James T. Green thought he was having a panic attack.

He took a break from work to walk around the block during a stressful day, and noticed he felt out of breath climbing up a small hill. That wasn’t normal, Green thought. He had become a regular biker in recent months and wasn’t exactly out of shape. He sat down at his desk, and looked at the Apple Watch on his wrist. His heart rate was through the roof, and the Heart Watch app he was using to check his pulse was flashing warnings. Maybe it was something more serious, he thought.

Although he had blood clots（血栓）in his lungs a few years back, he had been taking medication, and doctors said that it was an unusual condition for someone in their mid-20s. Still, the symptoms this time were much less severe, and he was feeling stressed, so his mind didn’t automatically jump to blood clots. Green’s doctor told him it sounded like anxiety. But then he showed her his heart rate recorded by the Apple Watch.

“This is my normal heart rate,” Green told her, pointing to the graph in the app. “This is where my heart is now. There’s something wrong.”

The doctor ordered a CT scan. The blood clots in his left lung had returned. An ambulance rushed Green to the emergency room, where he was pumped full of blood thinners（血液稀释剂）. He didn’t need surgery this time, but doctors told him that if he had waited, a clot could have killed him.

Green isn’t the only person who has discovered a serious health condition after seeing heart-rate data on a smartwatch. And he won’t be the last. Currently, smartwatches from Apple and others can tell you your heart rate and track your workouts. But these companies want to go beyond the basics by developing ways to tell you when something is wrong. In fact, it’s already happening.

   Scientists are debating how to limit their newly-discovered power to change genetic structure. Scientists have already changed the genes of farm animals and agricultural plants to make them more productive or stronger. But now they can also change genes in wild animals and plants. These genes would continue into later generations. For example，it may be possible for scientists' to remove from existence the kind of mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus. They might also be able to permanently remove species of plants and animals that are destructive to other species.

In a report published last week，the U.S. National Academies of Sciences，Engineering and Medicine said it supports continuing research on this kind of gene control. But it warned that it is not possible to know what will happen when these changed plants and animals are released into the wild.

Sixteen biologists，ethicists（伦理学家）and policymakers are on a National Academy of Sciences（NAS）committee that is examining the issue. They say that there is value to the new technology. But，they say，there is not enough evidence to support the release of changed organisms（生物）from the laboratory into nature.

Many people would support stopping mosquitoes and rats from carrying diseases. But scientists say we must understand the possible scientific，ethical，legal and social results of such action before we decide whether to take it. Gene modification is spread through reproduction（繁殖）.Changed genes will continue to spread as long as an animal or plant continues to reproduce. They cannot be limited to a farm or kept within a country's borders. Scientists are wondering what may happen if a changed organism mates with another species. They are not yet sure how the changed genes would affect the other species. It is possible that those genes could harm those creatures or even lead to their disappearance from our planet.

   Technology has enabled people to connect fast and across vast distances. 【小题1】 Therefore, it is important to find ways to communicate better, while we are still keeping pace with the demands of the modern day.

Cut back on texting. Texting is a good way of keeping in touch and communicating with another person if calling him is not possible. Unless you can’t help it, give up the habit of texting — while walking, eating or driving — because texting is not real communication. 【小题2】 Calling is a great way of enhancing conversations because it’s more direct, with a greater chance of successful communication.

【小题3】 We are more willing to spend time on Facebook than actually leave our desks and have a conversation with the person working right next to us. A good way of improving real-life communication is to log off or keep yourself away from social media.

Meet people face-to-face. The next time you want to open Facebook to chat with a friend, call him up and meet him instead. 【小题4】 Take time to meet the person who matters to you and you will get a kind of communication and relationship that staring at a screen just can’t provide.

Technology is a tool. It is worth remembering that technology is only a tool we have. 【小题5】Use social networks to find people, to reconnect with friends, to support a cause and to contribute to the bigger picture in a more real manner.

   Nature has its own way of balancing itself out，but when we humans get involved，we tend to throw things out of control. Forests and oceans are natural carbon sinks that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but since we’ve been pumping too much into the air, those sinks can’t keep up. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Advancement of Science in Germany, led by biologist Tobias Erb，have figured out a way to supercharge plants to make them better at absorbing carbon dioxide, which could be a key defense against climate change.

Erb and his team figured out a way to make plants more efficient（效率高的）at absorbing carbon, so that they consumed more carbon in a shorter amount of time. “If you think about plants, they are efficient carbon dioxide -fixing filters, but they are not fast,” Erb said. “I think there is a chance to improve existing biology with synthetic（人造的）biology.”

Erb’s team identified 17 enzymes（酶）from nine different organisms, re-engineering three of them, which had enlarged carbon consumption. When those enzymes worked together as a team, they worked better at not only plants’ natural enzymes, but also themselves individually.

Existing enzymes in plants consume about 5 to 10 molecules（分子）of carbon dioxide per second. The team of enzymes that Erb used consumed 80 molecules per second.

So far, these enzymes have only been tested in test tubes in the lab, but the next step is real world testing where the enzymes would be introduced into plants to see if the same result occurs. If those tests show that plants really can be supercharged, we will have a new tool in the fight against climate change where not only do we protect the amazing carbon-absorbing forests we have, but we also apply these super plants or an artificial leaf technology using the enzymes into other fields.