【推荐2】As of 2020, the world’s biggest lithium-ion (锂离子) battery is hooked up to the Southern California power grid and can provide 250 million watts of power, or enough to power about 250,000 homes. But it’s actually not the biggest battery in the world: these lakes are.

Wait — how can a pair of lakes be a battery? To answer that question, it helps to define a battery: it’s simply something that stores energy and releases it on demand. The lithium-ion batteries that power our phones, laptops, and cars are just one type. They store energy in lithium-ions.

How do the two lakes store and release energy? First, one is 300 meters higher than the other. Electricity power pumps that move billions of liters of water from the lower lake to the higher one. This stores the energy by giving the water extra gravitational potential energy. Then, when there’s high demand for electricity, valves (阀门) open, releasing the stored energy by letting water flow downhill to power 6 giant turbines that can generate 3 billion watts of power for 10 hours.

Unfortunately, neither of the giant batteries we’ve talked about so far is big enough to power multiple cities. The two lakes setup requires specific geography, takes up a lot of land, and has high upfront costs to build. The giant lithium-ion battery in California can power about 250,000 homes, yes, but only for an hour. Lithium-ion batteries also require certain heavy metals to make. These resources are limited, and mining them causes environmental damage. Inventors all over the world are rising to the challenge of making batteries that can meet our needs — many of them even weirder than the two lakes.

【推荐3】In 1996, someone found some very old clothes in an old mine in Nevada, USA; they included a pair of dirty old jeans. Today, those jeans are very valuable, and they are now in the Levi Strauss Archival Collection, in San Francisco. The jeans, which are over 140 years old, are the oldest pair of Levi’s 501 jeans in the world.

They are almost the same as a modern pair of 501’s; there are just some small differences in the detail For instance, today’s 501’s have two back pockets, the old pair just has one.

In 1853, a young tailor from Germany, called Levi Strauss, began working in San Francisco; Levi sold thick canvas to miners; the miners used the canvas to make tents.

One day, a miner told Levi that he could not find trousers that were strong enough for work in the gold mines. Levi decided to make some trousers out of canvas.

Very soon, he had sold all the canvas trousers he’d made! They were just what miners wanted.

However, the canvas was rather heavy and stiff Levi therefore began to look for a different textile; soon he found a heavy textile from France; it was called serge de Nimes. Americans just called this de Nimes, and this name soon got reduced to denim.

Denim was a bit lighter than canvas but it was very strong: it was ideal for miners.

However, original denim was almost white, and miners did not like the color! Their denim trousers got dirty as soon as they began working!

Levi Strauss therefore decided to use colored denim, and he chose dark blue. In 1873, he began to make denim trousers with metal rivets to make them stronger. This was a radical new idea: “Blue jeans” had arrived!

Levi’s jeans were so popular, that his company got bigger and bigger, soon, other firms were making blue jeans too. Miners liked them, but so did cowboys and other working men. Blue jeans became classic American working trousers. After the Second World War, jeans became popular all over the world. Today, blue jeans are now the international uniform worn by young people.

【推荐1】Welcome to Holker Hall & Gardens

Visitor Information

How to Get to Holker

By Car: Follow brown signs on A590 from J36, M6. Approximate travel times: Windermere—20 minutes, Kendal—25 minutes, Lancaster—45 minutes, Manchester—1 hour 30 minutes.

By Rail: The nearest station is Cark-in-Carmel with trains to Carnforth, Lancaster and Preston for connections to major cities & airports.

Opening Times

Sunday—Friday (closed on Saturday) 11:00am—4:00pm, 30th March—2nd November. Admission Charges

Special Events

Producers’ Market   13th April

Join us to taste a variety of fresh local food and drinks. Meet the producers and get some excellent recipe ideas.

Holker Garden Festival   30th May

The event celebrates its 22nd anniversary with a great show of the very best of gardening, making it one of the most popular events in gardening.

National Garden Day   28th August

Holker once again opens its gardens in aid of the disadvantaged. For just a small donation you can take a tour with our garden guide.

Winter Market   8th November

This is an event for all the family. Wander among a variety of shops selling gifts while enjoying a live music show and nice street entertainment.

【推荐2】It started during a yoga class. She felt a strange pull on her neck, a feeling completely foreign to her. Her friend suggested she, rush to the emergency room. It turned out that she was having a heart attack.

She didn’t share similar symptoms with someone who was likely to have a heart attack. She exercised, watched her plate and did not smoke. But on reviewing her medical history, I found that her cholesterol （胆固醇）level was sky-high. She had been prescribed a cholesterol-lowering statin medication, but she never picked up the prescription because of the scary things she had read about statins on the Internet. She was the victim of fake medical news.

While misinformation has been the object of great attention in politics, medical misinformation might lead to an increase in deaths. As is true with fake news in general, medical lies tend to spread further than truths on the Internet----- and they have very real bad consequences.

False medical information can also lead to patients experiencing greater side effects through the “nocebo effect （无安慰剂效应）Sometimes patients benefit from an intervention （干预）simply because they believe they will — that’s the placebo effect （安慰剂效应）.The nocebo effect is the opposite. Patients can experience harmful effects because they anticipate them. This is very true of statins. In blinded trials, patients who get statins are no more likely to report feeling muscle aches than patients who get a placebo. Yet, in clinical practice, according to one study, almost a fifth of patients taking statins report side effects, leading many to discontinue the drugs.

