【推荐1】Cars are “boxes collecting toxic(有毒的)gases” that stunt the growth of children, a leading expert has warned. Professor Sir David King said that parents should avoid driving their little ones to school and encourage them to walk instead. Vehicles(车辆)provide hardly any protection from the deadly gases, while walking is already known to be good for health.

Sir David told The Guardian: “Children sitting in the backseat of vehicles are probably breathing in polluted air. You may be driving a cleaner vehicle but your children are sitting in a box collecting toxic gases from all the vehicles around you. The best thing for all our health is to leave our cars behind. It’s been shown that the advantages of walking and cycling far outweigh the costs of breathing in pollution.” Sir David added: “If more drivers knew the damage they could be doing to their children, I think they’d think twice about getting in the car.”

His warming comes after recent research found that children’s brains slow down when they are put in high levels of air pollution. The study found pupils who breathed in toxic gases on the way to school had difficulty in performing as well as their classmates Spanish researchers said their findings appeared to show that polluted air is harming children’s brains as well as their lungs.

Toxic air is responsible for 40,000 deaths a year in the UK---and Brussels has warned Britain it could face if it continued to break EU safety rules. Former research has shown that too much polluted air will shorten people’s life length. Air pollution falls only behind cancer, obesity and heart disease in the biggest health risks to the nation, Prime Minister Theresa May recently said.

【推荐3】Plastic is the workhorse material of the modern economy (经济). Lightweight and durable, it’s been used to make a vast number of products since its introduction over 100 years ago.

However, a study carried out by the World Economic Forum, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and McKinsey Company showed the status of the breakdown in the global plastic system. A full 32% of the 78 million tons of plastic packaging produced annually is left to flow into our oceans.

The Ocean Cleanup, a start-up founded in 2013, is the brainchild of Boyan Slat, who came up with the idea for the company when he was just 17 years old. Since then, it’s received more than $2 million in funding(基金). The company plans to use a large array (列阵) that will be fixed to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. This will have arms that spread out over 100 km, getting all of the plastic garbage pushed into its nets. This is then collected by a 10,000-metre-cube container that will be emptied monthly.

Most recently, the Ocean Cleanup launched a team of explorers aboard a specially refitted C-130 Hercules aircraft heavily loaded with specialized sensor equipment. It discovered that the problem was worse than expected with an abundance of plastics measuring up to 1.5 m across and at a higher density than previously thought. The organization will continue to pilot the array and will start cleaning the pile before the end of the decade.

Once the plastic is out, what should we do with it? The foundation (基金会) hopes that the plastic from the ocean will have a commercial value which can help to fund the project. Ocean plastic is not easy to use, it’s mixed by nature consisting of everything from intact PET bottles to micro plastics. However, some of the world's biggest companies also see the chance to market oceans plastic products.

Transforming today’s plastics economy from its present form (take-make-waste) to a zero waste circular economy (take-make-take-make) is a difficult challenge. However, with cooperative action from producers, recyclers, governments and consumers alike and continuing innovation (革新) it can be done.

【推荐1】The pasty (馅饼) has been a recorded part of the British diet since the 13th century, at this time being enjoyed by the rich upper classes. The fillings were different and rich. It wasn’t until the 17th and 18th centuries that the pasty was popular among miners and farm workers in Cornwall as a means for providing themselves with easy and tasty meals while they worked. And so the Cornish pasty was born.

Traditionally, the pasty fillings are beef with potato, onion and swede! As meat was much more expensive in the 17th and 18th centuries, its presence was rare and so pasties traditionally included much more vegetables than today. The presence of carrot in a pasty, although common now, was the mark of a poor pasty at first.

Filling ideas are endless however, and can be as different as your taste will take you. There is much discussion as to whether the ingredients (原料) should be mixed together first or lined up on the pastry in a special order. However, there is agreement that the meat should be cut into pieces, the vegetables sliced and none should be cooked before they are sealed (密封) within the pastry. It is this that makes the Cornish pasty different from other similar foods.

It was such a commonly used method of eating amongst the miners that some mines had tools down the mineshafts (井筒) specifically to cook the pasties. If they were cooked in the mornings, the pastry could keep the fillings warm for 8-10 hours and, when held close to the body, keep the miners warm too. It was also common for the pasties to provide not only a main course lunch, but also a sweet or fruity dessert course. The salty filling would be cooked at one end of the pasty and the sweet course at the other end. Hopefully these ends would be marked on the outside too!

【推荐2】We all know ultra-processed foods are harmful to us, but it seems hard to resist the sweet smell of sweets and cakes. However, recently published research may make you think twice before picking up the colourful sweets next time.

UItra-processed foods range from the sweets that turn your tongue blue to those healthier- sounding canned soups packed with artificial(人工的))flavours. All in all, they are typically much more calorie-,sodium-(钠)and sugar-packed. According to the research, people who eat more ultra-processed foods are more likely to be more obese(病态肥胖的) and overweight, and tend to have a higher risk of having heart problems, diabetes or even cancer, including colorectal cancer(结肠直肠癌), breast cancer,etc.

This new link was observed when researchers analysed 24-hour dietary records of nearly 105,000dults. Participants recorded what they ate from a list of 3, 300 food items. Those items were later divided into different groups based on the degree to which they were processed.

"Ultra-processed fats and sauces, sugary products and drinks were associated with an increased risk of overall cancer, "the study says. Researchers have found that a 10% increase in the share of ultra-processed foods in the diet was related to an even greater increase in risks for overall cancer and breast cancer.

Faced with the surprising results, the researchers did many analysis and adjusted the findings for other factors, according to the study co-author Mathilde Touvier, and still, the results were quite concerning. She and her team suggested that people should try to limit the consumption of ultra-processed foods, making a balanced and diversified diet one of the prime concerns about public health.

【推荐3】What will the future school look like is difficult to make clear, but most experts agree that the school will be electronic in the future .

" Present-day schools will no longer exist in the next century," says a report in The Age. "At that time, future schools will become community-style centers, which run seven days a week,24 hours a day. ” At the same time, computers will surely become a central part of the school in the future.

According to The Age, the distant learning will be popular and students will listen to teachers on computers. Going into classrooms on their computers, students will study at any time, which is very easy for them. However, it is necessary for students to go to the actual school in order to develop some social skills.

The Seashore Primary School is an imaginary school in the future created by the Education Department of Australia. At this school, all the teachers and students have laptop computers . Teachers check messages and call students back on a special telephone system and students use telephones to search for information or speak to their experts who teach their lessons. Besides, all the lessons are related to all sorts of subjects and all the students have their own learning plans created by teachers .

As one headmaster says, a laptop computer is students⁵ library, data storage （数据存储）as well as the bridge to a wider world. Technology has changed the emphasis of future learning. Thus, well pay more attention to the learning of kids rather than the teaching.