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Mouse embryos (胚胎) have been cultured (培养) on the International Space Station (ISS), marking a significant step in understanding reproduction in space. Led by Teruhiko Wakayama from the University of Yamanashi in Japan, this experiment studied the possible safety of human pregnancy (怀孕) during long space journeys, such as a trip to Mars that lasts more than six months. Wakayama emphasized the importance of this research, saying, “We are conducting research to ensure we will be able to safely have children if that time comes.”

The experiment began on Earth, where early two-cell stage embryos from pregnant mice were taken out, frozen, and sent to the ISS on a SpaceX rocket. Astronauts on the ISS then warmed up and cultured the embryos for four days using devices specially designed for this task. Afterward, the embryos were kept and returned to Earth. The four-day growth period was chosen as embryos can only survive for this length outside a uterus, according to Wakayama.

Upon their return, the embryos were examined to check the impact of space’s unique conditions, such as higher radiation (辐射) levels and microgravity (微重力). The results were promising; the embryos showed no DNA damage from radiation and showed normal structural development, including the crucial change into two cell groups necessary for forming the fetus and placenta. Wakayama found these results significant, as it was previously believed that microgravity might prevent the embryo’s ability to separate into these separate cell types.

While these findings are promising, further research is needed to fully understand space reproduction. Wakayama referred to a previous study involving pregnant rats in space, which resulted in the birth of typical-weight rats, suggesting normal development. The team now aims to further study the health of embryos exposed to space conditions and plans to test whether mouse embryos sent to the ISS can develop into healthy young after returning to Earth.

For most people traveling abroad, their first choice is probably to make a beeline for (直奔) tourist sights. For me, I find lots of joy in grocery (食品杂货店) shopping on holiday.

As a vegetarian (素食主义者) , finding restaurants that meet my needs is not always easy abroad. 1． The first thing I do, after dropping my bags off, is to go to a grocery store. That enables me to cook breakfast in the morning without walking around for hours trying to find “vegan breakfast” near me.

The variety of foods attracts me every time I travel somewhere new. In Malta, I found the most delicious chocolate-filled cakes, a product I would struggle to find even in the UK. 2． I was so delighted that I could enjoy such an unexpected treat. Another surprise was their selection of ice cream available even in the smallest grocery stores.

3． Looking for smoked tofu and corn pancakes turns into quite a mission whenever I visit Cluj-Napoca in Romania. There is usually only one variety of smoked tofu, sold in a very small tub (食品盒) and only in the cafeteria section. 4． That is because they are never available at the smaller ones.

Grocery shopping on holiday sounds unusual. But it means being involved in the day-to-day lives of a country’s citizens. I can pretend I am a local and put myself in their shoes. I can watch kids begging their parents for sweets, an international experience that needs no language, or watch couples pick up snacks and drinks for a party on a Friday night. 5．

Our neighbors had a loud party last night. We weren’t _______ but this was one of those celebrations that I didn’t mind. They are a bunch of young, single guys and I would have felt out of place.

What _______ me was the way they behaved. One of the young men came over _______ in the day to “warn” us of the upcoming event and said it would be over at about 11 p. m. That was the first step. Even more _______ was what they did next. “Here’s my _______ ” offered our neighbor _______ . “Text me if it’s too noisy.” That was a level of _______ I had never experienced in all my years of being a neighbor!

And it really worked in their favor. My husband and I were so friendly that even when the event went past the _______ end time, even when the music reached high decibels (分贝) , and even when we couldn’t get through to the phone number, we felt no _______ . We knew they would stop and ________ to it eventually.

It takes such little effort to make people feel that they ________ and get people on your side. Everyone needs to ________ every now and then, especially in these uniquely tough times. But people who do it without disturbing others are few and far between. I hadn’t fully ________ my neighbors until this week. But now I see them in a new light and with greater ________ . They didn’t just bring the noise to the neighborhood; they showed us a good manner of ________ in life.

In December, an adult day center nurse in New York came to the rescue of her patient after deciding to adopt the dog he could no longer look after.

John Burley, 60, was a daily _________ at the Adult Day Healthcare program at The Grand Rehabilitation (康复) and Nursing at Rome, where Jennifer Smith _________. Just before Thanksgiving, he was _________, leaving him unable to look after his 13-year-old dog Boomer.

Jennifer Smith knew _________ what to do — she visited the humane shelter and adopted him herself. “She went right to the Rome Humane Society that day and _______ the adoption fee, took him to the vet, and went _______ for food, toys, and doggy clothes. He is really _________,” Kimberly Hare from The Grand Rehabilitation and Nursing at Rome said.

Now John Burley is a rehabilitation patient at the center. He is able to _________ daily visits from Boomer who has _________ the “mascot (吉祥物) of the adult day program.”

