【推荐3】Tiny homes have been popular as home prices have climbed to new heights and people have looked for creative ways to downsize. We’ve seen many design concepts, including storage units and buses, but Jim Dotzenrod and his daughter Danielle recently came up with a unique one. The pair worked together on the family project to transform a 1973 train caboose into the sleeper car.

The CR Station Train Caboose, as it’s known on Airbnb, which has become somewhat of its own tourist destination in the small town that houses it, is available to rent for $124 a night, and has an excellent rating of 4.86 out of 5 from more than 300 guests on the booking website.

According to Insider, the project began when Jim saw a bunch of train cabooses along the side of the road during a drive out of town. He said he wondered if he could change one of them into a place where people could live or stay. So, he bought the 52,000-pound caboose for $8,000. Getting the caboose to its final home took some creative thinking and some heavy-duty equipment.

Danielle said the work was challenging, especially since she and her dad both have day jobs. But their schedules didn’t stop them from finishing the project. “My dad can do anything he sets his mind to — like, absolutely anything — but my dad is so low maintenance himself,” Danielle told the website. “So when we built this together it was a good combination because he could build whatever and have me pushing him like, ‘Hey, let’s make this as cool as we can.’”

This caboose also has Wi-Fi, air-conditioning, a refrigerator, a shower and more. So, if you’re ever traveling in Iowa and want to experience something special, book a stay at the CR Station Train Caboose!

【推荐1】China will accelerate law-making on making up for ecological damage, as the mechanism (机制) continues to prove its role in helping restore damaged environments across the country, according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. From 2018 to 2021, authorities across the country handled about 11, 300 such cases, with compensation (补偿) amounting to almost 11.7 billion yuan.

The department showed statistics demonstrating the mechanism as effective in dealing with ecological and environmental damage.

It said that thanks to the compensation, over 36 million cubic meters of contaminated soil and 300 million cubic meters of polluted surface water have been treated. The mechanism has also helped restore over 61 million square meters of forest.

In a case exposed in late 2019, for instance, a paper company named Meili was found to have illegally dumped a large amount of thick, black waste from papermaking in the Tengger Desert. According to the ministry’s investigation, most of the pollutants were dumped from 2003 to 2007, polluted soil and groundwater, and damaging plants. In March 2021, after a third-party agency was brought in to assess the damage, a court in Zhongwei required the polluter to pay more than 198 million yuan in compensation in two stages.

In the first stage, Meili will pay about 44.2 million yuan to cover the cost to investigate andclean up the pollutants. The rest of the compensation will be used in the second stage to carry out compensatory restoration, groundwater monitoring and risk control in the area. In its statement, the department of law, regulation and standards also noted the remarkable progress the country has made in enhancing the institutions for the mechanism.

Bie Tao, director of the department, vowed further efforts to promote law-making for the mechanism. “Aside from striving to include ecological and environmental damage compensationinto the Environmental Protection Law and other relevant laws, we will also make efforts to promote research into a specific law for the mechanism,” he said.

【推荐2】Too many deaths and injuries occur while mobile phones are being held. Tougher new laws will come into force in a further severe action on using a mobile phone behind the wheel from next year.

It is already illegal to text or make a phone call, other than in an emergency, using a hand-held device while driving. From 2022, laws will go further to ban drivers from using their phones to take photos or videos, or play games. This will mean anyone caught using their hand-held device while driving will face a fixed penalty notice and six points on their license. Drivers will still be able to continue using a device “hands-free” while driving, if it’s secured in a cradle (支架).

The government will also revise The Highway Code to explain the new measures. It will also be more precise about some facts, making it clear that hand-held mobile phone use at traffic lights or in motorway jams is illegal except in very limited circumstances.

There will be an exemption (豁免) to the new law for drivers making a contactless payment using their mobile phone. This will cover, for example, places like a drive-through restaurant or a road toll, and will only apply when payment is being made with a card reader. Anyway, it will not allow drivers to make general online payments while driving.

Mary Williams, chief executive of Brake — the road safety charity, said, “If drivers take their attention away from driving, this can be deadly. Using a hand-held phone at the wheel is never worth the risk. This important road safety decision by government, along with Road Safety Week, is very welcomed. The theme for Road Safety Week is road safety heroes — we can all be road safety heroes by giving driving our full attention.”

