Growing Up in Australia

    Since 2004, Australia has been holding its largest study of children's health ever. This project, “Growing Up in Australia,” is following two groups of children from early childhood until they become adults. The project is being supported by the Australian government and involves hundreds of researchers visiting the homes of 10,000 children. Researchers hope to find a relationship between the children's future behavior and their health, education, and family environments.

    When the study began, the first group of children was aged 0-1, while the second group was aged 4-5. In order to make sure that children from every kind of environment and background were chosen, the study found volunteers from each area. Some volunteers are in the countryside, while others are in big cities. The volunteers for both groups were chosen from a variety of different social and ethnic (种族) backgrounds.

    The researchers visit the participants' (参与者) homes every two years to gather information. They interview the parents about parenting styles and the child's daily activities. They also take measurements of the children's health and how well the children perform in school. The researchers also collect information such as the income of the child's family, the school the child attends, and the kind of community (社区) in which the child lives. They plan to use the information to improve children's lives.

    Researchers have already begun to publish some interesting results. For instance, after examining information from the second group of children when they were 10-11 years old, researchers found that children who spend a lot of time doing organized activities, such as music lessons or sports, have good control of their emotions and behavior. The study also found that they are able to complete their homework without their parents around. On the other hand, it found that children who watch a lot of television get upset easily and have worse behavior. The Australian government is now using this information to make better educational and health policies for Australian children.

    People who multitask all the time may be the worst at doing two things at once, a new research suggests. The findings, based on performances and self-evaluation by about 275 college students, indicate that many people multitask not out of a desire to increase productivity, but because they are easily distracted and can't focus on one activity. And “those people turn out to be the worst at handling different things,” said David Sanbonmatsu, a psychologist at the University of Utah.

    Sanbonmatsu and his colleagues gave the students a set of tests and asked them to report how often they multitasked, how good they thought they were at it, and how sensation-seeking (寻求刺激) or imperative (冲动) they were. They then evaluated the participants' multitasking ability with a tricky mental task that required the students to do simple mathematical calculations while remembering a set of letters.

    Not surprisingly, the scientists said, most people thought they were better than average at multitasking, and those who thought they were better at it were more likely to report using a cellphone while driving or viewing multiple kinds of media at once. But those who frequently deal with many things at the same time were found to perform the worst at the actual multitasking test. They also were more likely to admit to sensation-seeking and impulsive behavior, which connects with how easily people get bored and distracted.

     “People multitask not because it's going to lead to greater productivity, but because they're distractible, and they get sucked into things that are not as important.” Sanbonmatsu said.

    Adam Gazzaley, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not a member of the research group, said one limitation of the study was that it couldn't find out whether people who start out less focused tend toward multitasking or whether people's recognizing and understanding abilities change as a result of multitasking.

    The findings do suggest, however, why the sensation-seeker who multitask the most may enjoy risky distracted driving. “People who are multitasking are generally less sensitive to risky situations.” said Paul Atchley, another researcher not in the group. “This may partly explain why people go in for these situations even though they're dangerous.”

    Have you ever run into a careless cell phone user on the street? Perhaps they were busy talking, texting or checking updates on WeChat without looking at what was going on around them. As the number of this new “species” of human has kept rising, they have been given a new name—phubbers（低头族）.

    Recently, a cartoon created by students from China Central Academy of Fine Arts put this group of people under the spotlight. In the short film, phubbers with various social identities(身份) bury themselves in their phones. A doctor plays with his cell phone while letting his patient die, a pretty woman takes selfie in front of a car accident site, and a father loses his child without knowing about it while using his mobile phone. A chain of similar events eventually leads to the destruction of the world.

    Although the ending sounds overstated, the damage phubbing can bring is real.

    Your health is the first to bear the effect and result of it. “Constantly bending your head to check your cell phone could damage your neck,” Guangming Daily quoted doctors as saying. “the neck is like a rope that breaks after long-term stretching.” Also, staring at cell phones for long periods of time will damage your eyesight gradually, according to the report.

