It is interesting to see that the force of only 6 or 7 people pushing in the same direction can cause up to 1,000 pounds of force-enough to break brick walls. During a deadly stampede(逃奔), people can even die standing up. People die when pressure is put to their bodies in a front to back direction, causing them not to be able to breathe.

If you are in a crowd, the first and most important thing is to make yourself familiar with your surroundings and find different exits. No matter where you are, make sure you always know how to get out. Make yourself aware of the type of the ground you are standing on, and know that in a crowd of moving people wet ground can cause you to fall.

When in danger, a few seconds can make a difference, giving you the possibility of making use of your escaping route. Always stay closer to the escape route. If you find yourself in the middle of a moving crowd, do not fight against the pressure, do not stand still or sit down, because you can easily get trampled（踩踏）. Instead, move in the same direction of the crowd; make use of any space that may open up to move sideways to the crowd movement where the flow is weaker.Keep your hands up by your chest, like a boxer-it gives you movement and protects your chest. If you fall, get up quickly. If you can’t get up because you are injured, get someone to pull you up. If you have kids, lift them up.

If you fall and cannot get up, keep moving in the same direction of the crowd, or if that is not possible, then cover your head with your arms; do not lie on your stomach or back.

Noise-cancelling audio instruments have been around for a while now，but one Berlin-based designer believes that blocking “visual noise” is as important，if not more so，as cancelling out unwanted sounds．To this end he has created a simple accessory（配件） called the Focus Cap．

Open work spaces definitely have their benefits，but they come with the drawback of offering employees little to no control over visual distractions(干扰)．With so many people around and so much going on，some of us can easily get disturbed by this information overload and lose focus in what’s really important．That’s where the Focus Cap comes into play．

“As we are still cavemen or mammals kept in an unnatural environment，I believe that only by reclaiming(收回) the normal，stress-free human state through simple tools and techniques can we finally release our actual creative potential and create our meaningful work for a brighter future，”says German designer Hannes Greblin，inventor of the Focus Cap．

After looking at other products designed at minimizing visual distractions，Greblin decided that most of them were either too expensive or too uncomfortable to become mainstream，so he decided to go with something much simpler —a simple cap with a retractable visor (可伸缩的帽沿)．

Greblin’s Focus Cap is really straightforward．You just wear it like a regular cap with the sides of the visor retracted，and just collapse the sides whenever you need to focus on what’s ahead of you．Whether you’re trying to focus on a task in an open work office, trying to study at university，or practicing yoga in a park and trying to ignore stares from strangers，the Focus Cap can help．

To be honest，this whole project sounds like a joke，but the Focus Cap does have its own website where people interested in this unusual accessory can actually sign up for updates on when it will go on sale．Greblin claims it will cost 30 euros($37) plus shipping．

A horse named Nunki died in Bahamian forest in July 2015, marking the end of the Abaco Island horse. But thanks to 21^st-century technology, the extinction may be temporary. Two years on, Milanne Rehor, head of the Wild Horses of Abaco Preservation Society, has received approval from the Bahamian government for an ambitious plan: using Nunki’s DNA to clone the species back into being.

How horses came to the Abaco Islands remains a mystery, but their root can go back to the horses brought by Spanish explorers to the Americas 500 years ago. No Abaco Island horses were born after 1999. When Nunki died, the species disappeared.

“When you get down to the point where there are no more individuals alive of a species, cloning is your only chance,” says Katrin Hinrichs, a vet at Texas A&M University. Cloning extinct animals can work, though it comes with limitations.

Upon Nunki’s death in 2015, Rehor had a vet collect tissue and send the sample to a Texas cloning laboratory, ViaGen.

Cloning is hardly guaranteed, but it is possible. Hinrichs warns, however, that cloning will not save the Abaco Island horse in the long run. Even if it is too late to bring back a herd of pure Abaco Island horses, there’s still value in preserving Nunki’s genes.

Because clones keep genes alive, and cloned horses can breed（繁殖）naturally, “cloning offers an amazing opportunity to improve the gene pool of gene-limited species,” says Hinrichs, Saving Nunki’s genes could one day add outside genetics to a herd that is facing an evolutionary bottleneck. The precise benefits Abaco genes could give aren’t known, says Gus Cothran, a vet at Texas A&M University. However, when Cothran compared the Abaco Island horse’s DNA against a database of horse species, he found it had preserved its Old World genes, Thus, Cothran says, saving the genes is worth the effort. “It’s an insurance policy. You’re trying to keep insurance policy. You’re trying to keep something that you may need in the future, but you don’t yet know that you need it.”

The way we get about has a deep influence on the way welive－affecting where we set up home, work and holiday. So what changes might come in the way we get around? What big ideas are out there, and do they have any chance of coming true?

Personal Air Travel

The idea: flying cars

Developments in light small plane technology will make it possible for everyone to own what are, in fact, flying cars. They will have closed cabins, heating, stereos and room for two people.

You will take off from a field near your home and fly to towns and cities. After landing, you will take off the fixed wing and continue your journey by road just as if you were traveling by car.

