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.

    World Expo 2010 will be held in Shanghai. It will last from May 1st to October 31st, 2010. The Expo site covers a total area of 5.28 km². It spans(横跨) both sides of the Huangpu River, with 3.93 km² in Pudong and 1.35 km² in Puxi. There are five functional zones marked A, B, C, D and E. Each of them has different functions.

    Zone A will host the national pavilions(国家馆) of Asian countries except southeast Asian ones.

    Zone B will be home to the China Pavilion(中国馆) and Oceania (大洋洲的) countries, Pavilions for International Organizations, Theme Pavilions(主题馆), Expo Centre, and Performance Centre etc.

    Zone C will host the national pavilions of European, American and African countries. A large public amusement park will be built at the entrance of this zone.

    Zone D is home to Corporate Pavilions(企业馆), the land is one of the original places of modern China's national industry. So some of the old industrial buildings will be kept and renovated(修复) into Expo pavilions.

    Zone E will host stand-alone(独立的) Corporate Pavilions, Urban Civilization Pavilion (城市文明馆), and Urban Best Practices Area.

    When you are travelling, whether on business or for pleasure, you often need to stay in a hotel. The kind of hotel you choose probably is decided above all according to how much money you want to spend. There are small hotels with very few services, where the prices are low, or there are large hotels with all the very latest comforts, where you could spend all the money you have in the bank for one very comfortable night.

    There are several different kinds of people who go to hotels. Some want to live, rather than just stay, in a hotel; the hotels which are designed to meet their needs are called residential hotels. However, most people who stay in hotels are either business people or tourists on holiday.

    In most hotels, there are two kinds of rooms: single rooms, for the use of one person, and double rooms, for the use of two people. In addition, in large hotels, there are also suites(套房), which include two or more rooms connected together—perhaps a bed-room and a living room. They are for people who are very rich or very important.

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    Imagine your body is like the house you live in. Every day, your family creates rubbish. The rubbish builds up until it is put out for the weekly garbage collection.

    Now, say you put three bags of garbage out, but because one of the collectors was away sick, only two bags are collected. You take the leftover bag inside to be put out again next week. The following week you put on another three bags, plus the leftover bag from last week. But again, only two bags are collected. Imagine this cycle is repeated over the following weeks.

    This is a simple description of what happens to your body when your kidneys (肾脏) don't work efficiently. Your body is not thoroughly emptied of waste products. Other areas of the body such as blood pressure and red blood cell production are affected and the insidious process that may lead to kidney failure begins.

    It's not uncommon for people to lose up to 90% of their kidney function before developing any symptoms. There may be no warning signs. This makes early detection (诊查)difficult.

    Kidney's main job is to remove toxins (毒素) and unwanted water from our blood. Every day our kidneys clean an average of 200 litres of blood. Kidney failure may be a gradual and silent process, going unnoticed because there is no obvious pain.

    Research shows that more than 35% of the patients requiring dialysis (透析) do not see a kidney specialist before they have to do so. Some risk factors for kidney disease such as age and genetic make-up are out of our control; however, some changes in lifestyle may help prevent kidney damage. Two major risk factors for kidney disease, diabetes (糖尿病) and high blood pressure, have been on the rise over the last few decades. Both conditions are chiefly affected by being overweight and not getting enough exercises, which are the potential (潜在的) risk factors for the kidney disease.

Plastic is everywhere, from the Arctic ice to vital organs in the human body. In fact, previous estimates suggest that the average person swallows a credit card-worth of microscopic plastic particles(颗粒) every week. But new research shows that this could actually be an understatement. 

Microplastics are plastics smaller than 5 millimeters, found in industrial waste, beauty products, and formed during the degradation of larger plastic pieces. Over time, they break down into even smaller nanoplastics. These tiny particles can pass through our intestines and lungs into our bloodstreams, reaching vital organs like the heart and brain. 

While the idea of eating plastic is unsettling in itself, the major concern here is that these plastic particles contain chemicals that can interrupt our body's natural release of hormones, potentially increasing our risk of reproductive disorders and certain cancers. They can also carry toxins(毒素) on their surface like heavy metals. 

In the past, researchers have shown bottled water can contain tens of thousands of identifiable plastic fragments in a single container. However, until recently, only the larger microplastics were detectable with available measuring tools, leaving the area of nanoplastics largely a mystery. 

Using Raman microscopy (显微镜学), capable of detecting particles down to the size of a flu virus, the team measured an average of 240, 000 particles of plastic per liter of bottled water, 90 percent of which were nanoplastics, a revelation 10 to 100 times larger than previous estimates. 

These plastics likely originate from the bottle material, filters used to "purify" the water, and the source water itself. "It is not totally unexpected to find so much of this stuff, " the study's lead author, Columbia graduate student Naixin Qian, said in a statement. His team hopes to expand their research into tap water and other water sources to better inform our exposure to these potentially dangerous particles. "The idea is that the smaller things get, the more of them I reveal, " he added.