【推荐2】Being a mother is apparently not like it was in the good old days.

Today’s parents yearn for the golden age that their own mothers enjoyed in the 1970s and 1980s, researchers found.

Mothers have less time to themselves and feel under greater pressure to juggle work and family life than the previous generation.

As a result, 88 percent said they felt guilty about the lack of time they spent with their children.

The survey of 1,000 mothers also found that more than a third said they had less time to themselves than their mothers did--- just three hours a week or 26 minutes a day.

And 64 percent said this was because they felt they had to go out to work, while nearly a third (29 percent) said they were under constant pressure to be the perfect mother, the report found.

Other findings showed social networking and parenting websites, as well as technology such as Skype, were important in providing help and support among female communities.

Kate Fox, of the Social Issues Research Centre, which conducted the survey for Procter& Gamble, said “With increasing pressure on mothers to work a ‘double shift’---to be a perfect mother as well as a wage-earner---support networks are more important than ever.”

It comes as a separate report examining childcare in the leading industrialized nations found that working mothers in Britain spend just 81 minutes a day caring for their children as a ‘primary activity’.

Mothers who stay at home, on the other hand, manage twice as much time---more than two and a half hours---looking after their offspring, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Critics say the pressure on women to work long hours, and leave their offspring in the hands of nurseries or childminders, is putting the wellbeing of their children at risk.

The study also reveals that, despite the fact that more and more modern mothers go out to work, the burden of childcare still falls on them---even if their husband is not in work.

A father who is not in work tends to spend just 63 minutes a day looking after his child---18 minutes less than a mother who goes out to work.

Working fathers spare less than three quarters of an hour with their children.

【推荐3】Young people spending hours staring at screens means half the world may need glasses within 30 years.

Phone devices and computer screens are to blame for the rising risk of short-sightedness among children and young adults, say scientists. Researchers have found high levels of looking at a phone or tablet is linked with around a 30 percent higher risk of shortsightedness, also known as myopia (近视). But when it is combined with excessive computer use, that risk rose to around 80 percent. Researchers fear that this could mean that by 2050, half the world or five billion people could be short-sighted.

The authors examined more than 3, 000 studies investigating smart device exposure and myopia in children and young adults aged between three months old and 33 years old.

In 2019, the WHO recommended children under two should not have any screen time and children aged two to five should have no more than one hour a day of sedentary screen time.

But in the same year, a CensusWide survey of 2, 000 British families found children were spending an average of 23 hours a week staring at screens. Numerous studies have also suggested that number has vastly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Bourne at Anglia Ruskin University said, “Around half the global population is expected to have myopia by 2050, so it is a health concern that is escalating quickly.”

“Our study is the most comprehensive yet on this issue and shows a potential link between screen time and myopia in young people. This research comes at a time when our children have been spending more time than ever looking at screens for long periods, due to school closures, and it is clear that urgent research is needed to further understand how exposure to digital devices can affect our eyes and vision,” added he.

【推荐3】For 30 years we have been told how temperatures have been rising rapidly to unheard of levels. This is causing polar ice to melt, sea-levels to rise and has brought about a dangerous increase in extreme weather events. These intense climatic changes would likely present challenges to our society and environment.

The causes of climate change are mainly anthropogenic (人为的) in nature. Since the industrial revolution, human activities have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The increased amount of gases which absorb heat has led to more heat being kept in the atmosphere, causing global warming.

The certainty of global warming can be seen through some of the natural phenomena like the effect on crops and extreme weather conditions around the world. The most recent assessment report says that the earth’s average temperature has risen by 0. 74 degrees in the period from 1906 to 2005, and that the average temperature will continue to rise. There have also been more violent downpours, sea levels have risen and the ice at the world’s poles and on its mountains is melting. The rising sea level is flooding the low-lying countries in Asia and small islands in the Pacific. This may lead to the displacement of millions of people, loss of millions of land and consequently billions of dollars.

Troubled by the serious situation, world leaders came together for the 2015 United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Paris. The climate talks led to 196 countries reaching a landmark agreement that will, for the first time, commit nearly every country to lowering planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions to address global climate change. That was certainly an encouraging step forward for our earth and mankind!

As the world leaders continue to commit themselves to monitor our sick planet, we need to continue to take small steps to heal the world. We are left with not much of a choice. If only we could just pack our bags and migrate to Mars!

A．	B．
C．	D．