【推荐2】Food expressions are popular with language learners. They combine two things important to every culture: food and language. Today we are going to talk potatoes!

Whether you like them boiled, baked or fried—potatoes are what we call a staple. This means they are a kind of basic food that you can build on. You can cover them in butter, salt and pepper or sour cream and herbs. And for people who eat pork, you have not lived until you have eaten a baked potato topped with cheese and bacon!

We have a potato expression to describe a person like that: simple, basic, common. If someone is a “meat-and-potatoes” kind of person, they prefer eating simple meals such as—well, meat and potatoes. They are not interested in complex, expensive food. They are unpretentious.

Men are often described by this expression. When I hear about a “meat-and-potatoes” man, I picture a big, beefy-guy. He likes to wear blue jeans and a simple T-shirt. He probably drives a truck and can fix it himself. He is a simple, no-nonsense kind of guy.

It is a little less common, but we can also describe a woman as a “meat-and-potatoes” kind of person. This type of woman not only likes to eat steak and hamburgers, she is also a down-to-earth (实际的) person. She likes simple things and can take care of herself.

People can also be called “small potatoes”. It is a way of saying they are not a danger. If police in a big city do not have enough resources, they probably won’t waste manpower on small potatoes, like bicycle thieves(小偷). Please note that we may say “small potatoes” for unimportant matters, but we do not say “big potatoes” for important ones. English is funny that way!

【推荐3】A study has found that a fifth of teenagers consume energy drinks under the impression that they are good for health.

The new research questioned almost 4,000 high school students about the energy drinks and found that boys were much more likely to drink them.

Australia requires companies to label their drinks as “not suitable for children”, yet the findings published in a journal showed many teens still believed the drinks were beneficial.

The energy drink market is expected to grow to a $72 billion by 2024 and reach $108.4 billion by 2031.

Separate market analysis showed teens who drink energy drinks were more likely to show anti-social behaviour, including smoking, alcohol consumption and other things. Energy drink consumption was also found connected with headaches, stomachaches and especially insomnia, which is common among teens and makes them extremely sleepy and unable to concentrate on their study.

One 16-year-old girl said she did not make a habit of drinking the energy drinks, but sometimes bought one after school.

“I know they’re not great for you, but sometimes I get to the end of a school day and I am just very tired,” she said, “You get up at around 7 a.m., sit through a whole school day and then go home, only to study through to 11 p.m.—if you don’t have extra-curricular activities. It’s not something I recommend, but they taste good and sometimes I feel like I’d benefit from caffeine.”

Due to the fact that teenagers incorrectly believed energy drinks were beneficial for their health, the researchers suggested it was necessary to educate students on the health risks.

【推荐1】The San Diego Zoo is celebrating an extreme rare event: the arrival of 41 Indian narrow-headed softshell turtles. This is the first time the species, which is native to South Asia, has been successfully bred (繁殖) in North America.

The turtles typically live at the bottom of deep rivers and streams in northern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Adults can grow up to 3.6 feet long and weigh as much as 440 pounds. During monsoon (季风) months in central India and dry months in other regions, the turtles lay up to 190 eggs in a nest on the beach and cover it with dirt to protect the eggs. When the babies hatch, they can fit in a person’s palm, at 1.5 inches long.

The San Diego Zoo got its first two Indian narrow-headed softshell turtles in 1997. The zoo planned to breed them and hoped to learn more about the species, whose numbers had begun to drop due to pollution, destruction of their habitats, and capture by humans for their eggs, meat, or use as pets. The species is listed as endangered, and researchers don’t know how many remain in the wild.

After learning that it only had female turtles, the zoo added a male to the habitat in 2001. Staff have been waiting for over 20 years to see if the turtles would breed. This summer, zookeepers found four nests in the enclosure. They hatched 11 turtles in August. Then, in September, staff members found 30 more tiny turtles in a nest they hadn’t noticed. “They are kind of cute,” said Kim Gray, head of the zoo.

The babies were moved to an indoor habitat where they can be protected and studied. The zoo plans to give about a half of the baby turtles to other zoos and aquariums that want to help protect the species. “This is a thrilling moment for us,” Gray said, “and a big step forward in the preservation of this species.”

【推荐3】Soot (煤灰) pollution is speeding up climate-driven melting in Antarctica, a new study suggests, raising questions about how to protect the delicate continent from the increasing number of humans who want to visit.

“It really makes us question, is our presence really needed?” says Alia Khan, one of the authors of the new study. “We have quite a large black carbon footprint in Antarctica, which is enhancing snow and ice melt.”

Black carbon is the leftover thing from burning plants or fossil fuels. Soot in Antarctica comes primarily from waste gases of cruise ships (游轮), vehicles, airplanes and electrical generators, although some pollution travels on the wind from other parts of the globe. The dark particles (微粒) coat white snow and absorb heat from the sun the way a black T-shirt does on a warm day. The blanket of dark bits speeds up melting that was already happening more quickly because of global warming. When snow and ice are uncovered, they reflect an enormous amount of sunlight before it can turn into heat.

“These are the mirrors on our planet,” says Sonia Nagorski, a scientist at the University of Alaska Southeast. “When those mirrors are covered in a film of dark bits, they are less reflective. That means more heat is trapped on Earth, speeding up melting and contributing to global warming.”

As a scientist who personally visits Antarctica every year, Khan says she is troubled by her own research results. On the one hand, she goes to Antarctica to collect crucial data about how quickly the snow and ice there are disappearing. “But then when we come to conclusions like this it really does make us think twice about how frequently we need to visit the continent,” she says, “and what kind of regulations should be placed on tourism as well.” That could mean requiring that cruise ships and vehicles be electric, for example, or limiting the number of visitors each year.

【推荐3】Social media giant Meta (formerly Facebook) says it has created a supercomputer that it expects to be the world’s fastest when it is completed later this year. Meta has recently announced that the supercomputer is currently operating and calls it the AI Research SuperCluster, or RSC.

Meta hopes RSC will help build entirely new AI systems that can, for example, power real-time voice translation to large groups of people, each speaking a different language. Such an operation fits with Meta’s stated goal of developing technologies to build a future “metaverse”, a term used to describe a non-physical world. Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg says, “I believe the metaverse, a highly virtual world where people in the world gather to socialize, play, and work is the next chapter for the Internet.” Such a system requires very powerful computers. The supercomputer will be able to deal with written information, images and videos that are in hundreds of different languages, up to 20 times faster than current systems.

Meta said with access to “real-world examples” from its social platforms, its supercomputer will train new AI to recognize different kinds of content and perform actions examining huge amounts of data. It added that data used will be encrypted before entering the training process to ensure that it is not accessible without authority.

Now, Meta still uses a combination of humans and AI to identify and remove, what it considers, harmful content and misinformation. Some critics say the company is not doing enough to block bad content. It has also face government examination over its business methods and users’ privacy in the United States and Europe. But the company believes its supercomputer will be helpful in “its first priority — no threatening users’ information security while approaching harmful content.”