Vitamin B could help reduce the effects of the dangerous type of air pollution, according to a new study published on Monday. In the first study of its kind, a team of international researchers looked into the damage caused by one of the pollutants that have the severest impact on health—PM2.5.

    They found that Vitamin B supplement could effectively reduce the impact of the tiny particles     （颗粒）on the human body, although they stressed that the research was in its early stages. According to the WHO, 92% of the world's people are living in places where the PM2.5 level goes beyond the recommended level. So it's urgent to find a solution to the problem.

    According to this study, published in the PNAS, 10 volunteers were initially exposed to clean air and given a placebo (安慰剂）to check their baseline responses. The group then kept on taking placebos tor tour weeks before being exposed to heavily polluted air from downtown Toronto, where an estimated 1,000 cars passed every hour. The bad air was delivered to the volunteers through an "oxygen type" face mask. The experiment was then repeated, with each volunteer taking a Vitamin B supplement daily, made up of 2.5mg of folic acid, 50mg of Vitamin B6, and l mg of Vitamin B12.

    Vitamin B6 can be found in liver, chicken, nuts and other things, and Vitamin B12 in fish, meat, eggs, milk and some cereals. The researchers found that four weeks of Vitamin B supplements — the damage of PM2.5 effects by 28-76%. The results emphasized how prevention at an individual level could be used to fight against the damage of PM2.5, the researchers said.

    The ability to speak more than one language certainly has its special benefits.It enables you to work in another country or interact with people whose language is different from your mother tongue.Cognitive（认知的）  psychologists have been interested in how bilingualism（双语能力）shapes the mind for almost a century.There are those who suggest that in order to speak one language,bilinguals have to suppress（抑制）the influence of the other.In the past three decades,research had argued that this unique form of language processing trains the brain in the use of abilities known as "executive（执行的）functions" such as ignoring irrelevant information or shifting attention. Bilinguals of different ages and cultural backgrounds have been shown to be faster and more accurate than their monolingual（单语的）peers when performing cognitive tasks demanding these abilities.Furthermore,it has been argued that bilingualism may lead to a delayed onset（发作）of symptoms associated with dementia（痴呆）.

    But the scientific community recently has become increasingly skeptical of the bilingual advantage.One of the main points of criticism is that differences between monolinguals and bilinguals when it comes to executive functions are not always apparent.It appears that research on bilingualism is at a turning point.We need to pursue a new approach to understand,beyond those individual examples of executive functions,how the bilingual mind works. We have attempted to address this challenge by testing whether bilinguals and monolinguals differ in terms of how accurately they can assess their own performances.This ability is called meta cognition and is associated with other areas where bilinguals have been shown to have an advantage.

    In our research,we presented participants with a situation in which they had to observe two circles on a screen and guess which one contained more dots.Sometimes the difference was obvious,making the decision easy,while at other times the decision was very difficult (for example,one circle contained 50 dots and the other 49).Participants were then asked to determine how confident they were in their decision on a scale from less to more confident than normal.

    During the course of two experiments,we found that bilinguals and monolinguals were equally likely to choose the circle containing the highest number of dots.However,monolinguals were better able than bilinguals to discriminate between when they were right and when they were wrong.In other words,bilinguals had less insight into their performance than monolinguals.This went against our initial predictions,as we expected to find a bilingual advantage in meta cognitive processing.These results indicate that bilingualism may be associated with cognitive disadvantages as well as benefits.

    The purpose of a map is to express graphically the relations of points and features on the earth's surface to each other. These are determined by distance and direction. In early times distance was often expressed in units of time, for example “so many hours' march” or “a day's journey by river”, but such measurements gave more information about the relative ease of crossing the local terrain than they did about actual distance. The other element is direction, but for the ordinary traveller, whose main concern was “Where do I go from here?” and “How far away is it?”, the accurate representation of direction was not of primary importance. Partly for this reason, written itineraries (行程) for a long time rivaled maps. Even today, certain types of maps, for example, those showing railway systems, may make little attempt to show true directions. Similarly, obvious landmarks along a route were at first indicated by signs, realistic or conventional (惯常的), and varied in size to indicate their importance. Clearly the conventions employed varied with the purpose of the map, and also from place to place, so that in studying early maps the first essential is to understand the particular convention employed.

    The history of cartography (制图) is largely that of the increase in the accuracy with which these elements of distance and direction are determined and in the comprehensiveness of the map content. In this development, cartography has called in other sciences to its aid. For example, instead of determining direction by observing the position of a shadow at midday, or of a constellation (星座) in the night sky, or even of a steady wind, use was made of terrestrial magnetism (地磁学) through the magnetic compass, and instruments were evolved which enabled horizontal angles to be calculated with great accuracy.

