When was the last time you used a telephone box? I mean to make an actual phone call — not to shelter from the rain. Ages ago, right? The last time I used a phone box for its intended purpose was…2006. I was conducting auditions (试演) for my play in my tiny old shared house in London. Hoping to impress some talented actors to come and work for me for nothing, I spread some throws over the sofas and lit candles to make it seem a bit more ”young professional”.

As I rushed outdoors to empty the wastepaper baskets, the door swung shut behind me. Suddenly I was locked outside. My mobile phone was inside, but luckily there was a telephone box across the street. So, I called Directory Assistance, got put through to our landlady’s managing agent, and had a spare key sent to me with just enough time to get back in before the actors arrived.

As it has been many years since I last used one, I should hardly be surprised that then are no longer any public telephones near my house. The last one standing has just been turn into a “mini community library”: any passer-by can “borrow” a book from its shelves return it later, or replace it with another title from their own collection.

For a few months after the “library” opened, I didn’t bother taking a look, as I had assumed that it would be stuffed full of cheese love stories. Then I noticed fork conducting spring cleans dropping boxes of voluminous books on various subjects there. And these books were free. This unbeatable price-point encouraged me to experiment with dozens of titles that I would never normally consider buying. And I’ve discovered some great books!

If I ever get trapped outside my house again, my local telephone box will, sadly no longer be able to connect me with my keys. But it can certainly keep me entertained while I wait for my wife to rescue me.

People have come to understand the enormous impacts-beneficial as well as harmful- plastics have on human lives and the environment. As polymer (聚合物) scientists committed to inventing sustainable solutions for real-world problems, we set out to tackle the issue of plastic waste by rethinking the way polymers are designed so we could make plastics with recyclability built right in.

Everyday items including milk jug, grocery bags, and takeout containers are made from a class of polymers called polyolefins. These plastics are really durable (耐用的) because the chemical bonds in those polymers are extremely stable. In a world set up for disposable (一次性的) items, durability is no longer a design feature but rather a design drawback. Imagine if half the plastics used today were recyclable through twice as many processes as they are now. Also conventional recycling requires careful sorting of all the collected materials, which can be challenging with so many different plastics. For example, separating paper from metal doesn’t require complex technology, but sorting a container from a milk jug of a different polyolefin is difficult to do without the occasional mistake.

In a study published in Science in October 2023, we described a series of polymers with only two building blocks-one soft polymer and one hard polymer-that behave like polyolefins but could be chemically recycled. Connecting two different polymers multiple times until they form a single, long molecule (分子) creates what’s called a multiblock polymer. By changing how much of each polymer type goes into the multiblock polymer, our team produced a wide range of materials with properties that covered all polyolefin types.

Using the same strategy but by adding hydrogen, we could disconnect the polymers back into their building blocks and easily separate them to use again. When we made new polymers out of these recycled plastics, they performed just as well as the original materials even after several rounds of chemical recycling. So we were able to create materials with similar properties of the plastics the world relies on. We believe this work is a step toward more sustainable plastics.

As cities balloon with growth, access to nature for people living in urban areas is becoming harder to find. If you’re lucky, there might be a pocket park near where you live, but it’s unusual to find places in a city that are relatively wild.

Past research has found health and wellness benefits of nature for humans, but a new study shows that wildness in urban areas is extremely important for human well-being.

The research team focused on a large urban park. They surveyed several hundred park-goers, asking them to submit a written summary online of a meaningful interaction they had with nature in the park. The researchers then examined these submissions, coding (编码) experiences into different categories. For example, one participant’s experience of “We sat and listened to the waves at the beach for a while” was assigned the categories “sitting at beach” and “listening to waves.”

Across the 320 submissions, a pattern of categories the researchers call a “nature language” began to emerge. After the coding of all submissions, half a dozen categories were noted most often as important to visitors. These include encountering wildlife, walking along the edge of water, and following an established trail.

Naming each nature experience creates a usable language, which helps people recognize and take part in the activities that are most satisfying and meaningful to them. For example, the experience of walking along the edge of water might be satisfying for a young professional on a weekend hike in the park. Back downtown during a workday, they can enjoy a more domestic form of this interaction by walking along a fountain on their lunch break.

“We’re trying to generate a language that helps bring the human-nature interactions back into our daily lives. And for that to happen, we also need to protect nature so that we can interact with it,” said Peter Kahn, a senior author of the study.