【推荐3】Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, recently signed two bills into law that strictly limit children’s use of social media platforms. Under the law, which takes effect next year, social media companies have to check the ages of all users in the state, and children under age 18 have to get agreement from their parents to have accounts. Parents will also be able to use their kids’ accounts, apps won’t be allowed to show children ads, and accounts for kids won’t be able to be used between 10:30 pm and 6:30 am without parental agreement.

While some people argue age limitation allows tech companies to collect even more data about users, let’s be real: These companies already have much private information about us. To solve this problem, we need a separate data privacy law. But until that happens, this concern shouldn’t stop us from protecting kids.

One of the key parts of the law is allowing parents to use their kids’ accounts. By doing this, the law begins to help address one of the biggest dangers kids face online: harmful content.

One huge challenge the law helps parents get over is the amount of time kids are spending on social media. A 2022 survey found that, on average, children aged 8 to 12 spend 5 hours and 33 minutes per day on social media while those aged 13 to 18 spend 8 hours and 39 minutes daily. It’s warned that lack of sleep is connected with serious harm to children — everything from injuries to depression (抑郁), fatness and diabetes. So, parents need to have a way to ensure their kids aren’t up on social media platforms all night.

Considering the experiences many kids are having on social media, this law will help Utah’s parents protect their kids. Parents in other states need the same support. Now, it’s time for the government to step up and ensure children throughout the country have the same protection as Utah’s kids.

【推荐1】The US space agency NASA has revealed an astonishing picture revealing new secrets of the Earth’s home galaxy (星系), the Milky Way. The sun is just one of hundreds of billions of stars that form the huge shape of our galaxy. Our solar system sits in an outlying region but the new image focuses on the centre of the Milky Way, a “noisy” area because of all the crowded stars. Light from this region takes about 26,000 years to reach Earth. For comparison, light takes just eight minutes to reach us from the sun.

The researchers use the data collected by two telescopes that see the sky in ways that are very different from the visible light our eyes can see to form the new image. Most of the data comes from 370 different pictures taken over the past 20 years by NASA’s Chandra X Observatory. This satellite telescope detects X-rays out in space. X-rays are a from of radiation that is sent out when violent events heat matter to temperatures of millions of degrees. Other data comes from the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa, which can detect radio waves from space. These waves have much less energy than X-rays. They are usually produced by cooler material, such as huge clouds of gas between the stars.

The brightest sources include neutron stars which are the cores of huge stars that ran out of fuel and collapsed to city-sized balls of super hot matter. Many neutron stars and black holes jet out gases that appear in the picture as purple streaks (斑纹). Powerful magnetic fields in the area cause the jets to bend as they get further from their source. Astronomer Dr Daniel Wang, who has worked on the image over the past year, said the new picture described “a violent or energetic ecosystem”.

【推荐3】The library is one of the most popular places at a western university. Students turn to it for research, conversations about class, and many other services.

Compared with Chinese libraries, college libraries in the US and UK tend to offer more resources. A postgraduate at Yale University can borrow as many as 225 books at a time.

In addition to borrowing books, there are online and electronic resources. These include a database search of popular and academic material, such as LexisNexis Academic, which offer items from newspapers and magazines.

Although books and articles are the items that students ask for most frequently, some libraries provide audio and video recordings, maps and sheet music (活页乐谱). At some schools, teachers and tutors put electronic copies of their teaching PPTs on the library Web to give easier access for students.

Another useful service in Western college libraries is the Interlibrary Loan. This allows a student at one school to borrow books from another school. The loan request is made through the student’s college library, which gets the book, gives it to the user, and arranges for its return.

Technology has brought more services to students and has made libraries attractive. Some universities have services for students to send messages through the computer or mobile texts to ask the library staff for information.

Earlier this year, Harvard University introduced a new Scan and Deliver service, allowing students to make requests for parts of books and articles. Requests made through the system are handled by library staff. The student receives and e-mail with an Internet link to the scanned pages. The service is free and all material comes within four days.

It used to be that libraries didn’t allow food or drinks. But that rule is changing and many of them now contain a cafe so students can spend as much time as they want in the library.

Actually, some US university libraries are now all-night affairs, or have at least one study room open all night.