First it was worry about second-hand smoke, now there's major concern over third-hand smoke which gets into hair, clothes, furniture or a car rather than directly from a cigarette or someone breathing it out.

    To be honest, I've always been worried about the health dangers of this even though I didn't know it had a name. My worry made me reluctant to let smokers hold my babies even though they didn't smoke in my house.

    Tests for its effects have been only carried out on mice, but I don't think they can be ignored. Researchers at California University last month suggested third-hand smoke (THS) could cause type 2 diabetes, liver and lung damage.

    They analyzed how people are affected by taking in smoke from another person's clothing, hair, home, or car. They say they can see an impact on the brain and liver. Lead author Manuela Martins-Green said: “Our goal was to decide the smallest amount of time required to cause physiological changes in mice when they are exposed(暴露) to THS.” This was done using an exposure system that is the same as human exposure.

    “We found THS exposure as early as one month caused liver damage. Exposure for two months lead to further molecular(分子的) damage, and at four to six months caused even more such damage. We also found the mice showed insulin resistance（抗胰岛素） after long-term exposure.”

    “THS is a hidden danger, a silent killer. Pollutants can be absorbed through the skin and through breathing.”

    “Although our research was not done on humans, people should be aware that hotel rooms, cars and homes that were used by smokers are very likely to be polluted with THS.” Martins-Green believes most people don't know they're being exposed to THS, or don't believe in the damage it can do.

    THS toxins(毒素) remain on surfaces for many years, and resist even strong cleaning agents.

    Lawns（草坪）are some of the most common things in the world until you really start thinking about them. That's when you realize that they make no sense. Why do people keep these uninteresting, pointless little plants outside their homes? They're not beautiful like flowers, they don't provide food and you have to take care of them constantly.

    Israeli bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari thought these deeds were weird too. He looked into their history and ended up with an interesting story.

    No one considered putting patches of grass outside their homes in ancient times. That changed in the Middle Ages, when French and English kings and nobles started putting patches of grass at their castle entrances.

    “Well-kept lawns demand land and a lot of work,” wrote Harari in his book. “In exchange, they produce nothing of value.” Peasants could never afford to waste their time or land on lawns, so these lawns were a perfect status symbol（身份的象征）for nobility（高贵）.

    When the Industrial Revolution began in the 18th and 19th centuries, the middle classes started being able to afford their own suburban（郊区的）houses. And guess what became the suburban status symbol? A perfectly kept lawn.

    The popularity of lawns continued to grow, taking over public event spaces and sports. In the past, people played sports on all kinds of surfaces—dirt, ice, sand. But in the last couple centuries, they made the switch to green grass.

    “Grass is nowadays the most widespread crop in the USA after corn and wheat,” Harari continued. Lawns spread beyond Europe and the U.S, and they're now status symbols around the world.

    Suburban people may not realize it, but they care for lawns just because centuries ago, French and English kings wanted to show off by intentionally planting something useless. It's strange that people should continue to spend so much time and money on what's really a leftover（遗留物）from the Middle Ages. When you plan your house, you can shake off（摆脱）the cultural leftover and imagine for yourself a rock garden or some other new creation.

    When a laptop or smartphone battery starts losing its power, the only options are to buy an expensive replacement, or just keep it plugged in all the time. But a woman Mya Le Thai may have found the answer to this problem.

    Thai was frustrated that the batteries for her wireless devices degraded(降级)over time, until they failed to charge fully. She did not like having to keep her laptop connected to an electrical outlet to keep it powered on. So, she decided to do something about that problem. At first, she and her team at UC Irvine thought about inventing a new battery. But as they experimented, Thai discovered something that might permit lithium—ion(锂离子)batteries to last forever.

    Lithium-ion batteries power most wireless devices. Over time, the batteries lose the ability to hold a charge. Most of these batteries have a life span of about 7,000 charging cycles before they die. One of the reasons lithium—ion batteries degrade is their use of nanowires to carry electricity. Nanowires are extremely thin. A human hair is thousands of times thicker, for example. Nanowires are extremely efficient carriers of electricity, which makes them useful in batteries.

