10月14日英语：喝酒的理由？新加坡研发益生菌啤酒 Probiotic beer boosts health

Tea bags release microplastics
饮袋装茶会喝入微塑料?

Every time you use a tea bag, you could be dosing yourself with billions of microplastic and nanoplastic particles. That's the conclusion of researchers at McGill University in Montreal. The research, published in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology, centered on four different types of plastic mesh tea bags, of the kind recently preferred by some premium brands. 
每次喝袋泡茶时，你可能喝进去的是数十亿微塑料和纳米塑料颗粒。这是蒙特利尔的麦吉尔大学研究人员得出的结论。发表在美国化学学会期刊《环境科学与技术》上的这项研究聚焦于4种不同的塑料网眼茶袋，是一些优质品牌近来喜欢使用的那种茶袋。

Having been emptied of the tea itself, the bags were placed in water heated to 95 C. Researchers were surprised to find each bag released around 11.6 billion microplastics and a further 3.1 billion even smaller nanoplastics. 
研究人员将茶袋里的碎茶取出，将茶袋放入加热至95摄氏度的水中。研究人员惊讶地发现，每个茶袋释放出大约116亿个微塑料和31亿个更微小的纳米塑料。

These levels were, says the report, "thousands of times higher than plastic loads previously reported in other foods". Scientists note that more research is needed to determine whether the plastics' effect on humans is negligible, subtle - or chronic.
报告称，这一水平"比先前报道过的其他食物塑料含量高出数千倍"。科学家指出，还需要进行更多研究才能确定微塑料对人类的影响是可以忽略的、微妙的还是长远的。

Impact of background music
背景音乐会阻碍创造力

From Mozart to Metallica, tons of people enjoy listening to various types of music while they paint, write, or draw. Many believe music helps boost creativity, but an international study conducted by English and Swedish researchers is challenging that notion. Psychologists from Lancaster University, the University of Gavle, and the University of Central Lancashire say their findings indicate music actually stymies creativity. 
从莫扎特到金属乐队，无数人在写作或绘画时喜欢听各种音乐。许多人认为音乐有助于激发创造力，但一项由英国和瑞典研究人员进行的国际研究正在质疑这一观点。兰卡斯特大学、耶夫勒大学和中央兰开夏大学的心理学家表示，他们的发现表明音乐实际上阻碍了创造力。

To come to their conclusions, researchers had participants complete verbal insight problems designed to inspire creativity while sitting in a quiet room, and then again while music played in the background. They found that background music "significantly impaired" the participants' ability to complete tasks associated with verbal creativity. It's worth mentioning that even familiar music with well-known lyrics impaired participants' creativity, regardless of whether or not it elicited a positive reaction.
研究人员让参与者在安静的房间里完成了一些旨在激发创造力的语言洞察问题，然后让他们在播放背景音乐时再做一次，从而得出了这一结论。研究人员发现，背景音乐"显著地削弱"了参与者完成与语言创造力有关的任务的能力。值得一提的是，即使是参与者熟知歌词的音乐也会削弱其创造力，不管它是否引起了积极的反应。

Ozone hole strangely shaped
南极臭氧空洞'异乎寻常'

The ozone hole that opens every year over the Antarctic is on course to be the smallest in three decades, scientists have said. The hole is currently well under half the area that usually opens up by mid-September, and may have already reached its maximum size, a little smaller in area than the Antarctic continent. 
科学家称，南极上空每年出现的臭氧空洞将是30年来最小的。目前，臭氧空洞的面积小于通常情况下9月中旬面积的一半，而且可能已经达到最大尺寸，比南极大陆的面积还要小一点。

Researchers say the hole is also a particularly unusual shape this year, being heavily skewed toward South America instead of centering on the South Pole. The rare shape - never before observed - indicates a significant distortion to the usual polar vortex, which maintains low temperatures in the stratosphere. 
研究人员说，今年臭氧空洞的形状也特别不寻常，严重向南美洲倾斜，而不是以南极为中心。这一罕见的异常形状表明，常见的极地漩涡发生巨大的扭曲。极涡维持着平流层的低温。

Anna Jones, a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, said: "Very occasionally in the Antarctic you will get disturbances. And I don't think anybody knows what's triggered it this year. This is a pretty new phenomenon. It could be a multiple collection of factors."
英国南极调查局的科学家安娜•琼斯说："在南极，很少会受到干扰。我想没有人知道是什么引发了这种改变。这是一种全新的现象，可能是多种因素造成的。"

Probiotic beer boosts health

新加坡研发益生菌啤酒

If you needed yet another reason to drink beer, science just gave it to you. Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) developed a new type of probiotic beer which could improve your immune system and neutralize pathogens and toxins. The idea came from Chan Mei Zhi Alcine, a fourth-year student from the Food Science and Technology Program at the NUS Faculty of Science. 
如果你还需要一个喝啤酒的理由，科学已经给了你这个理由。新加坡国立大学的研究人员研发了一种新型的益生菌啤酒，这种啤酒可以改善你的免疫系统，消除病原体和毒素。这一灵感来源于新加坡国立大学理学院食品科学技术系大四学生陈美芝(音译)。

She realized that while the market abounds with dairy-based probiotics, there's another huge untapped market for probiotics: beer. Due to its nature, beer is a fertile ground for probiotics, and the craft beer phenomenon has been growing at a staggering rate in many parts of the world - so why not blend the two?
她意识到，尽管市场中有多种以牛奶为原料的益生菌，但还有一块巨大的益生菌市场尚未被开发——啤酒。由于性质使然，啤酒是益生菌的沃土，而且在世界上许多地区，精酿啤酒现象正以惊人速度增长。那么，为何不将两者合二为一呢？