If you are a fruit grower—or would like to become one—take advantage of Apple Day to see what's around. It's called Apple Day but in practice it's more like Apple Month. The day itself is on October 21, but since it has caught on, events now spread out over most of October around Britain.
Visiting an apple event is a good chance to see, and often taste, a wide variety of apples. To people who are used to the limited choice of apples such as Golden Delicious and Royal Gala in supermarkets, it can be quite an eye opener to see the range of classical apples still in existence, such as Decio which was grown by the Romans. Although it doesn't taste of anything special, it's still worth a try, as is the knobbly(多疙瘩的) Cat's Head which is more of a curiosity than anything else.
There are also varieties developed to suit specific local conditions. One of the very best varieties for eating quality is Orleans Reinette, but you'll need a warm, sheltered place with perfect soil to grow it, so it's a pipe dream for most apple lovers who fall for it.
At the events, you can meet expert growers and discuss which ones will best suit your conditions, and because these are family affairs, children are well catered for with apple-themed fun and games.
Apple Days are being held at all sorts of places with an interest in fruit, including stately gardens and commercial orchards(果园). If you want to have a real orchard experience, try visiting the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale, near Faversham in Kent.
LONDON — A British judge on Thursday sentenced a businessman who sold fake(假冒的) bomb detectors(探测器) to 10 years in prison, saying the man hadn't cared about potentially deadly consequences.
It is believed that James McCormick got about $77.8 million from the sales of his detectors - which were based on a kind of golf ball finder - to countries including Iraq, Belgium and Saudi Arabia.
McCormick, 57, was convicted(判罪) of cheats last month and sentenced Thursday at the Old Bailey court in London.
"Your cheating conduct in selling a great amount of useless equipment simply for huge profit promoted a false sense of security and in all probability materially contributed to causing death and injury to innocent people," Judge Richard Hone told McCormick. "you have neither regret, nor shame, nor any sense of guilt."
The detectors, sold for up to $42,000 each, were said to be able to find such dangerous objects as bombs under water and from the air. But in fact they "lacked any grounding in science" and were of no use.
McCormick had told the court that he sold his detectors to the police in Kenya, the prison service in Hong Kong, the army in Egypt and the border control in Thailand.
"I never had any bad results from customers," he said.
A gaming company in New Zealand is luring employees from around the world by offering unlimited paid annual leave, a share in the company's profits and no set work hours.
Dean Hall became famous in international gaming circles for being the lead designer on popular video game DayZ. After searching the world for a location for his new gaming studio, Rocketwerkz, New Zealander Hall settled on the small university town of Dunedin on the south island's east coast, where land is cheap and creative start-ups have become an important pan of the city's identity.
Rocketwerkz's flexible work culture is now drawing talent from around the globe, with Hall receiving 300 messages of inquiry since a local newspaper wrote about his studio last week.
Last year, when the company was still in its infancy(婴儿期), baby cats would also make a regular appearance in the office as a form of fighting stress, and Friday afternoons are generally reserved for sports and games to end the week on a playful note.
“The first time I heard about the idea of unlimited paid leave in places like Silicon Valley it was about the problems it caused. A culture had appeared where employees took no leave,” said Hall.
“So to address that, our staff are issued the standard New Zealand annual leave of four weeks, but they can also take unlimited leave in addition to that.”
Emily Lampitt, from Britain, is a 3D junior artist who has been with the company for a year and a half. She says the flexible work culture was a huge factor in her decision to move to New Zealand.
“The flexibility here has made me feel much more relaxed” she says. I “That internal stress I used to feel in a traditional work environment has gone, so when I am at work now it is because I want to be, because I am passionate(有激情的), not because I am afraid of my boss or watching the clock.”
Rescue officials in Poland are working quickly to clear one of the country's highways. The roadway is covered with a sticky brown material. It is blocking cars from both directions.
What is causing the mess? Milk chocolate. The problems began early Wednesday, after a huge truck carrying many tons of liquid chocolate overturned. Chocolate spilled out. It spread across six driveways of Poland's A2 highway.
The liquid chocolate solidified（凝固）as it cooled, causing even more difficulties. The accident happened near the western Polish town of Slupca. Bogdan Kowalski is with the fire fighters of Slupca. He told the Associated Press that “the cooling chocolate is worse than snow”.
