Young people frequently say that they want to exercise, but they just can't find the time.
The solution just might be in-office interval training.
Recent studies show that very short but intense exercise rapidly builds and maintains fitness and health, even when the workout is only a few minutes long.
Work the stairs
You can complete an excellent, effective — and very brief — workout in an office stairwell, says Martin Gibala, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Canada and an expert on interval training.
For a study that he and his colleagues presented earlier this year, they asked 12 out-of-shape women in their 20s to warm up for two minutes by slowly walking up and down stairs in a campus office building.
They completed three of these abbreviated stair workouts per week for six weeks.
By the end, their aerobic fitness had improved substantially, the researchers reported, by about as much as if they had been running or cycling each week for hours.
Fidget your way to fitness.
Parents and teachers may once have urged you to sit still, but wiggling, tapping your toes, standing briefly, and otherwise fidgeting as much as possible at your desk is in fact good for your body.
In one recent study, college students showed healthier blood flow in their lower legs if they fidgeted than if they did not.
Even better, a 2008 study found that among office workers, those who frequently fidgeted burned as many as 300 calories more each day than those who resolutely stayed still.
Retirement (退休) should be time of joy and freedom. However, for some people retirement comes with feelings of depression (沮丧), which makes life difficult for them.
Retirement is a major life change. Even good changes usually involve some kinds of loss. When you retire, you find yourself lacking whatever working used to provide. That could include, for example, 1. knowing you're working for society, 2. getting admiration from your skills, 3. having “aha” moments when you solve problems, 4. having people to socialize with, and 5. simply having a place to go and a reason to get out of bed every day. For most people, there's a financial loss, too. Also, retirement age is a time when a lot of people have to deal with losing their parents or having serious health problems of their own.
Because of all these, retirees are more likely to get depressed.
Depression is very harmful. First, depression can make physical health problems worse. Second, it takes a toll on relationships, because it can make people angry. Third, it's hard to get much done when you're depressed.
What can we do to overcome (克服) the feelings of depression? First, do all the things that help depression in general: drink enough water, exercise, talk to friends, have a hobby, laugh, and spend time in nature. If you feel depressed more often than not, it's probably time to talk to a doctor about your feelings. Second, it's important to keep busy and get out of the house when you can. Make specific plans with friends. Take a class Volunteer. Or just make sure you start each day with some kind of goal. Third, try to focus on what you've gained by retiring. Think about what you may have now that you wished you had before you were able to retire. For example, days that are less stressful, a chance to rest and take better care of your body, more time for your family and yourself. To write, to start a hobby and to learn something new are all new possibilities. Finally, tell your story. You've lived a long time and you become an oral historian each time you talk with someone about your experiences. You can also write in a journal or make a video recording of your memories. Telling your stories can help you look back on your life and career with a sense of wholeness and achievements.
One day when I was 12, my mother gave me an order: I was to walk to the public library, and borrow at least one book for the summer. This was one more weapon for her to defeat my strange problem—inability to read.
In the library, I found my way into the “Children's Room.” I sat down on the floor and pulled a few books off the shelf at random. The cover of a book caught my eye. It presented a picture of a beagle. I had recently had a beagle, the first and only animal companion I ever had as a child. He was my secret sharer, but one morning, he was gone, given away to someone who had the space and the money to care for him. I never forgot my beagle.
There on the book's cover was a beagle which looked identical(相同的) to my dog. I ran my fingers over the picture of the dog on the cover. My eyes ran across the title, Amos, the Beagle with a Plan. Unknowingly, I had read the title. Without opening the book, I borrowed it from the library for the summer.
Under the shade of a bush, I started to read about Amos. I read very, very slowly with difficulty. Though pages were turned slowly, I got the main idea of the story about a dog who, like mine, had been separated from his family and who finally found his way back home. That dog was my dog, and I was the little boy in the book. At the end of the story, my mind continued the final scene of reunion, on and on, until my own lost dog and I were, in my mind, running together.
