Nowadays, it is more common for people to express their thoughts in an e-mail or text. In fact, more and more students use technology for written communication in their lives. Even so, research shows that teaching handwriting skills has its benefits. However, are the benefits worth spending valuable classroom time in teaching handwriting skills when students could be learning more about computer keyboarding?

States across the country have good reasons to require students to learn computer keyboarding skills. For one, students are learning technology that will help them communicate faster with more people and in many different forms, such as e-mails, websites, blogs, and so on. Also the better a student’s computer keyboarding skills, the greater the chance that a student has to become a better writer. Computer tools such as the grammar and spell check make correcting quick and easy, although not 100% accurate (准确的). With these and many other tools, students gain important computer skills. Furthermore, students no longer have to worry about their writing being graded poorly by teachers. All in all, computer keyboarding skills are a step in the right direction.

Still, the advantages of computer keyboarding skills may not be enough to leave handwriting instruction in the dust. Marlena Hamilton, professor of neurology at University of Pennsylvania, did an experiment with her co-workers to study what happens in students’ brains when writing. They found that many of the areas of the brain light up. These are the same areas that are used to learn to read. They then wondered if the same would be true when students looked at letters on a keyboard. “What we found, “she states, “is that brains are much less involved when we just look at letters. When we actually use our hands to make things, the brain works much harder.”

Schools across the nation are looking at the evidence and deciding what to do. William McIntyre, a reading coach at Sunshine Elementary School in Albany, New York, says, “What we have learned from the research is that learning handwriting benefits students educationally. What we also know is that students need to be taught keyboarding skills. Now, it is up to each school to make a decision.

Using first-of-their-kind observations from the James Webb Space Telescope. a University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led team looked more than 13 billion years into the past to discover a unique, minuscule galaxy cluster (星系团) that generated new stars at an extremely high rate for its size. The galaxy is one of the smallest ever discovered at this distance —around 500 million years after the Big Bang — and could help astronomers learn more about galaxies that were present shortly after the universe came into existence.

The James Webb Space Telescope can observe a wide enough field to image an entire galaxy cluster at once. The researchers were able to find and study this new, tiny galaxy because of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing (引力透镜), where mass, such as that in a galaxy or galaxy cluster, bends and magnifies (放大) light. A galaxy cluster lens caused this small background galaxy to appear 20 times brighter than it would if the cluster were not magnifying its light.

The researchers then measured how far away the galaxy was, in addition to some of its physical and chemical properties. Studying galaxies that were present when the universe was this much younger can help scientists get closer to answering a huge question in astronomy about how the universe became reionized (再电离的).

“The galaxies that existed when the universe was in its primary stage are very different from what we see in the nearby universe now,” explained Hayley Williams, first author on the paper and a PhD student at the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics. “This discovery can help us learn more about the characteristics of those first galaxies, how they differ from nearby galaxies, and how the earlier galaxies formed.”

“The James Webb Space Telesco pe can collect about 10 times as much light as the Hubble Space Telescope and is much more sensitive at redder, longer wavelengths. This allows scientists to access an entirely new window of data,” the researchers said.

Biological fieldwork can mean trips to exotic places. But the work itself can be depressing, especially when you are trying to track down complicated subjects. The most common method is to send a few eager graduate students armed with camera traps and several weeks of spare time. But perhaps not for much longer. A paper published in Current Biology, whose lead authors are Christina Lynggaard at the University of Copenhagen and Jan Gogarten at the Helmholtz Institute for One Health in Germany, suggests an easier method: simply swabbing (用拭子拭抹) nearby leaves for DNA.

The DNA in question is called “environmental DNA” (eDNA for short). It refers to all the genetic information that animals shed as they go about their daily business: breathing, urinating. moving around, or interacting with their environment in any way.

In recent years, gene-sequencing technology has become quick and sensitive enough to pick out genetic sequences from this universal eDNA-particular animals, including humans. One way of doing so is to blow air through filters, then analyses them to see which creatures live in the surroundings.

Aware of that technique, Drs Gogarten and Lynggaard wondered if there might be a simpler approach. Air-sampling systems can take days to do their work. Maintenance must be done, and filters must be changed. But given that eDNA is literally blowing around ecosystems, the researchers wondered if it might be collected on leaves. The leaves of many plants are waxy (质地光滑) and somewhat sticky. The researchers theorized that eDNA might end up stuck to leaves and that it could subsequently be collected by swabbing them. They tested their theory in the dense rainforests of Kibale National Park, in Uganda.

The swabs revealed the presence of 26 birds, 24 mammals, one amphibian and one fish, with each swab containing DNA from eight animals on average. More than half the samples were good enough to work out the precise species they came from.