Today, we know that the role of vitamins and minerals goes way beyond the prevention of deficiency diseases (维生素缺乏症) to actually preventing cancer and heart disease, the most fearsome killers of our time. With this knowledge has come the widespread call for nutritional supplementation (营养补充) — and a confusing group of vitamin, mineral, and supplements lining the supermarket shelves.

    Far from contributing to better health, however, nutritional supplements threaten to turn a scientific breakthrough into a nutritional disaster.

    Promoters of vitamins and minerals — especially vitamins A, C, and E— would have consumers believe that the little vitamin pill in the bottle is all they need for good health. Take your vitamins in the morning, and you're covered. It's okay to eat fast foods for the rest of the day or skip meals to achieve today's fashionably skinny look. But vitamins and minerals are only one part of the nutritional puzzle. A diet rich in fiber (纤维) and balanced in carbohydrates and protein is essential for good health. You can't get these things from a nutritional supplement. The focus on vitamin and mineral supplements may actually be robbing us of the full nutrition we seek.

    And no supplement can compare to the quality of nutrition found in natural sources. For example, our bodies turn carotenes (胡萝卜素) from plant foods into vitamin A. Many supplements contain a single carotene, but natural sources are rich in many different carotenes. Many supplements contain a form of vitamin E that is made from chemicals, when natural vitamin E is more readily absorbed and used by the body. And science is still discovering the wealth of nutrients in foods.

    You'd be hard-pressed to find a supplement as nutritionally comprehensive and powerful as a balanced diet. Even if you could, you'd pay much more than if you got the same nutritional value from natural sources.

    But perhaps the greatest danger presented by nutritional supplements comes from the very real risks presented by self-medication. Anyone can walk into the market and buy as many different supplements as desired. The reported benefits of high dosages of certain nutrients have led some people to believe that the more the better. Many take several vitamin and mineral supplements without regard to possible consequences.

    Surprising new research suggests that vitamin C pills may speed up hardening of the arteries, the underlying cause of heart attacks. Researchers said their findings support the recommendations of health organizations, which urge people to avoid high doses of supplements and to get their nutrients from food instead.

    As appealing as they're made to sound, nutritional supplements are danger in disguise. If you're looking for good health, don't look on the supplement shelves of your supermarket. Look in the produce section instead.

    I went online to check if my pay was in my bank account. To my amazement, I discovered that not only had I been paid, a company I'd never worked for had also paid me! I knew I'd have been beside myself if my own salary was not in my account, so I tried to get the money back to the right person. It is easier said than done.

    The bank couldn't help as it wasn't a bank problem. The human-resource department as the company that paid me was unable to help as I didn't have enough details. I rang the bank again. Thankfully I had sympathetic call operator who gave me a name, so I again rang the company “Daniel” worked for.

    I expected the bank would contact me to arrange to take the money from my account and repay Daniel. I heard nothing for a month and the money remained in my account when Daniel called, explaining he'd tried to get back his money but had been unsuccessful as neither the bank nor his company felt it was their error. He had rung to ask if I could speak to the bank, but after chatting for a few minutes we realized we could probably fix this problem ourselves.

    We decided I would take the money from my account and he would pick it up from me. Due to my busy job I was unable to meet Daniel personally but he left me a lovely bottle of wine in exchange for what was rightfully his. I never had any intention of keeping Daniel's pay, but red tape（繁琐手续）made it difficult to do the right thing. It all came down to two people being able to do what a huge bank and a large company couldn't do — admit a mistake has occurred and fix it.

    Recent summer temperatures in parts of Australia were high enough to melt asphalt. As global warming speeds up the heat and climatic events increase, many plants may be unable to cope. But at least one species of eucalyptus tree can resist extreme heat by continuing to “sweat” when other essential processes stop, a new study finds.

    As plants change sunlight into food, or photosynthesize (光合作用), they absorb carbon dioxide through pores on their leaves. These pores also release water via transpiration(蒸腾), which circulates nutrients through the plant and helps cool it by evaporation(蒸发). But exceptionally high temperatures are known to greatly reduce photosynthesis—and most existing plant models suggest this should also decrease transpiration, leaving trees in danger of fatally overheating. Because it is difficult for scientists to control and vary trees' conditions in their natural environment, little is known about how individual species handle this situation.

