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大家好!胖胖翔来了!最近高温肆虐,多喝水,多吃菜,少吃肉!越障部分有关极限运动,图片很给力~ Part I：Speed
【Time 1】
Article 1 A Shot of Coffee That Gets You Drunk
Now you can get a new kind of buzz from coffee. Researchers have found a way to turn used coffee grounds into an alcoholic beverage. In recent years, the industry of distilled spirits has put out a call for new beverages with different flavors created from unusual raw materials. To answer this call, some scientists examined the potential of used coffee grounds. The scientists first collected this raw material from a Portuguese coffee roasting company and dried it. Then they heated the powder in water at 163°C for 45 minutes, separated out the liquid, and added sugar. Next, the team mixed in yeast cells, let the concoction ferment, and concentrated the sample to get a higher alcohol content. (A similar process is used to produce other distilled beverages such as whiskey and rum from wheat and molasses.) And voilà! Used coffee grounds produced a new alcoholic beverage with 40% ethanol, comparable to other hard liquor such as vodka and tequila, researchers will report in the September issue of LWT - Food Science and Technology. To evaluate the product, eight trained taste testers were brought in and rated the intensity of different smells and flavors in the alcohol. The judges described the drink as smelling like coffee and tasting bitter and pungent. Researchers noted that the taste could be improved with age and concluded that the quality was good enough for consumption. Don’t count on the caffeine to keep you awake, however; most of it disappears in the brewing process.
字数[251] Resource: http://news.sciencemag.org/technology/2013/08/scienceshot-shot-coffee-gets-you-drunk
【Time 2】 Article 2 How Dogs Show Their Love
Want to know if your dog loves you? Watch his left eyebrow. Researchers have used high-speed video cameras to capture the subtle facial expressions of 12 dogs of various breeds. Each animal was led into a room divided by a curtained partition. Then the curtains briefly parted, and the dog might see its owner (who was instructed to show no emotions), an unfamiliar person, or an object the dog loved, such as a squeaky ball, or an object it feared, such as nail clippers, for 800 milliseconds. The scientists marked the dogs’ faces with blue tape to pinpoint their facial tics. The dogs’ facial expressions varied in response to what they saw, the scientists will report in an upcoming issue of Behavioural Processes. When the dogs saw a person, they lifted their eyebrows—and if the person was their owner, they raised their left eyebrow even higher. (In the video, the poodle’s eyes widen slightly as its eyebrows rise and ears drop when its straight-faced owner appears.) Strangers caused the dogs to move their left ears back slightly, a sign of caution. Beloved toys elicited no response, but those dreaded nail clippers caused dogs to twitch their right ears—perhaps a sign of a learned response, which is governed by the left side of the brain. Some of the results are puzzling, the researchers say, because previous research showed that dogs’ positive emotions are displayed on the right side of their faces. Why then did the pooches raise their left eyebrows upon seeing their owners? It may be due to mixed emotions—something dogs were not known to experience. While seeing their owners made the animals happy, they were blocked by the partition from reaching out for that all important touch—which made them sad.
字数[246] Resource: http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/08/video-how-dogs-show-their-love
【Time 3】 Article 3 Fibre Protects Against Cardiovascular Disease, Especially in Women
Foods high in fiber provide good protection against cardiovascular disease, and the effect is particularly marked in women. The new study, which was recently published in the scientific journal PLoS One, involved the study of the eating habits of over 20,000 residents of the Swedish city of Malmö, with a focus on the risk of cardiovascular disease. The importance of 13 different nutrient variables (aspects of fibre, fats, proteins and carbohydrates) was analysed.
"Women who ate a diet high in fibre had an almost 25 per cent lower risk of suffering from cardiovascular disease compared with women who ate a low-fibre diet. In men the effect was less pronounced. However, the results confirmed that a high-fibre diet does at least protect men from stroke," says Peter Wallström, a researcher at Lund University and the primary author of the article.
The exact reason for the difference between the sexes is unclear. However, a probable explanation is that women consume fibre from healthier food sources than men do. Women ate a lot of fibre in the form of fruit and vegetables, whereas the most important source of fibre for men was bread.
