Automakers typically display dozens of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles every year at the Washington Auto Show. But the prevalence of electric vehicles (EVs) at the car show would only 21 their deep unpopularity with American people. Despite EVs’ crucial role in reducing air pollution, they only take up just around 2% of car sales in the US last year. In stark contrast, gasguzzling SUVs, sedans, and trucks make up more than 70% of the market. So why American consumers generally do not find EVs 22 ? A recent research shows that Americans’ lack of interest in EVs can be attributed to the 23 of reliable sources of information they trust about how EVs can improve the environment. Environmental psychologists 24 that more American would purchase more EVs if they receive sufficient credible information about their benefits at the point of decision. Prospective consumers may not care too much about how EVs can minimize greenhouse gas 25 , but they would definitely respond to possibilities about how EVs will save them big bucks in the future.

　　Two decades of analyses have produced rich insights as to how the law should be applied to regulate the Internet’s peculiar characteristics. But, in the meantime, Internet-related technology has not 26 . The same public and private institutions that developed the Internet, from the armed forces to search engines, have 27 a significant shift toward developing robotics. An article to be published in the upcoming issue of California Law Review discusses how the cyber-law and policy should respond to the new transformative robotic technology. Robotics has essential qualities different from those of the Internet, and accordingly will 28 distinct legal issues. For instance, robotics combines, for the first time, the promiscuity of data with the capacity to do physical harm; robotic systems accomplish tasks in ways that cannot be anticipated in advance; and robots increasingly 29 the line between person and instrument. Nonetheless, robotics, being automatic in nature, may still prove “exceptional” in the sense of 30 systematic changes to law, institutions, and the legal academy.

　　The world shares the sorrow of the French people as Paris’ treasured Notre Dame cathedral was in flames. 31 The cathedral experienced several catastrophic damages after the French Revolution, and then a major controversial restoration in the mid-19th century. So, what has been lost in this recent fire accident? The fire destroyed the roof, the spire (the pyramidal structure on the top of the church tower), permanent paintings and sculptures, and many other historical artifacts. Not surprisingly, all the timber elements are gone due to the heat of the blaze. 32 What have been saved? Most of the stone fabric is not impaired thanks to the effort of the fire brigades. Additionally, most of the religious objects and artifacts that could be moved are not affected. For instance, the bells—an important symbol and artifact of the cathedral—managed to escape from the worst destruction. How will experts repair Notre Dame cathedral? 33 Reconstruction of major or large objects—such as the big rose windows—will demand a structural rebuilding work which can take years. 34 French people have accumulated many good illustrative or photographic documentation of the whole cathedral. 35

　　Stefan Koelsch and his colleagues presented people with sequence of chords and used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to monitor their brains. 37 Notably, active neuron activity was detected in the core brain area traditionally associated with language processing. This finding entails that the brain areas governing music and language overlap. This neurological overlap can be attributed to an etymological common ground between the two—they are governed by systematic rules, in which constituent elements (e.g., music note vs. word) are hierarchically organized into sequences (e.g., melody vs. sentence). 

　　Researchers from Northwestern University found that an awareness of music can make people more attuned to the melody of speech. In a 2007 investigation, these researchers exposed English speakers to Mandarin speech sounds and employed electrodes placed on the scalp to measure the electrical responses in their auditory brain stem. 38 The researchers observed that those who had received some musical training consistently exhibited a much stronger electrical response to the speech in the auditory brain stem than those who had no music training. 

　　Focusing on prenatal babies, some German neuroscientists found out that both language and musical prosodies can penetrate the womb. 39 Babies smile when hearing high-pitch discourse that indicates approval and praise, and become depressed when hearing low-pitched prohibitions. 40 Not only can exposure to music enhance our language skills, but the speech we hear also influences our perception of music.

