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Do Peru’s potatoes have the right matter? That’s the question scientists will be asking in Lima next month, when a selection of potatoes will begin undergoing tests to determine whether they are fit to grow on Mars.

NASA, the US space agency, is conducting the pioneering experiment together with Lima’s International Center (CIP).

They will cultivate(培养) a hundred selected varieties in Mars-like conditions that could eventually pave the way to building a dome on the red planet for farming the vegetable. Of the selected candidates, 40 are native to the Andes Mountains, growing in different ecological zones, can stand sudden climate changes and reproduce in rocky areas. The other 60 are improved varieties, able to survive with little water and salt. They are also immune to viruses. Those that pass the tests must meet a final criterion – they must be able not only to grow well on Mars but also reproduce in large quantities. “We are almost 100 percent certain that many of the selected potatoes will pass the test,” says Julio Valdivia Silva, a Peruvian NASA astrobiologist(太空生物学家) who is taking part in the ambitious project. 

The scientists plan to transport 100 kilos of it to a CIP lab in Lima that will imitate the complex Martian atmosphere – which contains mostly carbon dioxide – and expose it to extreme ultraviolet(紫外线的) radiation. If the varieties selected for next month’s experiment don’t adapt to the desert soil, the researchers will introduce nutrients, which will be provided by radiation.

In future years, NASA plans to build a Mars research center in the Peruvian desert. It would create a perfect copy of the Martian landscape and atmosphere for future research into space farming that could serve manned missions to Mars and other planets in the solar system.

When Geoff Marcy was 14, his parents bought him a telescope. Every night, he would go onto the roof outside his window to see the wonders of the sky.

“What excited me most was whether there were planets in other solar systems where life might exist,” he says. “I decided to try to find planets orbiting (沿…轨道运行) other stars like our Sun.”

And he did. “My fellow researcher, Paul Butler, and I found our first planet in 1995,” Dr. Marcy says. “We worked for ten years without finding anything! But we stuck with it, and our patience paid off. ”

Since then, the two scientists have discovered 65 of the more than 100 planets found orbiting other stars. Dr. Marcy and Dr. Butler also spotted the first “family” of three planets. In June 2002 they announced another discovery: a Jupiter-like (像木星一样的) planet orbiting star 55 Cancri.

At first, the two researchers found only planets that orbit close to stars. Recently, the scientists found planets farther out. The planet orbiting 55 Cancri is a major breakthrough: it is the first sighting of a large gas planet about the same distance from the star as Jupiter is from the Sun.

Why is this important? Scientists think that life on Earth may exist because of two special features in our solar system. The first is Jupiter.

“Because it’s so big, Jupiter pulls comets and asteroids (小行星), or they all come and hit the Earth.” Dr. Marcy explains. “Without Jupiter, life on Earth would likely have been destroyed.”

A second feature is that Earth is a rocky planet where liquid water, which is necessary for life, can exist. Unlike gas planets, rocky planets like Earth have surfaces where water can gather in pools and seas, which may support life. A huge space exists between the Jupiter-like planet and two other planets that lie close to 55 Cancri. Is there an Earth-like planet in the space, too small for us to notice? If so, says Dr. Marcy, “We would have two striking similarities to our solar system: a Jupiter-like planet and an Earth-like planet. And there may be life! ”

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     When you cut your skin, you bleed (流血). If a person loses a lot of blood, he will become ill and may die. Blood is very important. People have always known that. At one time, some people even drank blood to make them strong!

     When doctors understand how blood goes around inside the body, they try ways of giving blood to people who need it. They take blood from the healthy people and give it to people who need it. This is called "blood transfusion（输血）". The blood goes from the arm of the healthy person into the arm of the sick person.

     But there are two problems. First, it does not always work. Sometimes people die when they have blood transfusion. Later, doctors find that we do not all have the same kind of blood. There are four groups—O, A, B and AB. We all have blood of one of these groups. They also find that they can give any kind of blood to people of group AB. But they find that they must give A-group blood to A-group people and B-group blood to B-group people. I have O-group blood and the doctor told me that I could give blood to anyone else safely.

