【推荐1】One of the things that we expect from the ocean is is deep blue color that reflects the sky. Scientists at UC San Diego Institution of Oceanography along with scientists at the University of Washington have been experimenting with dyeing (染) the ocean at San Diego beach pink. What could they possibly be up to?

This is being done for a study that examines how freshwater outflows are combining with the ocean surf zone. The experiment is called Plumes in Nearshore Conditions (PiNC).“I’m excited because this research hasn’t been done before and it’s a unique experiment,” said Sarah Giddings, a coastal oceanographer leading the study. “The aim is to understand how freshwater interacts with waves, since it is usually warmer than ocean water and more buoyant (有浮力的).”

The freshwater is dyed pink so that the team can easily keep track of it when freshwater is added to the seawater. The dye is environmentally friendly and is then spotted as it makes progress in the water. It is tracked by sensors on poles that are located along the sand as well as by drones (无人机). There’s also a jet ski with a fluorometer that tracks the light that is given out from the pink dye. The sensors outside of the surf zone record the height of the waves, ocean currents and temperature. There are three planned dye releases as of now, and researchers are hoping that this pink dye experiment will help them record more about how pollutants travel in the ocean water through these additions of freshwater.

Giddings explained: “We’re bringing together different people with different expertise, such that I think it’s going to have some great results and impacts. We’ll combine results from this experiment with an older field study and computer models that will allow us to make progress on understanding how the dyed freshwater spread.”

【推荐2】A Swedish company came up with a creative and cheap way to clean up its streets: to hire birds. Crows, especially, have been trained to collect cigarette butts (烟头) off roadways and put them in a machine that rewards the clever birds.

The pilot project called Corvid Cleaning comes from The Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation and aims to lower the cost of street cleaning in the city of Sodertalje.

Founder Christian Gunther-Hansen thought crows would be the best choice because they are very clever. “They are easier to teach and there is also a higher chance for them to learn from each other,” he told Swedish news agency TT. “At the same time, they have a lower risk of eating any rubbish by mistake”.

The birds are trained through a step-by-step process to pick up rubbish and place it into a machine that offers them food.

Tomas Thernstrom, a waste expert for the Sodertalje Municipality, said one of the most interesting things about the project was that crows could be taught to pick up cigarette butts but humans can’t learn not to throw them on the ground in the first place.

【推荐3】Mother Earth got a bad health report from the United Nations (UN) this week, and the scientific team that conducted the exam didn’t hesitate to deliver the bad news. Joyce Msuya, director of the UN report, said, “The Earth stands at a crossroads. Its illnesses are still treatable, but not for much longer. If we continue along our present path, it will lead to a bleak future.”

According to the report, the Earth is suffering from biodiversity loss, population explosions, land degradation (退化) and air and water pollution.

Biodiversity helps regulate (调控) climate, clean air and water, form and keep soil, and reduce the effects of natural disasters. Yet, populations of species (物种) are declining and the extinction (灭绝) rates are rising. Presently, 42 percent of land-based animals, 34 percent of freshwater animals, and 25 percent of sea animals are at risk for extinction while 70 percent of our food depends directly on them.

However, the population is on track to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050. Without great and urgent changes in production and consumption patterns, the planet will not be able to support it by mid-century.

As for the Earth itself, 10 out of 14 land places have seen a decrease in productivity. Forty percent of wetlands have been lost to agriculture and urban development since 1970. Farm land is becoming less rich and useful, due in part to traditional farming systems. In most places, water quality has worsened “significantly” since 1990, poisoned by chemical pollution. One in three people still lacks access to safe water.

Joyce Msuya noted that the report provides multiple methods to treat the globe, many of them by using methods and technologies that already exist. For example, biodiversity loss and land pollution can be stopped by changes in consumption, agricultural practices, and redistribution of food.

“The world has the means to rescue our earth. What’s missing is the political will to act, with the necessary speed and size,” said Joyce Msuya.

【推荐1】Pioneers of the research that led to one of the first COVID 19 vaccines (疫苗) say breaktroughs made in their studies could point the way toward developing a potential vaccine against cancer before the end of the decade.

Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci co-founders of BioNTech said technology they had developed could help the immune system respond to cancer cells. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccine causes cells to create spike proteins, which warm the body’s immune system about things to look out for and 1o attack. It is hoped that this could be reworked using poleis found in cancer tumor cells, causing a similar bodily defensive action.

BioNTech was founded in 2008 specifically to work on cancer treatments. “From the very beginning, our focus has always been on developing the full potential of the body’s immune system to successfully help address cancer and infectious diseases,” says the company website.

Some of those earlier cancer vaccine developments have reached the clinical trial stage. “As scientists we are always hesitant to say we will have a cure for cancer,” said Tureci. “We have a number of breakthroughs and we will continue to work on them… this will definitely accelerate also our cancer vaccine.”

Luke O’Neill, professor of biochemistry at Trinity College Dublin, said that such a breakthrough would be “the Holy Grail” of cancer research. He added that it enabled the body to recognize a cancer tumor as a foreign element, in the same way it had done with COVID- 19, and to respond accordingly, so that the immune system could be “trained” to “hunt down” the abnormal presence.

What made the potential breakthrough even more exciting, he said, was that any treatment could be personalized to work on individual cancer patient’s specific circumstances. “You can take someone who’s got cancer, take their own tumor and make an RNA vaccine out of that and improve their own immune system specifically against their own tumor. That’s a really wonderful thing to see,” he added.

【推荐3】When landing at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta , Indonesia, tourists are often surprised to see many billboards advertising Chinese companies such as smartphone maker Oppo.

Walking into high-end shopping malls in Jakarta, consumers also notice that Chinese brands are spotlighted. In Plaza Indonesia, which houses international luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton and Chanel.

Oppo also has a well-designed store. Such a noticeable presence showcases the popularity of Oppo in Indonesia —an example of how Chinese companies are cager to explore the biggest economy in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

According to statistics from the Indonesia n government. Chinese companies’ direct investment in the country reached $8.23 billion in 2022, a year-on-year jump of 160 percent, reaching a record high and ranking as the second-largest source of foreign investment in Indonesia US investment bank Goldman Sachs also forecasted in a report that Indonesia will become the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2050 To turn such rosy prospects into reality. Chinese companies are scrambling to better localize their products, management teams and marketing strategies.

Oppo for instance, is now booming in on the high-end smartphone market after the company beat   Samsung as the top smartphone brand in Indonesia in the second quarter with a market share of 20 percent   The success is attributed in part to Oppo’s strategy of opening well-designed stores with competitive products in high-end shopping malls.