- Black-colored plastic used for kitchen utensils and toys linked to banned toxic flame retardants
- ‘Chroming’ is killing some kids. Experts explain this trend
- A junk dealer found a painting in a basement. Experts say it’s an original Picasso
- Why this mischievous 95-year-old is messing with Mickey Mouse
- AI helps uncover hundreds of unknown ancient symbols hidden in Peru’s Nazca Desert
- New DNA analysis unravels the mystery of ‘lost prince’ Kaspar Hauser
Black-colored plastic used for kitchen utensils and toys linked to banned toxic flame retardants
廚具和兒童玩具中所使用到的黑色塑膠與被禁用的阻燃劑有關
Health
Black-colored plastic used in children’s toys, takeout containers, kitchen utensils and grocery meat and produce trays may contain alarming levels of toxic flame retardants that may be leaching from electronic products during recycling, a new study found. Based on exposure to contaminated black plastic kitchen utensils such as spatulas and slotted spoons, study researchers estimated a person could be exposed to an average of 34.7 parts per million of decaBDE each day. “It was especially concerning that they found retardants that aren’t supposed to be used anymore,” said toxicologist Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program. “I would recommend not using black plastic for food contact materials or buying toys with black plastic pieces,” said Birnbaum, who was not involved in the study. Experts say there are ways that consumers can reduce their risk from flame retardants. “Replace your plastic kitchen utensils with stainless steel options or choose plastic free items to help reduce your overall exposure to harmful additives and plastic,” Liu said. “Some manufacturers also have strong policies about removing retardants from their products, so you can also be a careful shopper.”
---from CNN
黑色塑膠常被用於製作兒童玩具、外帶容器、廚房用具、超市裡承裝肉類及農產品的托盤，但一項新研究發現，這些塑膠可能含有高濃度的有毒阻燃劑，而這些物質可能是從回收的電子產品中滲出的。 研究人員估計——基於暴露在受污染的黑色塑膠廚房用具，如刮刀和帶孔舀勺下——每人每天可能會接觸到平均34.7 ppm的DecaBDE（十溴二苯醚）。 「特別令人擔憂的是，他們發現了一些不應再被使用的阻燃劑，」前美國國家環境健康科學研究所和國家毒理學計劃主任Linda Birnbaum說。 「我建議不要再使用黑色塑膠作為與食品接觸的材料，或購買含有黑色塑膠零件的玩具」Birnbaum補充。（她並未參與該研究） 專家表示，消費者可以採取一些措施來降低接觸這些阻燃劑的風險。 「用不銹鋼廚具替換你的塑膠廚具，或選擇無塑料產品，以減少你整體接觸到有害添加劑和塑膠的機會」，Liu說：「一些製造商也有嚴格強硬的政策，將阻燃劑從他們的產品中移除，因此你在選購時應該更謹慎。」
---摘錄翻譯自CNN
‘Chroming’ is killing some kids. Experts explain this trend
專家表明，「吸食金屬漆的潮流」正在殘害兒童
Health
For the younger generation, “chroming” is the new huffing. The dangerous practice is a means of getting high via inhaling hydrocarbons by misusing a variety of legal products, including permanent markers, aerosol deodorant, nail polish, metallic paint, computer duster, carburetor cleaner, paint thinners, gasoline and hair spray, said Dr. Anthony Pizon, professor of emergency medicine and chief of the division of medical toxicology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The term comes from the aftereffect of inhaling metallic paints sprayed on a rag, which leaves a chrome or metallic residue on one’s face, Pizon said. Consequences of repeated chroming can include poor performance at school, kidney or liver dysfunction, electrolyte disturbances, neuropathy, addiction, brain or heart damage, memory and concentration problems, ulcers, nosebleeds, mental health disorders, and mood changes such as apathy, paranoia or irritability, experts said. Preventing kids from chroming can be difficult since the items used are often household or hobby items. But if there are any products you don’t need or don’t use often, get rid of them or lock them up, Pizon said. If you notice chroming is a recurring problem for your child, they may have a dependency they can’t easily stop despite your intervention, Pizon said. Ask their primary care provider for professional resources in your area.