     There is another problem. To give blood of the right kind, doctors have to find a person of the right blood group. Often they can not find a person in time. If they have a way to keep the blood until someoneˈ needs it, they can always have the right kind of blood. At first they find they can keep it in bottles for fifteen to twenty days. They do this by making it very cold. Then they find how to keep it longer. In the end they find a way of keeping blood for a very long time.

     We call a place where we keep money a "bank". We call a place where we keep blood a "blood bank". One day, when you grow up, you may decide to give blood to a "blood bank". In this way you may stop someone from dying. Or perhaps one day you may become ill. You may need blood. The "blood bank" will give it to you.

A warm drink of milk before bed has long been the best choice for those wanting a good night’s sleep. But now a study has found it really does help people nod off—if it is milked from a cow at night.

      Researchers have discovered that “night milk” contains more melatonin(褪黑激素), which has been proven to help people feel sleepy and reduce anxiety.

      The study, by researchers from Seoul, South Korea, involved mice being fed with dried milk powder made from cows milked both during the day and at night.

      Those given night milk, which contained 10 times the amount of melatonin, were less active and less anxious than those fed with the milk collected during daytime, according to the study published in The Journal of Medicinal Food.

     Night milk quickened the start of sleep and caused the mice to sleep longer.

     While the effect of cows milk harvested at different time has not been tested on humans up to now,  taking melatonin drugs has been suggested to those who are struggling to fall asleep at night.

     Previous studies have also indicated that milk can be excellent for helping sleep because of the calcium content, which helps people to relax.

  Milk is also sugar-free and additive-free with nutritionists recommending skimmed milk as the best choice before bed as it is the least fattening. The more fat you take in before bedtime, the greater burden you will put on your body at night.

 Along the river banks of the Amazon and the Orinoco there lives a bird that swims before it can fly, flies like a fat chicken, eats green leaves, has the stomach of a cow and has claws(爪)on its wings when young .They build their homes about 4.6m above the river ,an important feature(特征)for the safety of the young. It is called the hoatzin.

    In appearance，the birds of both sexes look very much alike with brown on the back and cream and red on the underside .The head is small, with a large set of feathers on the top, bright red eyes, and blue skin. Its nearest relatives are the common birds, cuckoos. Its most striking feature ,though, is only found in the young.

    Baby hoatzins have a claw on the leading edge of each wing and another at the end of each wing tip .Using these four claws ,together with the beak(喙),they can climb about in the bushes, looking very much like primitive birds must have done. When the young hoatzins have learned to fly ,they lose their claws.

During the drier months between December and March hoatzins fly about the forest in groups of 20 to 30 birds, but in April, when the rainy season begins, they collect together in smaller living units of two to seven birds for producing purposes.

when danger comes in the form of a snake or a monkey, the young hoatzins–maybe three in one family–jump over the side and into the river. They swim about under the water until it is safe to return and then ,using their claws ,lift themselves up through the branches and get back home. When they have learned to fly they lose their claws and escape enemies not by swimming but by flying off ,in a slow and heavy way ,to a neighboring three

One reaction to all the concern about tropical deforestation（毁林）is a blank stare that asks the question, “Since I don’t live there, what does it have to do with me?”

    The answer is that your way of life, wherever you live in the world, is tied to the tropics in many ways. If you live in a house, wash your hair, eat fruits and vegetables, drink soda, or drive a car, you can be certain that you are affected by the loss of tropical forests.

Biologically, we are losing the richest regions on earth when, each minute, a piece of tropical forest, the size of ten city blocks, disappears. As many as five million species of plants, animals, and insects （40 to 50 percent of all living things） live there, and are being lost faster than they can be found and described. Their loss is immeasurable.

