寻找传说中的香巴拉

那里没有贫穷。没有苦困。没有人间的虚伪虞诈；那里有峡谷、有森林、有草甸、有冰川等美丽的自然景色；那里不愁吃，不愁穿，无忧无虑，是人类美好理想的归宿。     

香巴拉

“有一个美丽的地方，人们都把它向往，那里四季常青，那里鸟语花香，那里没有痛苦，那里没有忧伤，它的名子叫香巴拉，传说是神仙居住的地方。哦!香巴拉并不遥远，它就是我们的家乡。”这是来自西藏的歌声，美丽而悠扬；这是一片净土，一个信仰虔诚的地方；这就是西藏人心目中的“香巴拉”。     

寻找传说中的香巴拉

那里没有贫穷。没有苦困。没有人间的虚伪虞诈:那里有峡谷、有森林、有草甸、有冰川等美丽的自然景色;那里不愁吃.不愁穿。无忧无虑。是人类美好理想的归宿香巴拉,一个美丽的传说,一个神秘的地方,千百年来一直吸引着世界各地的科学家、探险家和人文学家,万里迢迢历尽艰     

Escaping speed of bacteria from confinement

Microswimmers such as bacteria exhibit large speed fluctuation when exploring their living environment. Here, we show that the bacterium Escherichia coli with a wide range of length speeds up beyond its free-swimming speed when passing through narrow and short confinement. The speedup is observed in two modes: for short bacteria with L <20 μm, the maximum speed occurs when the cell body leaves the confinement, but a flagellar bundle is still confined. For longer bacteria (L ≥ 20 μm), the maximum speed occurs when the middle of the cell, where the maximum number of flagellar bundles locate, is confined. The two speed-up modes are explained by a vanishing body drag and an increased flagella drag—a universal property of an “ideal swimmer.” The spatial variance of speed can be quantitatively explained by a simple model based on the resistance matrix of a partially confined bacterium. The speed change depends on the distribution of motors, and the latter is confirmed by fluorescent imaging of flagellar hooks. By measuring the duration of slowdown and speedup, we find that the effective chemotaxis is biased in filamentous bacteria, which might benefit their survival. The experimental setup can be useful to study the motion of microswimmers near surfaces with different surface chemistry.     

Escaping from an evolutionary prison cell

To a maternally transmitted parasite, male hosts are evolutionary prison cells. This is because passage into the next host generation is only possible via egg cytoplasm and not sperm. However, these parasites have come up with a neat array of evolutionary tricks to make the best of their custodial sentence.     

Behavior of Ants Escaping from a Single-Exit Room

To study the rules of ant behavior and group-formation phenomena, we examined the behaviors of Camponotus japonicus, a species of large ant, in a range of situations. For these experiments, ants were placed inside a rectangular chamber with a single exit that also contained a filter paper soaked in citronella oil, a powerful repellent. The ants formed several groups as they moved toward the exit to escape. We measured the time intervals between individual escapes in six versions of the experiment, each containing an exit of a different width, to quantify the movement of the groups. As the ants exited the chamber, the time intervals between individual escapes changed and the frequency distribution of the time intervals exhibited exponential decay. We also investigated the relationship between the number of ants in a group and the group flow rate.     

Escaping from prison: an economic reassessment of Rutland Water

Recently in the water industry interest has been growing in solutions to widening demand-supply gaps. These include demand-management elements. The paper examines the 1970 decision by Parliament to build Rutland Water and concludes that, despite over-predictions of water demands, the very few hard facts then available concerning water economy measures would probably not have prevented the reservoir being authorised, had they been taken into account. By 1981, however, dramatic reductions in expected population and per capita public water supply growth had occurred, with much more evidence available concerning the scope of demand-management. It is suggested a similar decision on economic grounds would probably have been a negative one.