LakeLander        ·2 hours ago

    Today, a man talked very loud on his phone on a train between Malvern and Reading, making many passengers upset. I wonder how he would react if I were to read my newspaperoutloudonthetrain, Ihave never had the courage to do it, though.

    Pak50          ···     ·57 minutes ago

    Why not give it a try? Perhaps you should take lessons on a

    musical instrument. The late musician Dennis Brian is said to have

    asked a fellow train passenger to turn off his radio. When his

    request was refused, he took out his French horn(号) and started to practice.

    Angie O'Edema·42 minutes ago

    I don't see how musical instruments can help improve manners in public. Don't do to others what you wouldn't like to be done to yourself. Once, a passenger next to me talked out loud on his mobile phone. I left my seat quietly, giving him some privacy to finish his conversation. He realized this and apologised to me. When his phone rang again later, he left his seat to answer it. You see, a bit of respect and cooperation can do the job better.

    Taodas                          ·29 minutes ago

    I did read my newspaper out loud on a train, and it turned out well. The guy took it in good part, and we chatted happily all the way to Edinburgh.

    Sophie 76                                     ·13minutes ago

    I have not tried reading my newspaper out loud on a train, but ,several years ago, I read some chapters from Harry Porter to my bored and noisy children. Several passengers seemed to appreciate what I did.

    Are you carrying too much on your back at your back at school? I'm sure lots of children of your age will say “Yes”. Not only the students in China have this problem, but children in the United States also have heavy school bags.

    Doctors are starting to worry that younger and younger students are having back and neck problems as a result of school bags being too heavy for them.

    “It's hard for me to go upstairs with my bag because it's so heavy,” said Rick Hammond, an 11-year-old student in the US.

    Rick is among students who have common school bags with two straps（带子）to carry them, but many other students choose rolling（有滚轮的）bags.

    But even with rolling bags, getting up stairs and buses is still a problem for children. Many of them have hurt their backs and necks because of the heavy school bags.

    But how much is too much? Doctors say students should carry no more than 10% to 15% of their own body weight.

    Scout Batch, a back doctor, said children under Grade 4 should stay with 10%. But it is also important that older children don't stay with over 15%, because their bodies are still growing.

    “Children are losing their balance and falling down with their school bags,” he said.

    Parents and teachers are starting to tell children to only take home library books they will be reading that night. Some teachers are using pieces of paper or thin workbooks for students to take home.

    One of the best answers is, as some children said, to have no homework at all!

    Motherhood may make women smarter and may help prevent dementia (痴呆) in old age by bathing the brain in protective hormones (荷尔蒙) , U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

    Tests on rats show that those who raise two or more litters of pups do considerably better in tests of memory and skills than rats who have no offsprings, and their brains show changes that suggest they may be protected against diseases such as Alzheimer's (早老痴呆症). University of Richmond psychology professor Craig Kinsley believes his findings will translate into humans.

“Our research shows that the hormones of pregnancy are protecting the brain, including estrogen(雌激素), which we know has many neuroprotective (保护神经的) effects,” Kinsley said.

    “It's rat data but humans are mammals just like these animals are mammals,” he added in a telephone interview. “They go through pregnancy and hormonal changes.”

    Kinsley said he hoped public health officials and researchers will look to see if having had children protects a woman from Alzheimer's and other forms of age-related brain decline.

    “When people think about pregnancy, they think about what happens to babies and the mother from the neck down,” said Kinsley, who presented his findings to the annual meeting of the Society of Neuroscience in Orlando, Florida.

    “They do not realize that hormones are washing on the brain. If you look at female animals who have never gone through pregnancy, they act differently toward young. But if she goes through pregnancy, she will sacrifice her life for her infant—that is a great change in her behavior that showed in genetic alterations to the brain.”

    Back in 2009, China was wrongly accused by the West of "controlling" the Copenhagen talks on climate change. By then China had truly carried out strict policies to reduce the energy consumption of economic activities and at the international level, the top Chinese leaders participated in round-clock efforts to cooperate with the major players to build a united front for efforts to solve global warming. But China was finally misjudged.

    This misjudgment caused China's scholars to rethink China's climate change communicative ways. Among them was Zheng Baowei, journalism professor of Renmin University of China, who realized China had to better shape its communication on its environmental protection.

    Delightfully, the efforts have paid off. Zheng set up a top-level international group advising his research team. He is in charge of doctoral candidates on climate change communication. Climate awareness surveys have been conducted, and a package of communication tools has been designed. Many seminars have been arranged.