My mother's call returned me to the real world. I suddenly realized something: I had read a book, and I had loved reading that book. Everyone knew I could not read. But I had read it. Books could be incredibly wonderful and I was going to read them.
I never told my mother about my “miraculous(奇迹般的) ” experience that summer, but she saw a slow but ramarkable improvement in my classroom performance during the next year. And years later, she was proud that her son had read thousands of books, was awarded a PhD in the literature, and authored his own books, articles, poetry and fiction. The power of the words has held.
Whether in the home or the workplace, social robots are going to become a lot more common in the next few years. Social robots are about to bring technology to the everyday world in a more humanized way, said Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist at the robot company Jibo.
While household robots today do the normal housework, social robots will be much more like companions(同伴) than mere tools. For example, these robots will be able to distinguish when someone is happy or sad. This allows them to respond more appropriately to the user.
The Jibo robot, arranged to ship later this year, is designed to be a personalized assistant. You can talk to the robot, ask it questions, and make requests for it to perform different tasks. The robot doesn't just deliver general answers to questions; it responds based on what it learns about each individual in the household. It can do things such as reminding an elderly family member to take medicine or taking family photos.
Social robots are not just finding their way into the home. They have potential applications in everything from education to health care and are already finding their way into some of these spaces.
Fellow Robots is one company bringing social robots to the market. The company's “Oshbot” robot is built to assist customers in a store, which can help the customers find items and help guide them to the product's location in the store. It can also speak different languages and make recommendations for different items based on what the customer is shopping for.
The more interaction the robot has with humans, the more it learns. But Oshbot, like other social robots, is not intended to replace workers, but to work alongside other employees. “We have technologies to train social robots to do things not for us, but with us,” said Breazeal.
September is an exciting month in every college freshman's life. For many, it's the first time that they've left home to live in a new environment. But after the hustle and bustle(喧嚣)of a few weeks, excitement gives way to a less enjoyable emotion— homesickness.
Homesickness manifests(显露)itself in many ways. You may miss mum's cooking, your pets, or even your old bed. All this becomes a fond memory of the past. Homesickness can be a bitter feeling for many students, especially when faced with the challenges of settling into an unfamiliar environment.
But remember, you're not alone. According to a recent BBC article, 70 percent of British college students experience homesickness. In this increasingly globalized world in which people migrate to faraway places for a relationship, education or work, homesickness is a feeling shared by many adults.
Homesickness can have similar symptoms to depression and in extreme cases it can develop into a panic attack. As for the term, homesickness or nostalgia wasn't invented until the 17th century. It was considered a disorder by a Swiss physician, who attributed soldiers' mental and physical discomfort to their longing to return home, “nostos” from Greek, and the accompanying pain, “algos”.
Studies in recent years, however, have shown that nostalgia may have some benefits to our mental health. After a decade of surveys and researches, Constantine Sedikides, a US social psychologist, found that nostalgia is what makes us human. He explains that nostalgia can resist loneliness, boredom and anxiety. Therefore, it's necessary for college students to learn some ways to overcome the uncomfortable feeling.
The computers changed our lives in the 1980s, the Internet changed our lives in the 1990s, and the robots will change our lives in the new century.
Do you think there will be robots in people's homes? It's not a dream that every home will have a robot.
Now, robots are not only able to help people do the housework, they can also help the doctors do the difficult operations, play chess with people, play the piano and so on.
A new cooking robot is used in Beijing. It can cook all the dishes on the menu, you only need to wait two to four minutes. In the future, the robot will be a nurse, a security guard, or a partner in your life.
Experts believe robots will be used everywhere from the industrial robots to service robots. In the future, robots will become part of the family, and provide close service for people. We all look forward to the new robot age.
Do you like eating processed meat? If you do, think twice now if you want to eat such meat for the sake of your health. Why? It's because eating processed meat can cause cancer, World Health Organization (WHO) experts said last Monday.
