Your smartphone(智能手机) can do a lot of things. It can call people. It connects to the Internet. It enables you to play fun games. But there is a dark side to this smart little device（设备）of yours – it might also spread disease.

    “People are just as likely to get sick from their phones as from handles of the bathroom,” Jeffrey Cain, the president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told The Wall Street Journal.

    This may be hard to believe, but scientists reached this conclusion after they tested eight random cell phones from an office in Chicago. All the tested phones showed high numbers of coliforms(大肠菌), a kind of bacteria found in excrement(粪便)，with about 2,700 to 4,200 units of the bacteria on each phone. In drinking water, the healthy limit is less than 1 unit per 100 ml of water. This bacteria can cause flu, pinkeye（红眼病）and diarrhea(腹泻).

    Although computers, keys and pens all carry germs(细菌), our smartphones get far dirtier. They touch a lot of stuff, including our hands and the inside of our pocket or purse. We take them almost everywhere: the bus, the subway and who hasn't played Angry Birds of Fruit Ninja while sitting on the toilet?

    “Some things that we think are personal are actually more public than we imagine,” Cain said.

    What's even worse is that after the phone returns from its dirty trip, it then spends most of its time cozying up to our faces. You don't think about how often you touch your phone to your face, do you? Our noses, mouths and ears are all warm and rich in grease（油脂）, an environment that germs really like.

    Compared to traditional keypads（键盘）, touch screens transmit（传播）germs more easily to hands. According to Time magazine's website, an expert in Australia warned that playing with iPads and iPhones at Apple stores is a health risk.

    So how do you keep your smartphone clean? Alcohol is effective when used to kill germs from the back and side of your phone. But it might harm the screen. There is one simple and reliable way you can reduce the germs on your phone's surface: wash your hands regularly.

    New mercury(汞) threat to oceans from climate change

    Rising temperatures could boost mercury levels in fish by up to seven times the current rates, said Swedish researchers in an article published in Science Journal. They've discovered warming increases levels of the toxin (毒素) in sea creatures. In experiments, they found that extra rainfall drives up the amount of organic material flowing into the seas. This alters the food chain, adding another layer of complex organisms which boosts the concentrations of mercury up the line.

    Mercury is one of the world's most toxic metals, and according to the World Health Organization, is one of the top ten threats to public health. The substance at high levels has been linked to damage to the nervous system, paralysis and mental impairment in children.

    The most common form of exposure to mercury is by eating fish containing methylmercury(甲基水银), an organic form of the chemical which forms when bacteria react with mercury in water, soil or plants. Levels of mercury in the world's ecosystems have increased by between 200% and 500%, since the industrial revolution say experts, driven up by the use of fossil fuels such as coal.

    In recent years there have been concentrated efforts to limit the amount of mercury entering the environment, with an international treaty, called the Minamata Convention, signed by 136 countries in place since 2013.

Researchers hope that the Minamata treaty will be successful and countries reduce the amount of mercury that is being produced. Otherwise this discovery of a previously unknown source could have impacts for human health.

    Other researchers in the field say that the new study highlights important issues that have previously been little known.

     “This work experimentally proves that climate change will have a significant effect of methylmercury budgets in coastal waters and its accumulation in fish,” said Milena Horvat from the Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia.

     “This work will also help us understand the formation of mercury in fish and help reduce mercury from emission sources (primarily industrial).”

    There's no doubt that man is the smartest. But do you know what other animals are smart, too?

    Dolphins

    Dolphins are very smart. Most of the “tricks” they're taught to do are actually behavior they would engage in on their own. They love to play, race and generally enjoy their life to the fullest. They speak a language we have yet to completely understand and like all civilized creatures, dolphins' mothers always provide their young children with guidance and possibly, love.

    Great apes

    The great ape family primarily consists of gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans. Their brain chemistry is so similar to humans' that NASA once used chimpanzees in place of astronauts during many dangerous missions. Gorillas have been taught sign language and orangutans exist in complex familial relationships.

    Elephants

    Everyone has heard the phrase “an elephant never forgets”. Elephants establish long-term friendships, recognizing and remembering their friends years later. If an elephant comes upon a fallen friend, it has even been known to feel sad.