---from CNN
對年輕世代來說，吸食金屬漆（chroming）已經成為新的吸嗅劑行為。 這種危險的行為是通過吸入碳氫化合物來獲取快感，並涉及濫用多種合法的產品，比如永久性簽字筆、噴霧除臭劑、指甲油、金屬漆、電腦除塵劑、化油器清潔劑、稀釋劑、汽油和髮膠等等，匹茲堡大學醫學院急診醫學教授兼醫學毒理學部主任Anthony Pizon博士這樣說。 Pizon博士解釋道，Chroming這個術語來源於吸入噴在布上的金屬漆後，會在臉上留下鉻等金屬殘留物的效果。 專家表示，反覆chroming的後果包括學習表現變差、腎臟或肝臟功能不全、電解質紊亂、神經病變、成癮、大腦或心臟損傷、記憶和專注力問題、潰瘍、鼻出血、心理健康問題、冷漠、偏執甚至是易怒等情緒變化。 防止孩子chroming可能會很困難，因為他們使用的物品通常是居家用品。Pizon博士建議，如果家裡有不需要或不常使用的產品，就應該丟棄或鎖起來。 Pizon博士說，如果你注意到孩子反覆出現chroming問題，他們可能已經上癮，即使有你的干預，他們也無法輕易戒掉。可以諮詢家庭醫生，或尋求當地的專業醫療資源。
---摘錄翻譯自CNN
A junk dealer found a painting in a basement. Experts say it’s an original Picasso
一個舊貨商在地下室發現一幅畫，專家說這是畢卡索的真跡
Culture
Luigi Lo Rosso used to spend his days combing abandoned houses and landfills in search of treasure to sell in the family’s pawn shop in Pompeii, Italy. In 1962, he found a rolled-up canvas with an asymmetrical painting of a woman in the basement of the villa on the nearby island of Capri. At just 24, Lo Rosso didn’t appreciate that the signature in the upper left corner of the artwork that read simply “Picasso” meant anything, his son Andrea Lo Rosso told CNN on Tuesday. The older Lo Rosso, who died in 2021, stuck it in a cheap frame and gave it to his wife — much to her chagrin, his son said.She didn’t think it was pretty enough to sell, so it hung in the family home for about 50 years and later in a restaurant they owned. In the 1980s, when Andrea Lo Rosso was in grade school, he saw Picasso’s “Buste de femme Dora Maar” in an art history textbook and learned that the Spanish painter spent time in Capri in the 1950s. He then told his parents the painting might just be of value. Thus began a decades-long journey to authenticate the signature on the artwork. The artwork has been locked in a vault in Milan since 2019. Finally, last month Cinzia Altieri, a graphologist for a patrimony court in Milan, was able to certify the Picasso signature as authentic.