Processed meat is the meat that has been preserved by salting, smoking, drying or canning. Experts from the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France studied 800 patients. The experts connected processed meat, such as hot dogs and bacon, with at least three kinds of cancer. A person who eats 50 grams of processed meat per day—about two pieces of bacon—increases his or her risk of bowel(肠) cancer by 18 percent.
The IARC has included processed meat in its Group 1 list, for which there is “enough evidence” of connection with cancer. Tobacco is also on the Group 1 list.
WHO experts also say red meat, including beef, lamb and pork, is “probably” carcinogenic (致癌的) to humans. Dr. Kurt Strait is with the IARC. He said in a statement that the risk of cancer increases with the amount of meat a person eats. Health experts in some countries advised against eating large amounts of red and processed meat. But those suggestions had been centered on the increased risk of heart disease and obesity.
However, meat industry groups protest the result of the WHO study. They say that meat is part of a balanced diet. They also say the causes of cancer are broad, and include environment and lifestyle factors.
The WHO report cites the Global Burden of Disease project, which shows that diets high in processed meat lead to 34,000 cancer deaths per year worldwide.
A few days ago I was sitting in a Thai restaurant enjoying a meal when I got a phone call from a friend I hadn't spoken to for a long time. Full of enthusiasm and excitement I talked slightly louder than usual and in Spanish, my mother tongue.
A few minutes into the call the lady sitting beside me got up, seemingly upset, and asked the restaurant staff to relocate her to a table as far away as possible from "this man who won't get off his phone"
I sank in my seat out of embarrassment. I ended the call soon afterwards and felt the urge to go over and apologize. Before getting up I looked around to see where she was and I found she was, indeed, at the table furthest away from me. I noticed that the lady was alone and staring out of the window, looking a bit sad.
Right then I quit my plan for a conventional apologetic gesture and decided to conduct an experiment. Seeing those funny smile cards in my wallet, I took one out. When signing my check I asked the waiter to secretly charge the lady's meal to my credit card instead of her bill.
I left the restaurant, letting the waiter know I would be back in a few hours to pick up my credit card. I returned later as promised, excited to learn the result.
To my pleasant surprise, things turned out the best possible way. A group of restaurant staff approached me with joy, telling me that the lady had dined there many times, but they had never seen her smile and laugh like she did upon receiving the smile card and the $0 check.
Actors Keira Knightley and Kristen Bell have both commented on their worries about using Disney princesses as role models for their children.
On a famous talk show, Knightley said her daughter (who was born in 2015) was "banned" from watching Cinderella, which Disney produced as a cartoon in 1950 and a live-action film in 2015. "Cinderella waits around for a rich guy to rescue her. Don't. Rescue yourself! Obviously."
Knightley added that she had also forbidden The Little Mermaid, the 1989 cartoon. "This is the one that I'm quite annoyed about because I really like the film. I mean, the songs are great, but do not give up your voice for a man. Well, that's a little difficult to handle, but I'm keeping to it."
Bell, the star of Frozen, expressed her disapproval of the Snow White fairytale, which became a classic Disney cartoon in 1938. In an interview with parents, Bell said: "I look at my girls and ask, ‘Don't you think it's very unusual that Snow White didn't ask the old witch why she needed to eat the apple? Or where she got that apple?' I say, 'I would never take food from a stranger, would you?' And my kids respond, 'No!' And I think I'm doing something right."
Bell, who played a Disney princess in Frozen, said she also used the story to illustrate issues about permission. She says that she asked her children: "Don't you think that it's very strange that the prince kisses Snow White without her permission? … Because you cannot kiss someone if they're sleeping!"
Bell later responded to criticism on social media. To one user she wrote: "Everything is a message to our children, because they are sponges(海绵) that soak up everything and are learning how to be adults through what they see. I want my girls to see and practice critical thinking and respectful behavior."
If you're planning on travelling, there are a few simple rules about how to make life easier both before and after your journey.
