【推荐1】With time going by, people have come to understand the importance of protecting the environment. But they can’t deal with everything by themselves. Take small steps, and you can make a difference.

• Think Green. Think about the environment as you live your life. If you turn off lights and TV when leaving the room, you’ll save energy.     1    .

• Shop Green. Shopping is fun, but buying things you don’t need is wasteful and even bad for the earth.     2    . And whenever possible, buy things locally made instead of those shipped from far away.

• Dress Green. What really matters is not the colour.     3    . So look for products made from environmentally friendly (环保的) materials.

•     4    . What’s better than learning about the environment?     5    . It can be as simple as using both sides of a piece of paper before you recycle it

【推荐3】The International Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN) added the Chinese paddlefish (白鲟) to its list of threatened species in July, 2022. People will never see a living Chinese paddlefish again as it has been declared extinct. For many people in China, this might be the first time they had heard the name of the fish that was once a denizen(栖息者) of the Yangtze River Basin.

The fish is thought to have been around since about 200 million years ago. It was among the world’s biggest freshwater species and could grow up to 7.5 meters in length. The last time the fish was spotted was in 2003 in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in Yibin, Sichuan Province. It was an injured female sturgeon(鲟鱼). After local people treated its wounds, it was released into the river.

According to the IUCN, the global sturgeon reassessment found that 100 per cent of the remaining 26 sturgeon species in the world are now at risk of extinction, up from 85 per cent in 2009. Their decline over the past three generations is steeper than previously thought.

“The extinction of the Chinese paddlefish should be a warning to everyone,” said Zhou Fei, China’s chief program officer at the World Wide Fund for Nature. “It has provided an opportunity for conservation experts to raise public awareness about the urgency of protecting freshwater species in the Yangtze River Basin and educate the public on the need for more efforts to save other species living in the region from extinction,” he added.

To prevent further loss of freshwater species in China, people must act urgently. There is no time to waste. Also, long-term threats to their life and habitats must be eliminated by taking systematic protection measures. The protection of biodiversity will delay the extinction of some species. It’s not something that can be achieved by certain departments. Instead, it requires joint efforts from all sectors of society.

【推荐1】An Warm-hearted Landlord

Ming Tinggui, 41, a landlord in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, has become famous online because of his acts of kindness during the city’s COVID-19 lockdown.

Xi’an imposed a citywide lockdown on Dec 23 in an effort to prevent a resurgence (复发) of COVID-19. Ming had 81 tenants (租户) in Yanta district at that time, about 80 percent of whom were students who had moved to Xi’an to attend training classes, begin internships or take China’s postgraduate entrance exam, scheduled from Dec 25 to 27. Most of the students only brought simple belongings that could fit inside a suitcase, with no room for pots or pans to cook with. Under lockdown, they were not allowed to go out, making mealtime a major headache. Having seen his young tenants living on instant noodles and snacks, Ming decided to cook meals for them. He bought as many vegetables as possible in the community and told his tenants via WeChat that he could provide dinner for them each day. His idea was warmly welcomed. The tenants placed their orders in the WeChat group every day, and Ming prepared their meals accordingly.

His wife and 65-year-old mother also joined him to wash vegetables and dishes. Although there were food supply problems at the beginning of the lockdown, Ming still managed to buy some meat for his hungry young tenants.

Ming received as many as 45 orders a day. Some of the tenants wanted to pay him for the dinner but were refused. Ming said he cooked the meals not for money but to help those in need. With the tenants-safety in mind, Ming divided the orders into small groups so that they could fetch their dinner one by one while keeping two meters from each other.

Greatly moved, the tenants reported his good deeds to the local media, shooting him to stardom overnight. Hearing of his generosity, many people offered to give Ming money to help feed his young tenants, but Ming politely refused.

Ming has decided to continue to prepare meals for his tenants until the lockdown is over, or at least until takeout food is available.

【推荐2】BEIJING- Wang Yaping, a taikonaut onboard China’s space station core module (舱), offered people on Earth a zero-gravity musical performance on Tuesday evening to celebrate the Lantern Festival. The space show was shared via a video released at an annual TV gala for the festival celebration. In the video, Wang was seen floating in the space module while playing a guzheng, or Chinese zither. She played a segment of the popular Chinese folk song. “Jasmine Flower”.

The Lantern Festival falls on the 15th day of the first month of the Chinese lunar calendar. People usually hang colorful lanterns, play riddle games and express their wishes and hopes for the future.

The crew members, who traveled to the space station core module on the Shenzhou-13 mission, kept some festive traditions alive as they continued to rotate around the Earth. Commander Zhai Zhigang wrote riddles on red paper scrolls with a brush pen. He displayed the calligraphy together with taikonaut Ye Guangfu and extended festival greetings to the audience. They also sent blessing to athletes at the ongoing Beijing Winter Olympics: “We hope that you all achieve success, gain friendship and harvest your best Olympic experience.”

The video of the space performance was received with much enthusiasm after it was shared on social media platforms. It drew nearly 2 million clicks in one hour after several national media outlets posted it on the Chinese micro-blogging site Sina Weibo. The Weibo account of Zhurong, China’s first rover on Mars, reposted the video, commenting, “The music was so beautiful, and it made me homesick, too.”

The Lantern Festival also marks the last day of the lunar New Year celebration. Though far from home, the festive sentiments in space are the same. The China Manned Space Agency released a video on social media platforms on Tuesday, showing that the taikonauts had decorated the orbiting core module with red lanterns, Chinese knots and paper- cutting decorations. Wearing new clothes, the trio (三人小组) enjoyed the traditions of eating dumplings and posting spring couplets on walls During the Chinese New Year holiday, they were also spotted watching the Winter Olympics and doing workouts in orbit.

【推荐1】Boston wants to be smarter. The city has taken advantage of tiny sensors, big data and other technologies to become more responsive to its residents’ needs. But technology alone is not sufficient to make today’s cities liveable. Boston has discovered that it also needs to reach the old-fashioned low-tech community and integrate that technology with city life.

Kris Carter, co-chair of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, rolled out Boston’s smart city program in 2014. It started with an app that residents could download to report locations where sidewalks needed repair. The city collected those reports and decided which place should be repaired.

The system worked beautifully, except for one problem: most of the alerts came from wealthier neighborhoods, where the concentration of smartphone-equipped residents was highest.

Boston’s push to become a leading smart city now contains a core tenet: high-tech initiatives(方案) shouldn’t only benefit the already well-resourced. Under Carter, technology is seeping into the city’s functioning and daily life, but with a special eye to serving those populations and neighborhoods that need the most support.

Instead of letting tech-savvy(懂技术的) residents and high-tech companies drive the process. Carter’s group run meetings in local libraries and other public spaces to find out what problems people in different neighborhoods care about solving. “Some cities take the point of view that if you put out the right technology devices, people will figure out how to take advantage of them,” he explains. “We wanted to start with a grass-roots view of what challenges needed to be addressed.” Only in that context, he adds, does technology enter the picture.

When it comes to sidewalks, Boston has introduced a second method of collecting repair tips. In addition to its smartphone app, it has hired people to get out and walk the city’s 1,700 miles of sidewalks to take notes on their condition. “Combined with our other sidewalk information, that gave us an even better way to predict where faster repairs would do the most good,” says Carter. “We’re really always looking for whatever mix of approaches best solves the problem.”