　　Findings of this research raise challenges to a long-standing assumption that brains will be irrevocably damaged soon after blood stops circulation. Importantly, the discovery of this research exacerbates the tug-of-war between the effort to salvage a person’s life and the endeavors to remove and implant the organs in another body. Typically, practitioners use various rules of thumb, such as “declare death after 30 minutes of unsuccessful resuscitative efforts”, as the reference point for death determination and for switching from life-saving effort to “organ-saving” effort (for transplantation purposes). But the aforementioned rules of thumb have not been clear-cut. In most countries, most organs for transplant have been extracted from people who have been pronounced brain dead; however, recently, more and more people who are declared dead after their heart and lungs have stopped working (circulatory death) are also eligible for organ donation. Apparently, the standards for death determination and organ transplantation are still not unequivocally accepted by clinicians. 

　　The debate on life and death will continue. Despite the lack of consensus, the transplant community, scientists, and medical professionals and other stakeholders generally agree that indisputable, unambiguous transplantation guidelines that can help protect the interests of individuals for whom recovery is a possibility and the interests of potential organ recipients are warranted. Such transplantation guidelines will help medical professionals to make indisputable decisions on the timing to switch from saving someone’s life to saving their organs for the benefit of another person. In any case, this decision on “life and death” should not come down to a moral decision. 

　　In addition, medical professionals should also make joint effort to optimize the resuscitation technology. If such a technology gets improved, people who are pronounced brain dead may become candidates for brain resuscitation, rather than candidates for organ transportation. In this regard, it would be harder for families to accept that further resuscitative intervention performed on their love ones is futile. In our view, as the science of brain resuscitation progresses, the decisions to revive patients from unconsciousness or apparent death might increasingly become more reasonable; and the decisions to give up resuscitation in favor of transplanting organs might seem less so.

　　The whole prospect and outlook of humankind grew immeasurably larger, and the multiplication of ideas also proceeded at an incredible rate. This vast expansion was unhappily not accompanied by any noticeable advance in the stature of human beings, either in their mental faculties, or their moral character. Our brain got no better, but it buzzed more. The scale of events around us assumed gigantic proportions while we remained about the same size. By comparison therefore we actually became much smaller. We no longer had great individuals directing manageable affairs. The need was to discipline an array of gigantic and turbulent facts. To this task we have certainly so far proved uneq ual. Science bestowed immense new powers on human beings and at the same time created conditions which were largely beyond our comprehension and still more beyond our control. While people nursed the illusion of growing mastery and exulted in their new trappings, they became the sport and presently the victim of tides, and currents, of whirlpools and tornadoes amid which they were far more helpless than they had been for a long time.

　　Hodgkin was the foremost leader and innovator in her field, and the major impact of her work led to her becoming the only female British scientist to win a Nobel Prize (so far). The 1964 award recognized her work in chemistry using a technique known as X-ray crystallography to find out the three-dimensional shapes of penicillin (1945) and vitamin B12 (1955). 

　　Accurate knowledge of the shape of penicillin was pivotal in understanding how it could overcome bacterial infections. As a result, Hodgkin’s work is still important in the development of new antibiotics as some bacteria have developed resistance to existing drugs. 

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　　In addition to her accomplishment in diabetes treatment, key to Hodgkin’s work was the technique of X-ray crystallography, a way of working out how a complex molecule is arranged in three dimensions. The way we find out this 3D shape is by growing tiny crystals of a substance so that its molecules are all lined up in an orderly array. We then hit this array with X-rays and capture the resulting “diffraction pattern” of spots that indicate how the molecules interfere with the beam. By capturing patterns from each side of the crystal and performing some mathematical computations, we can eventually get the average of the shapes of all the molecules, highlighting all the common features. This gives us a picture of the density of electrons in the molecule in 3D space and show how the atoms of the molecule are arranged. 

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　　Hodgkin’s pioneering work in crystallography gave birth to a whole new field that applied the methods she developed to large biologically important molecules, including DNA and proteins. We now know the 3D shapes of over 139,000 biological molecules, and all the information is stored in a completely open access database called the Protein Data Bank. 

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　　She was also very active in standing up for her core beliefs as a pacifist. For 12 years she was president of Pugwash, an organization founded in 1957 dedicated to reducing the danger of armed conflict and which sought peaceful solutions to global security threats. She even inspired her former student Margaret Thatcher despite their differing politics. 

　　Her life was a shining example to many so it would be entirely appropriate for us to honor her great scientific achievements, and help give her the public recognition she deserves, by putting her image on our new £50 notes.