    Ecologist John Drake of the S.U.N.Y. College of Environmental Science and Forestry and his colleagues grew a dozen Parramatta red gum (Eucalyptus parramattensis) trees in large, climate-controlled plastic pods that separated the trees from the surrounding forest for a year in Richmond, Australia. Six of the trees were grown at surrounding air temperatures and six at temperatures three degrees Celsius higher. The researchers withheld (扣留) water from the surface soil of all 12 trees for a month to imitate a mild dry spell, then induced a four-day “extreme” heat wave: They raised the maximum temperatures in half of the pods（three with surrounding temperatures and three of the warmer ones）— to 44 degrees ℃.

    Photosynthesis ground to a near halt in the trees facing the artificial heat wave. But to the researchers' surprise, these trees continued to transpire at close-to-normal levels, effectively cooling themselves and their surroundings. The trees grown in warmer conditions coped just as well as the others, and photosynthesis rates bounced back to normal after the heat wave passed, Drake and his colleagues reported online in Global Change Biology.

    The researchers think the Parramatta red gums were able to effectively sweat — even without photosynthesis — because they are particularly good at tapping into water deep in the soil. But if a heat wave and a severe drought (干旱) were to hit at the same time and the groundwater was exhausted, the trees may not be so lucky, Drake says.

    Other scientists call the finding encouraging. “It's definitely good news,” says Trevor Keenan, an ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who was not part of the study. “It would be very interesting to know how this translates to other species,” he adds. Drake hopes to conduct similar experiments with trees common in North America.

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    On a recent trip to London, I decided to visit some exciting new restaurants that are using technology to change the way people dine out. My first stop was at an Italian restaurant in the city center. When I walked into the restaurant, I was given a tray (托盘)and a special card, but I had no idea what to do next! The manager came up to me and explained that I could swipe (刷) my card at any of the food and drink stations in the restaurant, and that the card would record my order. No waiters necessary! I made my selection and then handed my card to the cashier. Once I'd paid for my meal, I collected it and made my way to the dining area on the second floor. The food was very delicious, but, I must admit, I didn't enjoy having to carry my food up two flights of stairs.

    On the next night, a friend of mine suggested that we visit his favorite high-tech restaurant. When we arrived, I was surprised to discover that there were no paper menus; instead, the menus appeared on the touch screen surface of the table. All we had to do was touch our choices with our fingers and wait for the waiters to bring us our meal. The touch screen tabletop also allowed us to change different tablecloths and even play games. We had so much fun playing games that we hardly touched our food when it arrived--we really should have told the waiter to give us takeaways instead.

    On my last day in London, I decided to get some tapas from a Spanish takeaway near my hotel. I had heard that the owners had placed a webcam (网络摄像机) at the restaurant to allow their customers to watch the long lunchtime queue (队列) online. This came in very handy for me. While I packed my baggage, I kept an eye on the queue and then raced to the restaurant when the lunchtime rush was over. Without that wonderful webcam, I could have missed my plane.

If you've ever seen a sparrow steal your dog food or a crow open a garbage bag, you get a sense of that some birds have learned to take advantage of new feeding opportunities—a clear sign of their intelligence. Scientists have long wondered why certain species of birds are more innovative than others, and whether these capacities stem from larger brains or from a greater number of neurons（神经元） in specific areas of the brain.

It turns out that it's a bit of both, according to a recent study by an international team that included members from McGill University published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The researchers used a new technique to estimate the number of neurons in a specific part of the brain called the pallium in 111 bird species. The pallium in birds is equal to the human cerebral cortex（大脑皮层）, which is involved in memory, learning, reasoning, and problem-solving, among other things. When these estimates about neuron numbers in the pallium were combined with information about over 4,000 feeding innovations, the team found that the species with the higher numbers of neurons in the pallium were also likely to be the most innovative.

"The amount of time chicks spend in the nest as their brains develop might also play acrucial role in the evolution of intelligence," says McGill University Emeritus Professor Louis Lefebvre who spent more than 20 years gathering examples of feeding innovations. "Larger species of crows and parrots, which are known for their intelligence, spend longer in the nest, which allows more time for the brain to grow and accumulate pallial neurons."

The results of the study help to deal with previously opposed views of the evolution and significance of brain size and show how a life-history perspective helps to understand the evolution of cognition.