【推荐1】Installing a little door in your main door can be a great way to allow your pets to come and go as they please.     1    . Petvation is looking to change that with the help of AI facial recognition and a mobile app.

You may already have a little entry in your door that only gives access to your cats or dogs, but that likely means your pets will have to wear some sort of “key” on a collar to identify them and unlock the pet door.     2     To save the trouble, considerate Petvation developers have developed a smart pet door without a “key”. They make use of the face recognition technology that has already been applied to our smartphones and computers to ensure that access to the home is only given to authorized family members.

However, the developers recognize that identifying and authorizing animal faces is more challenging than with humans.     3    . The AI model is expected to be continuously improved over time for better accuracy. And in addition to identifying cats and dogs, the system can also recognize all kinds of animals, so the entry point will remain firmly closed to unwanted guests.

The company says that three independent safety mechanisms are employed to “keep your pet safe from head to tail”.     4    . There’s also a light anti-pinch (防夹) mechanism in place. And finally the system checks all sensors during operation and will enter a safe mode if issues are detected.

That app is also used for setup and control, including the ability to give access to specific household pets and keep track of the comings and goings of pets.     5    .

【推荐2】New research has shown that a fungus (真菌)skin could provide a new alternative to some plastics used in computer chips, making them easier to recycle. The researchers were working on new materials to replace plastics, when they made the discovery.

At the time, a member of the team had been looking at using fungus materials for use in other areas. This work led to the latest study, which shows how Ganoderma lucidum(灵芝) skin could work as an alternative.

The team discovered that Ganoderma lucidum, which grows on rotten hardwood trees, forms a skin to protect its growth medium (the wood). “It does so in order to protect itself,” Kaltenbrunner, one of the researchers, said, explaining that the team were able to get this protection by removing the skin and drying it. The skin is slightly less insulating (绝缘的) than plastics, but it still works safely and successfully, with a thickness similar to paper and the ability to stand temperatures over 200℃.

The skin has many qualities that make it different from other materials. Kaltenbrunner said, “But most importantly, it can grow in waste wood and does not need too much energy.

“The skin is very proper because it can last a long time if kept dry, but in just a standard family compost, it would break down entirely within two weeks or less,” he added.

While the team’s work is experimental and a long way from being brought into use, they believe the skin could be a new alternative material for use in electronics. “There are large amounts of waste wood,” Kaltenbrunner said, “which is a lot of food for Ganoderma lucidum.”

【推荐1】Calculated every year by Global Footprint Network（GFN），Earth Overshoot Day（地球生态超载日）is the day when human has used up all the natural resources—produce,meat,fish,water and wood.This means we use up them ahead of time before the end of the year.

It is just like spending your entire years' money by August and then borrow money from friends,knowing fully well you cannot pay back. GFN says the same thing happens in the case of the earth."Because we give out more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than our oceans and forests can take in,and we harvest forests more quickly than they can regrow,"he said.

In a perfect world,we should only spend what we have.This means Earth Overshoot Day would fll on 31 December or perhaps in the following year. Unfortunately,the day has been climbing up quickly since 2014 when it fell on 19 August.In 2015,it was 13 August,and this year, the earliest so far—8 August!

According to GFN,Australia tops the list,with the United States coming in a close second.If the world's population started to live like either of these countries,we would need more resources to meet our needs.

Fortunately,experts say the situation isn't as bad as it sounds. Many countries have already taken measures to reduce carbon emissions（释放）by using wind or solar energy.People can also help by eating less meat, walking, cycling or taking public transportation,as well adopting the three Rs: Reduce,Reuse&Recycle.If we work together,we can help push back Earth Overshoot Day to December 31 or even beyond.

【推荐2】The next time you are tempted to order takeout or buy food and drinks on the go, you might want to hold off. The results of a major new study may be enough to startle you to adjust your consumption habits, as they reveal significant amounts of global plastic litter linked to takeout food products.

The study analyzed 12 million pieces of litter collected from oceans and rivers, shorelines, the sea floor, and open waters. Researchers found that 80% of items were plastic, and nearly half (44%) was related to takeout food and drinks — specifically, single-use bags, plastic bottles, food containers, and food wrappers. Other items included plastic caps and lids and disposable cutting tools. Lead study author Dr. Carmen Morales said, “I was shocking to find out that bags, bottles, food containers and cutting tools together with wrappers account for almost half of the human-made objects on a global scale.” Deserted fishing nets and ropes were another problem researchers noted, although more so in the open ocean, not along or near shorelines.

Based on their analysis, the researchers made three suggestions: 1) Replace takeout food and drink containers with materials that are more readily biodegradable; 2) introduce bans on avoidable plastics: and 3) use deposit refund schemes to incentivize reusable products.

Until that day comes, however, it’s up to us as consumers to change the way we choose products in order to avoid unnecessary plastic packaging — and there is an better time to get started than now, as Plastic-Free July kicks off. If you have not yet heard of it, Plastic-Free July is an annual month-long challenge to reduce one’s use of single-use plastic and to discover alternatives to purchasing, consuming, and transporting food (among other items). Keeping this new study in mind, here are some practical suggestions for reducing takeout-related single-use plastics in one’s day-to-day life.

【推荐3】In the last few years, biotechnology has been changing the way we think about fashion by turning organic waste into sustainable fibers. Revolutionary textiles (纺织品) made from pineapples, oranges，grapes, and even mushrooms are here to stay. And now, an amazing invention joins the sustainable trend by turning spoiled milk into biodegradable (可生物分解的) T-shirt.

Mi Terro, an exciting and innovative startup based in Los Angeles, was founded by CEO Robert Luo. After visiting his uncle’s dairy farm in 2020, and noticing the huge amounts of milk being dumped, Luo realized something must be done. According to Mi Terro, 40 percent of food including 128 million tons of milk is wasted annually. This generated around 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases.

