【推荐3】“We are what we eat”—or so the saying goes. From high-calorie meals to low-fat lunches, much of our health depends on what we eat. We know about the benefits of eating properly for our physical well-being, but food and cooking it is proving to be good for our mental well-being as well.

Some people are now advocating the therapeutic (治疗的）value of cooking food. It’s not just about the end result but the experience someone goes through.

TV chef and author Nadiya Hussain agrees that cooking is great for helping our mind. She loves to bake and became the champion of the TV show, The Great British Bake Off. She says that “Baking’s always been about therapy... It’s never really been about the cake.” And she thinks that baking is an important tool for our socialisation and mental health.

Certainly, creating some delicious food has helped some of us get through the recent lockdown; it’s helped take our mind off things and given us something to do. People have said that kneading dough (面团) to make bread, for example, has given them a sense of calm and control. Research has shown that doing creative tasks, like cooking, makes us feel happier.

Nicole Farmer, who studies how food impacts our biology, behavior and mental health, told BBC online that “cooking represents the shared human experience of food, and nurturing people through food, so I think that’s where it integrates opportunity into immediate positive emotions”.

Of course, cooking can be a very sociable activity and sharing the end result, a rewarding experience. Hopefully, as we start to mix with friends and family again, we can enjoy the benefits once more and put us all in the right frame of mind.

【推荐1】A growing number of under-35s in England are discovering the joys of going to or selling at craft (手艺) fairs and makers’ markets. A 2019 report found that 34% of those who buy hand-made items prefer markets and festival s to galleries or online purchases. The current craft revival (复苏) started through TV and the internet, but now it’s also about face-to-face sales and experiences. When product designer Ben Watson went to his first-ever craft fair in October, he didn’t have great expectations. “I thought there would be retirement-age couples hanging around but found the huge variety of attendees, most of whom engaged with makers throughout the day,” he says.

Nicky Dewar, director at the Crafts Council, says that what we consider as craft has widened, which has brought in an increase in shoppers under 35 buying craft. They also prefer to buy in markets rather than online. There’s something lovely about seeing markets pop up in so many different spaces. They’re important for emerging businesses and a big step for traders.

Sinead Koehler, founder of Crafty Fox Market, says there’s been an explosion of specialist markets all over the country. The festive market provides a platform to showcase unique handcrafted gifts and decorations. The common spread of markets doesn’t find universal approval, though. Koehler says that many craftspeople are aware of markets: “There can be a wide range of possibilities at these events. Quality can vary.”

Involved in selling and running markets since 2015, Sinead O’Connor confirms there has been an increased interest in craft, but she warns traders against selling items that are sourced rather than made by the seller at markets. “I find it encouraging that a lot of customers mentioned they liked my crafts. The feeling I get is that people really like something that can’t be bought from Amazon,” she says.

【推荐3】I am an Africa wildlife filmmaker. But wildlife filmmakers from Africa are rarer than mountain gorillas(大猩猩). To understand why there are so few, we need to remember our recent history.

When the colonialists(殖民者) ruled Africa, they seized control of the continent’s wildlife and other natural resources. They saw African wildlife as “big game” and the continent’s first protected natural areas were game reserves created by driving away locals for the benefit of white hunters. Later, game reserves were renamed national parks and big game hunting gave way to wildlife tourism. But African wildlife was still there for White people’s enjoyment and benefits.

That locals could have an interest in preserving wildlife for its own sake was rarely considered. Africans -like me who tried to get involved in wildlife conservation were made to feel out of place. When I was first interviewed by a British film crew, my interview was cut at the editing stage and replaced by a white man, just because I was an African.

Africa was the setting for some of the most popular films about wildlife, but these films were made by western-owned production companies for Western audiences, and most Africans never even got to see them. What Africa needed was to see themselves and their view points in the films. We urgently needed wildlife films made by Africans, about Africans and for Africans. As producer of the documentary TV series “Wildlife Warriors”, I set out to find African conservation heroes who could play a role in the documentary. I soon discovered that we had some talented African filmmakers across the continent.

Today things are changing fast. Companies like National Geographic and the BBC are leading the way with new approaches to global storytelling that deliver diversity and equality. Our African wildlife filmmakers’ mission is to draw on the power of local storytelling to inspire our people to save our continent’s rich wildlife.

【推荐1】An international team of researchers, led by Dr Christine Batchelor of Newcastle University, UK, used clear pictures of the seafloor to show just how quickly a former ice cover retreated (退去) at the end of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago.

The team mapped more than 7,600 small-scale landforms across the seafloor. The ridges (山脊) are less than 2.5m high and are spaced between about 25 and 300 metres apart. These landforms are understood to have formed when the ice cover’s retreating edge moved up and down with the tides (潮汐), pushing seafloor into a ridge every low tide. Given that two ridges would have been produced each day, the researchers were able to work out how quickly the ice cover retreated. Their results, reported in the journal Nature, show the former ice cover rapidly retreats at a speed of 50 to 600 metres per day.

The seafloor landforms also give light into the way in which such rapid retreat can happen. Dr Batchelor and co-workers noted that the former ice cover had retreated fastest across the flattest parts of its bed.

“An ice can go away from the seafloor and retreat quickly when it becomes buoyant (有浮力的),” explained co-author Dr Frazer Christie. “This retreat only happens across relatively flat beds, where less melting (融化) is required to thin the overlying ice to the point where it starts to float (漂浮).”

The researchers believe that the quick retreat could soon be observed in parts of Antarctica. This includes at West Antarctica’s vast Thwaites Glacier. The authors of this new study suggest that it could go through quick retreat because it has recently retreated close to a flat area of its bed.

“Our findings suggest that present-day rates of melting are enough to cause quick short retreat across flat-bedded areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, including at Thwaites,” said Dr Batchelor. “Satellites (卫星) may well know this ice-cover retreat in the near future, especially if we continue our climate warming.”

【推荐2】Just as it does on Earth, it snows on Mars. However, scientists have found that Martian snow is “dustier” than it is on Earth, which could mean it’s warmer and more likely to melt into water, a new study suggests.

“There is a chance that this dusty and dark ice might melt a few centimeters down,” said the study’s lead author, Aditya Khuller, in a statement.

In June, a separate study suggested that there may be more water on Mars than previously thought.

The scientists believe that the ice that was dug up by the Phoenix lander in 2008 occurred from a snowfall sometime over the past million years.

“It is widely believed that Mars has experienced many ice ages throughout its history, and it looks like the ice being exposed throughout the mid-latitudes of Mars is the remains of this ancient dusty snowfall,” Khuller added.

If researchers are able to better learn about the potentials of water on Mars, then they may be able to better learn about its prospects for once hosting life.

“Describing these features can significantly improve the ice stability (稳定) on Mars and inform us about its age and origin,” the researchers wrote in the study.

The researchers say that more work is required to determine if the ice actually melts into water.

Khuller added, “We are working on developing improved computer imitations of Martian ice to study how it evolves over time, and whether it might melt to form liquid water. The results from this study will be necessary to our work because knowing how dark the ice is directly influences how warm it gets.”

It has been somewhat integral to find, although scientists confirmed in 2018 that Mars still has lakes filled with liquid water.