First of all, always check and doublecheck departure (起程) time. It is amazing how few people really do this carefully. Once I arrived at the airport a few minutes after ten. My secretary had got the ticket for me and I thought she had said that the plane left at 10:50. When I arrived at the airport, the clerk at the departure desk told me that my flight was closed. Therefore, I had to wait three hours for the next one and missed an important meeting.
The second rule is to remember that even in this age of credit cards, it is still important to have at least a little of the local currency (货币) with you when you arrive in a country. This can be necessary if you are flying to a place few tourists normally visit. Once I arrived at a place at midnight and the bank at the airport was closed. The only way to get to my hotel was by taxi and because I had no dollars, I offered to pay in pounds instead. "Listen! I only take real money!" the driver said angrily. Luckily I was able to borrow a few dollars from a clerk at the hotel, but it was embarrassing.
The third and last rule is to find out as much as you can about the weather at your destination before you leave. I feel sorry for some of my workmates who travel in heavy suits and raincoats in May, when it is still fairly cool in London or Manchester, to places like Athens, Rome or Madrid, where it is already beginning to get quite warm during the day.
Sales of Apple's new iPhone 11 in China began on Friday, but were met with a cooler welcome from customers than in previous years. Unlike in previous years, no long lines were seen outside Chinese shops on Friday for the new iPhone, and the product release (发布) only made the headlines in a few media.
Huawei released its Mate 30 smartphone series on Thursday night. Its new devices(设备) have won consumers' hearts at home and abroad. Many compared it with Apple's new iPhone 11, saying that beats the new iPhone because of innovation and quality. One customer named Zhao Kai, an IT specialist who pre-ordered a Mate 30 Pro on Friday, said that he chose Mate 30 without hesitation. Zhao said, "It's clear that Huawei's new phone with its advanced 5G mode would lead the future global telecommunications market, too."
In contrast with iPhone 11's poor sales, Chinese netizens (网民) have joined in discussions on Mate 30 and iPhone 11. An online poll on the Mate 30 and iPhone 11 on Weibo on Friday showed that more than 60 percent of netizens chose the Mate 30, while less than 20 percent chose the iPhone 11. Many chose Huawei as a result of its technology.
Overseas customers also joined in the heated discussions on Huawei's new flagship devices on sites. On Twitter, many netizens said "nice", "best phone ever" and "my favorite one" on Huawei's Twitter account. Some netizens in countries like the UK, the Netherlands and Argentina asked when Huawei's new devices would be released in their countries.
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology may soon be a useful tool for doctors. It may help them better understand and treat diseases like breast cancer in ways that were never before possible.
Rishi Rawat teaches AI at the University of Southern California's (USC) Clinical Science Center in Los Angeles. He is part of a team of scientists who are researching how AI and machine learning can more easily recognize cancerous growths in the breast. Rawat provides information about cancer cells to a computer. He says this data helps the machine learn." You can put the data into them and they will learn the patterns and the pattern recognition. That's important to make decisions."
David Agus is another USC researcher. He believes that" machines are not going to take the place of doctors." "Computers will not treat patients, but they will help make certain decisions and look for things that the human brain can't recognize these patterns by itself. Once a confirmed cancerous growth is removed, doctors still have to treat the patient to reduce the risk of cancer returning. The form of treatment depends on the kind of cancer. Currently, researchers take a thin piece of tissue, put it on a small piece of glass and add color to better see the cells.
That process could take days or even longer. Scientists say AI can do something better than just count cells Trough machine learning it can recognize complex patterns or structures, and learn how the cells are organized. The hope is that machines will soon be able to make a quick identification of cancer that is free of human mistakes." All of a sudden, we have the computing power to really do it in real time…We couldn't have done this, we didn't have the computing power to do this several years ago, but now it's all changed." Agus adds that the process could be done "for almost no cost in the developing world." He says that having a large amount of information about patients is important for a machine to effectively do its job in medicine.