“Once John was ______________ in his room, Jennifer and Boomer made their way over to his nursing unit, but I told her to stay out of ______________. I asked John if he was feeling ______________ a surprise visit and he said yes,” said Hare.

“When he saw Jennifer and Boomer come around the corner, he just burst into tears and ______________ for his pal. John would get off bed and get around with Boomer happily. There was not a ______________ eye in the room between residents and staff. He was so happy to see the dog and so ______________ to Jennifer for saving him.”

Dad was always full of advice. One of the biggest lessons he taught me one summer was about having a strong _____ ethic(道德规范). When my brother and I were growing up, we mowed (割草) yards during the summer to _____ pocket money.

Every time we went to work, Dad was there to watch. I used to wonder _____ he came with us. He stood watching us work in the _____ weather when he could have been inside relaxing with air conditioning.

One day we were _____ our neighbor's yard. She always waited until the grass was knee－high to call us over. That afternoon, I was finishing up and was _____. I was just about to _____ the mower when I saw Dad pointing to some grass. I thought about how little I was getting paid for cutting grass so _____ that it almost broke the mower. I _____ him and kept walking. Dad called me out, “You missed a piece. ”

I frowned, hoping he would go home. He kept ______. So worn out and discouraged, I went back to cut that piece of grass. I said to myself, “That one piece isn't ______ anyone. Why won't he just let it go?”

Other neighbors ______ the good work we did and we soon got more ______. We started out with one client, but by the end of the summer we had five.

The lesson my dad taught me stayed with me: Be professional. If you say you are going to perform a job at a certain time, keep your ______. Give your customers the kind of service you would like to ______. It shows how sincere you are and how much pride you take in your work.

Satellites Can Help Us Fight Climate Change

At the beginning of 2021, President Joe Biden exclaimed that “science is back” as we continued our efforts to 1． the COVID emergency. That phrase continues to ring true across the federal government. Science and its applications are being used at every agency to deal with public health 2．, build new transportation infrastructure, inform policy decisions and tackle the climate crisis.

Recently the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological Survey assumed 3． of Landsat 9 from NASA, which built and launched it in 2021.This satellite is designed to 4． Earth’s land, water and other natural resources. Landsat missions support environmental sustainability and climate resilience. The Landsat program, which launched in July 1972, has helped us understand our planet and the changes that are occurring on it. That partnership has propelled research and observation forward through the launch of 5． Landsat satellites, each replacing its predecessors and working in tandem with new capabilities and strengths.

I attended the historic launch of Landsat 9 in California. It was nothing 6． of amazing. I toured the mission control center and met a young scientist from the Navajo Nation living far away from home. She uses Landsat 7． to see her home from many miles away, and with such data, she enables her community to manage water resources in the face of a changing climate. This is the power and beauty of science at work.

All around the globe, scientists are using Landsat and other imagery to interpret what is happening on Earth today and to compare it with the 50 years’ 8． of data the Landsat program has collected.

This science-based program and those like it across federal agencies are powerful tools in our efforts to responsibly manage our resources. Their prioritization helps to demonstrate the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to lead with science. So, too, the resources provided through the president’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act will be key to the development of longer-term sustainability measures as we 9． to climate change, including building more resilient communities and protecting our natural environment.

Landsat NEXT is the upcoming mission we will develop with NASA to power better science and decision-making for the next 50 years. Science is indeed 10． us on a path to a brighter future.

Gu Ailing, 1． is born to an American father and a Chinese mother , decided to compete for China in the 2022 Winter Olympics in June,2019. Since then, the magical girl 2．(attract) many people’s attention and has been expected to be the next super sports star in China.

With the Winter Olympics 3． (go) on, it turns out that Gu Ailing did live up to the expectations and achieved good grades with two golds and one silver. At the same time, her 4． (academy) excellence is also known to the public.

People say that Gu Ailing is 5． genius, but Gu says that talent accounted for “only one percent”of her wins, adding that her hard work is 6． really counts. While going to school in San Francisco, Gu could only practice on weekdays. She spent eight hours going to the ski hill and back, doing her homework on the way and making full use of her time 7． (practice) skiing.

When it comes to the reason 8． ski-loving, Gu says that skiing gives her freedom and 9． (creative), especially when she 10． (perfect) controls her body and does tricks that others can’t do. Through telling her own stories, Gu hopes to encourage more Chinese girls to try skiing and other extreme sports.

I've been writing since before I could write. As a kid, I dictated stories to my parents.About 12 years ago,I was living in New York City and pursuing a master in creative writing. For years I'd been suffering vision disorder,but in New York my symptoms worsened. I became unable to read or write for any considerable length of time. I tried vision therapy(疗法），an overhead projector,a special pair of glasses-all in vain.

