Point Reyes

At Point Reyes you will find trails, historic buildings and visitor centers where visitors can enjoy all aspects of the unique area. Visitors can enjoy camping, hiking and biking. Point Reyes National Park also features the Point Reyes Lighthouse and visitor center, and at the visitor center you can learn all about the lighthouse(灯塔)and for the very adventurous tourists a trip down the 308 stairs to the lighthouse is a great option.

Big Sur

Big Sur is a region in California with many wonders to offer visitors. The Los Padres National Forest is an excellent destination for hiking. Throughout the forest there are many trails, including trails allowing visitors to walk along the coastline. In addition, Big Sur is also a fantastic destination for wildlife viewing. This region is one of the few places where the majestic bird can be seen.

Yosemite National Park

Located in central California, Yosemite National Park is an amazing destination for recreational enthusiasts, especially rock climbers. Climbers travel from around the world to take on the challenges presented at Yosemite. There are many other recreational activities to enjoy, including biking, hiking, backpacking and many more. Yosemite Valley has a wide range of attractive sights, and waterfalls.

Joshua Tree National Park

Located in southeastern California, Joshua Tree has some amazing sites to see. There are many nature trails, hiking trails, as well as options for mountain biking and rock climbing. Visitors to Joshua Tree can enjoy the beautiful desert ecosystem. At Joshua Tree you can look into the dense star clouds of the Milky Way, and see clearly. These star clouds are especially dense and bright to the south near the horizon.

In my life, I make it a rule to avoid using plastic bottles. So when I was invited to visit Sri Lanka for two weeks, I wondered how I could go without using them.

First, I got prepared for the worst. I brought a water bottle that can convert any water from lakes, streams, or hotel taps into clean drinking water through a filter(过滤器). Next, I bought a package of Aquatabs that help purify the water. And I also packed two other water bottles.

When I got to the first hotel, I discovered that there was a large drinking water machine in the main hallway. The guide told us at the initial meeting that we could expect it in many places. However, I became less delighted when he told me later that many of the hotels bring out the cooler just when we arrive because they know we want to see it. Some will hide it the rest of the time because they’ll be able to make money off the sale of small plastic water bottles in the rooms.

This led to my next strategy. If there was no cooler available to the public, I’d ask the hotel staff to refill my bottle whenever I was at a meal. Sure enough, they did, although they usually asked first if I wanted a bottle of water. I could find they weren’t pleased by my requests, but they did it anyway. These requests are what drive the broader behavioral changes that we need very much in order to shake single-use culture. Imagine if every single traveler asked for their water bottles to be filled from cooler; I bet the hotel would have one installed the next day.

I ended up not using the filter bottle until I got stuck at Delhi airport for 24 hours, my flight back to Toronto delayed by heavy fog. In the hotel room, I filtered tap water before drinking and was grateful to have that option. I never needed the Aquatabs, but they’ll keep until my next camping or backpacking trip.

Spend some time watching flamingos (火烈鸟) and you might think that not much goes on in their tiny heads.

But these elegant birds actually lead complex social lives. Each bird has certain other individuals it prefers to spend time with, and others it avoids. In other words, flamingos have friends.

For five years, Rose and his team observed the daily goings-on of five of the world’s six different flamingo species housed at the WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre in Gloucestershire.

The partnerships that we see between birds are non-random. The birds are choosing who to associate with. Male-female pairs spend time together, but so do same-sex pairs and even groups of three or four. And those relationships can last for many years.

“So there were some flamingos in the group that really didn’t care who their partner was for that day, they would flit (轻快地掠过) around... and they would have many different relationships with many different birds.” And of course there were other flamingos that were less social butterfly and more alone wolf. But even they had a few close friends. “Those birds that were least social...had more investment in a smaller number of social connection with flamingos that they knew really well.”

Rose thinks that flamingos may have evolved (演变) their social lives due to their wetland habitats-in which the resources they need are concentrated in a small area.

If flamingos know their partners, if they know that these six birds, say, are friendly, and they get on with them, they can then waste less energy scrapping and quarreling with other birds that they don’t get on with.

By spending time with their friends, flamingos can more efficiently direct their limited time and energy to activities like hunting and mating.

As the commercialization of 5G accelerates in China, more companies are exploring what smart cities will look like in the 5G times.

US chip giant Intel Corp, for instance, is teaming up with partners such as China Unicom to build a 5G smart park in Nanjing, to offer a peek into the future of such smart cities.

The future smart city must be data-centric (以数据为中心) and intelligently interconnected. So how to better capture, transmit, store and analyze data will be the center of the future. Intel’s advantages can be found in its hardware and software solutions which can meet demands of multiple scenarios (多情景分析). The company will be devoted to opening cooperation, creating an innovative ecology and working with partners to create an intelligent future.

The company’s project, the Future Technological Smart Center in Nanjing, aims to gather a wide range of domestic and foreign partners around artificial intelligence, internet of things, 5G, cloud computing and other technological innovations to explore what future cities will look like. Intel said the Nanjing project is designed to build industry benchmarks, implement excellent solutions, and offer experience for the construction of smart cities and parks in the Yangtze River Delta region and even the entire country.

A Deloitte report said that China has already included the smart city initiative in its national strategy and made significant investments in these projects.

Both first-tier cities and small and medium-sized cities are home to smart city projects. The nation has formed many smart city groups across the eastern and southern coastal areas of China, Deloitte said.

Deloitte senior partner Ma Jionglin said in an earlier interview that China is one of the most active countries in the world in building smart cities. With advances in urban management and the increasing emphasis on the work and lifestyle of people, smart cities will be entering a new stage of development.