【推荐1】Would you like to build and launch your own rocket? Do you like inventing your own gadgets (小装置)?     1    

If so, come and visit our five floors of interactive (互动的) exhibits. Find out about the weather, aeroplanes and ships, or discover how the computer developed. There’s something for the whole family — the youngest can push brightly-lit buttons and watch how things work, while grandparents can enjoy our classic cars and planes.

    2     The first, Dead Ringers, shows how the mobile phone has created a huge global waste problem. Up to 50 million are thrown away each year; we show how scientists and charities are working together to stop this and how you can help. And in our 50 Year of Cartoon exhibition, you can come behind the scenes with us and see how your favorite animated characters were created.

Then come to our 3D Cinema. Only 12 people have ever walked on the Moon’s surface and now you can be the next.     3     Or take part in our cinema’s 3D wildlife adventure. You will search for and see elephants, rhinos, buffalos, lions and leopards, closely but safely.

    4     Here you will find everything you need to carry out your own experiments, along with books and educational games.

We can hardly wait for your arrival!     5     Visit our website at www.sciencemuseum.org for updates on events. Please note: some displays use flashing lights. No photography or video-recording are permitted inside the museum.

【推荐2】People feel lonely for a number of reasons, including simple social awkwardness and intentional isolation. Some people may even feel lonely when they are surrounded by people. Because they lack meaningful connections with those people. Everyone experiences loneliness sometimes. But it is never pleasant.     1    

    2     In order to make changes that will truly help you, you will need to take some time to figure out why you are feeling lonely. For example, say you assume that you are lonely be-cause you don't have enough friends and you go out and make more friends. You may still feel lonely after making new friends if your loneliness is the result of having too many friends and a lack of meaningful connections.

Start a journal to track your thoughts and feelings. Journals can help you to understand your feelings of loneliness better. It is also a great way to relieve stress. To get started, choose a comfortable place and plan to devote about 20 minutes per day to writing.     3    

Practice meditation. Some research has suggested that meditation may ease feelings associated with loneliness and depression. Meditation is also a great way to get more in touch with your feelings of loneliness and start to understand where they come from.     4     So it is best to find a meditation class in your area. If no classes are available in your area, you can also buy CDs that will help you learn how to meditate.

Consider talking to a therapist (心理治疗师) about how you have been feeling. It maybe hard to figure out why you feel lonely and how to move past those feelings.     5     Feeling lonely may indicate that you are depressed. Talking to a therapist can help you understand what is going on and decide on the best course of action.

【推荐3】Homemade biodiesel (生物柴油) helps you speed past the gas station toward fuel independence. Our expert outlines processing used cooking oil in a small DIY plant.

If you're guiding your household toward a more self-sufficient lifestyle, maybe you'd like to add do-it-yourself fuel to your list of goals. Biodiesel can be created from waste vegetable oil or animal fats, which you can collect free from restaurants, or you can grow soybeans (大豆) to press your own oil. Process the oil with a couple of chemicals to produce homemade fuel that can run any device— including pickups, cars, and home heating systems.

First, find a reliable source of raw material. Try sourcing used cooking oil from restaurants, functional food companies. If you're planning to sell your biodiesel, begin by analyzing the available raw material supply, and make plans to size your operation accordingly. Next, build your plant, sized to your raw material supply. A small family operation can fit in the corner of a garage, within the footprint of a single parking space. Allow enough space for a water heater, a tank for storing your incoming feedstock, and a tank for washing your fuel. For starters aim to line up enough feedstock to meet your family's fuel requirements.

If you're collecting used cooking oil from restaurants, expect that 20 percent of the material you gather will be water and bits of fried food. Water is not your friend when making biodiesel, so you'll need to remove it by heating the oil and allowing the contaminants (污染物) to settle to the bottom before you pour the oil of the top. You'll have to make a plan for getting rid of the oily wastewater.

Home biodiesel production is not without risks. Making your own fuel will require great attention to detail and safety. Now you know the basics of how to make biodiesel, but you’ll need to research carefully before you begin production.

【推荐2】The kid’s face is glowing green from the iPad in her hands, which shows a cartoon boy singing a nursery rhyme and dancing with dinosaurs. She’s so attracted that she doesn’t respond when her mother calls her name. “It’s literally like crack for her,” says her mom Meng Zhou at their home.

It is CoComelon, which may be the most streamed children’s entertainment program in the world. The show was watched for 33 billion minutes last year and had 3.6 billion views on YouTube in January, as many as three-quarters of whom were from outside the U. S. . CoComelon was a Top 10 show on Netflix for more than 100 straight days in 2021, and its music is streamed 1.3 million times a day on Spotify.

CoComelon is not only a ratings juggernaut (收视率主宰). It’s also a model for a new approach to children’s TV. A room of adults could work very hard for years on a concept that helped kids learn important ideas, only to find out viewers weren’t interested. CoComelon’s parent company, Moonbug Entertainment, searches digital platforms like YouTube for popular kids’ programming to figure out what the audience want to watch.

It’s clear that much of CoComelon’s popularity is caused by this program. As parents juggled childcare and remote work, demand for kid content increased greatly, thus making CoComelon successful. The success of the show is the influence that CoComelon has on babies and kids. You can see the evidence in the dozens of TikTok videos showing kids who hear the marimba tones of its theme song. And, Zhou’s daughter’s third word, after Mama and Dada, was CoCo.

As the show and others like it become inescapable, parents are going to have to deal with whether this type of children’s programming works for their families. Sure, their kids may love it — but does that mean it’s any good for them?

【推荐3】The new TV series Joy of Life is a hit, scoring 8/10 among the most critical reviewers of Douban, a Chinese social networking service website. The series premiered(首映)on Tencent Video and iQiyi(online video platforms)on November 26,2019.

But how would you feel if Tencent Video and iQiyi allowed anyone to pay an extra fee to see a show’s upcoming episodes(集)ahead of schedule? The two of China’s biggest video streaming platforms decided to allow users to pay an extra fee on top of their subscription(订阅)to get advanced access to episodes of Qing Yu Nian(Joy of Life). Monthly subscriptions for Tencent Video cost 15 yuan(US$ 2.14)and iQiyi charges 19 yuan(US$ 2.71). Under the new policy, users could pay 50 yuan(US$ 7.14)to always stay six episodes ahead in Qing Yu Nian. Alternatively, watching a single episode in advance costs 3 yuan(US$ 0.43).

Users are mad about Tencent Video’s and iQiyi’s extra fees on top of subscriptions. On Weibo, a Chinese microblogging website, tags related to the two platforms’ pricing policies repeatedly recurred on trending searches, where many people were found complaining about the platforms being greedy and called for the audience to boycott the policy.

The policy also drew criticism from People’s Daily. The state-owned newspaper said the platforms “have bad table manners” and “drain the pond to fish and burn the woods to hunt,” which are Chinese idioms used to describe someone focusing on quick profits as opposed to long-term interests. People’s Daily also said the sites look down upon on users’ rights. ” Two lawyers apparently agreed. The lawyers, who claim to be users of Tencent Video and iQiyi, started two separate cases, saying that they violated users’ rights.

But some experts don’t think the new pricing rules are unreasonable. Zhu Wei, a professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, argued in an article that charging outside subscriptions are value-added services and don’t violate the law. But Zhu added that the platforms are at fault for not properly informing users about the policy in advance.

In the face of extreme competition and perhaps an ambitious business model, China’s streaming giants are hoping that additional charges could turn their luck around. But judging by the pushback on social media, it may not be so easy. It’s hoped that the next stage of this streaming war is a little more friendly.