Luo soon came up with a way to turn food waste into clothes, turning the spoiled milk into biodegradable fibers to form an eco-friendly textile.

Not only is Luo’s solution extremely creative, it also adds benefit to the clothing he manufactures. According to Interesting Engineering, the process uses 60 percent less water than is used when making organic cotton shirts and the textile feels three times softer than cotton. Plus, the clothing is antibacterial, anti-wrinkle, and temperature regulating. These clothes are also healthy to wear; each T-shirt has 18 amino acids (氨基酸) that benefit the skin. But there’s even more! The company has committed to planning 1S trees for every purchase.

Mi Terro launched its milk-made T-shirts-online in 2021, and they now sold in over 40 countries around the world. Its groundbreaking process can also be used to create a sustainable substitute for plastic. Their ultimate goal would be to replace petroleum-based materials with protein-based materials made from food waste. This, in itself, has countless applications for the fashion, health care, and packaging industries.

Innovative and inspiring solution are proving to be the answer to growing waste and sustainability challenges the globe faces these days. Eco-conscious businesses like Mi Terro are creating a circular economy and are having a huge positive impact on the environment. Their vision for sustainable solutions may soon impact the entire world.

【推荐1】When American anthropologist Colin Turnbull published The Mountain People in 1972, he referred to his subjects — a Ugandan group called the Ik — as “the loveless people.” After two years of observations, he decided that they reflected humanity’s basic instincts (本能): cheat, thievery, and pitilessness. But when Athena Aktipis and her colleagues from the Human Generosity Project took a deeper look, they identified a community that shared everything. “Turnbull had visited Uganda during a disastrous famine (饥荒). All he saw is what happens when people are starving.” says Aktipis. But her team revealed that despite living under pressure, the Ik placed a high value on helping one another when they could.

Aktipis believes that altruism is more common and beneficial than evolutionary social science has long thought. “It was assumed that people are designed to only do things to help themselves or their relatives.” she says. By studying the unique, selfless practices that helped nine communities across the world to continue to exist, the experts from the Project are looking to show that we are indeed capable of widespread cooperation.

The Maasai people in Kenya provide one of the project’s main points. They rely on two-way friendships for resources like food or water when they’re in need, without expecting any repayment. Also, a world away, in New Mexico, while folks often help transport cattle and receive support in return, they will assist without repayment if someone faces difficulties, such as an injury or the death of a loved one.

Aktipis believes theoretical frameworks she’s perfected through studying these groups can apply broadly to any interdependent systems. Her big goal is to design social-service systems that support everyone. Take market-based insurance in the United States as an example: It’s priced based on individual risk factors such as health histories and where people live, which means millions of Americans can’t afford it. But in a system built on neighboring, pooled costs (合并成本) would level the burden during collective hardship like natural disasters and pandemics.

【推荐2】We’ve all done it. For many of us, it’s something that happens so naturally every day. After working on an important project or a task for a little while, you decide to take a break-only to pick up your smartphone and start looking through social media, reading emails, checking out the news and maybe getting in a quick round of “Candy Crush Saga”. A break is supposed to be a time to relax so that you can go back to your work feeling fresh. However, a new study finds that cellphone use during a mental break doesn’t really allow the brain to relax and can actually result in a poorer performance.

For the study, a group of 422 undergraduate students at Rutgers were assigned a set of 20 word puzzles to complete. Halfway through the task, the students were separated into three groups: one group took a break and were told to use their cellphones to go shopping online, another group took a break and were instructed to shop either via their computers or using a paper circular (印刷品广告), and the third group didn’t take a break at all.

Interestingly, the group that took a break with their cellphones displayed the highest levels of mental fatigue (疲劳), and had the hardest time solving the word puzzles following their breaks. In all, the cellphone group took 19% longer to finish the puzzle task, and solved 22% fewer problems than participants in the other two groups combined.

“The act of reaching for your phone between tasks, or the mid-task, is becoming more common. We assume it’s no different from any other break-but the phone may carry increasing levels of distraction (使人分心的事) that make it difficult to return focused attention to work tasks,” explains Terri Kurtzberg.

【推荐3】There are some things money can’t buy. Education, however, does not appear to be among them—at least as measured by performance on international exams. On average, pupils in wealthy countries obtain vastly higher test scores than those in developing ones. Do students in the rich world perform better because their governments provide superior schools? Or is the reason that they tend to have richer parents, and enjoy more educational resources at home?

Evaluating test scores around the world is more challenging than it sounds. Although pupils in the rich world mostly take one of a few big international exams, many developing countries rely on regional tests, making apples-to-apples comparisons impossible.

Dev Patel of Harvard University and Justin Sandefur of the Center for Global Development organized an exam in 2016 for 2,314 children in Bihar, in northern India. It included both questions from the leading tests and ones taken from smaller exams. Using answers from the same pupils on the same day to questions from different tests, they built a statistical model they called a “Rosetta Stone”. It can translate scores from a range of exams—such as one used only in West Africa—into an equal mark in other common international tests.

Patel and Sandefur then used these equations(等式) to calculate how pupils in 80 different countries would perform on the benchmark(基准) Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Their data show that the wealth of a student’s country and family has similar influences on test scores, meaning that big gaps in GDP per person matter more than small ones in household income do. For example, pupils from families that are very poor by rich-world standards—those earning $ 5,000 a year (measured in 2005 dollars)—were expected to score around 500 out of 1,000 on the TIMSS in America, and 560 in Japan. In contrast, those whose parents make $ 10,000 a year in an upper-middle-income country, such as Costa Rica, still manage only the equal of a 475.