Mundi, a 41-year-old female elephant, was orphaned (使……成为孤儿) at a young age, captured, and sold to the Mayaguez Zoo in Puerto Rico. The animals housed at the zoo were in such bad shape that they were being moved to various shelters under an order from the US Department of Justice.

Mundi was the zoo’s major attraction. Her departure caused so much argument that armed guards came to see her off the island. She was so popular that people lined the streets to say goodbye.

Mundi’s new home is certainly beautiful. After living in the zoo for 35 years with no other elephants, Mundi met Bo and Tarra, with whom she’s now sharing 850 acres. She was first housed in a separate place, but she and the other elephants could see each other, and they started getting along quickly. Soon, Mundi was no longer separated from the others. Tarra immediately acted as a big sister and mentor to Mundi, while Bo became her playmate. Now, they spend a lot of time together and the public can watch their interaction and learn about their behaviors on the shelter’s official website.

Carol Buckley, the founder of Elephant Aid International, first imagined setting up the Georgia shelter after meeting Tarra in 1974, when the elephant was less than a year old. At the time, Tarra belonged to the owner of a tire store, who used her to advertise the place.

Buckley ultimately became an advocate for elephants worldwide and designed the retirement home in Attapulgus to address their needs. Attapulgus was selected as the location for the shelter because its climate allows the elephants to be outdoors most of the time, almost year-round.

Even though water covers about 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, not all of it is safe to drink. In fact, less than three percent is fresh water, according to the United States Bureau of Reclamation. Most of the water is contained in the oceans and must be desalinated (脱盐)for use. Now researchers from MIT have developed a suitcase-sized desalination device that could be used to produce clean drinking water.

The new portable device produces water that actually goes beyond the World Health Organization standards, just by pushing a button, according to a press release from MIT. There are no filters required. The device powered by a small portable solar panel uses electricity to remove salt and other particles from the saltwater. This eliminates the need for repeatedly checking or repairing it.

Now most available portable desalination units use filters that require high-pressure pumps to push the water, which makes them heavier and less energy efficient. The filterless feature of the new device will allow it to be used in faraway places or places with limited resources like small islands and ships, and even for emergencies.

“This is really the highest point of a 10-year journey that I and my group have been on. We worked for years on the physics behind individual desalination processes, but pushing all those advances into a box, building a system, and testing it in the ocean were really meaningful experiences for me,” says Jongyoon Han, the senior author of the study.

After the researchers ran tests in the lab, the device was ready for field tests. At Boston’s Carson Beach, the device filled a plastic drinking cup with clear, drinkable water in just half an hour. Now the researchers are still working on a final design that could use cheaper materials so that it can be available to the general public, and a new model of the device could be ready by the end of 2022. This small but powerful desalination unit may be the key to bringing safe water to a thirsty world.

For many years, humans have looked up at the collection of stars and planets shining in the night sky that make up the Galaxy (银河系). However, the Galaxy is now being observed for the first time in a new way. They have produced an image of the Galaxy not based on light. Instead, the image is based on neutrinos (中微子).

Scientists discovered the high-energy neutrinos in ice deep be low Antarctica’s surface over a period of 10 years at the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory, a research station at the South Pole. They then tracked their source back to locations in the Galaxy. It is the first time these small pieces of matter have been observed arising from the Galaxy. This observation of the Galaxy is different from what can be seen with our own eyes, or even instruments that measure other electronic (电磁能的) sources. The image does not contain stars or planets or other things observable because of their light. Rather they are observable because of the neutrinos originating in the Galaxy.

“This observation is groundbreaking. It established the Galaxy as a neutrino source. Every future work will refer to this observation,” said Taboada, the spokesperson for the Ice Cube research.

Neutrinos are electrically neutral created in nuclear processes. They are not affected by even the strongest magnetic field and rarely interact with matter. As neutrinos travel through space, they pass clear through everything: matter like stars, planets, and even people, just as light goes without stopping through glass. Neutrinos are elementary units, meaning they are not made up of anything smaller.

Many parts of the universe are impossible to observe using light alone. The ability to use neutrinos in astronomy makes for a more complete examination.   The direction from which neutrinos arrive points directly to their original source, so the researchers used machine learning to help determine which neutrinos originated in the Galaxy and which originated elsewhere. But how the neutrinos originated is up for debate. This is now the key question.