    The application of astronomical concepts, and the extension of the knowledge of the world through exploration, encouraged attempts to map the known world. Then astronomers discovered that the earth is not a perfect sphere, but is flattened slightly at the poles, which introduced further refinements into the mapping of large areas. Meanwhile, the demands being made of the map maker were shifting significantly. The traveller or the merchant ceased to be the sole user of maps. The soldier, especially after the introduction of artillery, and the problems of range, field of fire, and dead ground which it raised, demanded an accurate representation of the surface features, in place of the earlier conventional or pictorial delineation (描绘), and a solution in any degree satisfactory was not reached until the contour (等高线) was invented.

    Depression(抑郁) can be a destructive illness, plaguing millions of people worldwide with feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and fatigue. Despite numerous antidepressant drugs, as many as a third of patients don't respond to medication. This has forced doctors to be more creative in finding different treatments for the condition.

    In the past two decades, researchers have tied depression to a seemingly unrelated condition: inflammation(炎症), the body's natural response to stress. It could rise from injury or inflection, or even emotional issues like an unhappy marriage or problems at work. Some amount of inflammation is generally beneficial, as it increases production of cytokines(致癌因子)，proteins that help us heal and protect us from the effects of overwork.

    But excessive cytokine levels, and the inflammation they bring on, could come at a cost—a number of studies suggests that high levels of cytokines could contribute to depression.

    Cytokines can reach the brain several ways: directly through the blood-brain barrier or indirectly by binding to nerve fibers elsewhere, which send signals to the brain to produce the inflammation molecules. In the brain, cytokines can disturb the production and release of several important signaling chemicals, including serotonin, dopamine and glutamate, which help control emotion, appetite, sleep, learning and memory. It's though that a lack of serotonin activity in the brain causes depression; most antidepressants increase the activity. But cytokines also have been shown to activate stress hormone signaling in the brain, which man also serve to develop depression.

    With all the evidence implicating inflammation in depression, doctors have been anxious to test anti-inflammatory drugs as a potential treatment. Four small studies published between 2006 and 2017 by research groups in Europe and Iran found that adults diagnosed with depression who took aspirin or another anti-inflammatory drug called Celecoxib, along with an antidepressant, got more relief from feelings of sadness, hopelessness, guilt and fatigue compared with those taking an antidepressant alone. However, Andrew Miller, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University, thought something was wrong in these small, limited studies. None of them looked at whether the participants had to have high levels of cytokines before they'd see a benefit from anti-inflammatory drugs.  "Unfortunately, much of the field has fallen into the trap of viewing inflammation as the be-all, end-all," Miller says. He and his colleagues wanted to see whether the effect of these drugs was limited to the depression patients with high cytokine levels, or if it helped all people diagnosed with depression.

    A recent documentary produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has caused a stir in China and in the UK.

    The documentary, titled Are Our Kids Tough Enough? focuses on five Chinese teachers who are sent to teach 50 UK teens at a school in Hampshire.

    The teachers instruct the students for a month. The pupils are then tested, and the results are compared to the ones of those who have continued in the regular UK education system. The idea is to see if the Chinese method improves academic performance.

    The Chinese teachers use their own teaching methods but receive strong resistance from the students. A clip from the documentary online shows some problems, with Chinese teachers calling their students lazy and lacking in discipline, while the students say the high pressure and harsh teachers are driving them crazy.

    This has aroused a new debate in both China and the UK, with some arguing the teenagers need more regulation and discipline. Others say Chinese methods encourage rote learning (死记硬背) instead of independent thinking. For instance, Chinese language teachers should do more than pass on knowledge about words and characters. They should inspire students, helping them feel the sentiment from Chinese literature. This is a higher level of teaching.

    Yang Dongping, dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, says, "The Chinese teaching methods are designed to strictly train the majority. Foreign teaching methods, however, are more natural and relaxing, and designed to inspire students' interest in learning. Education methods are based on culture. That is why a successful education method in one place may not work that well when simply 'transplanted' into another place."

    Yang Dongping says, "The documentary does reflect some problems rooted in traditional Chinese teaching methods. Nobel prize winner, Yang Zhenning, gave a very fair comment on this issue. He said the Chinese-style education method works for most ordinary qualified students effectively, helping them reach high standards. However, it may weaken the training for high-potential outstanding students."