【推荐1】Back before Shakespeare was born in 1564, theaters weren’t big business in England. Writers needed a royal or rich sponsor to support them if they wanted to make a living as a playwright, Permanent playhouses hadn’t existed since the Romans occupied Britain (43-410 CE), so actors wandered around from town to town hoping to find a paying audience. But all that changed in the decades following Shakespeare birth. London’s population started booming. All those people needed to be entertained in their spare me. Seeing the potential for permanent playhouses, investors started building new theaters.

These theaters were all competing for audiences, so they needed a constant Now of fresh material. People didn’t want to see the same play over and over. Writers were in demand to create stories that would fill seats, and some, like Shakespeare.

Competing theater companies had rival writers. Like rivals in most fields, these authors kept an eye on what their competitors were up to, so they could try to outdo them, sometimes by imitating or satirizing each other’s plays.

Shakespeare’s contemporaries weren’t nobodies. Ben Jonson actually dominated the scene back then with his political satires, which also got him in trouble with authorities who didn’t like his critical essays. And Christopher Marlowe, who historians say ended up influencing Shakespeare, was a big deal before Shakespeare got going.

Shakespeare could be pretty crafty when it came to his competitors, though. For instance, when Jonson’s satiric comedies were outshining Shakespeare’ romantic ones, Shakespeare borrowed from Jonson’s style and even got him to write for his company. Shakespeare chose collaboration over competition with other successful writers, too — such as John Fletcher, who took over as head playwright after Shakespeare left the business.

So why does Shakespeare get all the buzz and not these other writers? One simple distinction: Most of his plays were published.

Back in Shakespeare’s day, the theaters usually owned the plays. Most writers’ plays weren’t preserved with much care, much less published for the masses. Publishing scripts would just make it easier for a competing playhouse to rip off their material, and for the highly competitive players in the entertainment game, that just wasn’t good business. Most original manuscripts were eventually lost, destroyed, or discarded— including some of those written by Shakespeare.

Shakespeare wasn’t even the most prolific playwright in his day, but his name is now synonymous with Renaissance drama largely because his plays survived the centuries through publication while most others’ works didn’t. Some of his plays were published during his lifetime, and after his death in 1616, Shakespeare’s friends assembled The First Folio, a collection of 36 Shakespeare plays, 18 of which hadn’t been published previously — including All’s Well That Ends Well, Macbeth, As You Lite It, and Twelfth Night.

The First Folio is now considered one of the most influential books ever published in the English language. By preserving his legacy through its publication, Shakespeare’s pals made him a lasting literary star.

【推荐3】The United States gets hit by some of the strongest and most destructive storms on Earth. Examples of extreme weather include hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts. But the storms themselves are not the only problem. Weather experts say human choices about where and what to build are making the situation much worse.

Susan Cutter is a geography professor. She said a country like China has more people and land area than the United States. But, she added, “They don’t have the same kind of crash of air masses (气团碰撞) as much as we do in the US that is producing a lot of the extreme weather.”

The US experiences by far more tornadoes and other strong storms than other countries, said Victor Gensini, a weather expert. Gensini described a repeating weather pattern (模式) that leads to many strong storms. The pattern involves dry air from the western US moving up over the Rocky Mountains. There, it crashes into warm, wetter air from the Gulf of Mexico. In the West, people face wildfires as well as an extreme weather event known as an atmospheric river. Atmospheric rivers are long and wide areas of water vapour (蒸汽) that form over an ocean. When atmospheric rivers reach land, they often give out the water vapour in the form of rain or snow.

The US Northeast experiences strong storms in the winter and hurricanes in the summer. Sometimes it experiences both.

But weather experts say even though geography puts Americans in the path of many strong storms, human activity can make the storms more harmful. One of the main problems is when communities allow development in areas with a high risk for storms and flooding.

In some cases, the experts say building standards have gone down in recent years, putting more buildings at risk during strong storms. In addition, poverty can make it difficult for people to prepare for and recover from disasters. This is also true for people in many other places of the world.

【推荐2】Have you ever left the house without a jacket on a warm day, only to regret overestimating your freezing weather tolerance? Instead of dashing back home for your coat, there may come time in the near future when you simply use an app to control your clothing’s level of insulation (隔热).

Created by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). FibeRobo is cheap, programmable, shape-changing smart fiber reliant on a liquid crystal elastomer (LCE). Among the uses, clothing filed with the new LCE fiber could adjust the structure to become more insulated in colder temperatures, and vice versa for warmer weather. With an additional ability to combine with electrically conductive threads, a wearer could directly control their FibeRobo clothing or medical wearables like compression clothing via wireless inputs from a controller or smart phone.

