【推荐1】Plastic bottles by the side of a road are a common sight, an unseemly reminder of how often consumer products are thrown away carelessly. Now some of those bottles may become part of the road. A California company has put recycled plastic into road repaving (重铺)，which could revolutionize the industry with environmental benefits.

Sean Weaver, president of TechniSoil Industrial in the northern California city of Redding, said, “With this new technique, the repaved roads are stronger, flatter, safer and last longer than those made with regular asphalt (沥青).”

More appealing to environmentalists, the repaved roads incorporate 100% of the old asphalt - sparing the air from dozens of trips by trucks pulling away and bringing in building materials - and provide a new market for plastic products that could otherwise wind up in a landfill.

“Everybody that's looked at it said this will be one of the most transformative road construction technologies ever,” Weaver said. “We're recycling what's there, and we're delivering a road that's better than the original, at no higher cost than it would cost you to repave that road the traditional way.”

The process involves four large construction vehicles linked together in what's called a recycling train which scoops up the top 3 inches of asphalt on a lane, grinds (磨碎)them on a mill and mixes them with TechniSoil's G5 binder (粘合剂),containing from 2% to 20% of liquefied plastic. The mixed product is deposited back on the road, paved and rolled over. There’s no heat involved in the operation, which essentially replaces the traditional binder - bitumen, a leftover from refining oil - with a stronger plastic composite. The other elements of asphalt, such as crushed rock, gravel, sand and filler, remain in place.

【推荐2】Urban gardens are valuable assets (资产) to communities. They provide green spaces to grow sustainable food, build community cohesion (凝聚力), make new friends, connect with the earth, and much more. So, let’s check out our list of 4 inspiring urban gardens in the US.

Gotham Greens

Where: New York & Chicago

What: Gotham Greens first started in Brooklyn and now has four locations in New York City and Chicago. Their flagship farm in Brooklyn produces over 100,000 pounds of greens per year. But it doesn’t just produce healthy local vegetables. It is using high-tech greenhouses with solar panels to make sure the food grown is healthy and sustainable.

Baltimore Urban Gardening with Students

Where: Baltimore, Maryland

What: The Baltimore Urban Gardening with Students (BUGS) program encourages students to get their hands dirty and plant vegetables through their after-school and summer programs. Many of these kids don’t have access to green spaces and have never had the opportunity to grow food.

Revision Urban Farm

Where: Boston, Massachusetts

What: Revision Urban Farm in Boston works in partnership with the Revision Family Home-a shelter for 22 homeless parents and their kids. The farm provides these families within formation on healthy eating, and access to the farm’s fresh vegetables. The organization also provides job training to help families escape the cycle of poverty.

Swale

Where: New York

What: Swale, a floating food forest located on a large boat, is an innovative project meant to inspire citizens to rethink the relationship between our cities and our food. This urban garden serves as both a living art exhibit and an educational farm Food forests are sustainable gardens that include vegetables, fruit, nut trees, bushes, herbs, and vines — each one complementing the other in a symbiotic (共生的) relationship.

【推荐2】It looks like a mobile phone, but the service is much cheaper. It acts like a mobile phone, but only in your own city. Beyond the city walls, it’s useless.

“Little Smart”, also called “xiaolingtong”, has always been compared to mobile phones. But actually, it is more like one of those cordless phones (无绳电话) used around the home. The only difference is that this one reaches much further than from the bathroom to the living room. It can travel across an entire city.

Cheap costs are the main reason for the success of Little Smart. It costs 25 yuan a month for the line and about 0.1 yuan per minute to use. A mobile phone, on the other hand, can cost four or five times as much. What’s more, unlike mobile phones, there’s no fee (费) for incoming calls. So these low charges have attracted many users.

But, Little Smart is not really that smart. Users often complain about its bad voice quality. And there are not as many stations to pick up its signals as there are for mobiles. “I couldn’t receive a phone call if I was on a bus,” said Li Ping, a user in Hangzhou. “It worked fine when I stood still, but there were breaks in signal when I was moving.”

Scientists are trying to make Little Smart more user-friendly. Messaging and Internet access (接入) have been added to the service. And the latest Little Smart handset even has color screen.

【推荐3】Noah Webster, born on October 16, 1758, is known for The American Dictionary of the English Language. He has been called the “Father of American Scholarship and Education.” His “Blue-Backed Speller” books were used to teach spelling and reading to five generations of American children. But how much do you know about him beyond that?

At the age of 16, Noah Webster began attending Yale College, Unfortunately, he spent his four years at Yale during the American Revolutionary War, and, because of food shortages, many of his college classes were held in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Later, he served in the army. Having graduated from Yale in 1778, Webster wanted to continue his education in order to earn his law degree. He had to teach school in order to pay for his education. He set up many small schools that didn’t survive, but he was a good teacher because instead of forcing his students to learn, like what most teachers did, he rewarded them.

He earned his law degree in, 1781, but did not practice law until 1789. Once he started he found the law was not to his liking. Webster did not have much money.

In 1793, Alexander Hamilton lent him $ 1500 to move to New York City to edit a newspaper. In December, he founded New York’s first daily newspaper, American Minerva, and edited it for four years. For decades, he published textbooks, political essays, a report on some diseases, and newspaper articles for his party. He wrote so much that a modern list of his published works required 655 pages.

Noah Webster died on May 28, 1843 and was buried in the Grove Street Cemetery.