【推荐1】Flying insects are polluting new environments by eating microplastics in polluted waters and carrying them through the air, a new study has found.

UK researchers found that microplastics -- pieces of plastic less than 5 millimeters in size -- remain in the bodies of mosquitoes and other waterborne insects even after they become flying adults.

The findings mean that pollution from plastics being dumped into our oceans is being carried into the air, and raises concerns that birds and other creatures that eat the insects are also being polluted.

The team from the University of Reading in England and Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, inserted two minuscule pieces of polystyrene, each weighing just over one gram per cubic centimeter, into young mosquitoes and observed the insects throughout their life cycles. They found that the particles did not disappear from the mosquitoes’ systems after the insects moved between life stages and started to fly, and were present inside the fully formed insects. “When the microplastics become the adults, it represents a potential aerial pathway to pollution of new environments,” the authors wrote in the study.

“Thus, any organism that feeds on terrestrial life phases of freshwater insects could be affected by MPs found in aquatic ecosystems ( 水生态系统),” they added, using an abbreviation for microplastics. Freshwater insects such as mosquitoes are eaten by birds, amphibians, insects and fish, according to the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States. More than 150 million tons of plastic are floating in the world's oceans, with an additional eight million tons entering every year, according to the World Economic Forum. Plastic can be eaten by fish, birds and marine mammals, and can damage marine ecosystems such as coral reefs.

“This disturbing study raises real concerns about the spread of plastic pollution: it really is present everywhere, not just the marine environment,” said plastic pollution campaigner Emma Priestland from the charity Friends of the Earth.

“Knowing that plastic can be moved from the larval stage to the adult mosquito, which then serves as food to a multitude of larger animals, highlights the urgency with which we need to.”

A study from 2015 estimated that the total amount of floating plastic in the oceans could triple by 2025.

【推荐1】Great work is work that makes a difference in people’s lives, writes David Sturt, Executive Vice President of the O.C. Tanner Institute, in his book Great Work: How to Make a Difference People Love. Sturt insists, however, that great work is not just for surgeons or special-needs educators or the founders of organizations trying to eliminate poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. The central theme of Great Work, according to Sturt, is that anyone can make a difference in any job. It’s not the nature of the job, but what you do with the job that counts. As proof, Sturt tells the story of a remarkable hospital cleaner named Moses.

In a building filled with doctors and nurses doing great life-saving work, Moses the cleaner makes a difference. Whenever he enters a room, especially a room with a sick child, he engages both patients and parents with his optimism and calm, introducing himself to the child and, Sturt writes, speaking “little comments about light and sunshine and making things clean.” He comments on any progress he sees day by day (“you’re sitting up today, that’s good.”) Moses is no doctor and doesn’t pretend to be, but he has witnessed hundreds of sick children recovering from painful surgery, and parents take comfort from his encouraging words. For Matt and Mindi, whose son McKay was born with only half of a heart, Moses became a close friend. As Sturt explains, “Moses took his innate (与生俱来的) talents (his sensitivity) and his practical wisdom (from years of hospital experience) and combined them into a powerful form of patient and family support that changed the critical-care experience for Mindi, Matt and little McKay.”

How do people like Moses do great work when so many people just work? That was the central question raised by Sturt and his team at the O.C. Tanner Institute, a consulting company specialized in employee recognition and rewards system.

O.C. Tanner launched an exhaustive Great Work study that included surveys to 200 senior executives, a further set of surveys to 1,000 managers and employees working on projects, an in-depth qualitative study of 1.7 million accounts of award-winning work (in the form of nominations (提名) for awards from corporations around the world), and one-on-one interviews with 200 difference makers. The results of the study revealed that those who do great work refuse to be defeated by the constraints of their jobs and are especially able to reframe their jobs: they don’t view their jobs as a list of tasks and responsibilities but see their jobs as opportunities to make a difference. No matter, as Moses so ably exemplifies (例证), what that job may be.

【推荐3】Kids nowadays are growing up “connected”, learning to use technology at a surprising speed. Technology is a regular part of school now! Kids as young as Kindergarten are using smartboards, IPads, and computers to complete tasks in the classroom. Older children rely on the Internet for research, getting homework, sending work to teachers, and even accessing（ 获得） textbooks. In fact, today’s kids have been given the name “digital（数字）natives” because they are facing technology almost from birth, so new things have never been a greater challenge in the hands of our children. The Internet，Facebook, iPods, pictures and texting on cell phones and all of these are the ways kids communicate today. They have become a central part of their lives. It allows them a private life that most of us know very little about.

