【推荐1】Rayner Loi keeps a note on his iPhone with details of the fruit and vegetables that go bad every week at his home. That way, when he goes to the supermarket, he has a better idea of how many apples or bananas he actually eats in a week, and can adjust his shopping accordingly. He believes individual action like this is important to tackle the problem of food waste. But he also has higher goals.

In 2017, Loi founded Lumitics, a company that tracks food waste with the aim of helping hotels and airlines, which serve thousands of meals a day, figure out how much avoidable waste they are generating. Loi says most chefs can’t easily monitor all the food that never gets eaten and find it very hard to develop strategies and implement measures to reduce food waste.

Lumitics uses garbage cans equipped with weight sensors, cameras, and Al technology that can identify and track the type and amount of food that gets thrown out--including whether it’s spoiled, uneaten or kitchen waste. Later, Lumitics’ customers use the waste data to adjust the amount of food put out at a breakfast buffet, or cut back on buying certain ingredients. Loi points to company data that shows he has helped the hotels he work with reduce food waste significantly. That’s not only green, it’s good for the bottom line. Hotel restaurants often operate on relatively thin profit, “so any savings for them actually is really immense for their business” he says.

Loi and his small team are already working with major clients like the Four Seasons hotel in Singapore and airlines including Etihad Airways. Now, Loi is expanding his ambitions beyond Singapore: Lumitics is working to begin operations next year in hotels in the Middle East and in other cities across Asia. What they want to achieve is really tangible in terms of the number of meals saved and the amount of carbon emissions avoided.

I have observed that Colbie Caillat has a positive influence on pop culture in recent years. Colbie has taken a stand for natural beauty with the release of her hit single, “Try”. The first time I watched the “Try” music video, I felt inspired.

The video shows women of different backgrounds and body types as well as a range of ages. I find the most inspiration in the expressions on all of the women’s faces throughout the video. Each woman has a positive look on her own face as she is shown without make-up.

In today’s society, there is an unbelievable amount of pressure to “look good”. This opening line sets the mood for the video and gives viewers a chance to wonder whether society likes them. The theme of “Try” is that we young women should focus more on our personalities than our looks, contrary to what society wants us to believe.

I have shown this video to both my mother and my grandmother, since the video speaks positive to women of all ages. The inspirational words cause viewers to think deeper about inner beauty, which is quite powerful. My mother and grandmother had similar comments about the video, which inspired further conversation about their opinions of natural beauty in today’s society.

The closing words of the video are: take your make-up off. Let your hair down.Take a breath. Look into the mirror at yourself. Don’t you like you? Because I like you. It is important to focus on ourselves and ask ourselves whether we are pleased with ourselves. Colbie’s efforts break the pop culture rules of make-up.Inspiration and positive self-esteem come from within. Inner beauty makes one look good instead of the outside beauty. Colbie’s efforts should be copied to increase the importance of natural beauty in the pop culture and encourage further inspiration for young women in future generations.

【推荐3】Chances are you can name a few animals that are facing extinction. But what about plants? With some 40% of plant species under threat of extinction—and given humankind’s reliance on the plant world-one might think there’d be more urgency around protecting them. Yet in the United States, for example, plants receive less than 4% of federal funding for endangered species, despite comprising 57% of the endangered species list.

Much of mankind suffers from “plant blindness”. Defined by botanists Elisabeth Schussler and James Wandersee, plant blindness is the inability to see or notice the plants in one’s own environment, which leads to the inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere (生物圈) and in human affairs.

Now a paper published by Oxford University Press might have found a cure for that. Having noticed that nature shows increased viewers’ interest in the animals on the shows, the researchers set out to discover if nature documentaries could do the same for plants. For the paper, they focused on The Green Planet, the 2022 BBC plant-focused documentary narrated (解说) by Sir David Attenborough.

To figure out if the documentary engaged viewers enough to want to learn more, the researchers looked at people’s online behavior around the time of the broadcast. They noted which species appeared on the show and then looked at data on Google Trends and Wikipedia page hits for those same species before and after the episodes (集) of the documentary aired. The researchers found some 28. 1% of search terms representing plants mentioned in the BBC documentary had peak popularity in the UK, measured using Google Trends, the week after the broadcast of the relevant episode. Wikipedia data showed this as well. Almost a third (31%) of the Wikipedia pages related to plants mentioned in The Green Planet showed increased visits the week after the broadcast. The investigators also note that people were more likely to do online searches for plants that enjoyed more screen time on The Green Planet.

【推荐1】A new study has found that elephant seals have to work very hard to stay corpulent. Scientists paid special attention to females of the species during difficult two-month trips, or migrations, in the northeastern Pacific Ocean.

The seals were found to spend up to 20 hours every day and sometimes full 24 hours a continuous deep-diving to feed on fish. They fed 1,000 to 2,000 times daily to gain the body weight necessary for reproduction and warmth in the cold waters. Researchers studied 48 female elephant seals from Ano Nuevo State Park in California as they traveled large ocean distances. Their entire trip was around 6. 000 kilometers.

Scientists based their findings on data collected in 2011 and 2018. They used three small movable devices. The first device, attached under the jaw, counted the number of times the seals fed and measured their depth. The second satellite-linked device on the head, followed the seals' ocean movements and sensed their food. The third device was a "smart" video camera with an infra-red LED light and another depth sensor. It was also placed on their heads.

