Do you want to live another 100 years or more? Some experts say that scientific advances will one day enable humans to last tens of years beyond what is now seen as the natural limit of the human life span.

     “I think we are knocking at the door of immortality(永生),” said Michael Zey, a Montclair State University business professor and author of two books on the future. “I think by 2075 we will see it and that' s a conservative estimate(保守的估计).”

    At the conference in San Francisco, Donald Louria, a professor at New Jersey Medical School in Newark said advances in using genes as well as nanotechnology(纳米技术) make it likely that humans will live in the future beyond what has been possible in the past. “There is a great effort so that people can live from 120 to 180 years,” he said. “Some have suggested that there is no limit and that people could live to 200 or 300 or 500 years.”

    However, many scientists who specialize in aging are doubtful about it and say the human body is just not designed to last past about 120 years. Even with healthier lifestyles and less disease, they say failure of the brain and organs will finally lead all humans to death.

    Scientists also differ on what kind of life the super aged might live. “It remains to be seen if you pass 120, you know; could you be healthy enough to have good quality of life?” said Leonard Poon, director of the University of Georgia Gerontology Centre. “At present people who could get to that point are not in good health at all.”

    Mr. Jackson was tired of living in his old house in the countryside and wanted to sell it and buy a better one. He tried to sell it for a long time, but was not successful, so at last he decided to go to an estate agent（房产经纪人）.

    The agent advertised the house straight away, and a few days later, the owner saw a very beautiful photograph of his house, with a wonderful description of his garden in an expensive magazine.

    Having read the advertisement through, the house owner hurried to phone the estate agent, saying, “I'm sorry, Mr. Jones, but I've decided not to sell my house after all.” “Why?” the agent asked in a surprised voice. “Because from the advertisement in that magazine I can see it's just the kind of house I've wanted to live in all my life.”

    We humans spend about one-third of our lives asleep. This may sound like a lot of time, but it is not wasted. Sleep not only helps us stay healthy but it also helps our brains remember. Our brains need good sleep to remember what we do and learn during the other two thirds of our lives when we are awake.

    Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that sleep helps improve brain performance by shrinking(收缩)synapses in the brain. A synapse is the area where cells pass messages to other cells.

    Scientist Chiara Cirelli is a leader at the school's Center for Sleep and Consciousness. She told the reporter that sleep is when the human brain mixes information it has learned while awake into its general collection of knowledge. Meanwhile, the brain forgets unimportant details. This forgetting is important. It makes space for new learning and new memories.

    Cirelli said that the Centers research began with this hypothesis(假设): We sleep so that our brain can repair and refresh itself. She said the idea seems simple and reasonable. However, testing and discovering how it works has been extremely difficult.

    Synapses are only about 20-40 nanometers(纳米)wide. The team began their study by measuring the size of the synapses to look for changes in these already tiny spaces between nerve cells. Cirelli says the process(过程) is difficult because"all the actual measurements of the synapses have to be done by hand." The team had to wait until improvements in laboratory technology made it possible to see these tiny changes. A University of Wisconsin press release called the research a"huge job." Many research specialists worked for four years to photograph, rebuild and study certain areas of a mouse brain. The report also said the scientists measured 6,920 synapses.

    Cirelli says they found that our synapses shrink as our brains clean themselves during sleep. We wake up refreshed and ready to fill those synapses with new information. The research findings are the result of years of hard work at the University of Wisconsin Madison. The researchers published their findings in the journal Science.

Foreign visitors to the UK might be disappointed when they learn that not everyone there speaks like Harry Potter and his friends. Usually, there's an assumption by many non-Brits that everyone in Britain speaks with what's known as a Received Pronunciation (RP, 标准发音) accent, also called "the Queen's English". However, while many people do talk this way, most Britons speak in their own regional accents.

    Scouse, Glaswegian and Black Country – from Liverpool, Glasgow and the West Midlands – are just three of the countless non-RP accents that British people speak with. There are even differences in accents between towns or cities just 30 kilometers apart. What is even more disappointing is that not speaking in a RP accent may mean a British person is judged and even treated differently in their everyday life.

    In a 2015 study by The University of South Wales, videos of people reading a passage in three different UK accents were shown to a second group of people. The group then rated how intelligent they thought the readers sounded. The lowest-rated accent was Brummie, native to people from Birmingham, a city whose accent is considered working class.

    However, there is no need to be disappointed though you are not speaking in an RP accent. In fact, doing the opposite may even give you strength.

Kong Seong-jae, 25, is an internet celebrity from Seoul. After studying in the UK, he picked up several regional accents. He's now famous for his online videos, where he shows off the various accents he's learned. "British people usually get really excited when I use some of their local dialect words, and they become much friendlier. I think it makes a bit of bond between local people and foreigners to speak in their local accent," he said.

    So if you're working on perfecting your British accent, try to speak like someone from Liverpool, Glasgow or Birmingham. You may not sound like Harry Potter, but you are likely to make more friends.

Pet and animal-related apps are creating cybersecurity risks to their owners, new research has shown. While being able to keep track of your cat and dog may be an attractive benefit to many pet owners as it can provide peace of mind, allowing a third party to track your movements may be much less attractive.

Computer scientists at Newcastle University and Royal Holloway, University of London have exposed multiple security and privacy issues by evaluating 40 popular Android apps for pets. The results show that several of these apps are putting their users at risk by exposing their login or location details.

Password vulnerability(漏洞) was one of the areas exposed by the team. They identified three applications that had the user's login details visible in plain text within non-secure HTTP traffic. This means that anyone is able to observe the internet traffic of someone using one of these apps and will be able to find out their login information. In addition to login information, two of the apps also showed user details, such as their location that may enable someone to gain access to their devices and risk a cyber-attack.

Another area of concern identified in the study was the use of trackers. All but four of the applications were found to feature some form of tracking software. A tracker gathers information on the person using the application, on how they use it, or on the smartphone being used.

Scott Harper is a PhD student at Newcastle University's School of Computing and the lead author of the study. He said, "Pet tech such as smart collars and GPS trackers for your cat or dog, is a rapidly growing industry and it brings with it new security, privacy, and safety risks to the pet owners. We would urge anyone using these apps to take the time to ensure they are using a unique password, check the settings and ensure that they consider how much data they are sharing or willing to share."