    But that's not all. Being a phubber could also damage your social skills and drive you away from your friends and family. At reunions with family or friends, many people tend to stick to their cell phones while others are chatting happily with each other and this creates a strange atmosphere, Qilu Evening News reported.

    It can also cost you your life. There have been lots of reports on phubbers who fell to their death, suffered accidents, and were robbed of their cell phones in broad daylight.

    If you don't use your arms or your legs for some time, they become weak; when you start using them again, they slowly become strong again. Everybody knows that. Yet many people do not seem to know that memory works in the same way. When someone says that he has a good memory he really means that he keeps his memory in practice by using it. When someone else says that his memory is poor, he really means he does not give it enough chance to become strong.

    If a friend says that his arms and legs are weak, we know that it is his own fault. But if he tells us that he has a poor memory, many of us think that his parents are to blame, and few of us know that it is just his own fault. Have you ever found that some people can't read or write but usually they have better memories? This is because they can not read or write and they have to remember things; they can not write down in a little notebook; they have to remember days, songs and stories; so their memory is the whole time being exercised. So if you want to have a good memory, learn from the people: practice remembering.

    Getting stuck in a traffic jam is one of the most boring problems for people living in big cities. The fact that you're moving so slowly leads too stress, anger and the wish that your car could just fly over the traffic like an airplane.

    Soon, however, that wish could come true .On May 8, US car-renting company Uber showed off what it described as "the transportation mode of the future: on-demand air transport," reported ABC News.

    According to Nikhill Goel, head of products for Uber Air, the company's air taxi service may launch test flights in the US cities of Dallas and Los Angeles, as well as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, as early as 2020. If everything goes according to plan, passengers will be able to fly to work by 2023.

    When the Olympics comes to Los Angeles in 2028. Uber "expects to have hundreds, if not thousands, of its aircraft in the skies." Goel told Newsweek.

    So what would Uber's flying vehicles be like?

    They are small, electric aircraft that take off and land vertically (垂直地) , and they give off zero emissions (排放) and are quiet enough to operate in cities .

    Just like an airplane, the vehicles will have fixed wings to help them glide. But while a helicopter has just one big fixed rotor (定量). Uber's vehicles will have multiple rotors , which will help increase fuel efficiency (效率) while reducing emissions and noise.

    Because of these fixed wines and multiple rotors. Uber's flying taxis "should be quieter and safer than a helicopter." reported ABC News.

    However, the service still has a long way to go before it's ready to accept passengers. For example, to avoid any potential accidents. Uber is working with NASA to study air traffic control problems associated with low-flying aircraft. But just as Dubai's Mayor Betty Price said in a news release. "This program is revolutionary and future -oriented (面向未来的)."

    Artificial intelligence can predict when patients with a heart disorder will die, according to scientists.

    The software learned to analyze blood tests and scans of beating hearts to spot signs that the organ was about to fail. The team, from the UK's Medical Research Council, said the technology could save lives by finding patients that need more aggressive treatment. The results were published in the Journal of Radiology.

    According to the researchers, high blood pressure in the lungs damages part of the heart, and about a third of patients die within five years after being diagnosed. There are treatments: drugs, injections straight into the blood vessels, a lung transplant. But doctors need to have an idea of how long patients might have left, in order to pick the right treatment.

    The software was given scans of 256 patients' hearts, and blood test results. When this data was combined with eight years of patient health records, the artificial intelligence predicted when patients would die.

    The software could look about five years into the future. It correctly predicted those who would still be alive after one year about 80% of the time. The figure for doctors is 60%.

    The team now want to test the software works in other patients in different hospitals before assessing whether it should be made widely available to doctors. The researchers also want to use the technology in other forms of heart failure, such as cardiomyopathy, to see who might need a pacemaker or other forms of treatment.

    Dr Mike Knapton, from the British Heart Foundation, said, "This exciting use of computer software in medical practice will help doctors in the future to make sure that patients are receiving the correct treatment before the condition deteriorates and leaves them needing a lung transplant. The next step is to test this technology in more hospitals with heart disease."