Kids just don’t think about the results of the new world of social networking and text messaging. They don’t think that it is dangerous to send a photo of a particular person to a foolish person, who might send it to some friends that may send it to a hundred others and the next thing you know, it’s on many Facebook sites and all over the Internet forever. They don’t think that way because they don’t have the life experience that we do. We have to help them.

The key to knowing how they manage this privacy（隐私） is our “connection” to them. How closely do we connect with our kids and pay attention to what they’re doing? And how often do we talk to our children... and really listen to them? If they believe in us and know that we will be there for them, they are more likely to follow our advice. If we talk openly about what we believe in, what we stand for, those values will become their own before long.

【推荐1】Made In The USA: An Export Boom

In his State of the Union address two years ago, President Obama argued that in order to recover from the economic recession, one of the few things the U.S. needed to do was to export more goods around the world. That night, the president unveiled a new goal: to double U.S. exports over the next five years. It would be an increase that the president said would “support two million jobs in America.”

Most economists dismissed the promise at the time as something unrealistic, but two years later, the U.S. is on pace to meet that goal. American exports are up 34 percent since the president gave that speech, and the number continues to rise.

Competitive In A Global Market

Marlin Steel, a metal working business in Baltimore, makes parts that ship all across the world. “We export to 36 countries,” owner Drew Greenblatt tells All Things Considered Host Guy Raz. “We’re working around the clock, and we're growing.”

It's not just advanced manufacturing exports on the rise, but pork, cattle and all kinds of agricultural exports are up as well. Even American craft beer has found an export market.

Flying Dog CEO Jim Caruso says that increasingly, people all over the world are trying the beer from the Maryland-based brewery. Caruso says, “Even in those top beer-producing countries, a competitive American product is finding a market.”

Services Are Exports, Too

Another place exports are coming from is New York City — in particular, the 30^th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper on 5^th Avenue and 52^nd Street. That's where the consulting firm Kurt Solomon lies. It doesn’t actually produce a product for export; it provides management advice and strategy.

“Four out of every five Americans is now employed in the service industry,” the nation's top trade official, Ron Kirk says, “Services are a significant part of our exports, and make up about a quarter of our exported goods.” These services can include everything from legal consulting, finance, information technology and even engineering.

And There Are Other Factors

So why has there been an increase of more than 30 percent for exports in almost everything? Part of the increase, at least for the manufacturing side, is due to better technology, says Tyler Cowen, an economist. “A lot of it is being driven by smart machines,” he tells Raz, “The U.S. has high wage rates, which is a disadvantage, but if machines are doing a lot of the work, that doesn't matter.”

China factors a lot in America's export economy, too. “Wages in China have been going up as the country becomes more productive. Thus China is losing the cheap labor advantage it has held for some time.” Cowen says.

Will Jobs Grow, too?

“Companies have become more productive by dismissing workers and lowering costs.” Cowen says. “So I don't view exporting as a way of creating a very large number of jobs, but it will create more profits.”

So not every business or worker is necessarily benefiting from the export boom in the U.S., and Cowen says that could ultimately lead to a polarization (两极) of economic outcomes.

Made In the USA: An Export Boom

【推荐2】China has become Volvo's third largest market, with more of its car models to go on sale in the world's largest auto (汽车) market this year, Chief Executive Office (CEO) of Volvo Cars China said in Tianjin.

Alexander Klose, CEO of Volvo Cars China, told Xinhua at the Ninth Tianjin International Automobile Trade Show, being held from Friday to Wednesday.

Klose said Volvo Cars had entered a new time of fast development, adding that its sales volume in China roared in 2010.

Up to the end of September, Volvo's global sales volume was up 12.5 percent year on year (同年比), compared with 52 percent year-on-year rise in China, he said.

Two new Volvo sales centers opened in Beijing within merely one week in early October, about two months after east China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co acquired (购得) the Swedish brand from the US auto giant Ford for $1.5 billion in early August.

Klose said he was confident of seeing tremendous (巨大的) growth in China's auto market in the next five years. "As the Chinese government has increased the tax rate for large displacement (排量) cars already, we now have a lot of cars below three liters (升), and I think we'll stick to that strategy, as you can see now the XC60 which was introduced today is just two liters," he said.

"As the technology advances, we'll probably even see 1.6 liter engines or 1.5 liter engines in the future," he added.

Volvo Cars is not the only automaker hoping to take advantage of China's rapidly growing auto market.

Bentley, the famous British luxury (豪华) carmaker, will open a new sales center in China at Tianjin Thursday, which is the 11th one in China, according to a press release (新闻发布) by Shanghai-based Zenith Integrated Communications Corp (Zenith) Saturday at the auto show.

Zenth is the public relations agent of Bentley in China. The automaker has sold 421 limousines (大型豪华轿车) to China in 2009, and the goal for 2010 is 777, the release said.