【推荐2】By drawing patterns on the surface of a cup of tea, chabaixi, an ancient Chinese tea trick displayed in a recent TV drama, has gone popular for its apparent similarity with modern latte art. However, ten years ago, this distinctive technique was close to disappearing completely.

Chabaixi can create endless patterns such as bamboos and mountains or even calligraphy. There are over a dozen steps: grind tea for fine powder (粉末), pour boiled water,stir the mixture,and draw the patterns. It is different from making latte because people use clear water as the object to put into the cup instead of milk. But when the water touches the surface of whipped tea, it turns into a white color and disappears in 20 minutes.

“Chabaixi is one of the countless forms of tea-making techniques in China. The importance of chabaixi is not only that this technique is unique in the world, but also it gives us a window into people’s lifestyle in the Song Dynasty, a period of time when leisure activities in some ways resemble what we have now,” Zhang, a practitioner of chabaixi, said.

Before chabaixi was discovered by TV audiences, the technique was listed as part of China's Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2017, after it was recovered by Zhang Zhifeng. He started researching the origins of chabaixi in the 1980s and brought the technique back in 2009 after decades of trials and practice. Zhang spent nearly 30 years studying and researching the origins and making of tea, but for him it was all worthwhile.

“This technique is key to the tea culture of the Song Dynasty, and it would be a shame to let it fade. This technique must be passed on to the next generations so they can understand its history,” Zhang said.

【推荐1】Kenya has been at the forefront(前沿)of the global war on plastic since the government banned single-use plastics in protected areas in June 2020. Unfortunately, the preventive measures have barely received attention. Hundreds of tons of industrial and consumer polymer waste continue to get dumped into landfills daily. However, if 29-year-old Nzambi Matee has her way the unsightly plastic heaps(堆)will soon be transformed into colorful bricks.

The materials engineer’s seeking to find a practical solution to control plastic pollution began in 2017. She quit her job and set up a small lab in her mother’s backyard. It took her nine months to produce the first brick and even longer to convince a partner to help build the machinery to make them. But the determined eco-entrepreneur was confident in her idea and did not give up.

She says, “I wanted to use my education to handle plastic waste pollution. But I was very clear that the solution had to be practical, sustainable, and affordable. The best way to do this was by channeling the waste into the construction space and finding the most efficient and affordable material to build homes.” Her company produces over 1,500 bricks a day. The pavers are made using a mix of plastic products that cannot be reprocessed or recycled.

The collected plastic is mixed with sand heated at very high temperatures, and compressed(压缩)into bricks that vary in color and thickness. The resulting product is stronger, lighter, and about 30 percent cheaper than concrete bricks. More importantly, it helps repurpose the lowest quality of plastic. “There is that waste they cannot process anymore; they cannot recycle. That is what we get.” Matee says.

Matee is not nearly done. Her dream is to reduce the mountain of trash to just a hill by increasing production and expanding her offerings. She says, “The more we recycle the plastic, the more we produce affordable housing, the more we created more employment for the youth.”

【推荐2】In the past few weeks Richard Eckersley has noticed a change in people who come into his shop. The previous (以前的) Manchester United footballer, who turned his back on the game to set up the UK’s first “zero waste” store on Totnes High Street in Devon, says it is no longer only environmentalists who came in, looking for a cleaner way to shop. “A lot of new people are coming in. We are getting calls every week from around the country from people wanting to set up something similar in their towns,” says Eckersley, who set up the Earth.Food.Love shop with his wife Nicola in March 2017.

More than 200 miles away, Ingrid Caldironi shares the enthusiasm. She set up the plastic-free (无塑料的) Bulk Market in east London. “We have had an amazing response,” she says. Eckersley and Caldironi are at the head of an anti-plastic movement in the UK that has been fuelled by newspaper investigations including The Guardian’s Bottling It series and The Blue Planet television series.