The University of Southern California researchers are now only studying breast cancer. But doctors predict AI will one day make a difference in all forms of cancer.
Slowly but surely, we're moving closer and closer to 5G world. From smart-home security to self-driving cars, all the internet-connected devices in our life will be able to talk to each other at lighting-fast speeds with reduced delay. Objectively speaking, the fastest 4G download speeds in the US top out at an average of 19.42Mbps. But by comparison 5G promises gigabit (千兆) speeds.
"5G is one of those heralds (使者), along with artificial intelligence, of this coming data age," said Steve Koenig, senior director of market research for the Consumer Technology Association. "The self-driving vehicle is a great emblem of this data age, and that is to say, it is a sign of time, because with one single task, driving, you have massive amounts of coming from the vehicle itself, and a variety of sensors are collecting a lost of information to model its environments as it moves. It's pulling in date from other vehicles about road conditions down the lane. It could be weather information, and also connected infrastructure (基础设施) constructors. There's lots of data behind that task, which is why we need the high speed.
And virtual reality glasses and headsets haven't yet broken the mainstream, but tech companies are joyfully betting that these devices will eventually replace our smartphones. With 5G, that could actually happen. This is notable because companies such as Apple are reportedly developing AR glasses to assist — or even replace — smartphones.
Ericsson stated at February's Mobile World Congress how smart glasses could become faster and lighter with a 5G connection, because instead of being weighed down with components, the glasses could reply on hardware for processing power.
But don't get to excited. There's still a lot of work to be down in the meantime, including various trials to make sure the radios play nicely with hardware and infrastructure construction so 5G isn't concentrated only in big cities.
"Funny", a made-in-China emoji, seems to have recently moved beyond China. Now, it is more than an emoji, but a cultural expansion.
● Reaching Global Markets
A series of "funny" emoji-based bolsters (抱枕) have attracted the attention of Japanese customers. Even if one bolster is more than three times as expensive as in China, it doesn't kill their desires to buy it. One Japanese customer Miki said, "They are just so cute and I bought three bolsters at one time for my family. And every time I see them, my mood just brightens suddenly."
A Japanese netizen Kiro Kara said, "I think the emoji implies very complicated meanings. My dad will send it when he doesn't agree with someone but he has to say something and behave politely."
● Addition to Domestic Social Media
Compared with Japanese impressions of the "funny" emoji, Chinese netizens prefer to use emoji to tease one another on social media.
One commonly seen online comment is, "We strongly suggest stopping the usage of the emoji. Because every time other people send me the emoji, I feel very uncomfortable and consider myself as a fool."
Regarded as the most popular emoji, the "funny" emoji has received much attention since its release in 2013. In fact, the "funny" emoji is the updated version of its original one; "funny" has a smiley mouth, two eyebrows and a naughty look. All these characteristics present users a sense of satire (讽刺).
● In Everyday Use Abroad
It's not the first time the Chinese emoji takes the world stage. Earlier this year, one emoji from the Chinese basketball celebrity Yao Ming has been spread through the Middle East region. In a city in southern Egypt, Yao's smiling emoji has appeared frequently in local traffic signs to remind people the road ahead is one-way. Many locals do not know Yao Ming but are familiar with his emoji and nickname "Chinese Funny Face".
As a new online language, emojis have become a necessary part of people's daily life, helping people express their views in a more vivid and precise way. Also, it can help foreigners learn about Chinese culture. But how to properly use "the fifth innovation in China" without hurting others and turn them into commercial advantages still need answers.
Over half of Tokyo's residents don't think the postponed 2020 Olympics should be held in 2021, backing either a further delay or complete cancellation because of fears for the coronavirus, according to a poll (民意调查) published on Monday.
The survey carried out by two Japanese news organizations is only a single data point, but comes after health experts warned that even a year's delay may not be enough to hold the Games safely.
