【推荐1】It’s a cold night, and strong winds are blowing atop a hill in southwest Uganda. The wind rattles the giant metal insect trap. A 400-watt bulb is fixed at its center. The light is blinding to human eyes, but it’s a magnet for local bush crickets.

Protein dense and full of iron, zinc, and other essential minerals, bush crickets, and edible insects in general, have been praised by the UNFAO as a “food source of the future”, key to establishing food security. That’s important in countries such as Uganda, where nearly half of the children and a third of women suffer greatly from poor nutrition due to food shortage.

The visitors, as they’re called locally, come together to mate and feed in huge swarms after each rainy season in the autumn and pring, when hundreds of people across the country set aside their day jobs to catch then. Salted and fried, the crickets are a delicacy in Uganda, sold for two dollars a bag at open-air markets, taxi parks, and roadsides. Now what once was a small-scale and personal harvest in Uganda has become an increasingly commercialized undertaking, with giant traps taking tons of the insects at a time to meet the growing demand. “You see how you enjoy a movie with popcorn? Me, it’s movie with crickets,” says one fan.

However, this month, it should be the middle of the autumn harvest in Uganda. Legend has it that the insects come from the moon, and tonight it’s full. Yet “we’ve got nothing,” says a cricket catcher and wholesaler. “Where are they?”

Decreasing catches suggest the problem is not just overharvesting. Logging to clear land for cash crops has destroyed much bush cricket habitat. And climate change is making the rainy seasons unpredictable, affecting the crickets’ swarming patterns. With so many problems accumulating, there is still a long way to go. Thus, scientists have to start from scratch.

【推荐3】On November 18, 2021, the world's first self-driving, electric container ship made its first trip to Oslo. Norway. The ship's owners aim to cut pollution by moving large amounts of products by water on the southern coast of Norway instead of by truck.

The ship called Yara Birkeland is owned by Yara, a company that makes fertilizer (肥料). The company wanted to develop a zero-emissions (零排放) ship that was completely autonomous though it might cause financial troubles. Yara worked with a ship-building company called Vard and the technology company Kongsberg to develop the ship. Yara Birkeland is a container ship that can carry 120 large containers like those pulled by trucks. But the ship is fully electric and is powered by batteries.

Now, with Yara Birkeland moving huge amounts of fertilizer by water, the company expects to cut out 40,000 yearly trips by diesel (柴油) powered trucks, which will prevent about 1 million kilograms of carbon emissions every year.

In the future, Yara Birkeland is expected to operate completely automatically. Yara plans to spend the next two years training and testing the ship. But, as with many autonomous cars, the ship will continue to have humans watching out from a base on land even once the ship is driving fully by itself, says Svein Tore Holsether, Yara's president.

Many predicaments are waiting for Yara Birkeland. It'll be moving in a narrow waterway called a fjord. It' ll have to learn to handle the changing movements of water. It'll need to pass under two bridges and avoid all the other traffic on the busy fjord. Finally, it'll have to stop safely at the port in Brevik, one of the busiest ports in Norway. The company hopes that all of these will be settled in the near future.

【推荐2】Veteran Oksana Chusovitina, the 46-year-old, made a heart shape with her hands and waved to the crowd inside Tokyo’s Gymnastics Center on Sunday night after competing at a record eighth Olympic Games, while the athletes, officials and media workers gave her a standing applause as she left the sport’s biggest stage for the last time. She said she had been crying “tears of happiness, because so many people have supported me for such a long time”, adding, “I’m just so thankful.”

Born in Uzbekistan in 1976, she rose to fame as a gymnast at age 7, and was selected for the national team at age 13. She made her Olympic appearance at the 1992 Barcelona Games as part of the gold medal-winning Unified team, composed of athletes from former Soviet Union. She then represented Uzbekistan at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.

In order to raise medical expenses for her son with leukemia (白血病), she granted German citizenship in 2006 because of the promise of a higher income and better medical care. She took home a silver medal at the 2008 Beijing Games for Germany, but switched back to competing for Uzbekistan in 2013.

After her son’s recovery, Chusovitina continued to compete, but this time it was her love of gymnastics that kept her going. “There is no secret: I just love gymnastics and no one ever forced me to compete. I do so with pleasure.” she said. She had planned to retire after the London 2012 Olympics, but changed her mind and returned. She competed in the Tokyo Games as an Uzbekistan athlete this time, and regardless of her achievements, she drew a successful end to her long sports career.

She has collected 11 medals at major global championships and was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2017, and was named the Best Athlete of the Decade (2011-2020).