Eventually,I discovered a computer program for the visually challenged. As I typed,my words were read aloud by an automated voice. With my screen dimmed to black,I relied entirely on audio feedback to know what I had written.

Facing the blank page is worrying,but facing the black page is worse. The dark screen is a sinkhole that swallows creative hope. Sentences disappear into it like an astronaut into a black hole. I managed to complete my master degree, but it took me years to adapt to my new reality. The greatest barrier seemed to be the automated voice, which was like a robot parrot on my shoulder, and I wanted nothing more than to drive it away. If a pianist were forced to practice on an untuned piano,would it corrupt his ear over time?

Of course,I could have quit writing and stopped making myself suffer.But it honestly never occurred to me-and I'm glad it didn't. Last year, after I told my story on the radio,I was contacted by VocaliD,a Massachusetts-based company that created a voice modeled on my own.

The first time I heard the voice they created, it is so close to my own that the two are nearly indistinguishable. I've only just begun using this new voice. My hope is that this will restore a sense of solitude(孤独） to my writing process,allowing me easier access to that inner space where the imagination can take over, and I can forget myself, and the real work can begin.

The black screen still exists-it always will-but the robot parrot has taken wing.

Columbus Day has been on American calendars since 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared October 12 a federal holiday to honor the Italian explorer who “discovered” the Americas in 1492. However, the holiday has always been controversial. Many people believe that Christopher Columbus should not be given credit for “discovering” the continent, since native Americans had already been living there for generations.

Besides, the explorer’s mission was not a scientific “voyage of discovery”, but one intended to conquer the new land. Critics maintain that the Spanish army Columbus brought on his second voyage, caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of indigenous(土著的) people. Those that survived the massacre became slaves, working in mines. Many, therefore, believe that the explorer’s arrival should not be celebrated.

In 1977, a delegation of Native nations at the International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas, proposed renaming the holiday to “Indigenous People’s Day”. The proposal passed with a majority.

However, convincing the rest of the country to do the same was not that easy. It took 15 years before the city of Berkeley in California adopted the name in 1992 and then 22 more years before Minneapolis, MN and Seattle, WA did the same in 2014. The following year, eight more cities including Albuquerque, NM and Portland, OR, began celebrating the second Monday of October as “Indigenous People’s Day”. The movement really started to gain momentum in 2016 when 19 cities, including Boulder, CO and Phoenix, AZ, as well as the states of Minnesota and Vermont, all decided to rename the day to honor Native Americans. In 2017, 21 more cities, including Austin, TX and Los Angeles, CA have made the shift.

With the increasingly larger number of cities moving away from Columbus Day each year, it will be interesting to see if “Indigenous People’s Day” gets federal recognition. Meanwhile, it will continue to be the focal point of debates throughout the Americas.

In our information-driven society, shaping our worldview through the media is similar to forming an opinion about someone solely based on a picture of their foot. While the media might not deliberately deceive us, it often fails to provide a comprehensive view of reality.

Consequently, the question arises: Where, then, shall we get our information from if not from the media? Who can we trust? How about experts—people who devote their working lives to understanding their chosen slice of the world? However, even experts can fall prey to the allure of oversimplification, leading to the “single perspective instinct” that hampers(阻碍)our ability to grasp the intricacies of the world.

Simple ideas can be appealing because they offer a sense of understanding and certainty. And it is easy to take off down a slippery slope, from one attention-grabbing simple idea to a feeling that this idea beautifully explains, or is the beautiful solution for, lots of other things. The world becomes simple that way.

Yet, when we embrace a singular cause or solution for all problems, we risk oversimplifying complex issues. For instance, championing the concept of equality may lead us to view all problems through the lens of inequality and see resource distribution as the sole panacea. However, such rigidity prevents us from seeing the multidimensional nature of challenges and hinders true comprehension of reality. This “single perspective instinct” ultimately clouds our judgment and restricts our capacity to tackle complex issues effectively.

It saves a lot of time to think like this. You can have opinions and answers without having to learn about a problem from scratch and you can get on with using your brain for other tasks. But it’s not so useful if you like to understand the world. Being always in favor of or always against any particular idea makes you blind to information that doesn’t fit your perspective. This is usually a bad approach if you would like to understand reality.

Instead, constantly test your favorite ideas for weaknesses. Be humble about the extent of your expertise. Be curious about new information that doesn’t fit, and information from other fields. And rather than talking only to people who agree with you, or collecting examples that fit your ideas, consult people who contradict you, disagree with you, and put forward different ideas as a great resource for understanding the world. I have been wrong about the world so many times. Sometimes, coming up against reality is what helps me see my mistakes, but often it is talking to, and trying to understand, someone with different ideas.

If this means you don’t have time to form so many opinions, so what? Wouldn’t you rather have few opinions that are right than many that are wrong?