    Recently, he arranged a seminar on climate change and health communication on the changing situation both in China and the world. First of all, this stressed that China's policy has developed from reducing its energy consumption and pollution prevention to the important goals of achieving a "Beautiful China" and "'Healthy China, "while coming up with plans to realize an ecological civilization since late 2012. With such goals, China played a leading role in securing the Paris climate change deal in 2015 together with the United States and European Union. In Paris, China promised to let out its carbon to the maximum in 2030.

    It is a demanding job communicating climate change and other topics of lasting development well. Despite that, some foreign scholars have realized China's smart ways in presenting the green concepts. They appreciated China's idea of building a "Beautiful China" and "Healthy China" and said it can he expanded into an idea of a "Beautiful World" and "Healthy World".

    Looking back from how China had followed the steps of the industrialized countries in advocating climate fight, people find now its own green ideas are being recognized.

    After photographer Monni Must's daughter Miya died, the sad mother adopted her black dog, Billy Bean. As Billy became increasingly weak, the thought of its dying was just more than Must could handle. So she decided to clone the dog. “I feared everyone was going to forget Miya," she said, "and my other daughters thought I had completely lost my mind."

    Billy's cells were shipped to ViaGen Pets, a Texas company that provides the cloning service. With more than $50,000, Must picked up a new puppy. "The dog has a real soul and is everything my daughter was—fun, social and kind," she said. "I feel that I still have that touchable connection and not just a spiritual connection.”

    Cloning animals is hardly new. But the recent news that singer Barbra Streisand had cloned her dog grabbed international headlines. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals(PETA) president Ingrid Newkirk issued a statement saying she would love to talk her out of cloning, noting that millions of wonderful dogs are getting old in animal shelters every year or dying in terrifying ways when abandoned.

    Normally, a doctor takes a tissue biopsy(组织活检), a piece of skin and muscle about the size of a pencil eraser, from the dog. The next step is to take an egg cell from a donor dog, remove the egg's nucleus, and insert DNA from the pet to be cloned. When an embryo(胚胎)develops, it is transplanted in the body of a mother dog.

    In the basic cloning procedure, scientists take an entire adult cell and put it into an egg that's been relieved of its own DNA. The resulting embryo is a clone. However, in many animals, only one in 100 cloned embryos ever leads to a live birth. Some embryos die in the IVF dish or in the mothers bodies. Of those that are born, a few suffer from abnormalities and quickly die. Besides, pet cloning doesn't mean copying everything of your beloved pets.

    There has, in recent years, been an outpouring of information about the impact of buildings on the natural environment. Information which explains and promotes green and sustainable construction design, strives to convince others of its efficacy (功效) and warns of the dangers of ignoring the issue. Seldom do these documents offer any advice to practitioners, such as those designing mechanical and electrical systems for a building, on how to use this knowledge on a practical level.

    Although there are a good many advocates of "green" construction in the architectural industry, able to list enough reasons why buildings should be designed in a sustainable way, not to mention plenty of architectural firms with experience in green design, this is not enough to make green construction come into being. The driving force behind whether a building is constructed with minimal environmental impact lies with the owner of the building; that is, the person financing the project. If the owner considers green design unimportant, or of secondary importance, then more than likely, it will not be factored into the design.

    The commissioning (委任) process plays a key role in ensuring the owner gets the building he wants, in terms of design, costs and risk. At the predesign stage, the owner's objectives and expectations are discussed and documented. This gives a design team a solid foundation on which they can build their ideas. Owners who skip the commissioning process, or fail to take "green" issues into account when doing so, often come a cropper once their building is up and running. Materials and equipment are installed as planned, and, at first glance, appear to fulfil their purpose adequately. However, in time, the owner realizes that operational and maintenance costs are higher than necessary, and that the occupants are dissatisfied with the results. These factors in turn lead to higher ownership costs as well as increased environmental impact.

    In some cases, an owner may be aware of the latest trends in sustainable building design. However, firms should not take it as read that the client already has an idea of how green he intends the structure to be. Indeed, this initial interaction between owner and firm is the ideal time for a designer to outline and promote the ways that green design can meet the client's objectives, thus turning a project originally not destined for green design into a potential candidate.

    Typically, when considering whether or not to adopt a green approach, an owner will ask about additional costs or return for investment. In a typical project, landscape architects, mechanical and electrical engineers do not become involved until a much later stage. However, in green design, they must be involved from the outset, since green design demands interaction between these disciplines. This increased cooperation clearly requires additional cost. However, there may be financial advantage for the client in choosing a greener design. There are examples of green designs which have demonstrated lower costs for long-term operation, ownership and even construction.