While dog keepers realize their dogs can read their moods accurately, scientists have always been a little doubtful. Now thanks to some researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria, we finally have some convincing evidence.

    For their study, biologist Corson Miller and his team exposed eleven selected dogs to digital images of women that were either angry or happy. Half the dogs were rewarded for touching the screen when shown a happy face, while the other half got their treat for selecting those that appeared angry.

    Interestingly, the dogs were not provided with the entire face. Some dogs were shown only upper halves while the others observed lower halves. That's because the scientists believe humans show their emotions on their entire face.

    After some training like how to recognize small differences like the wrinkles between the eyes or the changes in their shape that accompany the happy or angry expressions, the dogs were mostly able to identify the correct expression not only on a familiar face but on a strange face. The researchers concluded the dogs were smart enough to read human emotions.

    They also found those being trained to read angry expressions took a longer time to learn. They guess it may be because dogs find angry faces disgusting, causing them to withdraw quickly. However, once the smart dogs realized they were getting rewarded, the trepidation seemed to disappear. In fact, the dogs had such a good time playing the computer "game" that scientists had a hard time keeping them away from the touch screens after the study was completed.

    The researchers also noticed only dogs with a male owner had a harder time understanding the expressions correctly. Since the touchscreen models were all females, this confirmed what has been observed in previous studies—dogs are more efficient at reading facial expressions of people that are the same gender as their owner.

    Researchers from France and Italy discovered that Canadian parents are less strict with their children than mothers and fathers in France and Italy.

    “Our most important finding was the difference between Canadians and the others,” said Professor Michel Claes, the lead author of the study. “Canadians focus on independence and negotiation. On the other hand, Italians, for example, exercise more control. We found Canadians seem to focus on negotiation in case of a conflict.”

    Claes said Canada, France and Italy were selected for the study because they share important cultural and social factors. “We chose French­Canadians because they share the same language as France, and originally came from France and share certain values. Italy was included because it was considered to have similar, strong and important family values,” he explained.

    The researchers examined the emotional ties between parents and their children by questioning 1,256 students aged 11 to 19 years old.

    Canadian students reported less control and more free actions, according to the study. Italian parents were stricter and French parents were somewhere in the middle.

    Claes explains that the differences lie in education in Canada, France and Italy.

    “North America has its own educational values, which promote individualization. Tolerance and comprehension are encouraged. Italy, on the other hand, promotes respect of authority, control, and the need for permission.” he said.

    Children from all three countries described their mothers as warm and communicative. Italian and Canadian children had similar feelings about their fathers, and reported high levels of emotional ties. But French fathers were generally thought by their children to be more distant and cold.

    “We were surprised by this,” Claes admitted.“It seems as though the relationships between French mothers and their children were becoming closer over time, while fathers maintain a form of distance and coldness, which is more of a source of conflict in France than in the other countries.”

    It started as a special day for Wesley Autrey, a 50-year-old construction worker in New York City. It was about 12:45 P.M., and he was waiting on a subway platform (月台) to take his daughters home before he went to work. He suddenly noticed a man nearby have convulsions (抽搐) and fall down suddenly. Mr. Autrey and two women went to help the stranger. The man, Cameron Hollopeter, managed to get to his feet, but then stumbled (绊倒) at the edge of the platform and fell onto the subway tracks. Mr. Autrey looked up and saw the lights of the subway train coming near through the tunnel.

    Mr. Autrey jumped onto the track immediately. He realized that he didn't have time to get Mr. Hollopeter and himself back up on the platform before the train arrived, so he lay on top of the man and pressed down as hard as he could. Although the driver tried to stop the train before it reached them, he couldn't. Five cars passed over them before the train finally stopped. The cars had passed only inches from his head.

    New York loves a hero. Mr. Autrey became an overnight hero and was named the “Subway Superman”. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave him the Bronze Medallion, the city's highest honor. He was asked to appear on several TV talk shows. He was also rewarded with money and gifts, such as $10,000 from Donald Trump, a $5,000 gift card from the Gap clothing store, a new Jeep, and Beyonce concert tickets.

    How did Autrey react (反应) to all this? He said, “I don't feel like I did anything great; I just saw someone who needed help. I did what I felt was right”.

    A five-year-old dog named Kelsey has been praised as a hero for helping to save the life of her owner who slipped in the snow and broke his neck.