Videos published on social media showed rescuers and cleaners were trying to move the sticky brown mess with a bulldozer（推土机）.
The private Polish broadcaster TVN24 reported that the driver of the truck was taken to a hospital with a broken arm. The accident happened in the morning when there was little traffic. Nobody else was harmed.
The sticky situation became a hot topic on social media. Some people offered to help the clean-up workers by eating the chocolate themselves.
Marlene Kukawa is a media officer for Slupea police. She told the New York Times that rescue workers needed to remove the truck from the highway first. “The cleanup”, she said at the time, “will take a few hours or more.” She added that accidents are rare in this part of the A2 highway. And, she told the New York Times, she is sure the area has never experienced something quite like a huge chocolate spill.
When you get a cut, you cover it with a bandage. How do you know when to change it? Maybe you just wait until it's wet or dirty. But when people have long-term or chronic (慢性的)wounds that take months to get better, changing bandages too early or to late could make healing take even longer. Changing the dressing on a wound too often can provide an opportunity for infections to get in. But if a bandage gets very wet very quickly from the inside, it might be filling with pus (脓)--a sign an infection has begun. Judging just when to change is important.
Chronic wounds are common in people who are older or who have certain health conditions. Chronic wounds affect around 6.5 million people per year in the United States. When Anushka Naiknaware, 13, learned about chronic wounds, she decided to make a device that could alert a person when it's time to change their bandages.
After a lot of trials and errors, the teen settled on a design that used an “ink” filled with carbon nanoparticles(纳米粒子). The teen loaded her ink into a printer cartridge (墨盒) to print onto her special paper, which was to be made into bandage. Well, actually, Anushka loaded her ink into many, many printer cartridges. Just changing a printer cartridge isn't easy, and filling one is even harder.
The small printed papers cost only 5 to 10 cents, Anushka estimates. The Bluetooth sensor is more expensive, but the teen notes that it could be used over and over again. She also knows there is a long way to go before her design can help patients. It hasn't been tested on a real person yet. “You have to make sure everything works perfectly,” she says.
China will green light Internet medical services conducted by medical institutions as part of a broader push to promote Internet Plus Healthcare, those at a State Council executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang decided.
Medical institutions will be allowed to provide online diagnostic services for some common and chronic diseases in patients' follow-up visits to their doctors. The top levels of hospitals will be encouraged to provide online services, including consultations (会诊), reservations and test result inquiries.
As China joins the ranks of middle-income countries, the demand for health services has increased accordingly. Internet Plus Healthcare can help reduce the problem of inaccessible and expensive public health services that have long been a big concern for the general public.
One decision coming out of the meeting says the intelligent review for health insurance will be applied and the one-stop settlement will be advanced. The real-time sharing of prescription and drug retail sales will be explored, as well.
“We must waste no time in pushing forward the measures once the decisions made.” Li said. “In recent years, top-level hospitals in major cities have seen steady increases in the number of patients. Medical bills have become a heavy burden on families and high-end medical resources still fall short of meeting the growing demand of the public.”
To solve the problem, a two-pronged (双管齐下的) approach must be taken. One is to establish medical partnerships to strengthen cooperation between major hospitals and community clinics. The other is to bring forward Internet Plus Healthcare to promote the sharing of quality medical resources.
The government will see to it that long-distance healthcare services cover all county-level hospitals. So more efforts will be made to ensure that high-speed broadband network will be extended to cover medical institutions in urban and rural areas. Dedicated Internet access services will be set up to meet the needs for long-distance healthcare services.
On average, primary school children in England have at least three sugary snacks a day, Public Health England (PHE) found. This means that the sugar they consume is three times more than the recommended maximum.
Children between the ages of 4 and 10 consume 51.2% of sugar from unhealthy snacks. PHE has launched a campaign, Change4Life, to encourage parents to look for healthier snacks of no more than 100 calories, and to limit them to two a day. The campaign advises parents to give their children a maximum of two snacks a day, with each containing no more than 100 calories. The campaign will also offer parents special suggestions on a range of healthier snacks—ones with 100 calories or fewer—at selected supermarkets, PHE said.