    Parrots

    As proved by this list, parrots are very smart. They are also the only animals listed that can actually hold a conversation. Some parrots know hundreds of words by imitating humans. The birds are also capable of remembering words and using them intelligently in response to situations.

    Now many young people are traveling around the world on their own, not because they have no one to travel with, but because they prefer to go alone．

     Kristina Wegscheider from California first traveled alone when she was at college and believes that it is something everyone should do at least once in their life. “It opens up your mind to new things and pushes you out of your comfort zone.” Wegscheider has visited 46 countries covering all seven continents(洲)．

    In foreign countries, with no one to help you read a map, look after you if you get ill, or lend you money if your wallet is stolen. It is challenging. This is what drives young people to travel alone．It is seen as character building and a chance to prove that they can make it on their own．

    Chris Richardson decided to leave his sales job in Australia to go traveling last year．He set up a website, The Aussie Nomad, to document（记录） his adventures. He said he wished he had traveled alone earlier. “The people you meet, the places you visit, or the things you do, everything is up to you and it forces you to grow as a person,” said the 30-year-old．

    Richardson describes traveling alone like “a shot in the arm”, which “makes you a more confident person that was ready to deal with anything”. He said: “The feeling of having conquered something on my own is a major part of what drives me each day when I'm dealing with a difficult task. I walk around with my head up because I know deep down inside that nothing is impossible if you try.”

    The great 19th century explorer John Muir once said: “Only by going alone in silence can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness.

    Throughout the history of the arts, the nature of creativity has remained constant to artists. No matter what objects they select, artists are to bring forth new forces and forms that cause change—to find poetry where no one has ever seen or experienced it before.

    Landscape is another unchanging element (元素) of art. It can be found from ancient times through the 17th­century Dutch painters to the 19th­century romanticists (浪漫主义艺术家 ) and impressionists. In the 1970s Alfred Leslie, one of the new American realists, continued this practice. Leslie sought out the same place where Thomas Cole, a romanticist, had produced paintings of the same scene a century and a half before. Unlike Cole who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace in nature, Leslie paints what he actually sees. In his paintings, there is no particular change in emotions and he includes ordinary things like the highway in the background. He also takes advantage of the latest developments of color photography to help both the eyes and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom.

Besides, all art begs the age­old question: What is real? Each generation of artists has shown their understanding of reality in one form or another. The impressionists saw reality in brief emotional effects, the realists in everyday subjects and in forest scenes, and the Cro­Magnon cave people in their naturalistic drawings of the animals in the ancient forests. To sum up, understanding reality is a necessary struggle for artists of all periods.

    Over thousands of years the function of the arts has remained relatively constant. Past or present, Eastern or Western, the arts are a basic part of our immediate experience. Many and different are the faces of art, and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings.

    There are billions of people on this planet, and many of us love to eat meat. Can the demand be filled in a sustainable(可持续的) and affordable way? A bunch of businessmen are not only optimistic but are working to make this happen sooner than you may think.

    The environmental effects caused by meat consumption (食用)—waste, animal treatment, health problems and even the greenhouse gas effects that are potentially caused by methane gas produced by cows—have given rise to a number of startups(新兴公司)looking to develop meats in different ways.

    For example, San Francisco-based Memphis Meats is developing cell-based meats in its labs without requiring any animals. Israel's Future Meat Technologies is doing the same by producing fat and muscle cells that are being tested by chefs in Jerusalem. All of these companies use special processes to harvest cells from animals and grow them in a lab.

    But don't worry if you're not a meat lover. Startups such as Jet Eat, which is also based in Israel, are working on food products grown in labs that are plant-based and replicate (复制) meats using natural elements while still keeping flavor, consistency and the "overall sensory experience", according to a report on NoCamels. Jet Eat, which was founded in early 2018, aims to 3D-print their lab-grown products by 2020.

    As you can imagine, there are plenty of barriers facing the industry. Educating the public is a big one. Another controversial issue is the labeling of the products. Recently both the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that they will begin jointly controlling the new "cell-based meat" category.

    Many of us have concerns about the challenges facing future generations as our global population increases and the earth's natural resources decreases. The good news is that there are plenty of businessmen around the world—like those producing lab-grown meats—who are working to solve some of these problems and make a little money in the process. Nothing wrong with that.