What will power your house in the future？Nuclear, wind, or solar power？According toscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT)in the US, it might beleaves—but artificial(人造的)ones.

    Natural leaves are able to change sunlight and water intoenergy. It is known as photosynthesis(光合作用). Nowresearchers have found a way to imitate this seemingly simple process.

    The artificial leaf developed by Daniel Nocera and hiscolleagues at MIT can be seen as a special silicon chip with catalysts(催化剂). Similar tonatural leaves, it can splitwater into hydrogen and oxygen when put into a bucket of water. The hydrogenand oxygen gases are then stored in a fuel cell, which usesthose two materials to produce electricity, located eitheron top of a house or beside the house.

Though the leaf is only about the shape of a poker card, scientistsclaimed that it is promising to be an inexpensive source of electricity indeveloping countries.“ One can imagine villages in India and Africa not longfrom now purchasing an affordable basic power system based on this technology, ”said Noceraat a conference of the American Chemical Society.

    The artificial leaf is not a new idea. The first artificial leafwas invented in 1997 but was too expensive and unstable for practical use. Thenew leaf, by contrast, is made ofcheap materials, easy to useand highly stable. In laboratory studies, Nocera showedthat an artificial leaf prototype(原型)could operatecontinuously for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity.

    The wonderful improvements come from Nocera's recent discoveryof several powerful, new andinexpensive catalysts. These catalysts make the energy transformation insidethe leaf more efficient with water and sunlight. Right now, the new leafis about 10 times more efficient at carrying out photosynthesis than a naturalone. Besides, the device canrun in whatever water is available；that is, it doesn'tneed pure water. This is important for some countries that don't have access topure water.

    With the goal to “make each home its own power station” and“give energy to the poor”, scientistsbelieve that the new technology could be widely used in developing countries, especially inIndia and rural China.

    In 1975, George Carlin appeared on a popular TV show, Saturday Night Live, with his famous words about blue food. “Why is there no blue food? I can't find blue food—I can't find the flavor of blue! I mean yellow is lemon; orange is orange and red is cherry. Where is the blue food?”

    Well, Carlin pretty much has it right—there is not no blue food, but there's certainly not a lot of it. Fresh-picked blueberries are blue, though they become purple when they are turned into jam. The blue in blueberries—like the purple in grapes and red in tomatoes—is found in nature. But it isn't a hot color for food. People don't seem to prefer blue food. Some diet programs even suggest that those determined to lose weight should make their food blue.

    Eating, in part, begins with our eyes. Chares Spence—an experimental psychologist from Oxford University—points out that color can change our taste experience. Commonly, we consider red-colored foods up to 20% sweeter than they actually are; and green foods as being more sour. Spence suggests: human expectations may be influenced by our long history of watching—green fruits can become sweet as they grow up and turn red.

    But what about blue? Except blueberries, much of the blue food we see these days is dyed blue artificially. Food producers argue that artificial color doesn't do much damage to health. A lot of research shows that some physical problems of kids are related to food dyes—while other studies show no effects at all. Blue birthday cake or even blue-dyed chicken can be served on the dinner table. So what?

    The iPhone, the iPad: each of Apple's products sounds cool and has become a fad(一时的风尚). Apple has cleverly taken advantage of the power of the letter “i” --and many other brands are following suit. The BBC's iPlayer--which allows Web users to watch TV programs on the Internet--used the title in 2008. A lovely bear--popular in the US and UK--that plays music and video is called “iTeddy”. A slimmed-down version(简装本) of London's Independent newspaper was started last week under the name “i”.

    In general, single-letter prefixes(前缀) have been popular since the 1990s, when terms such as e-mail and e-commerce(电子商务) first came into use.

    Most “I” products are targeted at(针对) young people and considering the major readers of Independent's “I”, it's no surprise that they've selected this fashionable name.

    But it's hard to see what's so special about the letter “i”. Why not use “a”, “b”, or “c” instead? According to Tony Thorne, head of the Language Center at King's College, London, “i” works because its meaning has become ambiguous. When Apple uses “i”, no one knows whether it means Internet, information, individual or interactive, Thorne told BBC Magazines. “Even when Apple created the iPod, it seems it didn't have one clear definition(定义),” he says.

    “However, thanks to Apple, the term is now connected with portability (轻便).” adds Thorne.