PHE said it had also improved its app so that it could mark the content of sugar, salt and fat in food and drinks. Dr Alison Tedstone told the BBC she hoped the campaign would help parents to choose healthier snacks for their children. “If you wander through a supermarket, you can see much more goods being sold as snacks than ever before,” she said, “It's a common phenomenon that kids' lunchboxes are full of snacks, leading to a lot of calories for lunch. Our research shows that parents usually appreciate a rule of thumb (经验法则). However, they are surprised to know how much sugar their children are consuming in snacks now.”
Justine Roberts, founder of Mumsnet, said, “The intake (摄入量) of sugar that kids are getting from snacks and sugary drinks alone is pretty astonishing, and it can often be difficult to distinguish which snacks are healthy and which are not. The rule of thumb from Change4Life can help parents make their decision correctly and wisely. ”
Three-day－old Oskar Lunde sleeps in a small bed at an Estonian(爱沙尼亚) hospital.
Across the room, his father turns on a laptop computer. "Now we will register our child, "Andrei Lunde says as he lifts his identification card into the card reader. His wife, Olga, looks on. And just like that, Oskar is Estonia's newest citizen. No paper. No time spent standing in a line.
Estonia has launched a project to make government administration completely digital. The goal is to reduce the size of the government work force, open up the decision-making process and fuel economic growth.
Need medicine? Reach for a computer and send an email or text message to a doctor. Need help from the local government? Click on a link to the government websites…
Estonia has created a system that supports electronic authentication(身份验证) and digital signatures. It provides paperless communications for both the government and private industry.
However, there are a few things that one cannot do electronically in Estonia: marry, end a marriage or buy and sell property. That is only because the government has decided it is very important to show up in person for some big life events. When Estonia declared independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, it had to build a new economy. Government leaders looked for an industry where the country could compete. They decided on information technology and the Internet.
When the poor country needed to replace a 1930s phone system, former President Toomas Hendrik Ilves rejected the offer of a free analog(模拟) system from Finland and argued for a digital one.
Last year, information and communications made up 5.9 percent of the economy. The government hopes to increase that figure with an "e-residency" program that lets businessmen around the world register their businesses in Estonia, thus gaining a presence in the European Union. More than 51, 000 people from 167 countries have registered at a cost of only 100 euros, or＄114 each.
(CNN)—This photograph of two men sharing a drink 30 meters below the water is part of an art project exploring the mysterious world of freediving—a form of underwater diving that relies on a diver's ability to hold his or her breath until resurfacing rather than on the use of oxygen tanks (氧气瓶).
Each man, dressed in shirt, jeans and sunglasses, sits in a chair at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea with local sharks—harmless to humans—swimming just meters away. Of course, these aren't ordinary men, but freedivers: extreme athletes who dive on a single breath of air.
American photographer Lia Barrett had been taking pictures of brave divers competing at the Caribbean Cup off the coast of Honduras, when she decided to create a fantastic underwater world in which humans go about everyday tasks—such as drinking coffee or riding bikes.
"After the competitors had a great time in the new national and world records set at the competition, I took advantage of their breath-holding skills to do photo shoots I had only dreamed of before," said the 29-year-old.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Barrett is often asked whether the amazing pictures are Photoshopped. She laughs quietly as she insists they're 100% real.
The picture of two men having coffee took 50 minutes to create, with the men receiving oxygen from standby assistants around every three minutes.
"On the way back up, we were holding onto the table during our decompression (减压) stop in the strong current (水流)—it was quite a scene."
The underwater models made an 11-minute stop on the way back to the surface, making sure they didn't rise too quickly and suffer decompression sickness—which can cause deadly blackouts (眩晕).
Sales of Apple's new iPhone 11 in China began on Friday, but were met with a cooler reception from consumers 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 only made the headlines in a few media outlets.
Huawei unveiled(公布)its Mate 30 smartphone series on Thursday night. Its new devices have won consumers' hearts at home and abroad. Many compared it with Apple's new iPhone 11, saying that beats the new iPhone in terms of innovation and quality. One customer surnamed Zhao, an IT specialist who pre-ordered a Mate 30 Pro on Friday, said that he chose Mate 30 without hesitation. Zhao said, "It's obvious that Huawei's new phone with its advanced 5G mode would lead the future global telecommunication market, and its new innovative features in gesture and side control attracted my attention, too."
