【推荐1】With the electronics industry developing, electronic products have become ubiquitous （无处不在的）in today’s life. Meanwhile, there are more and more abandoned electronic products, commonly called e-waste. It’s estimated that the number will grow to more than 60 million tons by 2021.

What contributes to the sharp rise in e-waste? Technology is developing rapidly, covering almost every aspect of our lives. Meanwhile, the lifespan of devices is getting shorter—many products will be thrown away once their batteries die. Companies intentionally plan the obsolescence （淘汰）of their goods by updating the design or software and discontinuing support for older models, so that it is usually cheaper and easier to buy a new product than to repair an old one.

What can we do about the growing e-waste problem? Recycling is very important and essential. As more people buy electronic equipment, producers are facing shortages of the raw materials, needed to make their products, so recycling and reusing e-waste makes economic and environmental sense.

Recycling e-waste is practiced both formally and informally. Formal e-waste recycling usually involves taking apart the electronics, sorting the materials and cleaning them. Companies must obey health and safety rules to reduce the health and environmental harm of handling e-waste by using: pollution-control technologies. All this makes formal recycling expensive. Informal recycling is typically, unlicensed and uncontrolled. At informal recycling workshops, people recover valuable materials burning devices to melt away non-valuable materials. Usually they do not wear protective equipment and lack any awareness that they are handling dangerous materials.

With the flood of e-waste growing around the world, recycling alone will not be enough to solve the problem. In order to reduce e-waste, producers need to design electronics that are safer, and more long-lasting, repairable and recyclable. The best thing we can do is to resist buying a new device until we really need it. Try to get our old product repaired if possible and, if it can't be fixed, resell or recycle it responsibly and correctly.

【推荐3】The pills we take to treat anxiety may affect the behavior of fish, new research in the journal Science suggests.

Swedish researchers found a common drug in rivers downstream of wastewater treatment plants. It is a drug for treating anxiety, called oxazepam. It is accumulating in fish and makes them bolder. Wastewater treatment plants are not designed to get rid of drugs. As a result, the drugs end up in wildlife, reaching harmful levels.

“It’s something we don’t think about very often, but there are a lot of similarities between fish and humans. So some of our responses to drugs can be seen in fish as well,” said Karen Kidd. She is a biologist at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. The mood-altering drugs get into waterways when people taking the prescriptions throw unused pills into the waste stream.

The researchers let perch（鲈鱼）swim in lab tanks with concentrations similar to those found downstream from wastewater treatment plants. “The perch preferred to swim alone rather than in large groups. They were more likely to explore their environment,” said Micael Jonsson of Umeå University in Sweden, who helped lead the research.

Jonsson said, “This adventurous behavior required more energy. And they ate more plankton（浮游生物）, or tiny algae-eating animals, to guarantee enough energy for their activities. This could reduce the population of plankton.” The result could be more algae(水藻). On the other hand, the new behavior could lead to the opposite effect. If perch make themselves closer to their natural enemies, they are likely to be eaten by them.

None of the scientists is suggesting that people should give up these drugs. They just want to reduce the effects of the medicines on the environment. They recommend wastewater treatment plants should be redesigned to get rid of these medicines. But Kidd said that would be too expensive for some communities.

Bryan Brooks, director of the Environmental Health Science Program at Baylor University, said drugs could also be designed to break down more quickly in the environment. And the government could continue to run recycling programs where people drop off their unused drugs at government locations. Brooks said he’s particularly concerned about drug effects on aquatic（水生的）environments, like the Trinity River south of Dallas and the South Platte River near Denver, where the majority of the flow comes from treated wastewater. In the developing world, he said, the problem may be even worse, because of careless wastewater treatment and industrial regulations.

【推荐1】Humankind has tried to improve its standard of living since the very beginning of civilization (文明). Back then, and today, providing food was the basic task for a person.     1     People feel the need for not only some primary things, such as bread and shelters, but also for various facilities and luxuries. Providing humanity (人类) with these things is connected to the use of natural resources, which requires energy. In turn, the common sources of energy we use today cause pollution, so economic growth is almost inevitably connected with environmental damage.

    2     The first of these is the fact that in order to produce more goods and products, at a faster rate, the construction of large industrial plants is required. These plants produce a lot of waste, which may cause negative long-term health effects to nearby populations of animals, or people.

The traditional energy sources, which are commonly used nowadays, are considered to be the greatest polluters to the environment. There also exist so-called eco-friendly sources of energy.     3     Of course, during this time people have to make some sacrifices to support these undertakings (企业) .

In order to produce practical energy, a transformation of the natural site is often inevitable (不可避免的).     4     Application of wind energy would block airflow’s natural speed. Consequently, the pressure balance that is brought about by this current will be affected, and it is important to remember that the environment and weather conditions are directly affected by atmospheric pressure.     5     This is the embarrassment mankind has to deal with. A good balance between economic development and sustainability is forever what humankind has to keep in mind

【推荐2】B vitamins（维生素）may offer some protection against the effect of air pollution,a new study suggests.

The scientists say the effect is real but stress the limitations of their work.Follow-up studies are urgently needed, they say,in heavily polluted cities like Mexico.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO),over 90% of the world's population live in heavily-polluted areas.The one of the pollutants that is considered the most dangerous is very fine particulate matter, referred to as PM2.5.At around 1/30 the width of a human hair,PM2.5 can go deep into the human lung and contribute to lung and heart health problems in the young and old.

Scientists have long suspected that PM2.5 causes what are termed epigenetic（表观遗传）changes in our cells that can damage our health.Now in this new human trial,an international team of scientists wanted to see if exposure to concentrations of PM2.5 could be mitigated by daily B vitamins.

Ten volunteers were tested initially exposed to clean air and their basic responses were measured.The same volunteers were later tested with large doses（剂量）of B vitamins while exposed to air containing high levels of PM2.5.The researchers found that a four-week B vitamin intake limited the PM2.5 effect by between 28-76% at ten gene locations.They found a similar reduction in effect on the mitochondrial DNA,the parts of cells that produce energy.

However,the researchers caution that their study,while observing a real effect,has limitations.As well as the small number of participants,there was little information on the size of the B vitamin dose that caused the response.