The poll found 51. 7 percent of respondents hope the Games in 2021 are postponed again or canceled, while 46. 3 percent want to see the rescheduled Olympics go ahead. Among those opposed to the 2021 Games, 27. 7 percent said they want them canceled altogether, while 24 percent would prefer a second postponement.
The telephone poll, conducted by Kyodo News and Tokyo MX television between Friday and Sunday, received 1,030 replies. Of those who said they want to see the Games held in 2021, 31. 1 percent said the event should be on a smaller scale, while 15. 2 percent said they want to see fully developed Olympics.
Tokyo 2020 was postponed in March as the coronavirus spread across the globe, causing the worst disruption (中断) to the Olympics since two editions were canceled during World War II. The Games are now scheduled to begin on July 23, 2021, although they will still be known as the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Officials from Japan and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have warned that it will not be possible to postpone them again, and even the year-long delay has created significant financial and logistical (后勤的) headaches.
Earlier in June, the mayor of Tokyo Yuriko Koike told AFP that the rescheduled Olympics will be safe despite the coronavirus pandemic, promising to make a "120-percent effort" to ensure the first-ever postponed Games can go ahead. Koike has been heavily involved in preparations for the Games, traveling to Rio for the handover ceremony after the last Summer Olympics.
If you live in Shanghai, you might have to take a "lesson" in sorting garbage, as the city recently introduced new garbage-sorting regulations. It's now required that people should sort garbage into four categories, namely recyclable, harmful, dry and wet waste. However, if people fail to sort their garbage properly, they can be fined up to 200 yuan. More cities are introducing similar regulations, following the practice in Shanghai. By the end of 2020, garbage-sorting systems will have been built in 46 major Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shenzhen, reported People's Daily.
According to a study by the Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy, under the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, over 90 percent of the public believe that garbage sorting is important for the protection of the environment. However, garbage sorting is still a big problem in China. Only 30 percent of participants said they think they are adequately sorting their trash, the study noted.
According to Xinhua News Agency, it's partly because many people lack the willingness to sort their own waste. In the past, some previous garbage regulations didn't give clear fines for people who failed to sort garbage. "It's a must to have a legal guarantee to promote garbage sorting. " Liu Jianguo, a professor from Tsinghua University, told China Daily. He also added "the importance of the new regulations in Shanghai is to change the past voluntary action into compulsory action for everyone"
Aside from China, many other foreign countries have also introduced garbage-sorting regulations. In Japan, waste sorting has become a basic survival skill, reported Xinhua. There is a fixed time for disposal of each kind of garbage and littering can result in high fines and even jail time. In Germany too, people are asked to sort waste into specific categories, reported HuffPost. For example, in Berlin, people have yellow bins for plastic and metals and blue bins for paper and cardboard.
Warren Edward Buffett was born on August 30, 1930. As the second oldest kid in his family, he has two sisters. He showed an amazing talent (天资) for both money and business at a very early age.
At the age of six, Buffett bought six-packs of Coca-Cola from his grandfather's store for twenty-five cents and resold each of the bottles for five cents. While other children of his age were playing, Buffett was making money. Five years later, Buffett took his first step into the world of high finance (金融).
At eleven years old, he bought three shares (股票)of Cities Service Preferred (CSP) at $ 38 per share for both himself and his sister, Doris. Shortly after buying them, the shares fell to just over $ 27 per share. Though Buffett felt frightened, he held his shares until they went up to $ 40. He immediately sold them—a mistake he would soon come to regret, because each share of the CSP went up to $ 200. The experience taught him that investing (投资)needed time and a patient wait.
In 1947, Buffett graduated from high school when he was 17 years old. It was never his plan to go to college. He had already made $ 5,000 by delivering newspapers. His father had other plans and strongly advised his son to attend the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. Buffett only stayed there for two years, saying that he knew more than his professors. He returned home and went to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Despite working full-time, he managed to graduate in only three years. Buffett approached graduate studies with the same resistance he displayed a few years earlier. He was finally persuaded to apply to Harvard Business School, which refused him because he was too young. Buffett then applied to Columbia University, where he got an experience that would forever change his life from famous investors Ben Graham and David Dodd.
