Breathing in polluted air on busy roads is as harmful as passively smoking ten cigarettes a day, new research has found. The drop in pollution had the same effects as avoiding four cigarettes a day. One of the researchers, Saskia van der Zee, explained why they compared the effects of pollution lo passive smoking. “We thought that passive smoking would be easier to understand,” she told The Times. "You don't want your neighbors to come into your house and smoke three cigarettes every day."

    Earlier this week, doctors warned that Britain is facing a major health emergency unless diesel(柴油)cars are taken off the roads. Emissions (排放物) from diesel cars arc already contributing to smog which has been linked to the deaths of 40,000 people a year. Health charities, medical leaders and environmental groups have called for a modern Clean Air Act lo bring pollution under control. Separately, more than 300 doctors in the Doctors Against Diesel group have written to Theresa May, calling for a diesel reduction.

    Professor John Middleton, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, said, “Diesel is the primary source of nitrogen dioxide(二氧化氮)in urban areas and is linked to health effects that begin before birth and extend throughout life, from childhood lung development to increased risk of heart disease, stroke and lung cancer. It is high lime lo handle the problem.”

    London is already planning to introduce an “emission zone” which diesel drivers would be charged to enter, and other cities are set to follow. But exerts are desperate to find new ways to control the damage done by pollution. Diesel drivers in Westminster have been told they may soon be charged 50 percent extra for on-street parking. And Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London，submitted a £ 3,500 plan to encourage drivers to switch to petrol or electric cars.

    “Cutting diesel emissions would therefore have an immediate effect on children's personal exposure, and improve their long-term health.” A government spokesman said.

    Phone Soap: Charge and Clean Your Phone

    You may charge your phone every day, but do you clean your phone as much? Whatever your hands touch, your phones touch. It has been discovered that some phones have 18 times more bacteria and viruses than any surface in a public restroom. So it probably won't surprise you that a 2011 University of London study found that one in six of our phones have bacteria and viruses on them—specifically, the bacteria called E. coli.

    The research on bacteria and viruses led to the invention of Phone Soap. It is not actually liquid like dishwasher soap. It is a phone charger that uses the electromagnetic radiation (辐射) used in hospitals to kill 99.9 percent of bacteria and viruses, cleaning your phone while it charges.

    “There are really certain types of bacteria and viruses that we should not be in touch with, and they are really on our phones,” says Wes Barnes, the Phone Soap co-founder. It all started while his cousin and co-founder, Dan LaPorte, was in his cancer research lab at college. “He realized he got the idea of getting rid of bacteria and viruses on the phones,” said Barnes. “In the lab they used UV-C light for destroying them. He realized this would be the fastest, most powerful way to kill any bacteria and viruses living on electronic machines.”

    Phone Soap looks like a little metal suitcase. Your phone rests in to charge and get cleaned at the same time. Instead of plugging your phone into the wall, you'd plug it into the Phone Soap charger box. The process only takes a few minutes but, Barnes says, “The idea is that you can leave it in there overnight if you want to keep charging. Reflective paint keeps the light completely around the phone so it cleans the phone fully.”

    The co-founders spent 2013 finding the right companies and they started shipping the product in late November. By last week's International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Phone Soap was all grown-up. Both co-founders have left their previous jobs and are selling Phone Soap nonstop. “We're shipping almost more than we can handle each day,” Barnes says. “It's been a great adventure.”

    The UK government has announced plans to tackle sources of air pollution, including popular wood-burning stoves, but its Clean Air Strategy, which was unveiled last week, fails to address the real problem.

    Although pollution from woodburning stoves is a relatively new problem for the UK, it has long been a major one in countries such as Canada and New Zealand. And the take-home message from them as to controlling the release of harmful particulates in the air is simple: ban wood burning.

    "There does not seem to be a limit below which there is no impact on health," says Gary Fuller at King's College London, whose team has shown that wood burning is now the source of a third of particulate pollution in UK cities.

    As New Scientist reported last year, families with wood burners are likely to be exposed to the highest levels of pollution and their neighbours are next in the firing line, given that the particulates produced can easily escape from homes. Despite this, the UK government isn't planning a ban. Instead, it wants "to prohibit the sale of the most polluting fuels", such as wet wood. What's more, lots of people with wood burners don't buy wood from shops. Instead, they scrounge it from wherever they can, with building waste one popular source. This is a disaster in pollution terms as treated or painted wood can release highly toxic chemicals when burned. The plan is also to "ensure that only the cleanest stoves are available for sale by 2022". But even the cleanest stove produces eight times as much pollution as a diesel truck, says Fuller.

    Some cities actually required old wood stoves to be replaced with cleaner new ones. That has helped, but wood burning remains a major source of pollution, says Fuller. In most cases, conventional gas central heating plus properly insulating (使隔热) your home is less harmful in global-warming terms than switching to a wood burner.