But their enthusiasm is not shared by big supermarkets, which have no interest in reducing their plastic waste. “For a nation of shopkeepers we are falling behind in this race,” says Sian Sutherland, founder of the campaign A Plastic Planet which led the calls for plastic-free goods shelves. Wandering through supermarkets where everything is covered in plastic, Sutherland says action rather than words is needed. Her co-founder Frederikke Magnussen explains the origins of their campaign. “It started with two unreasonable women who wanted choice — and supermarkets are all about choice, right? I can buy sugar-free, fat-free, African food, Asian food, yet if I want to buy plastic-free it is impossible for me to do so.”

Eckersley says, “After Willow, my daughter, was born, it made me think about what future lies ahead for her. I wanted to say that I at least tried, and I wanted to make a difference.”

【推荐3】For some people, walking or running outdoors is a great way to work out. However, seeing trash (垃圾) all over the ground is not so pleasant. Well, some people are doing something about it. They are plogging!

“Plogging” began in Sweden. The name combines the Swedish word “plocka,” which means to pick up, and the word Jogging, which means to run slowly. A Swedish man named Erik, started the movement in 2016. On the World Environment Day website, Erik says that he would ride his bike to work every day. Concerned about the amount of trash and litter he saw each day on his way to work, he took matters into his own hands.

In Sweden, many people who exercise outdoors have been doing plogging for years. Take Jeff Horowitz for example. He is a personal trainer in Washington, D.C. He often picks up trash while running outside. “I didn’t know it was a thing really. This is just my personal ethics(道德标准). where 1 go for a run and if I happen to see a piece of garbage lying around and it’s within reach - it is a kind of a little test for me to see if I can grab it and throw it in a near trash can without stopping. And it helps clean up the neighborhood,” he announced.

Today, plogging is an official activity, one that is becoming increasingly popular. Cities around the world now hold plogging events. “I would just hope people would think twice before dropping a garbage on the ground. And, it’s easy to put your garbage in the trash cans. I just think people should think about it a little bit more. I do hope one day there will not be a need for plogging.” said an interviewee.

【推荐3】Digital assistants such as Siri are increasingly common on phones and computers. Developing an emotional relationship with a piece of software can, however, bring discomfort to some people.

As a study published in Psychology Science by Park Daeun, of Chungbuk National University in South Korea, and her colleagues, shows, one emotion sometimes involved in machine-human interaction is embarrassment.

Dr. Park and her team recruited 187 participants into their study. To start with, each was presented with a series of statements on the changeability of intelligence. These included, “you have a certain amount of intelligence, and you can’t really do much to change it”, and “you can always substantially change how intelligent you are”. Participants rated their responses to these statements on a six-point scale, on which one meant “strongly disagree” and six meant “strongly agree”. The reason for this initial test was that Dr. Park knew from previous work that those who believe intelligence to be changeable are comfortable asking for assistance while those who believe it to be fixed often feel ashamed to do so.

The initial test done, the researchers presented their volunteers with a second, which involved looking at 16 sets of three words and trying to think of a fourth word that linked them. For example, when offered “room, blood, salts” a correct answer would be “bath”. Sometimes the first three words were accompanied by an unrequested hint (in the example given, this was “tub”). Sometimes they were not.

Hints appeared as the written form of the word in question, accompanied by a computer-shaped icon (图标). For half of participants this icon had a humanlike face, and the hint was placed inside a speech bubble originating from that face, thus anthropomorphizing (赋予人性) the presentation to some degree. For the other half the icon lacked a face and there was no speech bubble. After the final set of words had been displayed, participants were asked to agree to disagree with follow-up statements about their experience, such as “it was embarrassing to receive help during the task”, and “others might think I am incompetent (无能的) because I received help during the task”. This time, they quantified their feelings on a seven-point scale, with higher scores representing greater feelings of unease.

The researchers found that participants who believed intelligence to be unchangeable (the top sixth of the sample) felt more embarrassed and more incompetent after the tests. They averaged 3.2 when measured for feelings of shame and embarrassment if the computer icons they had seen giving the hints had had faces and speech bubbles but only 2.7 if not. In contrast, people who strongly believed that intelligence could be changed over time (the bottom sixth of the sample) felt the same level of discomfort (around 2.5) whether or not the icons had been anthropomorphized.