    Clearly the letter “i” also agrees with the idea that the Western World is centered on the individual. Each person believes they have their own needs, and we love personalized products for this reason.

    Along with “Google” and “blog”, readers of BBC Magazines voted “I” as one of the top 20 words that have come to define the last decade(十年).

    But as history shows, people grow tired of fads. From the 1900s to 1990s, products with “2000” in their names became fashionable as the year was connected with all things advanced and modern. However, as we entered the new century, the fashion disappeared.

    Rapid advances in a new technology will soon transform science fiction into reality — meaning people will have driverless cars, small robots at their command and the ability to experience being in another place without leaving home, predicted Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the planet's largest cell phone trade show.

    Introduction of books available online, Internet translation of languages and voice recognition for computers all happened much faster than anyone could foresee and that technological research into even more previously unheard of advances is progressing at a fast speed.

    “People who predict that holograms（全息图）and self-driving cars will become reality soon are absolutely right,” Schmidt told thousands of attendees. Research under way will lead to situations where people can put themselves at events like a rock concert so that they can see, hear and even feel the event. And turn down the volume, if it's too loud.

    One attendee said she was scared that the possibility could be dehumanizing, but Schmidt replied by holding up his cell phone into the air. “It has an off button and it is here on the right,” Schmidt said. “My point is that it is all about your control. If you don't like my version of a rock concert, I'm not forcing you to go.” In the future, small robots could be used so busy people can send them to events for video and voice transmissions when their presence isn't required, Schmidt said.

    Technology in the near future will redefine the relationship among people in the world. “With technology comes power and with power comes choice, and smarter resourceful citizens are going to demand a better deal for their new life,” Schmidt said.

    With exams just around the corner, now is a good time to explore some of UCL's lesser-known study spaces and get down to some revision. Here are some good choices for you.

    UCL Senate House Hub

    UCL Senate House Hub opened in 2015 and provides 144 study spaces. What's more, you can check how many spaces are available online before you head to the hub! Located on the third floor of the South Block of Senate House, the center has room for individual and group study in traditional library spaces, as well as casual armchairs and bar-style desks.

    UCL Eastman Dental Library

    The newly refurbished(翻新的) UCL Eastman Dental Library is located halfway along Gray's Inn Road and is open from Monday to Friday, 9:00 am–8:00 pm. The library has 72 study spaces, and many IT facilities are available. The library also has a study room for meetings and a computer room with an interactive whiteboard.

    UCL Language & Speech Science Library

    UCL Language & Speech Science Library (Lass) has disabled access and has recently been refurbished to add extra study spaces. With only 49 spaces, Lass is smaller than most other UCL Libraries and tends to fill up relatively quickly, so get there early to avoid disappointment.

    Senate House Library

    This one may be cheating as the Senate House Library is not technically a UCL library. However, all UCL students and staff can register for free membership online. With millions of books and journals, Senate House Library offers some places a little less used by UCL students but perfect for getting down to some hard work.

    Emily Temple-Wood was 12 years old the first time she was bullied(欺凌) online. They left ugly comments on her Wikipedia and Facebook pages about her looks “that would make my mother's hair curl.” says Temple-Wood, now 22 and in medical school. The reason? “I was a woman on the Internet,” she said.

    Over the years, she considered how she might take revenge(复仇). Then, as a freshman in college, it hit her: “What do misogynists (men who hate women) hate most?” she asked herself. “Women who are productive!” Her solution: For every rude comment she received, Temple-Wood would post a biography(传记) of a woman scientist, and thus, in 2012, Wiki Project Women Scientists was born. She wrote about her heroes, like Barbara McClintock, who received the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and Caroline Still Anderson, one of the first African American women to become a doctor in the United States, in the late 1800s. With help from other women, many of them scientists who have also been bullied online, Temple-Wood has published hundreds of these biographies and women of all ages have taken notice.

    “When I was a kid, I could count the number of women scientists I knew about on one hand,” wrote Siko Bouterse, who used to work for the Wikimedia Foundation. “But our daughters have the chance to get much more knowledge about scientists who look like them because of Emily.

    The ugly comments still come, says Temple-Wood. Being a strong woman online is not easy. “We all have days when we break down and need to have a glass of wine,” she says. “I tell people who are being bullied that it's OK to be sad. But now you need to find a productive way to take revenge.”