- 15 Foods You Need in Any Emergency
- Scientists believe they have found a link between bacteria in our gut and how fast we age
- India set to ban sugar exports for first time in 7 years
- Artefacts stolen from British Museum ‘may be untraceable’ due to poor records
- Around 13,000 years ago, humans and fire changed LA’s ecosystem forever
- How coin tosses can lead to better decisions
15 Foods You Need in Any Emergency
緊急狀況下需要的15種食物
Health
Over the last few years, most of us have had a glimpse of situations that are a little more dire: power outages, natural disasters, and damaging weather events that have forced us to reevaluate our usual strategies in the kitchen. Stocking your pantry with these healthy and shelf-stable foods--- low-sodium canned beans and other legumes, dry whole grains, unsalted nuts and seeds, natural nut and seed butters, tinned low-mercury fish packed in water, canned fruits and veggies, dried fruit, Jerky, self-stable milk, bottled water, root vegetables, sodium-free stock or broth, olive oil, vinegar, dried herbs and spices, so you’ll never go hungry, and you’ll always have a solid meal strategy in place. Even if an emergency never arises, which we hope it doesn’t, you’ll have a well-stocked pantry with plenty of healthy options to nourish your body.
--from Everyday Health
在過去的幾年裡，我們大多數人目睹了更可怕的情況：停電、自然災害和破壞性天氣事件，迫使我們重新評估我們廚房中的日常策略。在您的食品儲藏室中儲備這些健康又耐久的食物，讓您不必挨餓，且在家隨時有一套可靠的用餐策略—低鈉罐裝豆類和其他豆類、全穀物、無鹽堅果和種子、天然堅果和種子奶油、低汞錫罐裝水煮魚、罐裝水果和蔬菜、果乾、肉乾、保久乳、瓶裝水、根莖蔬菜、無鈉高湯或肉汁、橄欖油、醋、乾香草和香料。即使我們希望不會發生的緊急情況從不降臨，您也將擁有一個儲存大量健康品項的完善食品儲藏室，來滋養您的身體。
--摘錄翻譯自Everyday Health
Scientists believe they have found a link between bacteria in our gut and how fast we age
科學家相信他們已找到腸道細菌與我們老化速度的關聯
Health
The human gut is a complex ecosystem, home to trillions of microorganisms that play a vital role in maintaining our health. Recent findings published in the journal of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience have found that the diversity of microbes in the gut may not only influence our physical fitness but also affect how fast we age. "We found that inflammatory bacteria are actually accelerating the ageing process, so if you have more inflammatory bacteria. Then you have advanced ageing," said Professor Zsolt Radak, lead author of the study.
--from Medical Euronews
人類腸道是一個複雜的生態系統，是數萬億扮演維持我們健康之關鍵角色的微生物的居所。最近發表在《發展認知神經科學》期刊上的研究結果發現，腸道微生物的多樣性不僅會影響我們的身體健康，還會影響我們老化速度。該研究的主要作者Zsolt Radak教授說：「我們發現炎症細菌實際上正在加速老化過程，所以如果你有較多的炎症細菌，那麼你就會提前老化。」
--摘錄翻譯自Euronews
India set to ban sugar exports for first time in 7 years
印度七年來首次禁止砂糖出口
Culture/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/SUESWPRN6RIA7NTARNKQCMIOXI.jpg)
India is expected to ban mills from exporting sugar in the next season beginning October, halting shipments for the first time in seven years, as a lack of rain has cut cane yields, three government sources said. India's absence from the world market would be likely to increase benchmark prices in New York and London that are already trading around multi-year highs, triggering fears of further inflation on global food markets. "Our primary focus is to fulfil local sugar requirements and produce ethanol from surplus sugarcane," said a government source who asked not to be named in line with official rules. "For the upcoming season, we will not have enough sugar to allocate for export quotas." India allowed mills to export only 6.1 million tonnes of sugar during the current season to Sept. 30, after letting them sell a record 11.1 million tonnes last season. Monsoon rains in the top cane growing districts of the western state of Maharashtra and the southern state of Karnataka - which together account for more than half of India's total sugar output - have been as much as 50% below average so far this year, weather department data showed. Patchy rains would cut sugar output in the 2023/24 season and even reduce planting for the 2024/25 season, an industry official, who declined to be named, said.
