Some interesting things

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This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.
It's straight out of a horror movie: an ant, infected with a fungus, starts behaving strangely. It crawls as high as it can in the forest, grabs a leaf or twig in its mouth and bites. Hard.
"It enters into this 'death-grip phenotype' is what we call it." Colleen Mangold, a molecular biologist at Penn State. "And then a couple hours after initiation of that behavior the ant will die."
The fungus, known as Ophiocordyceps, then eats through the corpse and sprouts a stalk from the ant's body to release more spores and infect more ants. It's a harsh way to go.
"It's not ideal, definitely not ideal."
Mangold and her colleagues wanted to get to the bottom of why the ants do this—specifically, how they get their death grip. So they dissected infected ants and zoomed in on their jaw muscles with electron microscopes.

They saw that the fungus had invaded and grown into jaw muscle cells, perhaps to suck up nutrients. And they spotted lots of mysterious tiny particles, which might be produced by the ant's immune system—or by the fungus, as a way of communicating with the muscle and forcing it to contract.
Whatever the mechanism, they found that the ant's jaw muscles had contracted so hard, they'd been irreparably damaged. The full details—and gory pictures—are in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Mangold hopes to get to the bottom of what those tiny particles do in follow-up work. And in the meantime, unless you're a carpenter ant, rest assured you have nothing to worry about.
"It's highly species specific. I seriously doubt we'll be seeing any real-life human zombies anytime soon."
Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

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THE STORY OF BREAD

Alice Thompson Paine
All over the world people are eating bread—rye bread, corn bread, wheat bread, rice bread, even oat bread. We may call bread the most important food in the world. Thousands of people are busy every day making it for us, and wonderful machines have been invented to help them make enough for the great hungry mouth of the world.
When the Swiss Family Robinson were cast away on a desert island, do you remember how they made bread? They dug roots and ground them to a pulp. Then, after squeezing out the juice, they made the pulp into little flat cakes, which they baked. When they did this, they were making bread in the very same way that it was made away I back in the beginning of things. Nobody knows when people first began to make bread, but it was probably the first thing that primitive men and women cooked for themselves after they passed the first rude stages of eating raw meat and fish, or berries and roots.

changkongceyi

咖啡还跟得上你不

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I walk into the coffee shop and breathe in deep, savoring that familiar aroma. The smell of coffee, with a hint of hazelnut, vanilla, mocha,
and just a touch of cinnamon. There’s only one place in the world other than a coffee shop that smells like that—Grandmother’s house.
Grandmother didn’t just like her coffee, and it wouldn’t really do her justice to say she loved her coffee. Grandmother was to coffee what a sommelier is to wine.
She knew the intricacies of coffee, the different tastes and even the textures. And only the best would do for her. No instant coffee, or coffee bought at the grocery store.
She had to have fresh coffee, from a respectable coffee shop. “The morning cup of coffee sets the tone for the whole day,” she used to say.　
I used to go to Grandmother’s every Sunday morning. Her routine was always the same. She would kiss me once on each cheek, hang up my coat
and lead me into the kitchen, slice a piece of banana bread right out of the oven (sometimes cranberry), and pour a cup of freshly brewed coffee.　　
“Alexa,” she said to me one day. “Did you know that every person’s personality is like a flavor of coffee?”　
“Really?” I said, amused at how Grandmother relished her coffee so much that she related everything to it.　　
“Ye” she said. “You, my dear, are French vanilla. You are sweet, almost sickeningly so at times to the discerning coffee drinker.”
I slightly recoiled at Grandmother’s assessment of me. You expect your grandmother to call you sweet, but never sickeningly sweet.　
“Your father is espresso,” she continued. “He comes on strong. There are many people who don’t like him,
but others can’t live without that high feeling that he gives them. He has an addictive personality that many people can’t let go of.”　　
“Let me gues Grandmother. You’re hazelnut.”“Hazelnut? Why on earth would you say that?”　　
“Because I find your coffee talk a bit nutty.”I smiled at Grandmother, but I could tell she was not amused.
“Alexa dear, I am trying to teach you a lesson about life here. I do not need you poking fun at me.”　　
A lesson about life? Is she kidding? “Grandmother, you can’t dissect a person’s personality by comparing them to a cup of coffee.
People are more complex than that. Everyone has nuance personality quirk things that make them different.
You just can’t go around saying, ‘She’s a dark roast, he’s an instant, he’s a mocha almond.’”　
Grandmother looked at me, almost a blank, dull stare. “Then you just don’t understand coffee,” she snapped, clearing my plate and coffee cup from the table.
“I guess not,” I sighed, exasperated at my hazelnut grandmother.　　I went to Grandmother’s house many more times after that, and she always kept her same routine.
It was a welcome routine, one that I enjoyed every week. Grandmother didn’t talk to me after that about the “coffee catastrophe” as I called it,
but eventually, she did start to make more ridiculous claims concerning her favorite drink.　
“I knew your grandfather was the right man for me because we loved our coffee the same way,” she said. “Cream with just a touch of sugar.”　　
I rolled my eyes. “Grandmother, many people like it that way.” 　“I disagree,” she said. “For most people, if they prefer cream,
they like a lot of sugar, or at least a moderate amount. Those who drink it with just a touch of sugar usually put milk in it, or drink it black.”　　
“So what if Papa preferred his coffee black? Or with milk and sweetener? Does that mean that you would have never married? That I wouldn’t be here today?”　
“Oh don’t be silly,” Grandmother said. “I won’t think about your grandfather preferring his coffee any differently. I don’t know what would have become of us.
But you, my dear Alexa, belong to me. You would be here no matter what.” The last time I saw Grandmother was a Sunday just like all the others.
I sat down at the table with Grandmother and she looked at me with a very intense look in her eyes. “Do you ever think about heaven?” she asked me.　
I stared at Grandmother and stopped chewing for a moment.　“Well, do you?” she asked again.　　
“Umm, not really,” I said, growing increasingly uncomfortable with this line of conversation. “Well, I’ve been thinking about it lately,” Grandmother said.
“I mean, I am getting to that age where I realize that I don’t have much more time here on earth. And I’ve just been thinking lately about heaven—
and what’s there and what’s not. And I just hope that when it’s my time to leave this world, the next one has everything that I love here.”　
“And what’s that, Grandmother?”“Good food, good people, and good coffee.”　I smiled at Grandmother’s simplicity and love for the good things in life.
And I hoped that she would find exactly what she would be looking for in the next world.　
Grandmother passed away later that week. They found her sitting in her favorite rocker in the living room, half a cup of freshly brewed coffee by her side.
And somehow, I knew that it was a sign that everything would be all right for Grandmother.　Now, years later, I’m frequently reminded of my Grandmother.
The scent of freshly baked banana bread, or the way someone will kiss me on my cheek will bring a quick flashback of her.
But my memories are always most vivid when I step foot into a coffee shop, the aroma of freshly roasted beans and brewed coffee livening my senses.　　
“What would you like?” the person at the counter asks me. “A medium hazelnut,” I say. “Cream with just a touch of sugar.” 　　

