【推荐2】Years ago, I lived next door to an old man named Steve, who told me he hadn’t had any friends since quitting his factory job 20 years earlier. Steve sat on his porch (门廊) all day. Across the street was another neighbor, Werner, who usually sat on an armchair on his lawn. The two men, both around the same age, stared at each other but rarely talked. When Steve fell down on the floor, Werner watched as the ambulance crew tried to save him.

Steve and Werner are a handy example for the kind of separation that COVID-19 has visited upon many of us. Although the pandemic has gone now, a separation still exists. The percentage of men with at least six close friends fell by half between 1990 and 2021, according to the Survey Center on American Life.

In short, man is in friendship recession (衰退). It is the result of social conditioning and 10, 000 years of developmental forces, where cooperation has been changed into competition. The invention of the big-screen TV hasn’t helped.

A 2020 Oxford University study confirms what many people will readily admit: People prefer to socialize in groups rather than on-on-one. Groups are looser, less private. And shared activities often center on something—a sport, a bar, or a football match. But when the activity goes away, the group often goes with it.

I reconnected with an old friend who had played professional football and I asked him if he was in touch with any of his former teammates. “No,” he said. When football ended, those connections did too. Without that central activity to keep the relationship, they all disappeared from one another’s lives.

There was a time when card games or watching the football games was a sort of guilty pleasure, a senseless activity. Now we’re learning that these things, or at least the connection they represent, are basic to mental health.

【推荐1】I remember clearly my first pineapple on ice at a corner deli in New York. It was on the north-east corner of Columbus and 57th Street, a store filled with flowers and fresh produce that stayed open all night. In my first flush of enthusiasm for the new city, everything about that deli seemed great. Abundance! Convenience! Pineapple, freshly cut and packaged on ice! A lasting memory.

It has been 15 years since then. Corner delis remain, but under pain of competition from a new generation of delivery alternatives like GoPuff and Getir that promise to deliver any item within 15 minutes, getting up off the sofa to walk half a block for some milk is a long past. One ingredient down for your dishes? No need to turn off your stove and put on your shoes! Instead, for a small fee, order a person to your door bearing a single can of chickpeas. LEGS NO MORE!

The downfall of old services , and the reversal(反转) of the consumption style are affecting the city landscape at all levels. As a multibillion dollar business, hyper- fast delivery is tearing at breakneck speed to make tiny delivery windows. It not only means more bikes on the streets, large areas of real estate(房地产) are being turned over to “dark stores” that you walk past every day but can only buy via an app once you’re home.

The threat to New York’s symbolic delis remains to be seen. Although nearly every business, from diners to bookshops, has closed their doors over the last 10 years, only the New York delis remain largely untouched. Still, the pressure must be intense.

Instant delivery is making us even lazier and more useless as people, of which I am not proud. Last week, when running out of milk, I ordered the delivery of a single coffee from Starbucks. I gave myself a pass because it was coffee. But if these things are quicker and more convenient, they’re also sadder and stripped of the bare minimum of human contact needed to hold neighbourhoods together. And, like so much innovation in technology, they can run counter to(与…背道而驰) the point of the very thing they enable.

【推荐3】In the first test of its kind in Europe, and only the second in the world, Belgian researchers tested 39 brands of straws (吸管) for the group of synthetic (合成的) chemicals known as poly-and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The straws are made from five materials — paper, bamboo, glass, stainless steel and plastic. PFAS were found in the majority of the straws tested and were most common in those made from paper and bamboo. They were not found only in steel straws tested.

PFAS are used to make everyday products, from outdoor clothing to non-stick pans, resistant (抵抗to water, heat and stains. They are, however, potentially harmful to people, wildlife and the environment. They have been related to a number of health problems, including lower response to vaccines (疫苗), lower birth weight, thyroid disease, liver damage, kidney cancer and testicular cancer. They break down very slowly over time and can last thousands of years in the environment, a property that has led to them being known as “forever chemicals”.

A growing number of countries, including the UK and Belgium, have sopped the sale of single-use plastic products, including drinking straws, and plant-based versions have become popular. The PFAS concentrations (浓缩物) were low in them and, bear in mind that most people tend to only use straws occasionally, bringing a limited risk to human health. However, PFAS can remain in the body for many years and concentrations can build up over time.

It isn’t known whether the PFAS were added to the straws by the producer for waterproofing or the PFAS were the result of contamination. Potential sources of contamination include the soil the plant-based materials were grown in and the water used in the production process. However, the presence of the chemicals in almost every brand of paper straws means it is likely that it was, in some cases, being used as a water-resistant coating, say the researchers.