In contrast with iPhone 11's lukewarm(冷淡的)sales, Chinese netizens have engaged in discussions on Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro. 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 not out of patriotism (爱国主义)but for its technology.
Overseas consumers also engaged in active discussions on Huawei's new flagship devices on technology sites and social media platforms. 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.
Reading books and looking at pictures is great, but nothing facilitates (促进) learning like travel, especially for teenagers. Not only do they get to see a world beyond their neighborhood, they also get to experience it, feel it, taste it, hear it and better understand the world around them.
After nearly four decades in the classroom and traveling the world, Phyllis Duvall Bailey knew this perhaps better than anyone else.
Becoming involved in the work in AKA Sorority Inc in US, she worked to educate children about the United Nations. There was no doubt in Bailey's mind that the lessons would mean so much more if the students could see things for themselves.
Starting in 2015, Bailey, 82, set out to take her students to the UN Headquarters in New York City to give them a "Window Seat to the World", and thus transformed them into global citizens.
Indeed, it is a great opportunity to give students national and international exposure. Since Bailey saw the students as future leaders, she was desperate to expose them to the UN, its mission, its agendas (议程) and its supporting organizations.
She decided to give $10, 000 of her own money to pay for the late June trip, enough to take 10 students aged 14-17 on a four-night stay in New York. There, they had guided tours of the UN Headquarters and the New York City Harbor (海港).
It was Quenyaun Payne's first trip to the city and Taylor Sappington's second. Payne, 17, is a senior at Mceachem High School in the state of Georgia, US. Sappington, 15, is a junior at Therrell High School in Atlanta, Georgia, US. Both said their visit to the UN was inspiring.
"I like not only how countries are working together but they're focused on common goals like global warming and keeping peace," Sappington said.
Payne commented, "The trip was amazing. I'm so thankful Mrs. Bailey made it possible."
Actually, there are a lot of people grateful for the retired teacher's effort. The United Nations Association of Atlanta recently gave Bailey its Humanitarian Award, and the United Nations Association of the US-awarded her with the National Education Award.
But Bailey wasn't looking for recognition or even gratitude. Over those four days in New York, she'd already felt it and seen it in the eyes of those 10 teenagers, Payne and Sappington included, who made the trip.
"It has been a real joy to get to see and watch their reaction to new experiences," she said.
At least 200 elephants have died in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe in the past two months due to a serious drought (干旱) in the country. National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority spokesman Tinashe Farawo told The Associated Press. Other animals, including giraffes, zebras, hippos and buffaloes are also dying due to the drought."The situation cannot improve until it rains, "Farawo said.
"Almost every animal is being affected," Farawo said. "Of course, elephants are easily noticed, but some bird species are seriously affected because they can only breed (繁殖) in certain tree heights and those trees are being knocked down by elephants."
"In a desperate attempt to locate food and water, animals have come in the park and nearby communities, threatening human populations as well. Thirty-three people have died because of these animals this year," the park said.
"Six hundred elephants and two lion prides will be moved to less crowded parks. A pack of wild dogs, 50 buffaloes, 40 giraffes and 2,000 impalas will also be relocated, " Farawo said.
"The animals have exceeded their ecological carrying capacity (生态承载力)," he added." If the populations go unchecked, the animals will threaten the very ecosystem they depend on for survival."
Typically, park leaders follow a policy of not intervening (干预) to help the animals , but the hard conditions have persuaded them otherwise. Fearing more deaths before the rainy season, they have started bringing in food to help the animals, which usually rely on natural vegetation.
"We used to say nature should take its course," said wildlife officer Munyaradzi Dzoro."We are now forced to intervene. We are not sure when and how we will receive the rain. To avoid losing animals, we have to intervene to maintain population sizes.
In addition to a lack of food and water, muddy ponds have turned into death traps for the animals. Many have gotten stuck in the clay (泥土) while attempting to reach Long Pool, the park's largest watering hole, which has shrunk to 5% of its normal size, the Associated Press reports.