Take rubber for example. For many uses, only natural rubber from trees will do, Synthetics are not good enough. Today over half the world’s commercial rubber is produced in Malaysia and Indonesia, while the Amazon’s rubber industry produces much of the world’s four million tons. And rubber is an important material in making gloves, balloons, footwear and many sporting goods. Thousands of other tropical plants are valuable for their industrial use.

Many scientists strongly believe that deforestation contributes to the greenhouse effect-or heating of the earth from increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As we destroy forests, we lose their ability to change carbon dioxide into oxygen.

    Carbon dioxide levels could double within the next half-century, warming the earth by as much as 4.5 degrees. The result? A partial melt-down of polar ice caps, raising sea levels as much as 24 feet; even 15 feet could threaten anyone living within 35 mile. s of the coast. Unbelievable? Maybe. But scientists warn that by the time we realise the severe effects of tropical deforestation, it will be 20 years too late.

Can tropical deforestation affect our everyday lives? Now, you should have got the answer.

Below is a page from a popular magazine.

Most Weight We Can Lift: 455 kilograms

The world's strongest weightlifters can raise 455 kg—but Todd Schroeder, a biokinesiologist at the University of Southern California, thinks they're wimping out(怯懦). Our brains limit the number of muscle fibers activated at any time to keep us from getting hurt. “Turn that safety off, and you can produce a lot more force,” Schroeder says. He thinks optimal training, including mental, may help athletes tap as much as 20% more strength.

Smartest We Can Get: IQ of 198

This honor goes to Abdesselam Jeloul, who set this record in a 2012 adult IQ test. But a few prodigies（天才）aside, if your score approaches Einstein's 160, you're probably at humanity's upper reaches. “Our brain operates close to its information-processing capacity,” says Simon Laughlin, a neurobiologist at University of Cambridge. This is due to a range of electrical trade-offs: if the human brain were to get bigger, it would be less efficient.

Fastest We Can Run: 10.5 metres per second

After Olympic player Usain Bolt broke the 100m world record at 2008 Olympics, Mark Denny, a biologist at Stanford University, wondered whether “Lightning Bolt” had run as fast as a human can go. After having graphed 100m records back to the 1920s, Denny predicts human will reach and stay at about 9.48 seconds over 100m, or 0.10 seconds faster than Bolt's current record of 9.58 seconds(10.44m/s)–a lot speedier in a sport in which differences are measured by 100th a second.  

Most Friends We Can Have: 150 friends

We're not talking about Facebook friends, but real ones that you can depend on. With that criteria, 150 is the limit, says Robn Dunbar, a psychologist at the University of Oxford. This is the number of people you can have a relationship with involving trust and obligation, he says, not just names and faces. Dunbar examined census data on tribal groups, which averaged out 148 members. The same number regularly crops up in modern business. Most famously, the founder of GoreTex insisted on completely separate factory units of 150 workers so people would be more likely to be pairs.

Longest We Can Go Without Sleep: 11 days

In 1964, Randy Gardner, a 17-year-old from San Diego, woke up at 6 am to start his school science project: an attempt to break the world record for days without sleep. He succeeded. Gardner made it to 11 days while William Dement, a Stanford University psychiatrist, documented it and monitored his vital organs. Since then, studies have shown that rats deprived of shut-eye will die within 30 days, and a rare disease called fatal familial insomnia, which stops people from dozing off at all, causes death in a few months to a few years.

Longest We Can Go Without Solid Food: 382 days

Of course, this feat is easier to accomplish if you're obese to start with–which was the case with“Patient A.B.”The 27-year-old, under observation at the University of Dundee in Scotland, weighed 207 kg when he started his fast（禁食）in the 1973 study. With a diet of purely non-calorie food such as yeast and multivitamins, he dropped to 82 kg by the time the study ended, more than a year later. Needless to say: don't try this at home.

