【推荐1】When Jean Armour Polly, a former librarian, first introduced the idea of having computers in libraries in the early 1980s, she was met with pushback. “People teased and said, Why would you go to a library to use a computer?” she said. Even when the Internet rolled around, many librarians felt they were supposed to be the only gatekeepers of knowledge and information.

Polly got interested in the potentials of technology early on. In the mid-1970s. she had taken free computer classes. In 1981, Polly managed to secure an Apple II Plus into Liverpool Public Library in New York, she helped it create its own bulletin board system. By 1992, libraries were offering free internet to the public, a year after the first website was introduced to the public.

Since the Internet was hard to use back then, Polly along with local librarians would help library-goers take their baby steps online. “We didn’t have all the graphic interfaces (界面) like we have now, and we didn’t even have Google. So you really needed somebody to hold your hand,” Polly said. Polly would also go around attending library conferences about the Internet, excitedly speaking to anybody who would listen about the resource.

Wilson Library Bulletin, a library magazine. asked Polls to write a beginner’s article foe librarians explaining what the Internet was and how to use it. She needed a good metaphor as to what navigating the Internet felt like in the early days. Her mousepad happened to have a picture of a surfer and said “information surfer”, a phrase that was already floating around. The words just clicked for her. “Surfing the Internet” was published in the summer of 1992, quickly becoming viral as a catchphrase after Polly put the article up online.

In 2019, Polly was admitted into the Internet Hall of Fame for promoting the use of computers in public libraries.

【推荐1】When Howard Bisla was tasked with saving a local shop from financial ruin, his concern was energy efficiency. He approached his electricity provider about upgrading the lights. The provider had another idea. An experimental cooling system: panels (面板) that could stay colder without consuming energy.

The panels now sit on the shop's roof, their mirrored surfaces coated with a thin cooling film and angled to the sky. They cool liquid in pipes underneath that run into the shop and, together with new lights, have reduced electricity bills by 15%.

The panels came from a discovery at Stanford. Researchers there created a material that stayed colder than its surroundings in direct sunlight. Since then, they have made a host of materials, including films, paints and treated wood, that stay cool in the heat.

These materials all rely on improving a natural effect known as passive radiative (辐射的) cooling. They reflect light in much the same way as mirrors or white paints do, but they can do far more. When the materials point at the sky, the rays can pass through the atmosphere and into space. That links the materials to a heat sink, into which they can keep dumping (倾倒) heat without it coming back. As a result, they can stay a few degrees cooler than surrounding air. Scientists have termed them super-cool materials.

These materials might also reduce the increasing demand for power-hungry refrigeration and air conditioning. Researchers have even suggested they might help Earth respond to global rising temperatures. But many more are cautious. So far, how much electrical power can be saved has been based on data from small samples. There are also doubts about their ability to work in a variety of climates and places. Another unknown is whether consumers will embrace the idea. Even replacing worn-out roofs with reflective white ones has not been widely adopted. However, this modelling work suggests that use of a super-cool paint might double the energy savings. “It’s a bit of a game-changer, in a sense,” according to researchers.

【推荐3】Scientists in Israel have developed a gene-edited hen that could help avoid killing billions of male chicks every year. Male layer chicks are of no value to the egg-laying industry, since they’re not female and cannot lay eggs; and they’re unwanted by the meat industry, since they have the wrong body type and are not fast-growing broilers (肉鸡). An estimated seven billion male chicks are killed annually.

This is understandably troubling for many people, and various attempts to solve the problem have been proposed over the years. Mainly these focus on trying to identify a bird’s sex as early as possible so as to abandon it prior to development or hatching (孵化).

This latest development, however, takes it to another level by preventing the male chick from developing altogether. The “Golda” hen, as it’s called, has DNA edited into it that stops the development of male embryos (胚胎) when the egg is exposed to blue light for several hours. Female embryos are not affected by the light and hatch and grow as usual. They do not contain any of the edited material, nor do the eggs they lay, so consumers needn’t be concerned about consuming genetically modified (转基因) eggs.

