【推荐1】In 2015 the project of an architectural (建筑方面的) company won the most important art award in Britain, the Turner Prize. The Turner Prize was established to celebrate developments in contemporary art, which is the art of today. The win by the company, named Assemble, was a surprise as architectural projects are not usually seen as art.

The Turner Prize website describes Assemble as a company from London “who works across the fields of art, design and architecture to create projects with the communities who use and inhabit them.” They won the prize because they work with local people in an ongoing way when they do a project.

The project that they won the prize for is called Granby Four Streets, which is in Liverpool. The Granby Four Streets are four streets of terraced houses in an area called Toxteth in Liverpool, a city where the famous music group, the Beatles, came from. In fact, terraced houses were a terrible eyesore in the city. One could hardly believe these rows of houses, in such a bad state, were right in the inner city of a big British city.

However, over the past ten years, local people have cleaned the streets, planted trees and flowers in them, painted the empty houses and organized a busy monthly street market. They also founded a Community Land Trust to take care of the terraced houses. A Community Land Trust is a not-for-profit organization run by volunteers that delivers housing and other community facilities at affordable levels or local people. Their goal was to get the area beautiful and livable again to make their city a better place.

Local resident Hazel Tilley was asked if Assemble's work was really art. She replied, "It's recognizing the humanity in art. It's not this piece of work of art that goes into some rich person's warehouse; this is something that you live with. And it's art for the people.”

【推荐3】The Stories Behind 3 of the Photos from Our Pictures of the Year

Each year, National Geographic will publish a special issue to showcase some of the impressive images taken around the globe to celebrate the high-quality photography. This year, 49 were selected as the best photos of the year out of millions of images, and the photo editors give a glimpse behind the scenes of 3 images included in 2022 Pictures of the Year annual special issue.

Qaanaaq, Greenland//Kiliii Yüyan

Photographer Kiliii Yuyan is no stranger to documenting the daily lives of native peoples and the issues they face around the world. He commits himself to capturing surprising and unique images for each story while his colleague Mallory has quit in their tracks. In his story, two cousins push strollers (婴儿车) across a snowy plain in Greenland on their way to annual dogsled races. The story itself challenges readers to think about how to treat their ecosystem without destroying it and gives more insight into the daily lives of Inughuit women.

Canary Islands, Spain//Carsten Peter

It’s hard to capture the speed, texture, and sense of danger of lava flowing from a volcanic eruption, but that’s what photographer Carsten Peter achieved with this image. He documented the 85-day eruption for National Geographic, then returned to focus on the damage and on the scientific fieldwork that had been done once the slow-moving lava had cooled.

Minneriya. Sri Lanka//Brent Stirton

Photographer Brent Stirton provided a window into these animals’ lives, which she hopes will increase awareness and stir up sympathy through the photo.

The image was tough to capture not only because Stirton needed to get close to the wild animals for the frame but also because it was a challenging time to work in Sri Lanka. The government was collapsing in economic decline. “I think there’s an opportunity to show people a side of animals they may have not seen before,” she says.

For more pictures and stories, please click the https://www. nationalgeographic.com.

【推荐2】In the 1950s, Central American commercial banana growers were facing the death of their most lucrative product, the Gros Michel banana, known as Big Mike. And now it’s happening again to the Cavendish — another kind of banana.

With its easily transported, thick-skinned and sweet-tasting fruit, the Gros Michel had been widely grown on plantations (种植园) in Central America. United Fruit, the main grower and exporter in South America at the time, mass-produced its bananas in the most efficient way possible: it cloned branches from the stems (茎) of plants instead of growing plants from seeds, and continued to grow them in heavily packed fields.

Unfortunately, these conditions are also perfect for the spread of a kind of fungus (菌类), which attacks the plant’s roots and prevents it from transporting water to the stem and leaves. The fungus was resistant to crop sprays and travelled around on boots or the tyres of trucks, slowly spreading to all plantations across the region. The farmers had made great efforts to escape the fungus, but they failed. Then, after along search, they finally found the Cavendish. Its bananas tasted good enough to keep consumers happy. Most importantly, that fungus didn’t seem to affect it. In a few years, United Fruit had saved itself by filling its plantations with thousands of the new plants.

While the operation was a huge success for the Latin American industry, the Cavendish banana itself is far from safe. In 2014, South East Asia, another major banana producer, exported four million tons of Cavendish bananas. But, in 2015, its exports had dropped by 46 percent because of a combination of another kind of fungus and bad weather.

Growing practices in South East Asia haven’t helped the matters. Growers can’t always afford the expensive lab-based methods to clone plants from branches without spreading the disease. Also, they often aren’t strict enough about cleaning farm equipment and fields. As a result, the fungus has spread to Australia and the Middle East — and Latin America, heavily dependent on its Cavendish crops, could easily be the next.