What else is on the fake news hit list? As always, vaccines （疫苗）.False concerns that the vaccine may cause side effects have greatly reduced coverage rates.

Cancer is another big target for pushers of medical misinformation — many of whom refuse alternative therapies. “Though most people think cancer tumors are bad, they’re actually the way your body attempts to contain the harmful cells,”^, one fake news story reads. It warns that prescription medications lead to the uncontrolled cell mutations （变异）.

Silicon Valley needs to face this problem. I am not a free-speech lawyer, but when human health is at risk, perhaps search engines, social media platforms and websites should be held responsible for promoting or hosting fake information. Meanwhile, journalists should do a better job of spreading accurate information.

【推荐3】Raegan Byrd tries to complete her homework every night. But the high school student in Hartford, Connecticut, has to use her mobile phone to search for the necessary information because she does not have internet connection at home.

In May, the US Department of Education(DOE) published its findings that the number of homes without access(接入) to internet has been getting smaller, but 14 percent of homes in city areas and 18 percent of homes in the countryside still do not have internet connections.

In some states, the problem is much more serious. For example, in the countryside of northern Mississippi, a third of the 294 homes in Maben do not have computers. And close to half have no access to internet whether they can pay for it or not.

Sharon Stidham, a mother in Maben, has to take her four boys to the school library at East Webster High School. Her husband works there, so the children can use the internet for their schoolwork. A signal tower can be seen through the trees from their home, but they could not put aside any money for the internet.

Research results from the National Center for Education(NCE) have shown that students with internet at home get much better scores in reading, math and science than the ones who do not.

Some teachers call this problem “the homework divide”. Jessica Rosenworcel, an NCE member, said, “The so-called homework divide is the cruelest part of the digital age and it is hurting the poor students and creating a big obstacle to their dreams.”

Local communities(社区) have started to help. They made lists of restaurants and other businesses with Wi-Fi places where children are welcome to come and do their homework. And many public libraries have also planned to provide free access to the students next year.

【推荐1】I made a promise to myself on the way down to the vacation beach cottage. For two weeks I would try to be a loving husband and father. Totally loving. No ifs, ands or buts.

The idea had come to me as I listened to a talk on my car radio. The speaker was quoting a Biblical passage about husbands and their wives. Then he went on to say, “Love is an act of will. A person can choose to love.” To myself, I had to admit that I had been a selfish husband. Well, for two weeks that would change.

And it did. Right from the moment I kissed Evelyn at the door and said, “That new yellow sweater looks great on you.” “Oh, Tom, you noticed”, she said, surprised and pleased. Maybe a little puzzled. After the long drive, I wanted to sit and read. Evelyn suggested a walk on the beach. I started to refuse, but then I thought, “Evelyn’s been alone here with the kids all week and now she wants to be alone with me.” We walked on the beach while the children flew their kites.

So it went. Two weeks of not calling the Wall Street firm where I am a director; a visit to the shell museum though I usually hate museums. Relaxed and happy, that’s how the whole vacation passed. I made a new promise to keep on remembering to choose love.

There was one thing that went wrong with my experiment, however. Evelyn and I still laugh about it today. On the last night at our cottage, preparing for bed, Evelyn stared at me with the saddest expression.

“What’s the matter?” I asked her.

“Tom,” she said in a voice filled with sadness, “ I don’t?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…that checkup I had several weeks ago…our doctor…did he tell you something about me? Tom, you’ve been so good to me…am I dying?”

It took a moment for it all to be understood. Then I burst out laughing.

“No, honey,” I said, wrapping her in my arms. “You’re not dying; I’m just starting to live.”

【推荐2】In today's world, most workers are highly specialized, but this specialization can come at a cost——especially for those on the wrong team. New research by Harvard's Growth Lab uncovers the importance of teams and coworkers when it comes to one's productivity, earning potential, and stays of employment. The research analyzed administrative data on the 9 million inhabitants of Sweden. It found that to earn high wages and returns on education, workers must find coworkers who complement, but not substitute them.

The research offers a tool to assess the right and wrong coworkers in fields of expertise. The right coworkers are those with sills you lack, yet needed to complete a team. The wrong coworkers are those who have the same skill set as you and eventually lower your value to the employer. For example, those with a degree in architecture are best assisted by workers with engineering, construction, or surveying degrees, and negatively impacted by those with landscape or interior design degrees.

“We tend to think of sills as something personal that individuals can market to a company, ” said Frank Neffke, Growth Lab Research Director “However, this vision of sills is too simplistic. One person's sills connect to another person's sills, etc. ,and the better these connections are, the more productive workers will be, and the more they will earn” Neffke adds that the benefits of working with complementary coworkers are not the same for all workers. Those with higher levels of education seem to benefit much more from working in complementary teams than workers with lower levels. Over the past 20 years, workers with college degrees or higher have been increasingly able to find better matching coworkers.

Complementary also drives careers. The research shows that people tend to stay longer in organizations with many complementary workers and tend to leave those with many workers who substitute them. These results hold true for up to 20 years of one's career.

The research also supports several well-known facts, such as cities and large firms pay higher wages. Workers are more likely to find better fitting teams in cities, and large firms often allow workers to specialize.