Life in the Clear

    Transparent animals let light pass through their bodies the same way light passes through a window. These animals typically live between the surface of the ocean and a depth of about 3,300 feet—as far as most light can reach. Most of them are extremely delicate and can be damaged by a simple touch. Sonke Johnsen, a scientist in biology, says, “These animals live through their life alone. They never touch anything unless they're eating it, or unless something is eating them.”

    And they are as clear as glass. How does an animal become see-through? It's trickier than you might think.

    The objects around you are visible because they interact with light. Light typically travels in a straight line. But some materials slow and scatter(散射) light, bouncing it away from its original path. Others absorb light, stopping it dead in its tracks. Both scattering and absorption make an object look different from other objects around it, so you can see it easily.

But a transparent object doesn't absorb or scatter light, at least not very much, Light can pass through it without bending or stopping. That means a transparent object doesn't look very different from the surrounding air or water. You don't see it —-you see the things behind it.

    To become transparent, an animal needs to keep its body from absorbing or scattering light. Living materials can stop light because they contain pigments(色素) that absorb specific colors of light. But a transparent animal doesn't have pigments, so its tissues won't absorb light. According to Johnsen, avoiding absorption is actually easy. The real challenge is preventing light from scattering.

Animals are built of many different materials—-skin, fat, and more—-and light moves through each at a different speed. Every time light moves into a material with a new speed, it bends and scatters. Transparent animals use different tricks to fight scattering. Some animals are simply very small or extremely flat. Without much tissue to scatter light, it is easier to be see—through. Others build a large, clear mass of non-living jelly-lie(果冻状的)material and spread themselves over it .

    Larger transparent animals have the biggest challenge, because they have to make all the different tissues in their bodies slow down light exactly as much as water does. They need to look uniform. But how they're doing it is still unknown. One thing is clear for these larger animals, staying transparent is an active process. When they die, they turn a non-transparent milky white.

    Half a century ago, Japan built the world's first high-speed rail network—a network that remains the gold standard in train travel today. Currently the country is now helping Texas build its own bullet train, a potential game-changer for transportation in the state.

    When it launched on October 1, 1964, the world's first high-speed rail network was known as the “super-express of dreams.” The first line in Japan's now world-famous shinkansen network was built against all odds, in the face of fierce public opposition, technical difficulties and astronomical costs.

    Half a century ago, the system was far humbler. In 1964, the first track was a 320-mile-long link between Tokyo and Osaka that reduced the trip from six-and-a-half hours (on conventional trains) to three hours and 10 minutes, traveling at a maximum speed of 200 miles per hour. For the first time, workers could get to meetings in one city during the day and be back home drinking a beer in the local pub that night.

    Not only did the train expand mobility profoundly, but also businesses appeared around the major stops as a growing emphasis on productivity swept across Japan. Today, the shinkansen network has 1,487 miles of track, with more set to open in the coming years. It seems that everything the shinkansen touches turns to city, and regions that are off the beaten track, so to speak, benefit greatly from the economic jumpstart brought by the train. New shinkansen lines are often proceeded by aggressive marketing campaigns promoting tourism in those areas, a strategy that seems to work.

    Despite its astronomical costs, it actually has saved more. Today, over 350,000 annual trips transport tens of millions of passengers all over Japan with efficiency—the average delay time is less than a minute. A research report titled 30 Years of High-Speed Railways: Features and Economic and Social Effects of The Shinkansen by Hiroshi Okada, estimates that the economic impact from the shinkansen train network, based on the time saved from faster travel, is approximately ¥500 billion ($4.8 billion USD) per year. Okada stresses that the cultural impact is also significant, a shinkansen offers people living far from urban centers “easy access to concerts, exhibitions, theaters, etc., enabling them to lead fuller lives.”

    Japan has a plan, known as the One-Day Travel Initiative. Its goal: regardless of where you are in Japan, it should only take you three hours to get to the nearest major regional city (Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo or Fukuoka). The planned impact of this hyper-mobility is to discourage the tide of migration toward urban centers, like Tokyo, and encourage decentralization.

    It has been found that plastic that finds itself into UK's waters can find its way to the Arctic within just two years. UK researchers have used a current-tracking tool to follow the waste as it was carried by the waters of the northern hemisphere.

    The team at Imperial College London used PlasticAdrift.org to track ocean currents(洋流) and follow the trail of plastic north to the freezing Arctic waters. Their study revealed that the majority of plastic waste which didn't end up on the UK's coastline, or sink to the ocean floor, was carried through the Barents Sea, north of Norway, before being carried into the Arctic Ocean.

    Large pockets of the world's oceans are now choked with a soup of discarded plastics, made up of everything from shopping bags to old children's toys, brought to these trash “islands” by the currents. Over time larger chunks (厚块，大块) are broken down by the sun's ultraviolet rays (紫外线) and the saltwater, leaving plenty of micro plastics which can kill fish and other wildlife.

    Dr. Erik Van Sebille, a lecturer in oceanography (海洋学) and climate change at Imperial, said, “We're only just beginning to understand the effect that plastic waste has on the weak Arctic ecosystem(生态系统), but we know enough about the damage done by oceanic plastic pollution to act and reduce its impact on our oceans and coastlines. From seabirds caught in loops of plastic packaging to polystyrene particles(聚苯乙烯粒子) blocking the digestive(消化的) systems of fish, plastic causes a continuous path of destruction from surface to seafloor. This analysis shows how in the UK we're part of the problem.”