    But, Thai had a theory—the nanowires might last longer if covered with a gel(凝胶). She and her team tested this theory. "It was a long process and a lot of work, "Thai said. The team tried many coverings for the wires. PMMA, a type of plastic, was one of them. The nanowires were coated with PMMA and cycled through charges 200, 000 times. The PMMA-coated nanowires showed no evidence of damage. The results suggest that batteries could last forever, without losing charging ability.

    Thai hopes to continue her research to understand why this gel works so well and to see if any other gel could create better results and she is enjoying the publicity about her discovery. She said she never expected her research to get media coverage. "It's kind of cool," she said. "I'm really glad people are showing interest in my work and not just in the work itself, but also in technology and energy."

    Any foreigner who has tried to learn Chinese can tell how hard it is to master the tones required to speak and understand. And anyone who has tried to learn to play the violin or other instruments can report similar challenges.

    Now researchers have found that people with musical training have an easier time learning Chinese. Writing in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience, researchers from Northwestern University say that both skills draw on the same parts of the brain that help people discover changes in pitch(音调).

    One of the study's authors, Nina Kraus, said the findings suggested that studying music "actually tunes our sensory system". This means that schools that want children to do well in languages should hesitate before cutting music programs, Dr. Kraus said. She said music training might also help children with language problems.

    Mandarin(普通话)speakers have been shown to have a more complex encoding(编码) of pitch patterns in their brains than English speakers do. This is because in Mandarin and other Asian languages, pitch plays a central role. A single­syllable word can have several meanings depending on how it is intoned.

    For this study, the researchers looked at 20 non­Chinese speaking volunteers, half with no musical background and half who have studied an instrument for at least six years.

    As they were shown a movie, the volunteers also heard an audio tape of the Mandarin word "mi" in three of its meanings: squint, bewilder and rice. The researchers recorded activities in their brain stems to see how well they were processing the sounds. Those with a music background showed much more brain activities in response to the Chinese sounds.

    The lead author of the study, Patrick C.M. Wong, said it might work both ways. It appears that native speakers of tonal languages may do better at learning instruments.

Improve your reading, writing and math skills

    Through the Literacy and Basic Skills program, you will learn reading, writing, math and other basic skills (e. g. computer) to help you prepare for:

    ● employment

    ● college studies

    ● independence

    ● school credit

    These courses(课程) are free and available in English or French. There are courses designed for local people and Deaf people as well.

    Requirements(要求)

    To take these courses you have to:

    ● be an Ontario resident

    ● be 16 years old or older

    ● have reading, writing and math skills below the grade 12 level

    Learn in a classroom

    You can take these free classroom courses at more than 300 locations across the province.

    Find out more by contacting Employment Ontario.

    Learn online

    You can also learn online as one way of the Literacy and Basic Skills program.

    Four different organizations in Ontario offer free online courses tailored to you. Find out more about learning online:

    ● in French

    ● in English

    ● as a local person

    ● as a Deaf person

Everyone gets anxious when the world takes an uncertain turn. And often, we treat that anxiety with a little panic buying.

A study published last year in the Journal of Consumer Research found that people buy things in troubled times as a means of keeping control over their lives. The researchers noted that utility items — specifically, cleaning products — tend to move most quickly from store shelves. The hoarding (囤积) of toilet paper, as perhaps the most fundamental cleaning product, may represent our most fundamental fears. An invisible enemy moves slowly and quietly towards us. We need to hold on to something in uncertain times. Maybe a hoard of toilet paper brings promises.

The thing is, it's not actually going anywhere. For all the sharp words and even sharper elbows thrown around by the crazy toilet paper shoppers, they seem to be missing one essential fact: There is no toilet paper shortage.

As The New York Times points out, shop owners that see their shelves emptied often fill up the shelves again in a day, often in just a few hours.

"You are not using more of it. You are just filling up your closet with it," Jeff Anderson, president of paper product manufacturer Precision Paper Converters, tells the Times.

The thing is, the toilet paper-obsessed shoppers have been infected with something many times more contagious (感染性的) than any coronavirus: fear.

"People are social creatures. We look to each other for cues for what is safe and what is dangerous," Steven Taylor, a clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia, tells Fox News. "And when you see someone in the store panic-buying, that can cause a fear contagion effect. People become anxious ahead of the actual infection. They haven't thought about the bigger picture, like what are the consequences of hoarding toilet paper."