Fuel efficient engines and the advantage of being able to travel in the sky will keep costs and the environmental influence down.

Flying for Fun

The idea: Jet Packs

The idea was a hit when a stuntman (特技演员) flew around on one during the opening ceremony of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, which was very successful.

You’ll be able to use the equipment—roughly the size of two scuba (呼吸器) tanks fastened to your back－for short journeys.

They will be handy for cleaning hard-to-reach windows, arriving in style at a party and shopping.

Taxis

The idea: driverless taxis

These computer-controlled taxis will take you wherever you want along a fixed route, whenever you want to go.

For the price of one person’s bus fare, several people can ride at speeds of up to 25 mph, and there will be fences to guard against accidents.

There will be little, if any, wait for the use of the taxis, which will leave from stations and will be used by prepaid cards.

The taxis, which will travel on a 1.5 m-wide track, will use 75% less energy per passenger than a car and 50% less than a bus.

We can stay young forever. That is the message Dr. Shen Ziyin wants to give the world. And the Chinese doctor claims(声称) that he has found an answer to the problems of aging.

His solution(解决办法) is a herbal medicine to slow the process of aging.

  Dr. Shen Ziyin has been trained in Western medicine. At the same time he studied traditional Chinese medicine. And, he has been working for the past forty years to put together the best of both and find a cure for aging. He has taken a hint(线索) from the ancient Chinese medicine system called “shen”.

According to Shen, it is the kidney(肾) which adjusts the functioning of the body as well as its aging process. It is responsible for the level of activity that the human bodies go through. Studies conducted by Dr. Shen show that herbal medicine based on the shen system slow the aging process, says a report in The Telegraph newspaper.

We notice that when people grow old, they have reduced strength, loss of hair, backache, weakness in general, and wrinkles, among others. This happens because when people grow old, their bodies produce T-cells. These T-cells contain a particular substance called Fas. Fas makes the cells in the body destruct themselves.

So the only way to slow down aging is to slow the production of T-cells in the body. This can happen if people eat low calorie food. Then the body is not active enough to produce extra T-cells. But, is going hungry all the time a good price to pay for staying young?

This is where Dr. Shen’s herbal medicine comes in. But how effective it will be, only time can tell.

    A food additive is any substance that is added to food. Many people are put off by the idea of “chemicals in food”. The truth is that all food is made up of chemicals. Natural substances like milk, as well as man-made ones like drinks on sale in the market, can be described by chemical formulas. Some chemical substances are indeed harmful, but a person who refused to consume any chemicals would find nothing to eat.

The things we eat can be divided into natural and man-made substances. Some people feel that only natural foods are healthy and that all man-made ingredients are to be avoided. But many natural chemicals, found in plants and animals, are harmful when eaten, and some laboratory-made substances increase the nutritional value of food. Other chemicals have natural and man-made forms that are exactly alike: Vitamin C is Vitamin C, whether it comes from a test tube or from an orange. Like “chemical”, “man-made” doesn’t necessarily mean “not fit to eat”.

Food additives are used for many reasons. We add sugar and salt and other things to foods we prepare at home to make them taste better. Food producers have developed a range of additives that stabilize, thicken, harden, keep dry, keep wet, keep firm, or improve the appearance of their products. Additives can make food more convenient or nutritious, give it a longer shelf life, and make it more attractive to the consumer, thus increasing the sales and profits of the producers. 

Food additives are presently the centre of a storm of serious argument. Food producers have been known to use additives that have not been proved safe; some substances in common use have been proved unsafe and have been taken off the market. Many people feel there’s a risk of eating food to which anything has been added. But food additives are now regulated by the FDA of the federal government, and new additives are subjected to strict testing before they can be placed on the market. For most people, the chances of developing serious side effects from the long-term use of presently approved food additives are very slim.

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Throughout history, people have written about animal rains. Some records from about 2,000 years ago tell about fish and frog falling from the sky. There is one place where animal rain is common. In the city of Yoro, in Honduras, fish fall from the sky in May or June every year. The fish are small and silver-colored. They are even still alive. People can collect the fish to eat. But where have the fish come from?

There are some theories about animal rains. Some researchers say the fish are fresh water fish. The fish are also all blind. This leads them to believe the fish usually live under theground. They would not need tosee.

Another theory held by most researchers is that water spouts make most animal rains happen. A water spout is a tall stream of water that the wind pulls up from the sea during a violent storm. Water spouts are strong enough to lift small animals, like fish, from the water. So during a storm, a water spout gathers fish from the water into clouds. Then the clouds travel across land, following normal weather movements. Finally, the storm ends. The fish drop to land.

However, this theory does have some problems. Many people do not believe the rain of fish in Yoro comes from a water spout. That is because most animal rains do not happen often---or a year after year. But the rain of fish in Yoro happens every year, near the same time. And it has happened for over 100 years in this way!

People may never know the scientific reason behind Yoro’s rain of fish. But the people of Yoro do not need a scientific explanation. They call it a miracle (奇迹).