【推荐2】China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) has become the top guidance service provider for domestic Gaode Map, according to a statement released by the Beijing Institute of Space Science and Technology Information.

Based on the average number of satellites called by domestic navigation apps for each positioning, BeiDou satellites have been called the most, 30 percent more than the second-ranked GPS. Although the news only became public on Wednesday, the BDS has actually long overtaken GPS in serving domestic map apps, according to Liu Dingding, a Beijing-based experienced market analyst.

Gaode Map has used BeiDou satellites to make more than 210 billion positioning calls each day. The combination of BDS and map navigation is providing better services to the public. Map apps users can check the number of BeiDou satellites currently offering service in real time during navigation. Another domestic map giant, Baidu Maps, also announced an official switch to the BeiDou system on September 30, with daily positioning uses exceeding 100 billion for the first time.

BeiDou playing a dominant role in the domestic navigation sector is of great significance. For starters, as a homegrown technology, it is free from external interference (外部干扰), and it could ensure data and information security. In addition, the positioning quality of BDS has proved on many occasions to be much better than GPS, Liu said. He also noted that the application of BDS in navigation apps is only the tip of the iceberg. The system has been widely used in many industrial and agricultural sectors, from port management and grain production to providing disaster relief.

An intelligent farm in Handan, North China’s Hebei Province, has installed BeiDou-supported positioning and navigation devices, automatic steering (自动驾驶) devices and remote-control devices on autonomous tractors to sow seeds and spray pesticides. BDS has seen fast development and use overseas too, with BeiDou products, technologies and services applied in more than 120 countries and regions.

【推荐3】When Auntie Rose died in early 2007, she was the oldest wild chimpanzee known to humankind. At around 63 years old, very elderly for a chimp, her final months had been difficult.

Still, until the very end, Auntie Rose had been fending for herself. Adult chimpanzees rarely share food, so elderly animals have to find their own meals. Aging animals in the wild are less active, and may become a bit feeble too, losing muscle mass as they age. But they handle old age much better than we do. They just power along.

People often become less active as they age, inspired by the self-fulfilling prophecy that their bodies are naturally weakening and that their condition is therefore inevitably deteriorating. Yet even wild chimpanzees like Auntie Rose, who had to walk many miles to find food and did not receive health care when ill or injured, appear to be aging in a healthier way, says anthropologist Melissa Emery Thompson of the University of New Mexico.

Studies in people with hunter-gatherer lifestyles, many of whom remain very active until the end of their lives, also often show that they stay healthy much longer than those of us taking it easy as we grow older, says Emery Thompson. For instance, the walking speed of the Hadzain Tanzania, who keep up their foraging duties throughout life, does not appear to significantly decrease as they grow older. “It’s not physical activity, but inactivity, that makes us frail,” she says.

The many calcium-rich plants in the gorilla diet may be part of the explanation. But the most important factor, Thompson believes, is again physical activity. Even though mountain gorillas spend many hours a day sitting down and eating, they get plenty of exercise traveling up and down the region’s steep slopes.

【推荐3】From a young age, Barbara Binns’s passions were reading and doing research. With her latest book, Unlawful Orders, a biography, she captures American history.

Unlawful Orders tells the story of James Williams (1919-2016), a doctor who served with the Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black military pilots, during World War II. While at the Freeman Airfield base in Iowa, he stood up to racial unfair practices through peaceful protest, which pushed the government to make some changes in the US army.

Binns lives in Chicago, Illinois, where she grew up and where most of her stories took place. In 2008, she wrote several books for young readers. She found her current book’s subject while researching James’s mother, Clara Williams, for another project. James had also lived in Chicago, in a neighborhood not far from where Binns grew up, but she hadn’t heard about him. “I found myself wondering if I ever walked past him on the street and didn’t realize I was in the presence of greatness,” Binns told The Week Junior. She said she would have loved to have him as a role model during her childhood.

That’s one reason why she wrote Unlawful Orders, she said — for children who need a hero, someone who looks ordinary but did extraordinary things through quiet but persistent actions.