【推荐1】Several studies have shown that listening to music can be highly beneficial. One study revealed that music could improve blood flow in ways that decrease levels of stress-related hormones and ease pain. But even without the knowledge of these research outcomes, we all know that music holds great power over our lives. How many times has music cheered us up when we were feeling down?

The Croatian architect Nikola Basic understood the importance of music in people’s lives. So, he came up with an unusual collaboration between an object and the ocean. In 2005, he designed a 230-foot morse orgulje, also known as the sea organ (风琴). The musical instrument is made up of a system of pipes and whistles that plays actual music as the waves of the Adriatic Sea push air through it.

At first glance, this invention might appear like an ordinary set of white stone steps, but its bottom stairs are covered in various holes. Water and wind enter through these openings, leading to chambers (室) within the giant instrument that connects to 35 organ pipes. As the waves flow, the air pushes through the inner channels, while the holes in the above steps sound out calming tunes.

This sea organ’s home is in Zadar, Croatia, which faced complete destruction during the Second World War. The city was eventually rebuilt, but it was filled with dull concrete structures that robbed the place of its natural charm. Seeking to restore it back to its former glory, local authorities brought in award-winning architect Nikola Basic, who, inspired by the hydraulis, an instrument built by the ancient Greeks that used water to push air through tuned pipes, designed and overlooked the construction of the sea organ.

Thanks to Basic’s artistic creation, life and joy have been brought back to the 3,000-year-old city. Now, it is a popular lunch place for tourists who want to feel the refreshing wind of the sea and hear the beautiful sounds coming from the sea organ.

【推荐2】Dyslexia (阅读障碍) is a common reading disorder. It refers to a language-processing problem in which the brain tends to confuse the order of numbers, letters and other images. Past research showed that crowded text was especially difficult for people with dyslexia to read. So researchers at Anglia Ruskin University wanted to see how much help an increase in the spacing between letters would provide.

Steven Stagg and his team found 59 students between 11 and 15 years old. The kids came from schools in three cities in England. 32 had dyslexia; 27 did not. While the researchers recorded them, each student read two passages out loud. One passage was printed in its original format. In the other, the spacing between the letters was increased by 2.5 points. That extra space equals about 0. 88 millimeters. The recording allowed the scientists to measure someone’s reading speed and count any errors, such as skipped

People with dyslexia often employ aids to help them read, such as colored overlays (透明膜). So the researchers offered those colored plastic sheets to the students here. Readers place the plastic on top of the text and then read through it.

Those colored overlays didn’t help either group of kids. But the extra spacing did. Kids with dyslexia read the wider-spaced text 13 percent faster than the text with original spacing. These kids also made fewer mistakes. Students without dyslexia read faster, too, although only by 5 percent. Stagg studies how the mind processed language. He wasn’t surprised that the colored overlays weren’t helpful. Stagg has dyslexia and says colored overlays never helped him much, either. What was unexpected to the scientist was that wider-spaced letters helped even kids without dyslexia.

This is very good news. It means teachers and publishers can print material with extra spacing between letters knowing it will help everyone. Readers with dyslexia won’t feel singled out by having to use special reading materials. It’s a simple fix, too. Certain text-writing and document— processing software, such as Microsoft Word, can easily add extra spacing between letters. Web designers can add space to the text on their pages, too,

【推荐3】Join people around the world in a global celebration of Burns Night, honoring the poet Robert Burns. Burns was born in Alloway in 1759. More than 200 years after his death, the work of Scotland’s national poet lives on through his poetry and songs, including: Auld Lang Syne and To A Mouse. Each year, communities around the world with a Scottish connection mark Burns Night with songs, dancing, poetry and a Burns Supper.

What is Burns Night?

Burns Night is a yearly celebration held on or around 25th January, the day when Burns was born. A Burns Night celebration can have many different elements and each community has its own traditions. The most important item is a Burns Supper.

What food is eaten at a Burns Supper?

A Burns Supper can be formal or informal and guests are traditionally invited to take turns in reciting Burns’ poems or songs. Burns Supper special foods include Cock a Leekie Soup, Clootie dumpling and Scotch whisky.

Sites connected with the life of Robert Burns

If you’d like to find out more about the life of Robert Burns and the places he lived in, there are several museums devoted to his life and work, and you can also explore towns and villages with Burns connections. Click here to explore Robert Burns sites for more information.