"The difference in the results for men and women shows that we need to pay more attention to gender when we conduct research on diet," says Peter Wallström.
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【Time 4】
However, the researchers did not identify any definite links between the other nutrients in the study and cardiovascular disease, for example the proportion of saturated fat or sugar in the diet. "These results should be interpreted with a certain amount of caution. Almost everyone eats more saturated fat than recommended, including the participants in many other population studies. It is therefore difficult to compare recommended and high fat intake. Other types of study that have been carried out have shown that those who limit their fat and sugar intake are at lower risk of cardiovascular disease," says Peter Wallström.
Peter Wallström is skeptical of 'extreme' diets and says that the dietary recommendations from the National Food Administration are good, despite having received criticism: "The National Food Administration's dietary advice, which is based on extensive research, is well balanced. In the short term, most weight-loss diets achieve their aim as long as you follow them. However, we know too little about the long-term effects to be able to recommend more drastic changes to one's diet," says Peter Wallström.
Data for the study has been taken from the Malmö Diet and Cancer population study, which has involved 30,000 Malmö residents since the start of the 1990s. The participants have given blood samples and detailed information about their diet.
字数[384] Resource: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120416112920.htm
【Time 5】
Article 4 Graveyard of Iceballs Past
The asteroid belt has long been thought a dull place. But in recent years, astronomers have spotted objects that occasionally spew small amounts of water vapor or dust—possibly because they’ve recently collided with something else. Now, scientists propose that most if not all of these objects may be shedding dust or water vapor because they’re the barely active remnants of comets that are now largely bereft of surface ice. These objects—a total of 11 bodies, which the researchers dub asteroidal belt comets (ABCs)—are either close to the end of cometary life as we know it, or they’ve recently been reactivated because gravitational perturbations of Jupiter (large planet located outside the asteroid belt in each image) have nudged the bodies into orbits that now pass closer to the sun. Along parts of those new paths, heat can penetrate more deeply and reach ice previously insulated by a surface layer of dust (yielding a solar system that today looks like the artist’s representation at top). On average, the surface layers of dust on those objects average at least 1.8 meters thick, the researchers report in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. But in the solar system’s early days, before surface ice evaporated from those bodies, comets were both more numerous and more active (bottom), the researchers contend. If that’s true, nighttime skies of the distant past must have been spectacular indeed.
字数[234] Resource: http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/08/scienceshot-graveyard-iceballs-past
Part II： Obstacle
【Time 6】
Article 5
Tough Mudder Death Shows Risk of Extreme Endurance Events A sports physician and psychologist share safety tips to reduce risk.
The first fatality in a Tough Mudder endurance event this past weekend raises a dire prospect that's typically far from the minds of participants or buried in the fine print of contracts.
Such extreme activities, with names like Rugged Maniac and Warrior Dash, have surged in popularity. Their novelty challenges include crawling under live wires, plunging into an icy dumpster, and dangling from monkey bars coated with butter and mud.
At best, such obstacle courses push mental and physical stamina and build teamwork; at worst, people get injured or even die.
After the Tough Mudder in Gerrardstown, West Virginia, this past weekend, 20 participants were treated at the local hospital, including two people with heart attacks and several people with hypothermia, head injuries, and orthopedic injuries. Avishek Sengupta, a 28-year-old from Maryland, drowned. His death has been ruled an accident after he jumped from a plank into a pool of muddy water during the race.
In April 2012, a 30-year-old man died in Texas after a similar event called The Original Mud Run. Two men died in a Warrior Dash in Missouri later that summer.
Tough Mudder is a nine- to 12-mile (14- to 19-kilometer) endurance challenge that bills itself as "probably the toughest event on the planet." An estimated 750,000 people have participated in Tough Mudder courses since 2010, running through mud and over obstacles. There are more than 50 Tough Mudder events planned for the rest of this year in the U.S., Australia, Japan, South Africa, and Europe. The company that puts on the events says that its courses are designed with safety experts, and that emergency personnel are present.