The drought has affected an estimated 11 million people, according to the World Food Program, which is planning large-scale food distribution.
For most people, a cinema experience is not complete without a bag of popcom,but believe it or not, there's actually a guy trying to get popcom forbidden at the theater.
Mike Shotton has never been able to enjoy himself there because his experience is always destroyed by having to bear people chewing popcorn. He finally lost his patience when he went to watch Star Wars with many children eating popcorm.
"The noise has annoyed me since I was a lttle kid," Shotton said."I'm the kind of person that if I hear something in the background, I focus on that until that's all I can hear.I was really looking forward to Star Wars. I couldn't believe the amount of noise during the film—it compltely destoyed my viewing"
So the 39-year- old started a petition （请愿） on petition-buzz. com, hoping to get nid of popcorn from cinema across the U. K."I call on you now to stand with me, and tell others that no longer are we prepared to let this destroy our film viewing," he said.
Unsurprisingly, his petition has only received 126 signatures so far. In fact,someone started an opposite petition in response, arguing that popcorn is an important part of a cinema experience. However, more people were in support of Shotton, and he actually won.
"My next plan is to start a further petition which, if it gets enough signatures, will mean it has to be decided by the government whether it'll be forbidden," he said. "I'm also planning to campaign （领导运动） outside cinemas and explain to people about the petition and trying to encourage them not to buy popcorn when they go into the cinema." It sounds great, but I think people love popcorm too much for this to actually work.
The Notre Dame (巴黎圣母院) fire has been put out, but its spire and a large portion of its wooden roof have been damaged. The terrible destruction causes a sudden sharp pain to people around the world. "What a pity that we cannot see the damaged parts of the wonder anymore."
But the good news is that there is at least one way of seeing them, namely through a video game called Assassin's Creed: Unity. In this game, the player can travel to one city after another and enter the buildings exactly like what they are in reality, and see Notre Dame as it was before the fire. Further, with virtual (虚拟的) reality technology, which is already quite mature, one can even look around the undamaged Notre Dame as if it is still there. Maybe digital (数字的) technology could help to better protect architectural cultural heritage.
The idea of making digital models of ancient buildings to save their data dates back to the 1990s and the necessary technology has continued to advance since then. By scanning the ancient buildings with lasers (激光), building 3D models with multiple images, as well as measuring everything precisely, engineers can make a copy as accurate as the real one.
As computers and smartphones are hugely popular, the digital model has great useful value. First, itallows tourists to feel the cultural relics without touching them. The virtual tour of Dunhuang Grottoes in Gansu Province is a good example of this as tourists can view the paintings without standing near them. Furthermore, it can make the digitized cultural relics more famous by spreading awareness about them via the Internet. In 2000, a virtual tour of the Great Wall became very popular at the Hannover World Expo, which increased the number of foreign tourists visiting the site in the following years. Above all, it preserves all the information of the cultural relics. of course, however precise a model is, it is not the original. Maybe we will have better technologies in the future, but the digital technology offers a practical way to preserve architectural cultural heritage at the moment.
Cara Clarkson and her family were overjoyed when spotting two young grizzly bears (灰熊) — one with rarely seen all-white fur, alongside the Trans-Canada Highway.
“White grizzly bears are unheard of, so it was a luxury and incredible experience,” said Cara, sharing her images and videos on social media and saying that was a real treat given that the family was out celebrating her husband's and son's birthdays. Mike Gibeau, an animal specialist, said the Clarksons who encountered the white bear — now called Nakoda, are truly lucky, for white grizzly bears are incredibly rare.
The expert doesn't believe the grizzly's white fur is a case of albinism, a disorder in which an animal fails to produce melanin, which is responsible for skin, hair, and eye color. Instead, he thinks the bear's unusual coloring is the result of a recessive (隐性) gene (基因), the characteristics of which are often covered by those of dominant genes. However, if both parents carry the same recessive gene — in this case, one that results in white fur — it can be passed on to latergenerations.
Though this is the first time the world has seen the white grizzly, park officials, who have known of Nakoda's existence since 2018, never publicized the unique bear due to fear that it would be heartlessly run after by fans eager to see these unusual-looking animals.
