【推荐1】Many managers believe that overworking is an evidence of devotion from their employees’ side. Still few others regard this custom as a threat to the workers’ work-life balance, which may negatively influence the level of productivity and efficiency.

Employees at Amsterdam design studio Heldergroen won’t be putting in much overtime. Not in the office, at any rate. That’s because every day at 6:00 pm, their desks, tables and other work surfaces, with their computers attached, are lifted to the ceiling by steel cables （绳索）normally used to move heavy props（道具）in theatrical productions. If you leave a half-eaten sandwich on your desk, you’re out of luck.

“Once the chairs and other workplace paraphernalia are cleared away, the space is free for evening and weekend use as a dance floor, yoga studio ... or anything else you can think of – the floor is actually yours, ” doctor Sander Veenendaal said.

In a way, the office space itself is working overtime for Heldergroen, bringing about lots of publicity and carrying an enlightened（有启发的）message of career-life balance far and wide.”We think that doing activities like this makes it easier for people to work here,” says Veenendaal. “You know when it is time to relax or do something else that inspires you.”

That sounds awesome. There’s just one catch. In the morning, the desks reappear and everybody has to go back to work.

【推荐3】Martha had been working for Miller Laboratories for two years, but she was not happy there. Nothing significant had happened in the way of promotions or salary increases. Martha felt that her supervisor, a younger and less experienced person than she, did not like her. In fact, the supervisor often said unpleasant things to her.

One day, while talking with her friend Maria, she mentioned how discouraged she gave her the name of a cousin of hers who was director of Human Resources Department for a large chemical company. Martha called him the next day and set up an interview on her lunch hour.

During the interview, Mr. Petri said, “You’re just the kind of person we need here. You’re being wasted in your other job. Give me a call in a day or two. I’m sure we can find a place for you in our organization.” Martha was so happy she almost danced out of the building.

That afternoon, Ruth Kenny, her supervisor, saw that Martha had come in ten minutes late from her lunch hour and she said, “Oh, so you finally decided to come back to work today?”

This was the last straw. She could not take another insult. Besides, Mr. Petri was right: she was being wasted in this job.

“Look,” she said angrily, “if you don’t like the way I work, I don’t need to stay here, I’ll go where I’m appreciated! Good-bye!” She took up her things and stormed out of the office.

That night she called Maria and told her what had happened and then asked Maria, “What do you think?”

“Well,” said Maria carefully, “are you sure about the other job?”

“Well, not exactly, but…”

Maria continued, “Will you be able to get a recommendation from Ms. .Kenny if you need one?”

“A recommendation? .. .from Ms. Kenny?” hesitated Martha, in a worried tone.

“Martha I hope you didn’t burn your bridges，” Maria said. “I think I would have handled it differently.”

【推荐1】Each year, backed up by a growing anti-consumerist movement, people are using the holiday season to call on us all to shop less.

Driven by concerns about resource exhaustion, over recent years environmentalists have increasingly turned their sights on our “consumer culture”. Groups such as The Story of Stuff and Buy Nothing New Day are growing as a movement that increasingly blames all our ills on our desire to shop.

We clearly have a growing resource problem. The produces we make, buy, and use are often linked to the destruction of our waterways, biodiversity, climate and the land on which millions of people live. But to blame these issues on Christmas shoppers is misguided, and puts us in the old trap of blaming individuals for what is a systematic problem.

While we complain about environmental destruction over Christmas, environmentalists often forget what the holiday season actually means for many people. For most, Christmas isn’t an add-on to an already heavy shopping year. In fact, it is likely the only time of year many have the opportunity to spend on friends and family, or even just to buy the necessities needed for modern life.

This is particularly, true for Boxing Day, often the target of the strongest derision(嘲弄) by anti-consumerists. While we may laugh at the queues in front of the shops, for many, those sales provide the one chance to buy items they’ve needed all year. As Leigh Phillips argues, “this is one of the few times of the year that people can even hope to afford such ‘luxuries’, the Christmas presents their kids are asking for, or just an appliance that works.”

Indeed, the richest 7% of people are responsible for 50% of greenhouse gas emissions. This becomes particularly harmful when you take into account that those shopping on Boxing Day are only a small part of our consumption “problem” anyway. Why are environmentalists attacking these individuals, while ignoring such people as Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who has his own￡1.5bn yacht with a missile defence system?

Anyway, anti-consumerism has become a movement of wealthy people talking down to the working class about their life choices, while ignoring the real cause of our environmental problems. It is no wonder one is changing their behaviours—or that environmental destruction continues without any reduction in intensity.