As detailed in a recent institute profile, LCEs are composed of molecules (分子) possessing liquid-like properties that can also arrange into periodic crystal formations once cool. Importantly, the team’s new LCE can be flexible between its phases at safe, comfortable temperature levels — an industry first.

The result is a fiber capable of contracting when exposed to heat, and self-reversing as temperatures drop without any external sensors or interwoven components. What’s more, FibeRobo is flexible and strong enough to use within traditional manufacturing methods like embroidery, weaving looms, and knitting machines.

“At the end of the day, you don’t want a top-class fiber.” Jack Forman, an MIT graduate student and paper lead author, said in a statement. “You want a fiber that, when you are working with it, falls into the gathering of materials — one that you can work with just like any other fiber material, but then it has a lot of exciting new capabilities.”

While many current smart textile (纺织品) projects are trying to reinvent how a person can interact with their clothing, these clothing enterprises perhaps may one day expand the number of clothes in your closet. Meanwhile, this newest version may actually downsize your wardrobe.

【推荐1】Antarctica, the southernmost continent on Earth and a frozen continent, remains an mysterious and original land, buried in ice and surrounded by a vast, inhospitable ocean, which often shrouded (隐藏) in mystery and intrigue. It holds a wealth of scientific wonders waiting to be explored. With the aid of cutting-edge technology, researchers have delved into its icy depths, uncovering the secrets of this remote and pristine (原始的) wilderness.

At the forefront of Antarctic exploration are advanced satellite imaging systems. These orbiting wonders provide detailed maps of the continent’s surface, allowing scientists to monitor changes in ice coverage and track the movements of glaciers with unprecedented accuracy. Such data is crucial for understanding the impacts of climate change on Antarctica’s delicate ecosystem and predicting future sea-level rise.

In addition to satellites, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) play a key role in Antarctic research. These robotic submarines are equipped with an array of sensors and cameras, enabling them to navigate beneath the ice shelves and explore previously inaccessible regions. By collecting data on water temperature, salinity, and marine life, AUVs offer invaluable insights into the dynamics of Antarctic Ocean currents and the habitats of its unique marine species.

Furthermore, drones have revolutionized scientific fieldwork in Antarctica. These unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are utilized for conducting aerial surveys of vast ice sheets and capturing high-resolution imagery of remote locations. By providing researchers with real-time data and imagery, drones facilitate rapid assessments of environmental changes and aid in the study of wildlife populations, from penguins to seals.

Despite the remarkable advancements in technology, conducting research in Antarctica remains a huge challenge due to its extreme weather conditions and remote location. However, through cooperative efforts and innovative approaches, scientists continue to push the boundaries of exploration, uncovering the mysteries of Antarctica and advancing our understanding of the Earth’s climate system.

【推荐3】Shoes worn by the warriors of the first emperor of China, famously known as the Terracotta Army, may have been surprisingly flexible and slip resistant. Copies of them are helping to build a better picture of what Qin dynasty soldiers wore and how this might have aided them in battle.

The Terracotta Army found in 1974 near Xi’an, China, is formed of over 8000 sculptures showing the armies of the founder of the Qin dynasty, Qin Shi Huang. The terracotta figures including warriors, chariots and horses, were buried alongside the emperor more than 2200 years ago to guard him in the afterlife.

Analysis of the sculptures has revealed what the ancient Chinese warriors wore and used. Now, Na Cha and Jin Zhou at Sichuan University in China have recreated the shoes of one of the warriors. The pair determined that the warrior’s square-toed shoes had upturned tips and 1.5cm thick sole (鞋底). There were also circular markings on the bottom of the soles, which the researchers took to represent stitches (缝线). There were more circles at the front and the heel, hinting that the real shoe was thinner in the middle.

The terracotta shoes looked like real shoes unearthed from the Qin dynasty, so the researchers used traditional shoe-making techniques and materials from the time to recreate them, even the circular markings on the sole.

The researchers also created copies of other shoes found in the region and wore both types to test them. They found that the army copies were more likely to bend during walking and were more slip resistant than the others. They were even more slip resistant in wet conditions than modern shoes with rubber or plastic soles. If the copied shoes truly reflect the real ones, they would probably have enhanced the soldiers’ fighting abilities, say Cha and Zhou.