As it turns out, they were right. Nakoda's photos and videos, which have gone viral, have led to crowds of people rushing to the bear's current location, resulting in unsafe parking and traffic jams. The concerned officials enforced a 10-kilometer no-stopping zone, which they hope will inform visitors to travel through the area safely and to prevent these bears from getting hit on the highway.
Wildlife experts, who are trying to lead the young grizzlies away from the highway, hope to help them develop a behavior of avoidance of humans and eventually head to the forests, where they can live a long, healthy life.
Millions of people crowded onto trains, airplanes and buses across China last week. They were hurrying home, to be with their families for China's most important holiday, Chinese New Year. More than one billion people around the world are celebrating the New Year.
History Behind the Holiday
The Chinese New Year is celebrated at the second new moon after the winter solstice (冬至). (The winter solstice is one of the two times of the year when the sun is at its greatest distance from the equator. It is also the shortest day of the year. ) According to an ancient legend, Buddha asked all the animals to meet him on Chinese New Year. 12 animals came, and Buddha named a year after each animal. The animals were: the mouse, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.
A Good Year to Be a Pig
Buddha announced that people born in each animal's year would have some of that animal's personality. If you were born in 1959, 1971, 1983 or 1995, you were born in the year of the Pig. People who were born in these years are believed to be polite, honest, hardworking and loyal. They are also supposed to be lucky, which is why many Chinese like to have babies in a Pig year. They are said to get along best with people born under the year of the Rabbit, Goat, Tiger, Dragon, Horse and Dog.
Festivals, Lions and Feasts
On Chinese New Year's Eve, the Chinese celebrate with fireworks, family gatherings, and feasts. One of the most popular ways to celebrate the holiday is the lion dance. The lion is considered a holy (神圣的) animal. During celebrations, dancers dressed as lions (or holding up elaborate paper lions in the air) perform to bring good luck to the people they visit at their homes or businesses. People often wear in red, which symbolizes fire. Legend has it that fire can drive away bad luck. The 15day New Year season is celebrated with firecrackers, dragon dances and visits to friends and relatives. The celebrations end with the Lantern Festival, when brightly colored lanterns are hung in parks around China.
The idea of billions of people going through a few masks a week during this pandemic definitely rings alarm bells, but a team of researchers in Melbourne may have the solution.
They've discovered that adding millions of discarded face masks to road-paving (铺路) mixtures would actually lower the cost of the road, while preventing billions of them from landfills. Just one kilometer of road would need three million masks, and the polypropylene (聚丙烯) plastic used to make single-use surgical face masks also increased the flexibility and durability of the road.
The new material is a mixture of about 2% torn masks, with recycled concrete aggregate (RCA)—a material obtained from waste concrete and other minerals from destroyed buildings. This recycled material was found in the study to be ideal for two of the four layers generally required to create roadways. Paving a kilometer of two-way road with the RCA and three million face masks would result in a change of 93 tons of waste from landfills.
The final product then is more resistant to wear than asphalt (沥青), as well as being cheaper too, provided there was a method for collecting masks. The research team did a cost-analysis and found that, at $26 per ton, the RCA was about half the cost of mining raw materials, and as much as a third of the cost of shipping the used masks to a landfill.
The widespread application would be ideal for large infrastructure (基础设施) projects. For example, Washington has the 11th worst roads in terms of unaddressed repairs in the U.S. If the damaged roads in Washington state were repaired with the RCA/mask mixture, it would reuse nearly 10 billion masks, sparing American landfills hundreds of millions of tons of trash.
It's said that the team is looking for private industry partners or governments willing to give their plastic mask road an opportunity for a large-scale test.
Ant Forest, a green initiative by the world's leading payment and lifestyle platform Alipay, received the "U.N. Champions of the Earth" award, the UN's highest environmental honor. It was given to Ant Forest for motivating half a billion people to adopt an eco-friendly and greener lifestyle, greatly contributing to ecological protection with the help of digital technology.
Alipay achieved this by inspiring its users to do environmentally-friendly things, such as walking, using public transportation, going paperless in the office and more to earn "green energy points". These points can then be used to water and grow their own virtual young trees. After the virtual young trees have grown up on line, Ant Forest will plant real trees somewhere in China.