    The man, Bob, was alone when he left his Michigan farmhouse on New Year's Eve to collect firewood. Expecting a journey of only several meters, Bob was wearing just long johns (衬裤), a shirt and slippers when he went outside, although the temperature was around -4℃.

    After the accident, he was unable to move in the snow. Fortunately, Kelsey came to his assistance.

    "I was shouting for help, but my nearest neighbor is about 400 meters away, and it was 10:30 pm, Bob explained." But my Kelsey came. By the next morning, my voice was gone and I couldn't yell for help, but Kelsey didn't stop barking."

    Kelsey's companion kept him warm by lying on top of him. She licked his face and hands to keep him awake." Kelsey kept barking but never left my side," Bob recalled. "She kept me warm. I knew I couldn't give up and that it was my choice to stay alive."

    Bob spent 20 hours in the freezing cold. When he finally lost consciousness, his dog kept barking. Finally, hearing the barking, Bob's neighbor discovered him at 6:30 pm on New Year's Day and called the emergency services at once. When Bob arrived in hospital, his body temperature was below 21℃. However, doctors were surprised to find that he didn't have any frostbite (冻疮). They believed it was because of Kelsey's determination to keep him warm, Dr. Chaim Colen, the doctor who treated Bob, said, "Animals can help and his dog really saved him... He was very fortunate.”

    Bob said he was "enormously" grateful to both Dr. Colen and his Kelsey, "They saved my life. They are truly heroes!"

    Plastic waste has polluted the Arctic. Two new studies have spied bags, fishing rope and tinier bits of rubbish in the Barents Sea. This sea sits north of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. It mixes with the Arctic Ocean, which is even farther north.

    Plastic waste in the Arctic could harm wildlife and may hint that large volumes of human rubbish are collecting there, says Melanie Bergmann. She is one of the scientists who spotted the waste. She studies Earth's oceans at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany. She first started counting bits of plastics in the Barents Sea because she kept spotting signs of the stuff there in images taken with deep-sea cameras.

    Bergmann and her colleagues counted pieces of plastic from an icebreaker, a boat designed to break through large blocks of ice in very cold waters. They also tracked plastic pieces they saw during helicopter rides over Arctic waters. The team found 31 pieces of plastic. “That doesn't seem like much, but it shows us that we've really got a problem, one that extends even to this remote area, far from civilization,” Bergmann says. She and her colleagues described their findings October 21 in Polar Biology.

    Another team has also been counting plastics in the area. Those scientists took water from the Barents Sea and counted the number of smaller bits of plastics, called microplastics.

    Plastic in the ocean is dangerous to animals. Some may get caught in rope or bags. And wildlife may swallow bags and other plastic bits. That makes them feel full. But some may eventually starve because they are not getting the nutrients they need to live. Sometimes plastics also may break down in an animal's body and release poisonous chemicals. If another animal later eats the one that swallowed plastic, it too can end up with poisonous chemicals in its body. This, in turn, can travel up the food web, endangering predators (肉食动物) — even people.

A rainy day can be a chance to recharge. While you relax on the sofa with a movie, the raindrops falling on your windows might one day provide the power for your TV. This is the idea behind an invention that harvests energy from water. 

The technology is based on the triboelectric (摩擦电的) effect. An engineer at the University of Hawaii, David Ma knew that it was possible to generate electricity by rubbing two things together. So, he thought, "Why don't we use water?"

A drop of water sliding across a surface coated with two different materials would generate enough friction(摩擦) to create an electrical charge. By placing metal wires that the drop of water touched as it moved, it should be possible to harvest electricity, he reasoned. 

It worked. In fact, the researchers lit up 15 LED bulbs with a single moving water drop. 

This is not the first time that scientists have got electricity from water-generated friction. Earlier experiments, though, harvested the charge produced in a surface by a sliding drop of water. There, the surface had acted as an electrode(电极). This is different. The energy of friction is being harvested from the water itself. 

"The technology could someday power phones, sensors or other small electronics," says Christopher Oshman, an engineer at the Colorado School of Mines. "This work is a step towards harvesting the energy of moving objects all around us, including ourselves, to power the electronic devices we use every day," he says. 

"Ma has shown that the technology can work in a lab," Oshman says. Next, the Colorado researcher would like to see it tried on a larger scale, such as on an umbrella.