In the eyes of many environmentalists, the world appears to be getting worse. They believe, the natural resources are running out and the air and water are becoming ever more polluted. But if we check the facts, things look different. Energy has become more abundant, not less so. Fewer people are starving. What seems to cause this gap between perception and reality?

One factor is the prejudice in scientific research. Scientific funding goes mainly to areas with many problems. That may be wise policy, but it will also create an impression that there are more potential problems than actually exist.

Secondly, environmental groups seek attention from the mass media. They also need to get continuous financial support. Understandably, perhaps, they sometimes exaggerate (夸大) their arguments. In 1997, for example, the World Wide Fund for Nature issued a statement titled: “Two thirds of the world’s forests lost forever”. The truth turns out to be near 20%.

The media can add to confusion too. People tend to be more curious about bad news than good. Newspapers and broadcasters are there to provide what the public wants. That, however, can lead to significant misinterpretations. For example, when a natural disaster happens, the media usually highlights the negative parts, giving more attention to the disaster’s details and what happens afterward. This flood of bad news can make people think that such events are more frequent or serious than they actually are. Consequently, people may develop a sense of insecurity, despite statistically low probabilities of similar events happening to them.

Another factor is people’s poor perception. People worry that vaccines can cause severe side effects or long-term health problems. Despite extensive scientific evidence demonstrating their safety and effectiveness, some individuals remain hesitant due to unfounded fears.

It is crucial that we look at the facts if we want to make the best possible decisions for the future. It may be costly to be overly optimistic – but more costly still to be too pessimistic.

As the days are getting colder, you might wish you could magically turn into a bear and spend the winter sleeping. But don’t be too jealous of the bear, as scientists are looking for ways to let humans hibernate, too!

Hibernation is a state where an animal’s heart rate, breathing and metabolism slow down.Then they can save energy during winter months to survive a shortage of food.

Japanese researchers have found the secret behind hibernation-the “Q neurons”. These neurons in animals’ brains can put them into a hibernation state. The researchers also did surgeries on mice after turning on the mice’s “Q neurons”. It turned out that during hibernation, the surgeries did less damage to the mice’s organs.

According to the team, humans’ “Q neurons” cannot be turned on and off as easily as the mice’s. But they are confident in copying the mice’s hibernation in humans. That means we could let people “hibernate” when having surgery, causing less damage to their bodies.

In recent years, more scientists are waking up to the benefits of hibernation. For example, US scientist Katherine Grabek found that when the thirteen-lined ground squirrel hibernates, it cleans out harmful brain plaques that are related to Alzheimer’s in humans. The animal’s blood pressure also goes up and down greatly before and after hibernating. But it doesn’t suffer from any illness related to blood pressure.

Grabek and her team found molecules from the squirrel that can protect against high blood pressure and heart disease. They hope to find more that may affect human health, and then design drugs.

Some studies in bats showed that, during hibernation, their bodies age more slowly. This also provides new ideas for making humans live longer in the future, according to New Scientist magazine.

German physicist Albert Einstein is one of the most famous scientists of all time, the personification of genius and the subject of a whole industry of scholarship. In The Einsteinian Revolution, two experts on Einstein’s life and his theory of relativity— Israeli physicist Hanoch Gutfreund and German historian of science Jürgen Renn— offer an original and penetrating (犀利的) analysis of Einstein’s revolutionary contributions to physics and our view of the physical world.

For the first time ever, by setting Einstein’s work in the long course of the evolution of scientific knowledge, Gutfr eund and Renn discover the popular misconception of Einstein as an unconventional scientific genius who single-handedly created modern physics—and by pure thought alone.

As a large part of the book explains, Einstein typically argued that science progresses through steady evolution, not through revolutionary breaks with the past. He saw his theory of relativity not as something from scratch, but a natural extension of the classical physics developed by pioneers such as Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei and English physicist Isaac Newton in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well as nineteenth-century physicists.

The authors highlight how classical physics cannot be separated cleanly from modern Einsteinian physics. The book also includes substantial sections on Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo whose methods inspired Einstein. When Einstein considered himself as standing on their shoulders, he meant that, without their contributions, he would not have formulated (阐述) the theory of relativity.

The Einsteinian Revolution is an important and thought-provoking contribution to the scholarly literature on Einstein and his surprising scientific creativity between 1905 and 1925. Gutfreund and Renn might not have given the final answer as to why Einstein, of all people, revolutionized physics in the way that he did. But they argue in fascinating detail that, to understand his genius, one must take into account not just the earlier history of physics but also the history of knowledge more broadly. Although not always an easy read, the book will interest physicists and historians alike.