--from Reuters
根據三名政府消息人士表示，印度因為降雨不足導致甘蔗產量減少，印度預計從10月起的下一季禁止糖廠出口砂糖，這是七年來首次禁止砂糖輸出。若於全球市場中少了印度提供的砂糖，可能會導致紐約和倫敦交易所砂糖的基準價格上漲，然而這兩個市場中糖價已於位於多年高點附近，也引發全球對於食品市場通膨加劇的擔憂。「我們主要的重點是要滿足印度本地的砂糖需求，且從剩餘的甘蔗中製造乙醇。」一名不願意具名的政府消息人士指出，「接下來的這一季，我們將沒有足夠的糖可分配作為出口。」截至9月30日這一季為止，印度僅允許糖廠出口610萬噸砂糖，而上一季則是創紀錄的允許糖廠出口1,110萬噸的砂糖。根據氣象部門的數據顯示，西部Maharashtra及南部Karnataka甘蔗種植區佔印度砂糖產量一半以上，今年的季風雨量低於平均值百分之五十以下。一名不願意具名的產業官員表示，不穩定的降雨將減少2023/24年的砂糖產量，甚至減少2024/25年種植的面積。
--摘錄翻譯自Reuters
Artefacts stolen from British Museum ‘may be untraceable’ due to poor records
大英博物館所遭竊的文物缺少紀錄可能無法追蹤
Culture
Many examples of missing gold jewellery, gems and ancient items were not catalogued, say cultural heritage experts. Many of the priceless artefacts suspected to have been stolen from the British Museum’s collections may never be recovered because of its poor record keeping, cultural heritage experts have said. Ittai Gradel, a British-Danish antiquities dealer who uncovered the suspected thefts of items such as gold jewellery, semiprecious stones and ancient glassware, said he had been told hundreds of missing objects had never been properly cataloged by the museum, making it difficult to prove they belonged to its collections. Gradel, who first alerted the museum to the suspected thefts in 2020, said he understood staff had found almost an entire collection of 942 unregistered gems was missing. The museum’s records only describe the collection as a whole and do not detail the individual pieces. “As far as I understand, these individual items were not described, only a sum total,” he said. “So, 935 gems are missing and the problem is, if they can’t be identified, how can they return to the museum? “They have been lying there without any registration at all for over 200 years,” making them an open invitation to theft “because who could ever find out?”
--from The Guardian
文化遺產專家表示，許多黃金首飾、寶石和古代文物都未被編錄。更表示由於大英博物館保存管理紀錄不當，許多疑似遭竊的珍貴文物也因此無法找回。Ittai Gradel一位英國丹麥裔古董商，他發現了黃金首飾、半寶石和古代玻璃器皿等疑似遭竊的物品，他也被告知博物館從未對遺失的百件物品進行正確的分類編碼，因此很難證明是屬於博物館的收藏品。博物館的紀錄只描述整個收藏品，並未詳細介紹每個物件。「據我了解，這些單獨的物件沒有被載明，僅有紀錄總數。」他表示，「有935顆寶石失蹤了，問題是如果無法被辨認，那又如何能夠回到博物館中呢?」「200多年來，它們一直躺那兒沒有任何的登記，這就成了給竊賊的公開邀請函，“因為誰能發現呢?”」
--摘錄翻譯自The Guardian
Around 13,000 years ago, humans and fire changed LA’s ecosystem forever
大約 13,000 年前，人與火徹底改變了洛杉磯的生態系統
Sciences
By about 11,700 years ago, most large land mammals outside of Africa had gone extinct. Scientists have long debated whether these extinctions were primarily caused either by human activities or a changing climate as the last ice age came to a close. A new study of the remains of animals trapped long ago in the La Brea tar pits, in what’s now Los Angeles, suggests both factors worked in concert to bring about the demise of the region’s megafauna. A warming, drying climate plus humans’ hunting and burning of the landscape led to large fires that precipitated the end-Pleistocene die-offs there around 13,000 years ago and forever changed the ecosystem, researchers report in the Aug. 18 Science.
--from Science News
大約 11,700 年前，非洲以外的大型陸地哺乳動物大多已絕跡。長期以來，科學家們一直爭論著造成這些動物滅絕的原因為何。是因為人類活動，還是因為冰河時代末期的氣候變化所造成的呢？針對拉布雷亞瀝青坑內（位於現今的洛杉磯）古老動物遺骸的一項新研究表明，上述那兩項因素皆與該地區的巨型動物滅亡有關。研究人員在8 月18 日的《科學》雜誌上報導，因為氣候變得溫暖乾燥，外加人類燃燒地貌並進行狩獵活動，導致13,000 年前的更新世末期發生多場大火，致使當時的物種滅絕，徹底改變了生態系統。
--摘錄翻譯自Science News
How coin tosses can lead to better decisions
如何用擲硬幣來讓我們做出更好的決策
Sciences
When faced with a multitude of choices, many of which you would be happy to accept, flipping a coin or letting a die decide for you may be the better option. Sometimes making a quick good choice is better than making a slow, perfect one, or, indeed, being paralyzed into complete indecision. When struggling to choose between multiple options, having a decision seemingly made for you by an external randomising agent can help you to focus on your true preference. This "randomised" strategy can help us to envisage the consequences of what was, up until that point, an apparently abstract decision. Recent experiments by a team of researchers at the University of Basel, Switzerland, have demonstrated that a randomly dictated decision prompt can help us to deal with the information overload that often precipitates analysis paralysis.
--from BBC Future
當你面臨一個擁有很多選項的問題時，且其中有許多選項是你很樂意接受的，擲硬幣或骰子為你做出決定可能是更好的選擇。有時，快速地做出好的選擇比緩慢地做出完美地選擇更好。[快速地做出好的選擇]也比陷入完全猶豫不決的情況還要好。當你在眾多選項之間猶豫不決時，交由一個外部的隨機媒介為你做出決定可以幫助你將焦點放在自己真正的偏好上。這種「隨機」策略可以幫助我們設想一個原本很抽象的決定的結果。瑞士巴塞爾大學的一組研究人員最近進行的多項實驗表明，透過一個隨機選用的提示媒介所做的決策，可以幫助我們[減少分析癱瘓的發生]，應付資訊超載的問題。而資訊超載就是造成分析癱瘓的原因之一。
--摘錄翻譯自 BBC Future