   When you're on the go, your best friend and resource can be your phone. In the age of smart phones, apps are like guiding stars: They can point you in the right direction for a hotel, list expenses, send postcards, and much more. When used together, these apps can be the basic travel tool, placing a wealth of information at your fingertips no matter where you are on the planet. U.S. News Travel has picked the essential travel apps, known for their utility and reliability. Best of all, they cost absolutely nothing.

Trip It

Your Personal Travel Agent

   Be your own travel agent and plan every detail of your trip—from car rental to accommodating restaurants—with Trip It. You can make travel schedule by hand, or simply forward the email confirmations of your flight, rental car, train tickets, and hotels to plans.

Weather Free

Your Go-To Meteorologist(气象学者)

  Stop trying to explain the weather forecast on the evening news (particularly when it's in a foreign language). The Weather Free app informs you (in English) of the climate in various locations. It features the local weather, and other key factors that will inform your decision about what to wear before stepping outside.

Goby

Your Event Guru

  When you're in a foreign city, you sometimes look around and ask: Where are all the people? Goby has the answer. This app pinpoints the neighborhood hot spots (including museums, hotels, eateries, and more) in your neighborhood. But its true value comes in finding nearby events. You'll discover concerts, plays, and more right around the corner.

A scientist turns out to be able to see the future by offering each of some four-year-olds a piece of candy and watching how he or she deals with it. Some children reach eagerly for the treat they see. Some last a few minutes before they give in. But others are determined to wait until the last moment. By the time the children reach high school, something remarkable has happened. A survey found that those who as four-year-olds had enough self-control to hold out generally grew up to be more popular, adventurous, confident and dependable. The children who gave in to temptation(诱惑) early on were more likely to be lonely, easily frustrated(沮丧)and inflexible(固守己见的). Actually, the ability to delay reward is a sign of emotional intelligence which doesn't show up on an IQ test.

The hardware of the brain and the software of the mind have long been scientists' concerns. But brain theory can't explain what we wonder about most, like the question why some people remain upbeat in the face of troubles that would sink a less resistant soul. Here comes the theory of Daniel Goleman, writer of Emotional Intelligence: when it comes to predicting people's success, brain ability as measured by IQ may actually matter less than the qualities of mind once thought of as "character".

EQ is not the opposite of IQ. What researchers have been trying to understand is how they work together; how one's ability to handle stress, for instance, affects the ability to concentrate and put intelligence to use. Among the ingredients(要素) for success, researchers now generally agree that IQ counts for about 20%; the rest depends on everything from social class to luck.

While many researchers in this relatively new field are glad to see emotional issues finally taken seriously, some few fear EQ invites misuse.

This could be the perfect gift for the partner, who embarrasses you on the dance floor. Smart socks, which can teach to dance, may be the answer for anyone with two left feet.

The socks have been developed as a running tool to help runners improve their skills. Thanks to the socks, users can accurately（精确地）record not only know far and fast they run but also how well. It means the user maximizes(最大化)theirperformance, and reduces damage to body and prevents hurt. The hi-tech socks are made of special fibers(纤维) that watch the movements of your feet. They look, feel and can be washed like normal clothes.

Sensorsrecordeach movement and send it by an ankle transmitter (脚踝发射器) to a smart phone. Then a “virtual coach” application shows the information and can tell the user what they are doing wrong, and help to improve skill in any task with feet.

The socks should be useful to athletes and weekend joggers. “People think running is so easy and of course everybody can do it but not necessarily safely and well,” Dr Davide Vigano said. A recent study showed that between 60 and 80percent of runners got hurt per year. This is pretty much more than any other human activity. Researchers say the technology can also be developed to teach people how to dance, play sports such golf, or even to help to teach women to walk better in high heels.

Mr. Vigano said, “People could all benefit from the idea. We have had interest from all sorts of sports, like skiing, football, cycling and golf. Anything where you have to use your feet can use it. It could even be put in high heels to help women walk in them safely.”

Socks are just the start, and the technology could be used in gloves, hats and boots. The socks, anklet and software package, are expected to be sold for around￡120, which will go onsalein March.