Cigarettes aren’t just harmful when they’re being smoked. Even when cigarette ends go out and are cold, new research has found they continue to give off harmful chemicals in the air. In the first 24hours alone, scientists say a used cigarette end will produce 14 percent of the nicotine (尼古丁) that an actively burning cigarette would produce.

While most of these chemicals are released within a day of being put out, an analysis for the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found the level of nicotine fell by just 50% five days later.

“I was absolutely surprised,” since environmental engineer Dustin Poppendieck from the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).“The numbers are significant and could have important impacts when cigarette ends are dealt with indoors or in cars. While much attention has been paid to the health influence of first hand, second hand and now third hand smoking, it is not the case when it comes to the actual cigarette end of the matter.”

To measure emissions (排放) from this forgotten thing, Poppendieck and his team placed 2,100 cigarettes that were recently put out inside a special room. Once the ends were sealed away, the team measured eight chemicals commonly produced by cigarettes, four of which the FDA have their eye on for being harmful or potentially so.

After setting the room’s temperature, the researchers tested how emissions changed under certain conditions. When the air temperature of the room was higher, for instance, they noticed the ends produced these chemicals at higher rates. This finding might discourage those who want to leave ashtrays (烟灰缸) out for days at a time, especially in the heat.

A new study shows that the more people read any kind of fiction, the better their language skills are likely to be. The piece was written by Sandra Martin-Chang of Concordia University in Canada, and her student Stephanie Kozak.

Martin-Chang and Kozak used a scale(量表) called the Predictors of Leisure Reading (PoLR) to investigate reading behaviours (motivations, attitudes and interests). They then examined how well the PoLR predicted the language skills of 200 undergraduate students, with all data gathered at York University in Toronto. The researchers note that the age range of the subjects in the study is of key interest. In early adulthood, reading becomes self-directed rather than forced by parents or teachers, which makes this a perfect time for developing one's own reading habits. This population is also rather understudied, with most existing research focusing far more on children.

The researchers administered a series of measures over two separate half-hour sessions. First, the volunteers completed the 48-question PoLR scale measuring various reading behaviours. They were then given language tests. The researchers found that people who enjoyed reading fiction for leisure and who identified themselves as readers scored higher on the language tests, while those who read to access specific information scored more poorly on the same tests.

The many benefits of reading have long been established. Besides having better language abilities, lifelong readers are known to be more understanding of others, attain higher socioeconomic status and even live longer, healthier lives than non-readers.

“Teachers and parents can develop a love of reading by letting young people read what they want, without guilt or shame. This established interest, wanting to read something over and over again, having a strong desire to read an entire series, feeling connected to characters and authors, these are all good things,” Martin-Chang concludes.

We rely on our memory not only for sharing stories with friends or learning from our past experiences, but we also use it for crucial things like creating a sense of personal identity. Yet evidence shows that our memory isn’t as consistent as we’d like to believe.

There are countless reasons why tiny mistakes might happen each time we recall past events, ranging from what we believe is true or wish were true, to what someone else told us about the past event, or what we want that person to think.

And whenever these mistakes happen, they can have long-term effects on how we’ll recall that memory in the future.

Take storytelling for example. When we describe our memories to other people, we might ask ourselves whether it’s vital to get the facts straight, or whether we only want to make the listener laugh. And we might change the story’s details depending on the listener’s attitudes. It isn’t only the message that changes, but sometimes it’s also the memory itself. This is known as the “audience-tuning effect”, showing us how our memories can change automatically over time, as a product of how, when, and why we access them.

In fact, sometimes simply the act of rehearsing(复述) a memory can be exactly what makes it susceptible(易受影响的)to change. This is known as “retrieval-enhanced suggestibility”. In a typical study of this effect, participants watched a short film, then took a memory test a few days later. But during the days between watching the film and taking the final test, two other things happened. First, half of the participants took a practice memory test. Second, all of the participants were given a description of the film to read, which contained some false details. Participants who took a practice memory test shortly before reading the false information were more likely to reproduce this false information in the final memory test.

Why might this be? One theory is that rehearsing our memories of past events can temporarily make those memories malleable. In other words, retrieving(找回)a memory might be a bit like taking ice-cream out of the freezer and leaving it in direct sunlight for a while. By the time our memory goes back into the freezer, it might have naturally become a little misshapen, especially if someone has influenced it purposely in the meantime.

These findings lead us to wonder how much our most treasured memories have changed since the very first time we remembered them. Remembering is an act of storytelling, after all. And our memories are only ever as reliable as the most recent story we told ourselves.