The number of Ant Forest users has reached 350 million, reducing 3 million tons of carbon dioxide. "Such programs are quite attractive to me. I feel satisfied to see a real tree planted just by doing some simple things such as riding bicycles and buying tickets online," said an interviewee.
This initiative of Ant Forest is in line with the Chinese government's strategy of a "Green Economy". The country is taking aggressive actions in expanding its green coverage. Now, its efforts are paying off, with improved biodiversity and a healthier economic growth. Rare animal species have been spotted and forest parks are now popular attractions of tourism.
The planet is at a critical point which could result in natural disasters. It seems clear that unless governments, businesses and people form a focused team, it's difficult to stop global warming. Fortunately, Ant Forest shows that it is possible to make joint efforts while relying on digital technology. And more initiatives are using technology to contribute to a sustainable future of the planet.
Brothers Ayaan and Mickey Naqvi, who live in Shelton, Connecticut, were decorating their family Christmas tree last year when one of their favorite ornaments (装饰品) was destroyed. While the ornament was beyond repair, from its broken pieces sprang a bright idea: What if there was a better way to hang ornaments so they'd be truly secure? From that, the Ornament Anchor (装饰锚) was born.
Using a special system, Ayaan created the model and presented it for a school project. The reception (反响) was overwhelmingly favorable-so favorable in fact, the boys quickly turned their invention into a potential money-making product.
This wasn't the boys' first commercial invention: A previous invention landed the pair and their family on a TV programme Shark Tank. While they didn't cut a deal, it was a true learning experience.
From $1, 000 in sales in six hours at a local Christmas trade show, the Ornament Anchor went on to be displayed on Good Morning America. In one year, the brothers' invention has brought in more than $250, 000.
After their success, Ayaan and Mickey are determined to pay their good fortune forward by contributing 10% of their profits to local animal shelters. "Ever since I was super young, I've had a fascination with all of life's creatures, " Ayaan explained. "My goal is to help as many animals in need as I can. "
The boys admit that starting a new business in 2020 had its challenges. While they are enjoying their success, adjusting to distance learning due to the coronavirus lockdown isn't easy.
Through the difficult times, they say they've just tried to take things one step at a time and keep a positive attitude because that-along with the love and support of their family-are what keeps them anchored (稳定).
Two high school students have identified four new planets in distant space about 200-light-years from Earth, making them "the youngest astronomers" to make such a discovery.
Kartik Pingle, 16, and Jasmine Wright, 18, who both attend schools in Massachusetts, participating in the Student Research Mentoring Program (SRMP). Along with the help of Tansu Daylan, an MIT doctor for Astrophysics and Space Research, the students studied and analyzed data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Together they focused on Tess Object of Interest (TOI) 1233, a nearby, bright sun-like star and here they found four planets rotating (旋转) around the star. "We were looking to see changes in light over time," Pingle explained. "The idea is that if the planet transits the star, or passes in front of it, it would periodically cover up the star and decrease its brightness. "
While studying 1233, Pinglé and Wright had at least hoped to find one planet, but were overwhelmed with joy when a total of four were spotted. "I was very excited and very shocked. " Wright said. "We knew this was the goal of Daylan's research, but to actually find a multiplanetary system, and be part of the discovering team, was really cool. "
Three of the newly discovered planets are considered as "sub-Neptunes", which are gaseous (气态的), but smaller to the Neptune that lives in our solar system. While observing the planets, the team determined each one completes their orbit around 1233 every six to 19. 5 days. However, the fourth planet is labeled a "super-Earth" for its large size and rockiness-this one orbits around the star in just under four days.
"We have long been studying planets beyond our solar system and with multi-planetary systems, the two young students are kind of hitting the jackpot. They are really blessed." Daylan said. "The planets originated from the same disk of matter around the same star, but they ended up being different planets with different atmospheres and different climates due to their different orbits. So, we would like to understand the fundamental processes of planet formation and evolution using this planetary system. "
Daylan added that it was a "win-win" to work with Pinglé and Wright on the study. "As a researcher, I really enjoy interacting with young brains that are open to experimentation and learning and have minimal bias." he said. "I also think it is very beneficial to high school students, since they get exposure to cutting-edge research and this prepares them quickly for a research career."