【推荐2】A worldwide shift from fossil fuel-powered cars to electric vehicles (EV) could significantly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that humans emit to the atmosphere. But the vehicle electrification can also shift some pollution to communities already suffering under higher economic, health and environmental burdens, researchers warn.

California is seeking to reduce its carbon footprint and has made great increases in the promotion of electric vehicle purchases. One tool the state has launched is the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project, or CVRP, which offers consumers money back for the purchase of new EVs.

Now, an analysis of the CVRP’s impact on the state’s air quality from 2010 to 2021 reveals both good and bad news, researchers report May 3 in PLOS Climate.

The good news is that the CVRP is responsible for reducing the amount of the state’s overall CO₂ emissions, reducing them by about 560,000 tons per year on average, says environmental scientist Jaye Mejia-Duwan at the University of California. In 2020, transportation in California produced about 160 million tons of CO₂, about 40 percent of the total emitted by the state that year.

The bad news is that the most disadvantaged communities in the state didn’t see the same overall improvement in air quality. Those communities didn’t have the same decreases in CO₂ — and in fact saw an increase in one type of air pollution, tiny particulates (颗粒) known as PM2.5. “These particulates are small enough to go deep into the lungs, increasing the risk of cancer, heart problems and cognitive decline,” Mejia-Duwan says.

“Electric vehicles are often referred to as ‘zero-emission vehicles,’ but in fact, they’re only as clean as the underlying electric grid (电网) from which the energy is sourced,” Mejia-Duwan says. EVs tend to be relatively heavy due to their batteries. And “heavier vehicles can produce more particulate matter than equally sized fossil fuel-powered cars, due to brake, tire or road wear,” Mejia-Duwan says.

【推荐1】Do a country 's people get happier as it gets richer? Most governments seem to believe so, given their continuous focus on increasing GDP year by year. Reliable, long-term evidence linking wealth and happiness is, however, lacking. And measuring well-being is itself filled with problems, since it often relies on surveys that ask participants to assess their own levels of happiness subjectively.

Daniel Sgroi of the University of Warwick and Eugenio Proto of the University of Glasgow, both in Britain, think, nevertheless, that they have an answer.

By examining millions of books and newspaper articles published since 1820 in four countries (America, Britain, Germany and Italy), they have developed what they hope is an objective measure of each place’s historical happiness. And their answer is that wealth does bring happiness, but some other things bring more of it.

In Britain, for example, happiness fell sharply during the two world wars. It began to rise again after 1945, peaked in 1950, and then fell gradually, including through the so-called Swinging Sixties, until it reached a nadir around 1980.

America’s national happiness, too, fell during the world wars. It also fell in the 1860s, during and after the country 's civil war. The lowest point of all came in 1975, at the end of a long decline during the Vietnam war, with the fall of Saigon and America’s humiliating defeat.

Overall, then, Dr Sgroi and Dr Proto found that happiness does vary with GDP. But the effect of health and life expectancy is larger, even when the tendency of wealth to improve health is taken into account.

A one — year increase in longevity, for example, has the same effect on national happiness as a 4.3% increase in GDP. And, as the grand historical sweep suggests, it is warfare that causes the biggest drops in happiness.

On average it takes a 30% increase in GDP to raise happiness by the amount that a year of war causes it to fall. The upshot appears to be that, while increasing national income is important to happiness, it is not as important as ensuring the population is healthy and avoiding conflict.

【推荐3】You can’t see it with your own eyes，but your smart-phone is likely to be covered with bacteria- perhaps even more so than your toilet seat. That's a lot of dangerous microbes（微生物）floating around, and yes, it is terribly dirty.

In this age of global travel and trade, it’s more important than ever to cut down on possible routes of infection and to stop bacteria and viruses spreading from person to person. Part of that means making sure your phone isn’t sending anything more than data.

And besides the potential health risks of a dirty phone, there's also the simple annoyance of looking at a screen that’s covered in fingerprints and other oily spots that are part of life with a smart-phone.

In short, you’ve got plenty of reasons to regularly give your phone a thorough clean. Not just during a pandemic（大流行病），either-we should be thinking about keeping our phones bacteria free all the time, says microbiologist Paul Turner, a professor at Yale University.

After all, we touch our phones all the time and many of us are relatively careless about cleaning them. “It sets the stage for kind of concern,” Turner says. “People could be handling phones and picking up any bacteria or virus that can attach to a surface and survive for a period of time.”

Take SARS-CoV-2, the corona- virus（冠状病毒）that causes the COVID-19, for example. Scientists are still trying to get solid evidence, but early research suggests that it can survive on plastic or stainless steel（不锈钢）surfaces for two or three days. That means you could be washing your hands perfectly well, but immediately picking the virus up again as soon as you reach for your phone.

You could be doing everything right（like washing your hands and staying away from people），but