As the days are getting colder, you might wish you could magically turn into a bear and spend the winter sleeping. Actually, scientists are looking for ways to let humans sleep through the winter, too! That is hibernation (冬眠).

During hibernation, an animal’s heart rate (心率) and breathing slow down. They can save energy when there’s little food in the winter months.

Japanese, researchers have found the secret behind hibernation—the “Q neurons (神经元)”. These neurons in animals’ brains can put them into a hibernation state. The researchers also did surgeries (手术) after turning on the mice’s “Q neurons”. It turned out that the surgeries caused less damage to the mice’s body during their hibernation.

According to the team, humans’ “Q neurons” cannot be turned on and off as easily as the mice’s. But they are sure that they would be able to copy the mice’s hibernation in humans. That means if we let people in surgery “hibernate”, it can cause less damage to their bodies.

In recent years, more scientists are waking up to the advantages of hibernation. For example, US scientist Katherine Grabek found that when the thirteen-lined ground squirrel (多纹黄鼠) hibernates, it deans out harmful brain plaques (斑块) that are related to Alzheimer’s (阿尔茨海默症) in humans. They hope to design-drugs for humans based on this finding.

Some studies in bats and marmots (土拨鼠) 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.

Does blue light actually influence your health? Blue light before bedtime can make it harder to sleep, and the screens on phones, computers and televisions give out a lot of blue light. It is true. But if you think blue light as a main problem influencing your sleep or your eye health, it’s time to think in another way.

A researcher says that blue light is part of sunlight, and your eyes are under the sunshine all the time. You’re fine. There are studies of mice that have found blue light can be bad for the eyes, but mice are nocturnal creatures (夜行性动物) whose eyes are different from ours. In a sense, their eyes can protect themselves.

However, adding more protection isn’t likely (可能) to help. You can buy glasses to stop the blue light, but the researcher points out that the way will waste your money. You could get the same effect (影响) just by holding your phone far from your face. Try it now and see if you notice a difference. No? Then it shouldn’t surprise you that a recent research result said that blue-blocking (防蓝光的) glasses have no special effect on sleep quality.

If you’re worried about your eye health or your ability (能力) to get to sleep on time, you already know what to do: put the screens away at bedtime. Read a book or find something else to do. While you’re using screens, take a 20-second break every 20 minutes.

To help protect people against the novel coronavirus (新冠病毒), scientists have created vaccines (疫苗). These days, people who are between 3 and 59 can get vaccinated (接种疫苗). Here is something about vaccines.

There are many different ways to make vaccines. At least 115 different vaccines for the novel coronavirus are being developed around the world right now. Many of them may not work or may have influences that can be dangerous. That is why testing is very important.

Before a vaccine is ever tested on humans, it’s first tested on animals to make sure it seems safe. Testing the vaccine on humans is done in several different periods. In Period (阶段) 1, a small group of people are given small amounts (数量) of the vaccine to see if it has any bad influences. Period 2 still tests the vaccines safety, but it’s mainly a test to see if the vaccine seems to work. If Period 2 goes well, the vaccine can begin Period 3. During Period 3, the vaccine is tried on a much larger group of people to see how well it works.

The novel coronavirus is very serious and it influences the whole world. There is huge pressure to develop a working vaccine quickly. It normally takes seven or more years to develop a safe vaccine that works well. Luckily, this time, developing the vaccine against the novel coronavirus doesn’t need so long, scientists have created it.

Thanks to the scientists, we can get vaccinated so soon. All of us believe that we can overcome the novel coronavirus completely.