The BBC explains how the gene-edited hens end up with all-female chicks. Females carry a W and a Z chromosome (染色体) (WZ). Males carry two Z chromosomes (ZZ). The Golda hen has a W chromosome and a gene-edited Z*chromosome (WZ*), preventing embryo development when exposed to blue light.

The actual science is being kept under wraps, since the Volcani Institute plans to license its technology through a company called Poultry by Huminn. There is no peer-reviewed study yet. But the animal welfare organization Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) has been following the research closely for three years, visited the firm, and backs the development

CIWF’s Research and Education Team explained, “The great advantage of this gene-edit is that it appears to have no bad effect on animal health and welfare. Our current support for this technology is in principle, as the next important step is to see whether the hen and the female chicks she produces - who will lay eggs for human consumption-can go through a commercial lifespan without any unexpected issues arising.”

【推荐2】When Jennifer first heard that her friend George passed an exam, her heart sank. She’d failed the same test weeks earlier. But then, instead of feeling upset and envious, she congratulated him. Jennifer was surprised when she could share her friend’s happiness, she experienced her own, in turn.

Finding pleasure in another person’s good fortune is what social scientists call freudenfreude, a term which describes the happiness we feel when someone else succeeds, even if it doesn’t directly involve us.

Freudenfreude is like social glue, making relationships closer and more enjoyable. A study in 2021 found that in daily life freudenfreude boosted kind acts, such as helping others. Sharing in someone else’s joy can also improve life satisfaction and help people cooperate during a conflict.

While the benefits of freudenfreude are plentiful, it doesn’t always come easily. In some cases, it might really hurt you when you see another person’s winning as your loss, making freudenfreude feel out of reach. If you were raised in a family that paired winning with self-worth, you might misread someone else’s victory as your own weak point. Factors such as mental health and overall well-being can also affect your ability to share someone else’s joy.

To better understand freudenfreude, it can be helpful to illustrate its better-known counterpart, schadenfreude: the pleasure we feel when witnessing someone’s misfortune. In a 2022 study, experts examined instances of freudenfreude and schadenfreude among college students, some of whom were experiencing mild depression. Freudenfreude scores were higher, and schadenfreude scores were lower among those who were not depressed. The mildly depressed students, however, had a harder time developing a joy-sharing mindset. When you’re feeling down, it’s natural to view positive news with negativity.

However, no one gets to the top alone, and when we raise others up, we’re often carried up with them. When we feel happy for others, their joy becomes our joy. Celebrating our friends’ successes — big and small — helps us all win.

【推荐2】Each year, about 250 billion to-go cups serve coffee and tea from places like Starbucks and McDonald’s are produced to satisfy the world’s love for hot drinks on the run. These paper-based cups have the inside surface covered with plastic to prevent water from escaping, and keep water from being absorbed into the material. Despite this, that also removes any opportunity for the cups to be biodegradable (可生物降解的).

The materials that created these cups of goodness and convenience are recyclable but only if separated. In addition, the demand for such resources is low, so they are worth next to nothing.

In response to this great challenge, NextGen Consortium, multi-year partnership led by Starbucks and McDonald’s launched their first big initiative (倡议)—NextGen Cup. The first step in NextGen Cup was an open competition where participants presented ideas for sleeves, cups, lids and other parts of the hot-cold paper-based takeaway coffee cup that would make it reusable, recyclable, or biodegradable; to finally be widely used. 12 winners, announced in 2019, shared a prize of $1 million, as well as personalized growth, and support from members of NextGen Consortium.

Later, they launched two pilot programs at independent coffee shops in California. In one case, customers were given “smart” reusable cups made mostly from recyclable plastic. They then could drop their empties into collection containers at key locations, for washing and reuse. These cups were printed with RFID chips or QR codes, through which coffee shops can know where there is the greatest need for collection containers and how many are not using them.

To reduce coffee cup waste, Cup Club is already replacing millions of takeaway cups in the UK, while Recup in Germany, has performed a deposit system that simply adds a small extra fee to any coffee cup which is returned to the buyer after the cup is deposited in any registered collection point.