Elephant seals get their name from the large noses. These noses look like an elephant's trunk. There are two species—the northern elephant seal and the slightly larger southern elephant seal. The two are the world's biggest seals and the largest ocean mammals other than whales.

The northern male elephant seals can grow up to 4 meters long and weigh up to 2,000 kilograms. The northern females are smaller, getting up to about 3 meters in length and 590 kilograms. The males feed only in coastal waters.

Some large ocean mammals depend on deep dives to get enough food to support their large bodies. Sperm whales（抹香鲸）, for example, hunt for large prey like giant squid, Female elephant seals, which are large, but not as big as sperm whales, have a different solution. They eat huge amounts of small fish. But it is hard for them to catch enough small fish to meet the energy needs of their large bodies.

【推荐1】California, Arizona and Nevada announced an agreement on Monday to cut their use of the Colorado River by another 14% in exchange for $1.2 billion grants (拨款) from the US government. The landmark agreement, which lasts through 2026, would avoid compulsory cuts set by the US government to keep the crucial Colorado River basin from collapsing in the face of constant over-consumption and a long drought worsened by climate change.

The 1,450-mile-long Colorado River provides drinking water for 40 million people in seven US states, part of Mexico, and several Native American tribes. It also supplies water for 5.5 million acres of productive farmland.

The Interior Department needs to sign off on the agreement before it takes effect. Camille Touton, leading member of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation, called the agreement “an important step forward toward our shared goal of creating a sustainable path for the basin that millions of people call home.”

The voluntary cuts are about half of what the US government said were needed last year, but an exceptionally wet winter and unusually plentiful snow pack gave the seven states that use the Colorado River a temporary relief. The two dammed reservoirs (水库) on the river, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, have risen 7 feet and 26 feet, respectively, since April, after falling to crisis levels in 2022. Lake Mead is now 30% full and Lake Powell 27%.

Arizona, California and Nevada draw their Colorado River water from Lake Mead while four Upper Basin states—Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming—use water directly from the river and its branches. All seven basin states still have to reach a longer-term arrangement for use of the declining Colorado River after 2026. Monday’s agreement is “a great start”, Jack Schmidt, director of the Utah State University’s Center for Colorado River Studies, tells the Los Angeles Times. “It’s about 25% of where we ultimately need to get.”

【推荐2】Street pavements burst open, houses flattened, and entire villages were destroyed in what’s being described as one of the worst flood disasters to hit Western Europe in more than two centuries. As reported, more than 165 people died, while dozens of others remain missing after a record rainfall caused rivers to overflow into towns and streets across western Germany, Belgium, as well as parts of the Netherlands, Switzerland and northern France. In Liège, Belgium’s third-largest city, water from the Meuse river overflowed Thursday evening into parts of the city center, causing city officials to call for residents (居民) to evacuate the area or seek higher ground.

By the weekend, fears that a dam could burst were calmed, as the water levels in the river began to go down. But many different pieces of debris (碎片) flowing through the river from nearby villages—including parts of homes, street signs and car tires—served as a reminder that it would take weeks and months to fix the damage in the surrounding villages. This may be the worst flooding disaster our country has ever known,” said Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo, who declared Monday a national day of mourning (哀悼). Additional search-and-rescue teams have been brought in from France and Italy to help locate the missing and assist with the cleanup.

In western Germany, the death rose to at least 143 people. Firefighters, meanwhile, say they carried out more than 1, 000 search-and-rescue missions, which became harder by the fact that the floods had cut power lines, disabling cellphone towers. We don’t know the number yet’ but there will be many. Germany’s interior minister, Horst Seehofer, said the country must prepare much better in the future, adding, “This is a result of climate change.”

【推荐3】The world’s nations have promised to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels, which involves shutting down fossil fuel extraction (化石燃料开采) as quickly as possible. But despite this promise, first reached six years ago during the Paris Climate Accords, the fossil-fuel producing nations are on track to extract more than twice as much coal, oil and natural gas as would be permissible under this plan, a new United Nations report says.

To have a chance of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees, production of coal needs to drop by 11% every year between 2020 and 2030. while production of oil and gas needs to drop by 4% and 3%, respectively, the report finds. Instead, production of oil and gas is set to increase, while coal production is projected to drop slightly.

The so-called production gap, the difference between countries’ climate promises and their fossil fuel production plans — hasn’t changed since the United Nations first examined it in 2019, indicating that international climate accords are still closer to theoretical promises than detailed plans.

The report looks at fossil fuel production in 15 countries — including Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, the U.S. and the United Kingdom — hat are collectively responsible for three-quarters of the world’s fossil fuel production. Most of these countries have promised to reach zero emissions by mid-century, but they are planning to increase their fossil fuel extraction until at least 2030.

So far, climate efforts from major fossil fuel extractors, including industry, have “focused on extracting fossil fuels in less-polluting ways, not on winding down production levels in line with climate goals,” the report says. While these efforts, such as developing carbon-capture (碳捕捉) technology and reducing methane leaks (甲烷泄露) are important. they fall far short of the changes science demands if global temperatures are to stay at a livable level.

To close that gap, the report urges governments to make realistic plans for winding down fossil fuel extraction, starting with state-owned companies, which arc responsible for more than half the world’s extraction of such fuels.