【推荐3】Popcorm Park Zoo is not like most zoos. It is a very special place.

This unusual place was not originally a zoo. At first it was called the Forked River Animal Care Center. The workers there looked after lost or unwanted cats and dogs. Today the center is part of the zoo, but now many other kinds of animals are helped there, too.

The changes to the center began in 1977 when a raccoon(浣熊)needed help. One of its front paws(爪子)had been badly hurt. The workers cared for the animal. Finally it was better, but it could not care for itself. The raccoon was allowed to live there. Then a hurt deer was brought there for help. It, too, stayed there after it got well.

Once people heard about the wonderful work being done at the center, they began taking all kinds of hurt or homeless animals there. Soon it was no longer just a home for cats and dogs. So many animals were living there that it became more like a zoo.

Popcorn Park Zoo got its funny name because many of the animals there like to eat popcorn made without oil or salt. The popcorn is sold there to help make money to care for the animals. People buy the popcorn to feed the animals as a treat.

Popcorn Park Zoo now looks after more than 200 kinds of animals. Many of them live freely there. Some of the gentler ones, such as goats, sheep, geese, and deer, walk among the visitors who come to see them. Others are kept in large closed-in areas almost like their natural homes. All the animals there get care and love.

【推荐1】The Tokyo Olympics brought some of the fastest times ever seen on the track. At an astonishing number of races, athletes beat personal bests along with national, Olympic and world records. Elaine Thompson-Herah set a new Olympic record in the women’s 100 metres, breaking Florence Griffith Joyner’s record set over 33 years ago. World records were broken in both the men’s and women’s 400 metres hurdles, by Karsten Warholm and Sydney McLaughlin respectively.

Is this just an unusually good Olympics for record-breaking races or is something different going on? Part of the answer can be found by looking down at an athlete’s feet. If you look closely, you might spot some new technology known as “super spikes (钉鞋)”—and underfoot, there’s a high-tech track.

Recently, track spikes have seen a similar shift in the performance-improving technology that previously took over marathon racing shoes. Traditionally, track spikes have tried to lessen the amount of midsole foam(中底泡沫) to reduce weight and energy absorption. However, new technology is lightweight and the foam is better at returning energy to the athlete, giving back as much as 80 to 90 percent. In this way, the foam acts as a spring with each step the athlete takes.

Another new technology contributing to athletes’ speed in Tokyo is the track. While it may look like a regular track, Mondo, the company behind it, spent three years researching and developing the surface specifically for the Tokyo Olympics. The track has been precisely tuned to allow shock absorption and energy return, playing a similar role to the foam in spikes.

Additionally, the games being delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic may actually have benefited some athletes, giving them more time to train. Other factors, such as the weather, could affect how an athlete performs on any given day. And above all, we cannot ignore the effort and talent of the athletes competing in these races. It may just be that we have got a particularly talented crop this year.

【推荐3】In the west of the city Seville in Spain, a sea of giant mirrors is reflecting the sun’s energy to provide “concentrated solar power (CSP)” while brightening the path to a new wave of green energy projects.

The 624 carefully positioned mirrors reflect the sun’s heat towards a 50-meter-tall central tower where it is concentrated and used to boil water into steam. The superheated steam is then used to turn a turbine (汽轮机) that can produce up to 11 megawatts of electricity—enough power for 6,000 homes—according to Solucar, the Spanish company that has built the power plant.

The Spanish tower, known as PS10, is the first stage of an ambitious development. By 2025 it is hoped that additional towers will create “a solar farm” with an output of 500 megawatts, which would be enough power for 180,000 homes, almost the entire population of nearby Seville.

CSP produces no greenhouse gases and the only pollution is visual. There is also the possibility that production can keep going around the clock-even when the sun has gone down. Solucar is currently testing technology at a plant near Granada that will pump 50 percent of the electricity generated in the day into the Spanish national grid (国家输电网), and use the other 50 percent to melt salt, which will then act as a kind of battery, storing the sun’s power. When dusk falls, the heat stored in the molten salt can be used to generate power through the night.

The Sahara, the world’s largest desert, has always been seen as a problem. But with large-scale CSP projects, suddenly all that empty space, with its year round clear skies and hot sun, has a value that could transform local economies. It could potentially turn Africa into an exporter of energy to power-hungry Europe.