---from CNN
Luigi Lo Rosso過去常在廢棄房屋和垃圾場中尋找寶藏，然後拿到家族在義大利龐貝經營的當鋪裡出售。 1962年，他在卡布里島一棟別墅的地下室裡發現了一幅捲起來的畫布，是一幅不對稱的女子畫像。 根據他的兒子Andrea Lo Rosso週二告訴CNN的說法，Luigi Lo Rosso當時只有24歲，並沒有意識到畫作左上角的簽名「Picasso」意味著什麼。 Luigi於2021年去世，當時他把這幅畫裝在一個便宜的畫框裡，送給他的妻子——這讓她頗為不滿，兒子說道。她母親認為這幅畫不夠美，賣不出去，所以它掛在家裡長達50年，後來又掛在他們家開的一間餐館裡。 1980年代，當Andrea還在讀小學時，他在藝術史教科書中看到了畢卡索的《一個女人的半身像》（Buste de femme Dora Maar），並得知這位西班牙畫家曾在1950年代造訪過卡布里。 他隨即告訴父母這幅畫可能價值不斐。 於是，一場長達數十年畫作簽名鑑定的旅程便開始了。 這幅畫自2019年以來一直鎖在米蘭的一個保險庫裡。上個月，米蘭文化遺產法院的筆跡學家Cinzia Altieri成功確認了畫作上的畢卡索簽名。
---摘錄翻譯自CNN
Why this mischievous 95-year-old is messing with Mickey Mouse
為什麼這位95歲的老人會和米老鼠扯上關係
Culture
In a new show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the zany work of a nonagenarian ceramicist with a mischievous eye delivers a refreshing twist on traditions in pottery. Magdalena Suarez Frimkess is an anarchic cartoonist in clay: in a career spanning more than half a century, the Venezuelan-born artist has created everyday objects decorated with irreverent images of Mickey Mouse (running around the rim of a soup bowl), Donald Duck (looking guilty), and Olive Oyl (being thrown to the sharks). Considering her medium and subject matter, Suarez Frimkess sits art-historically somewhere between Grayson Perry and Andy Warhol. Sometimes her compositions are whimsical and nostalgic, other times they are unsettling and a little sinister. But such classifications feel wholly inappropriate to this unique body of work. Suarez Frimkess herself calls her aesthetic “serious and funny at the same time.” The retrospective pays tribute to a creative and enduring marriage — fashioned by disruption as well as tenderness — and the bridging of her two nationalities, one ancient, the other modern. But most of all it provides a window into the world of an irrepressibly animated artist quite unlike any other.
---from CNN
在洛杉磯縣立美術館（LACMA）的新展覽中，一位年逾九旬的陶藝家以頑皮的眼光創作出瘋狂的作品，為陶器傳統帶來了令人耳目一新的扭轉。 Magdalena Suarez Frimkess是一位無拘無束的卡通陶土藝術家：在超過半世紀的職業生涯中，這位出生於委內瑞拉的藝術家創作了許多日常物品，上面裝飾著諷刺的米奇老鼠形象（在湯碗的邊緣跑來跑去）、表情愧疚的唐老鴨以及被扔給鯊魚的Olive Oyl。 考慮到她的創作媒介和題材，Magdalena Suarez Frimkess在藝術史上介於Grayson Perry和Andy Warhol之間。她的作品有時充滿了童趣和懷舊的氣息，然而有時則顯得不安和詭異感。這樣的分類對這一類獨特作品體系來說似乎很不適合。Magdalena Suarez Frimkess本人稱她的美學風格「又嚴肅又有趣」。 這次的回顧展覽向她一段充滿顛覆性創意與溫情的婚姻致敬，並體現了她一個古老、一個現代的國籍身份——不過最重要的是，它為觀眾提供了一扇窗口，並展現了一位無法壓抑且充滿生命力的藝術家，與她獨特無可比擬的風格。
---摘錄翻譯自CNN
AI helps uncover hundreds of unknown ancient symbols hidden in Peru’s Nazca Desert
AI協助發現隱藏在秘魯納斯卡沙漠裡數百個古代未知符號
Sciences
Archaeologists working in Peru, assisted by artificial intelligence, have discovered 303 previously unknown giant symbols carved in the Nazca Desert. The carvings include birds, plants, spiders, humanlike figures with headdresses, decapitated heads and an orca wielding a knife. The rate of new finds has increased in recent years due to the use of remote high-resolution imaging, with an average of 19 geoglyphs found annually from 2000 to 2020, according to the research. However, the use of AI to narrow down potential candidates has since turbocharged the pace and, more broadly, promises “a revolution in archaeological discoveries,” according to the study. It’s not clear why the Nazca people made the symbols. The main hypothesis is that they formed a sacred space that was perhaps a place of pilgrimage. Other theories propose they played a part in calendars, astronomy, irrigation or for movement, such as running or dancing, or communication, the study noted.
