NASA’s first look at a sample (样本) from a small planet Bennu shows life’s building stones. This is the most material collected from beyond the moon.

When beginning to open the capsule (太空舱) that collected the sample, NASA scientists found extra material outside the collection container, which has led to a few science discoveries.

The material in the capsule was collected by blowing dust and rocks into a container with gas. Much of that material is made up of water-clay (水粘土) minerals. “The reason that Earth is the habitable world that we have, with oceans and lakes and rivers and rain,” said planetary scientist Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona in Tucson, who leads the OSIRIS-REx mission, “is that these clay minerals, like the ones we’re seeing from Bennu, landed on Earth 4 billion years ago to 4.5 billion years ago, making our world habitable.” Other grains contain a necessary part of life common on Earth, including carbon and iron, Lauretta said, “as well as structures that may have been important for jump-starting life.”

A quarter of the Bennu sample will go to scientists on the OSIRIS-Rex mission for research. The rest will be divvied up among scientists around the world, with a part left for future study.

“This sample is our dream,” said Daniel Glavin, a senior scientist for sample return at Goddard. “I just can’t wait to get at it. And this material will be around for generations and generations.”

Play Helps Develop Bigger, Better Brains!

If play is not simply a way to have fun, for what other reasons has it developed? 【小题1】 Earlier this year, Sergio Pellis of Lethbridge University, Canada, reported that there is a strong positive link between brain size and playfulness among mammals in general. 【小题2】The opposite was also found to be true.

According to John Byers of Idaho University, the timing of the playful stage in young animals provides an important clue to what’s going on. If you plot the amount of time a child devotes to play each day over the course of his development, you discover a pattern typically associated with a “sensitive period”—a brief development window during which the brain can actually be adjusted in ways that are not possible earlier or later in life. 【小题3】

“People have not paid enough attention to the amount of the brain activated by play,” says Marc Bekoff from Colorado University. Bekoff studied coyote pups at play and found that the kind of behavior involved was obviously more variable and unpredictable than that of adults. He also reasons that such behavior activates many different parts of the brain.

【小题4】 “There’s enormous cognitive involvement in play,” says Bekoff. He points out that play often involves complex assessments of playmates and the use of specialized signals and rules. He believes that play creates a brain that has greater behavioral flexibility and improved potential for learning later in life. 【小题5】

Scientists have connected the “fat gene” with the “happy gene”. They believed there could be genetic evidence which explains why fat people are often happier than their skinny friends. The breakthrough could be an explanation for why fat characters, such as The Laughing Policeman and Father Christmas are often described as joyful and kind.

FTO is the major genetic contributor to being fat. But it is also connected with an eight percent reduction in the risk of depression. Researchers at McMaster University in Canada had been studying whether there was a connection between being fat and being depressed. They found the opposite was true．

They studied 17,200 DNA from participants in 21 countries. Results showed people with FTO gene — the fat gene — showed less signs of depression. This finding was supported by three additional international studies.

Professor David Meyre said, “We set out from the belief that being depressed and being fat both deal with brain activity. We thought that fat genes may be related to depression. However, we have discovered a molecule (分子) contributing to depression. It is the first evidence that an FTO fat gene is connected with protection against depression.

In a recent interview, actress Lisa Riley said she was more than comfortable with her size. She said she is a “big, really happy” girl who is lucky enough to be confident in her own skin, and added, “Many people want to be thinner. Not me. I love being different and it drives me mad that people don’t believe I’m happy with what I am.”