阿say

It took me XX years to sit with you and have coffee .

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Attaining Moral Perfection

In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with in my reading, I found the catalogue more or less numerous，as different writers included more or fewer ideas under the same name. I proposed to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use rather more names，with fewer ideas annexed to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurred to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which fully expressed the extent I gave to its meaning.
These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
1.TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2.SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3.ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4.RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5.FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6.INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7.SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8.JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9.MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10.CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11.TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12.CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13.HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judged it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone through the thirteen; and, as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arranged them with that view, as they stand above. Temperance first，as it tends to procure that coolness and clearness of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to be kept up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of ancient habits，and the force of perpetual temptations. This being acquired and established, Silence would be more easy; and my desire being to gain knowledge at the same time that I improved in virtue, and considering that in conversation it was obtained rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue, and therefore wishing to break a habit I was getting into of prattling, punning，and joking，which only made me acceptable to trifling company, I gave Silence the second place. This and the next, Order, I expected would allow me more time for attending to my project and my studies. Resolution, once become habitual, would keep me firm in my endeavors to obtain all the subsequent virtues; Frugality and Industry freeing me from my remaining debt, and producing affluence and independence, would make more easy the practice of Sincerity and Justice, etc., etc. Conceiving then, that, agreeably to the advice of Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, daily examination would be necessary.

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Eight years ago, the jury in the trial of Casey Anthony announced their verdict. "As to the charge of first-degree murder, verdict as to count one, we the jury find the defendant not guilty."
Anthony had been charged with murdering her two-year-old daughter. But like the murder charge, the jury's decision for additional charges of aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter were again "not guilty."
"That created this huge outcry." Christopher Ferguson, a clinical psychologist at Stetson University in central Florida, not far from where the trial occurred. "There was kind of like this narrative that she got preferential treatment, maybe not on purpose, but that the jury was more sympathetic to her because she was this pretty young female and that kind of conflicted with people's impression of who a murderer is."
Mock trial studies have suggested that attractive people have an edge in the criminal justice system. So Ferguson and his colleagues looked into that stereotype using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the largest long-term study of people who began participating in the study as teens.

The interviewers asked the youths some multitude of questions—and also rated the respondents' degree of attractiveness, a measure that's been used to examine links to health and wealth.
In this case, Ferguson and his team looked at a subset of nearly 8,800 respondents and examined the correlation between attractiveness and arrest, conviction and sentencing. After controlling for things like gender, race and socioeconomic status, they found that attractiveness did have a protective effect—but only for females.
"Girls or women who are more attractive were less likely to be arrested if they'd committed a crime and less likely to be convicted if they were arrested for that crime. However, it did not have any impact on their sentencing. So once they were convicted, attractiveness conveyed no further benefits." The results are in the journal Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.
It's just a correlation, of course, and there are limitations. The attractiveness ratings were an average of four different interviewers' assessments, made over a dozen years. But beauty, as they say, is in the eyes of the beholder. And the effects weren't huge. Still, Ferguson says, "being sort of alert to our stereotypes and prejudices sometimes can help us combat them a little bit" — and perhaps get us closer to the ideal that justice should be blind.

迷茫的维修

Love me love my body love my coffee