---from CNN
考古學家在人工智能的協助下，在秘魯發現了303個以前從未發現的巨型符號，這些符號都是雕刻在納斯卡沙漠中的地畫。這些雕刻包括鳥類、植物、蜘蛛、帶著頭飾的人形圖案、斷頭的頭顱以及一隻持刀的逆戟鯨。 研究顯示，近年來由於使用了高解析度的遠程成像技術，新發現的地畫數量不斷增加，從2000年到2020年平均每年可以發現19幅地畫。然而開始使用 AI 縮小潛在候選地點的範圍之後，馬上就加快了速度，廣泛而言，AI有望「掀起一場考古發現的革命」。 研究也指出，目前還不清楚納斯卡人為什麼要製作這些符號。主要假設是，這些符號形成了一個神聖的空間，也許是朝聖的地方。其他理論則認為它們與日曆、天文學、灌溉、運動（例如跑步或跳舞）有關，甚至是用於交流。
---摘錄翻譯自CNN
New DNA analysis unravels the mystery of ‘lost prince’ Kaspar Hauser
新的DNA分析揭開了「失蹤王子」Kaspar Hauser的謎團
Sciences
“His birth was unknown, his death hidden.” So reads the headstone (translated from Latin) marking the grave of the enigmatic man known as Kaspar Hauser, who died in 1833. Nearly 200 years later, scientists have finally solved a longstanding mystery about Hauser’s suspected ties to German royalty. Hauser appeared seemingly out of nowhere in what is now Nuremberg, Germany, on May 26, 1828, when he was about 16 years old. He was found wandering the town square with no identification and with an unsigned letter clutched in his hand. The letter and Hauser’s fragmented recollections told a harrowing tale: that he grew up in a cramped dungeon that he never left and was fed and kept clean by a benefactor whom he never saw. When the teenage Hauser turned up in the town center, he could barely write his own name and was scarcely able to communicate with officials who questioned him. Recently, scientists found definitive answers through new analysis of hair samples from Hauser, according to research published in the journal iScience. Their approach, developed for ancient fragments of DNA from Neanderthals, was more sensitive than earlier methods. When they analyzed Hauser’s mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA — genetic code passed down on the maternal side — they confirmed that it didn’t match mtDNA from Baden family members. Nearly two centuries after Hauser’s mysterious appearance, this finding ruled out the possibility that he was a kidnapped prince.
---from CNN
「他的出生無從得知，他的死亡隱而不明。」這句話（由拉丁語翻譯）刻在神秘男子Kaspar Hauser的墓碑上，他於1833年去世。將近200年後，科學家終於解開了關於Hauser與德國皇室之間關係的長久謎團。 1828年5月26日，Hauser似乎憑空出現在如今的德國紐倫堡市，當時他大約16歲。被發現徘徊在市中心廣場，身上沒有任何身份證明，而手裡緊握一封未簽名的信。 這封信和Hauser支離破碎的記憶拼湊出一個驚悚的故事：他在一個狹窄的地牢中長大，從未離開過，一直由一個從未見過的恩人提供食物，且幫他清潔身體。當他出現在市中心時，他幾乎無法寫出自己的名字，也無法與偵訊他的官員交流。 最近，科學家通過對Hauser的頭髮樣本進行新的分析，找到了最終答案。根據發表在《iScience》期刊上的研究，這種分析方法原本是為研究尼安德塔人的古代DNA片段而開發的，比早期的方法更加靈敏。 當他們分析Hauser的粒線體DNA（mtDNA，通過母系遺傳的基因代碼）時，發現其與巴登家族成員的mtDNA並不匹配。這一發現排除了Hauser是遭綁架的王子的可能性，並解開了這位神秘男子出現，所帶來將近兩世紀的謎團。
---摘錄翻譯自CNN