    Dr. Erik continued, “It would be impossible to ban plastic, and undesirable as it is, it's a useful material that offers many benefits. We should instead have a holistic (整体的) approach to improving the situation, including social and behavioral, chemical and engineering solutions. Our aim is to have the least amount of plastic that ends up in the oceans and make sure it degrades (降解) quickly and safely if it does. ”

    Younger students experience school bullying (欺凌) more frequently than older ones, and male students are bullied more than their female peers, a survey found.

    It also found that nearly half of the students had been intentionally hit or knocked down by classmates. About 6 percent said they are targeted by bullies on campus every day. The survey also found that students from ordinary schools experienced more bullying than peers from key institutions, and children from poor families are more likely to be bullied at school.

    Being bullied can have a negative impact on a child's personal development and academic performance, according to Zhou Jinyan, a researcher who led the study at Beijing Normal University. 揅hildren being bullied will find it hard to trust others,? Zhou said. 揟hey may often feel anxiety, anger, resentment or depression. These emotions will further undermine their ability to control their own life.”

    In recent years, bullying on Chinese campuses has been frequently reported and has attracted widespread attention and concern. The most recent incident to arouse heated discussions took place in December at Beijing's Zhongguancun No.2 Primary School. A fourth-grade student was bullied and laughed at by classmates, causing him acute stress disorder.

    The Supreme People's Procuratorate (最高人民检察院) received about 1,900 cases related to school bullying in 2016. Meanwhile, there was a notable increase in bullying reports involving middle school students from 14 to 18 years old.

    Zhou came up with some ways to solve the problem, including boosting communication between teachers, parents and students and trying to establish more harmonious relationships among children. She said it was strongly suggested that parents try to be involved in their children's educational experience, as their presence and companionship have proved effective in reducing bullying and its negative effects.

    It was Sunday, so Dad and I were at the second-hand goods market, looking for tools, appliances(家用电器), and other things that needed cleaning. Some were broken; others, like silver cups, just needed to be cleaned and polished. It was 1974, and the Depression(经济大萧条) was very serious. Dad worked full-time at a factory, but the money wasn't enough. Dad had tried a second job for a while, but he found it was too hard on the family. One day, he had an excellent idea that set me on a lifelong course of making money to support myself. Standing beside a crowded table at the second-hand goods market, I looked over an ancient manual sewing machine. Someone had changed it to run on electric power. It was much older than Mom's machine, but it looked like it had quality and a long life built into it. "Dad!" I called. "This is a beauty!"

    Dad walked over, pulling a cart full of audio equipment, tools, worn-out appliances, and what appeared to be a block of dull kitchen knife." What have you got, Son?" I described what I saw and what I figured I could do to x the beauty up. Dad paid for my discovery, and we headed home.

    Every day after school I worked on the ancient machine, and every night Dad and I sharpened tools and knives, sanded off rust, polished metal, and replaced missing parts from various items. The next Saturday we headed off, as we did every weekend, to that same market, where we sold the treasures we'd purchased the week before—at a tidy profit. My antique beauty brought in more money than anything else, and Dad let me keep every penny.

    Dad's gone now, but I can never thank him enough. Even if we hadn't needed the extra money Dad and I brought in, I wouldn't have traded those weekends for all the picnics or Little League games in St. Louis—not in a million years.

    People with an impulsive(冲动的) personality refer to those who tend to do things without considering the possible dangers or problems first. According to a new study by researchers at the University of Georgia, such people may be more likely to have food addiction. The study found that people exhibiting impulsive behavior weren't necessarily overweight, but impulsiveness was related to a direct relationship with food, and therefore, less healthy weight.

    Food addiction has been compared to addictive drug use. Studies have linked the dopamine (多巴胺) release that occurs after tasting delicious food to the dopamine release that happens when people consume other addictive substances.

    Impulsive behavior involves several personality traits (特点). Two of these traits, known as negative urgency and lack of perseverance, were particularly associated with food addiction and high BMI (身体质量指数) during the study.

    Negative urgency is characterized by the tendency to behave impulsively when experiencing negative emotions. Some people might drink alcohol or take drugs. For others, it could mean eating to feel better. Lack of perseverance is when a person has a hard time finishing hard or boring tasks. People with a lack of perseverance might have difficulty attempting to change addictive eating behavior, which could also cause obesity.

    "Impulsiveness might be one reason why some people eat in an addictive way despite motivation to lose weight," said Dr. Ashley Gearhardt, a clinical psychologist. He was involved in developing the Yale Food Addiction Scale in aid of those people. "We are theorizing that if food addiction is really a thing, then our measure, the Yale Food Addiction Scale, should be related to helping control impulsive action," said Gearhardt.

    Clinical psychologist Dr. James MacKillop, whose lab was conducting the study, believes that therapies(治疗，疗法)used to treat addictive drug behavior could help people who suffer from addictive eating habits.

    "Most of the programs for weight loss at this point focus on the most obvious things, which are clearly diet and exercise," MacKillop said. "It seems that managing strong desires to eat would naturally fit in with the skills a person would need to eat healthily."