With around 100 students scheduled to be in that 9:00 am Monday morning lecture, it is no surprise that almost 20 people actually make it to the class and only 10 of them are still awake after the first 15 minutes; it is not even a surprise that most of them are still in their pajama's(睡衣). Obviously, students are terrible at adjusting their sleep cycles to their daily schedule.
All human beings possess a body clock. Along with other alerting systems, this governs the sleep/wake cycle and is therefore one of the main processes which govern sleep behaviour. Typically, the preferred sleep/wake cycle is delayed in adolescents, which leads to many students not feeling sleepy until much later in the evenings. This typical sleep pattern is usually referred to as the "night owl" schedule of sleep.
This is opposed to the "early bird" schedule, and is a kind of disorder where the individual tends to stay up much past midnight. Such a person has great difficulty in waking up in the mornings. Research suggests that night owls feel most alert and function best in the evenings and at night. Research findings have shown that about 20 percent of people can be classified as "night owls" and only 10 percent can be classified as "early birds" —— the other 70 percent are in the middle. Although this is clearly not true for all students, for the ones who are true night owls, this gives them an excellent excuse for missing their lectures which unfortunately fall before midday.
As people are becoming more socially conscious about where their food comes from and how it impacts the planet, they are choosing animal-free plant-based options. Cow-free meat has been around for quite some time and the popularity of brands of the cultivated(培育的)meat is rising. While there are a large number of plant-based milk substitutes(替代品), none of them have the same taste of cow's milk. Now, a food-tech company created real dairy products(奶制品) without harming a single cow or the planet.
The company stresses that their product produced in the lab is not a milk substitute but rather is the real deal. And it is very healthy. The company also says that the lab-produced milk tastes the same as the real thing and they hope to eventually replace cows by creating every dairy product sold. They expect to roll out plant-based cheese and yogurt in addition to milk. "Our company was founded with the mission to stop using animals to produce our food because, as dairy lovers, we realize that giving up on milk is not a choice," John said. "But today's milk comes with an unreasonable price tag. The dairy industry is destroying our planet, our health, and our animals, and is simply not sustainable (可持续的) anymore."
The environmental price tag of dairy farming is too high. According to the World Wildlife Fund, dairy cows add a huge amount of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and contribute to global warming and climate change as well as pollute the air around them. Dairy operations consume large amounts of water and run-off of manure (粪肥) and fertilizers from these farms get into local waterways. The production uses only 5 percent of the resources and produces only 1 percent of the waste of producing cow's milk according to the company. And they accomplish this by being 100 percent cruelty-free unlike dairy farms.
New Zealand is an island country in the southwest of Pacific Ocean. The country geographically comprises two main lands—the North Island, or Te Ika-a-Maui, and the South Island, or Te Waipounamu, and numerous smaller islands. New Zealand is situated some 1, 500 kilometers east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and roughly 1, 000 kilometers south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. Because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. The country's varied topography(地形) and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, while the city that has the largest population is Auckland.
Polynesians settled in the islands that were to become New Zealand somewhere between 1250 and 1300 AD, and developed a unique Maori culture. In 1642, Abel Tasman, a Dutch explorer became the first European to sight New Zealand in 1840. Representatives of the British Crown(王室) and Maori Chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, making New Zealand a British colony. Today, the majority of New Zealand's population of 4. 5 million is of European descent(血统), and the indigenous(土著的) Maori are the largest minority, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Reflecting this, New Zealand's culture is mainly originated from Maori and early British settlers, with recent broadening arising from increased immigration. The official languages are English, Maori and New Zealand Sign Language, with English predominant(主要的).
New Zealand is a developed country with a market economy that mainly consists of the exports of dairy products, meat and wine, along with tourism. New Zealand is a high-income economy and ranks highly in international comparisons of national performance, such as health, education, economic freedom and quality of life.