    Finally, there are separate but related EU laws that set limits on the maximum allowable concentrations of specific pollutants in the air at individual locations. The UK frequently breaches these: London's Oxford Street often hits its annual limit within the first weeks of each year. As a result, the UK government has lost a series of court cases brought by the environmental organization ClientEarth. Separately, on 17 May, the UK and five other countries were referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union for their repeated failures to keep to these limits. If the government really wants to clean up the UK's air, it has a lot more work to do.

    After opening the world's first commercial Direct Air Capture plant（直接空气捕集工厂）designed to pull CO₂ out of the air, Swiss company Climeworks is now trying to create the world's first “negative emission（负排放）” power plant.

    An international team of scientists has been working on a way to turn captured CO₂ into minerals. The project is called CarFix. Experts capture the gas, put it into water and send it to more than 700 meters underground. There the CO₂ on contact with a special kind of rock forms into a mineral.

    “Our results show that between 95 and 98 percent of the CO₂, sent underground was mineralized over the period of less than two years, which is amazingly fast,” says lead author of the CarFix project, Dr. Juerg Matter. Before this discovery it was thought that this mineralization could take hundreds to thousands of years.

    The DAC technology can collect CO₂ from the atmosphere and then store it underground or sell it to business needing the gas. For example, customers can use it in drinks. And the first plant in Zurich is supplying the captured CO₂ to a nearby greenhouse to “feed” vegetables. By using the company's CO₂ the customers can reduce their carbon mission as well as lower their dependence on energy.

    A 2015 study suggested that before the CarFix project, experts could collect CO₂, but they didn't have a large-scale（大规模的）method to safely treat it.

    Combining Climeworks' DAC technology with the CarFix mineralization process they will be able to create a system. This system doesn't put additional carbon back into the atmosphere. Actually it is carbon negative.

    “The economic cost of applying this kind of carbon capture technology on a large-scale is not particularly practical now, but for the first time we are seeing a realistic and effective system,” says Christoph Gebald CEO of Climeworks.

    People often say that there is nothing in the world that can be as great as a mother's love. Some mother expressions mean just that. The phrase "mother lode" comes from mining. It means the place where the largest amount of gold can be found. But now, the term "mother lode" means a rich supply of anything. For example, you might say, "She just graduated from college and struck the mother lode with her new job!"

    When we call something "the mother of all", this means it is the biggest or best of something. Here is an example: "We are going to throw the mother of all parties this weekend. So you have to come!"

    Naturally, the word "mother" can be used to mean to give birth, even to something you cannot touch, such as an idea or wisdom. The saying "necessity is the mother of invention" means that when people really need to do something, they will find a way to do it. And "experience is the mother of wisdom" means that people learn from what happens to them.

    You might think all expressions about mothers are sweet and loving. Not so. A boy who is "tied to his mother's apron strings(围裙带)" is controlled by his mother. We can also call him a "mama's boy". Both of these terms are even more insulting(侮辱人的) if you are talking about a man, not a young boy. It can be a huge mistake for a woman to marry a "mama's boy" who is still "tied to his mother's apron strings".

    A show about mothers would not be complete without talking about the very popular but mysterious "Mother Goose". The short poems and songs that "Mother Goose" wrote are a part of growing up in the United States. Real or not, you could say "Mother Goose" is the mother of all nursery rhyme(童谣) writers.

    Devon Gallagher, a college graduate from Philadelphia, wants the world to know exactly here she's been during her worldwide vacation in a special way.

    The traveler, who was born with a bone disease, had her right leg amputated(k)at the age of four. Although the amputation caused setbacks for Gallagher early on, she now sees it as nothing short of inspiration for living her best life.

    To spread that message, Gallagher has taken to social media, where she shares photos of her travels across the globe, but instead of simply using a geo-tag, she writes her location across her artificial leg before taking a picture.

    Now she has been taking pictures across the Continent, which show her cycling over the canal in Amsterdam relaxing on a wall overlooking the city of Barcelona, posing with a waffle in Brussels, taking in the spectacular Parthenon temple in Athens and enjoying a river cruise in Budapest, all with the well-known locations written on her artificial leg “I get a new leg every two years and I can choose the design on it. One day I had a sudden thought to get a chalk-board, "Gallagher said. "My mum and grand-mother weren't too keen on the idea, but my friends thought it was great and told me to go for it, so I did.”

    Gallagher said people often stare when she's writing on her leg, but once she shares the photos she receives only positive feedback. "My leg hasn't stopped me from doing anything I've wanted to do," she said. "I don't know if it's my determination to prove to myself that I can do it, but regardless, I've been able to keep up with my peers and lead a pretty great life, Gallagher shows us that you should never let anything stand in the way of your dreams. And if life gives you an artificial leg, make art