To reduce risk of competing in such events, sport psychologists and physicians emphasize preparation and awareness. We asked two experts—Justin Anderson of Premier Sport Psychology in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, and Dave Olson, a team physician for the Minnesota Vikings—to share their insights on extreme activities. (Quiz: Are You a Risk Taker?)
Justin Anderson, a sport psychologist, on extreme endurance events:
The term "extreme" has been applied to everything from Tough Mudder to Ironman to things like heli-skiing or BASE jumping. What makes a sport extreme?
It depends on whom you ask, but I think "extreme sports" include anything that's on the fringe of the mainstream and can be incredibly grueling or incredibly dangerous. All of those activities fit those categories.
Why do you think endurance events like Tough Mudder have become so popular?
Humans always want to continue to push the envelope. People tend to feel most content when they're growing and hitting or exceeding goals. Then there are additional gains like triggering dopamine in the brain—it acts as a natural high, and we can feel euphoric once we've completed one of these things.
There's also this identity factor of being someone who's tough and a go-getter. Finally there's the community; we get to interact with folks like ourselves who are high achievers, and that can be a really attractive thing.
What should anyone who participates in an extreme activity consider before they go out there?
It's important to be mindful of why we're getting into these activities and see if it's really worth it. When our dopamine levels get triggered, it becomes a natural high. What tends to happen is it takes more and more to get that psychological and biochemical effect, so we push and say we can go to this next level.
Also be careful not to be too caught up in the "rah rah" of the event. Once you jump into these things, it can be really seductive—that social persuasion of "let's go," even though your body and mind might be saying to slow down or take it back a notch.
Do people tend to overestimate their ability to do these endurance events? Underestimate the risks?
It depends on the person. Certainly a lot of people overestimate their ability. Ask yourself what you're doing to get your body prepared. Pay attention to your body and mind, especially when it's telling you to stop. That's the beauty of endurance sports like Ironman—the athletes are incredibly tough and they've learned in training how to focus on other things when they're running through cramps or their body wants to stop.
But the key is knowing which signals to pay attention to and which ones not to, and that comes from years of experience of knowing your body and its limits.
When you talk about the difference between pros and amateurs, we say pros practice far, far more than they play, and amateurs play far more than they practice. In the case of high-level athletes, they do a lot of training and understand what the extremes are. They know they have to build up to them. I recommend getting to know the process because these things are much more challenging than they appear, both mentally and physically.
Dave Olson, a team physician for the Minnesota Vikings, on preparedness:
What's the minimum training you would recommend for an event like Tough Mudder?
These events are tricky for sports medicine doctors. With sports teams we really get to see the athletes and review their histories. With mass events like Tough Mudder or a marathon, pretty much the only requirement is to sign up and think you're ready to do it.
Train smart for an event, ideally over a series of months to ramp up your activity, and get a medical checkup to make sure it's safe for you to do so. Tough Mudder events can be tricky because with, say, marathons, people go online and can read about how to train. But with events like Tough Mudder being new and different, a lot of times we see people going because friends say, "You should come do this." They may do some runs but often they don't end up doing the training they need to prepare. People have to be realistic and look at their medical background.
How do you best avoid injury on the day of the event?
Hydration is big, and equipment—making sure you're dressed properly and have good shoes that have been worn before so you don't get blisters, that kind of thing. If it's 100°F (38°C) out, have the proper shirt. And have an extra set of clothes for when you're done—something warm to put on in case you've been through an icy stretch. Dress smartly, look at the weather, and plan ahead.
To Justin's point about knowing which body signals to pay attention to and which to plow through, how do you know when you should stop?
It can be really tricky. I think it's hard for an athlete who hasn't been doing a lot of training—the first signal like chest pain might already be too late. You have to really listen to early signals like dizziness, cramping, and listen to them as warning signs. It's hard in those events because it's a group event—there's a lot of cheering and pushing through—but you really have to be smart about it, especially if you're not well trained.
字数[1184] Resource: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130424-tough-mudder-death-extreme-endurance-sports-risk-safety/ | 
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发表于 2013-8-6 21:18:16
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