CLIP

If you’re looking for an e-bike experience without getting rid of your favorite two-wheeler, the CLIP is for you. It’s a friction-drive (摩擦驱动的) motor that easily attaches to the front wheel of your bike, its roller helping speed you around faster than you can pedal. It’s removable, so you can charge it under your desk or at your destination.

Yakima CBX Solar

Topped with Sunflare solar panels, Yakima’s new CBX Solar rooftop cargo (货物) box is equipped with two USB ports and can power your campsite on an overnight trip or keep your devices charged without having to use your car battery. Plus, the CBX Solar has more than enough room to hold your sports equipment.

Nuheara IQbuds2 MAX

Wireless earbuds (耳塞) are increasingly capable of blocking the noise of the outside world while you listen to tunes. But when you can’t hear the person right in front of you, it’d be nice if they offered a little help. The IQbuds2 MAX are on the case. They are the only wireless buds that feature both active noise cancellation and audio-processing technology capable of identifying human conversations, which tune out everything except the people or sounds you want to hear.

Guardhat HC1 Communicator

Besides head injuries, industrial workers also face other dangers at work sites. Guardhat’s new tech-enabled hard hat, the HC1 Communicator, can help keep those workers safe. The Communicator monitors the wearer’s location in real time; allows them to make hands-free video and audio calls; and detects their nearness to dangerous materials, temperatures and moving equipment.

Life continually requires that we write down a few words of thanks: for holidays, meals, presents or people’s place in our hearts. However, too often, our messages end up flat or somewhat unconvincing. To make our messages more effective, we might take a lesson from the history of art.

To some extent, what distinguishes great from common art is the level of detail with which the world has been studied. A talented artist is, first and foremost, someone who takes us into the specifics of the reasons why an experience or a place felt valuable. They don’t merely tell us that spring is ‘nice’, they zero in on the particular contributing factors to this niceness: leaves that have the softness of a newborn’s hands, the contrast between a warm sun and a sharp breeze, the soft cry of baby blackbirds....

Some of the reason why great artists are rare is that our minds are not well set up to understand why we feel as we do. But we can be confident if our minds have been affected, the reasons why they’ve been so will be somewhere, waiting to be uncovered. We stand to realise that it wasn’t so much that the food was ‘delicious’; but that the potatoes in particular had a charming rosemary and garlic flavour. A friend wasn’t just ‘nice’; they brought in a hugely sensitive and generous tone to bear in asking us what it had been like for us when we suffered. The details will be there, waiting for us to catch them.

We don’t have to be great artists to send effective thank-you notes. We just need to locate and hold on tightly to two or three highly detailed reasons for our gratitude.

It’s mid-February and along Britain’s south coast gilt-head bream (鲷鱼) are swimming from the open sea into the river mouths. And this summer, countryside visitors throughout southern England will catch sight of blue flashes as small red-eyed damselflies fly across starry ponds. Both events are happening much further north than they would have 20 years ago.

Fingers point at climate change. As areas become too hot or dry, many wildlife populations are declining, while some species are showing up in places that were historically too cold or wet.

Our team, led by Alba Estrada, wanted to explain this phenomenon. If we could predict which species can and can’t colonise (移居于) new locations, we could decide which are most in need of conservation.

How far individual animals or plant seeds can move was long thought to be the most important factor. But according to our findings, other characteristics also turned out to be highly important. For example, how quickly plants and animals can produce, how well they can compete with other species for resources, and what kinds of food they can eat or habitat they can live in.

The result of this is that we might be able to predict which animals will survive under climate change. The wood mouse is found throughout continental Europe. As climate changes, we think the mouse will move north because it can breed quickly, live in lots of habitats, has a broad diet, and individuals can travel a long way. On the other hand, consider the European ground squirrel. We think it might stay just in southeast Europe because it can only live in grasslands — and climate change won’t suddenly turn farms and forests into meadows (草坪).

It’s encouraging to know that some species are doing well under climate change. There are some headaches, however. Those gilt-head bream are feeding on the local shellfish, which might be taking food away from the native fish. Small red-eyed damselflies look great, but they could become all too common around British ponds and outcompete native species. Climate change is once again posing us some tricky conservation questions.