 2008. Many of them were buried around 3,000 BC, which is around the time when the bluestones were put up to form the Aubrey holes around Stonehenge. The famous stones weren't built until 500 years later. The team used chemical isotope (同位素) analysis and radiocarbon dating (放射性碳年代测定法) the study and found out that at least 10 of the 25 individuals analyzed didn't live near the Stonehenge site but in western Britain. This region includes West Wales, where the bluestones were sourced. Furthermore, the wood that was used to burn the bodies was also found to have come from different trees. Some of the pieces of trees come from trees in dense woodland, many of which are found in West Wales. Some of the individuals may have been cremated elsewhere before being buried in Stonehenge.

    The researchers suggest that these prehistoric people may have been part of the sacred site's early construction crew. They may have been the ones to transport the bluestone materials from the Preseli Mountains in West Wales. The findings are an interesting revelation, particularly since it means that there were significant interregional connections that existed as far back as 5,000 years ago. Even back then, in the Neolithic Period (新石器时代), human civilization had wide contacts and exchanges.

    Back in 1988, I was working at the University of Bonn in Germany as a research fellow. I took some time off in early May to visit a friend, who was the director of a museum in Viterbo, in central Italy. I set out by train, which crossed the Swiss border to reach Zurich, winding through valleys and along hillsides, and entering tunnels and making its way through the Swiss Alps. The scenery was so beautiful.

    The train then crossed the Italian border before passing through Milan and Florence, then finally stopping in Rome. I was lucky, as my hotel was close to the railway station. The next morning, I had a coffee at a nearby café and eagerly set out to visit as many of the famous Roman landmarks as possible.

    The following day I headed back to the train station, intending to take a short train ride to Viterbo to meet up with my friend. When I arrived at the station and attempted to locate the correct platform, I quickly realized that the station was closed for an upgrade (升级). For a moment my mind went blank and did not know what to do. My biggest problem was my luggage—my suitcase and hand luggage were so heavy that I couldn't move about easily. As I don't speak Italian, I could not ask anyone for instructions. I dragged my suitcase about 100 meters to a nearby motor mechanics. A tall, strong man of about 50 years of age was working there and I excused myself and asked where the nearest station was. I am sure that he did not understand me properly but he could easily guess that I was looking for a station. He replied, but I did not understand.

    He smiled, wiped his hands and said something, which I guessed to mean "come along". So I dragged my suitcase along and followed him. He opened the door of his car, motioned to me to get in and then drove for a few minutes to the next station. I got out, unloaded my luggage, then shook his hand with thanks. He smiled back and drove away.

    There was no time to hug or exchange names  I understood he was busy and in the middle of his work. I was moved so much by his generosity that I have never forgotten him.