【推荐1】As people are becoming more socially conscious about where their food comes from and how it impacts the planet, they are choosing animal-free plant-based options. Cow-free meat has been around for quite some time and the popularity of brands Beyond Meat and the cultivated (培育的) meat from Aleph Farms and others are soaring. While there are a large number of plantbased milk substitutes (替代品), none of them have the same taste of cow’s milk. Now, an Israeli food-tech startup Remilk created real dairy products without harming a single cow or the planet.

The company stresses that their product Remilk is not a milk substitute but rather is the real deal. And the end product is very healthy. The company also says that the lab-produced milk tastes identical to the real thing and they hope to eventually replace cows by creating every dairy product sold. They expect to roll out plant-based cheese and yogurt in addition to milk. “Remilk was founded with the mission to stop using animals to produce our food because, as dairy lovers, we realize that giving up on milk is not an option,” said Aviv Wolff, CEO of Remilk. “But today’s milk comes with an unreasonable price tag. The dairy industry is destructive to our planet, our health, and our animals, and is simply not sustainable anymore.”

The environmental price tag of dairy farming is way too high. According to the World Wildlife Fund, dairy cows add a huge amount of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and contribute to global warming and climate change as well as foul the air around them. Dairy operations consume large amounts of water and run-off of manure (粪肥) and fertilizers from these farms get into local waterways. The production of Remilk uses only 5 percent of the resources and produces only 1 percent of the waste of producing cow’s milk according to the company. And they accomplish this by being 100 percent cruelty-free unlike dairy farms.

【推荐3】Next month, I’m traveling to a remote area of Central Africa and my aim is to know enough Lingala — one of the local languages — to have a conversation. I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage this — until I discovered a way to learn all the vocabulary I’m going to need. Thanks to Memrise, the app I’m using. It feels just like a game.

“People often stop learning things because they feel they’re not making progress or because it all feels like too much hard work,” says Ed Cooke, one of the people who created Memrise. “We’re trying to create a form of learning experience that is fun and is something you’d want to do instead of watching TV.”

Memrise gives you a few new words to learn and these are “seeds” which you plant in your “greenhouse”. When you practice the words, you “water your plants”. When the app believes that you have really remembered a word, it moves the word to your “garden”. And if you forget to log on, the app sends you emails that remind you to “water your plants”.

The app uses two principles about learning. The first is that people remember things better when they link them to a picture in their mind. Memrise translates words into your own language, but it also encourages you to use “mems”. For example, I memorized motele, the Lingala word for “engine”, using a mem I created — I imagined an old engine in a motel (汽车旅馆) room.

The second principle is that we need to stop after studying words and then repeat them again later, leaving time between study sessions. Memrise helps you with this, because it’s the kind of app you only use for five or ten minutes a day.

I’ve learnt hundreds of Lingala words with Memrise. I know this won’t make me a fluent speaker, but I hope I’ll be able to do more than just smile when I meet people in Congo. Now, I need to go and water my vocabulary!

【推荐1】Scientists near San Francisco work to identify a type of endangered fish using a tool that was originally made for treating cancer.

Currently, CRISPR is used to change the genetic material in specific cells. By changing the structure of immune cells, it helps recognize and fight cancer. The same technology is now used in a special machine called Sherlock, which, of course, is named after the famous investigator Sherlock Holmes. They do not, however, use Sherlock to change fish cells. Instead, the ocean researchers catch the fish, collect a small amount of mucus (黏液) and then test the cells to find the genetic makeup of the fish. It can be done in about 30 minutes. In the past, the researchers would have to wait weeks or months to get test results.

The researchers have found that the technology is extremely helpful when looking at different species of Chinook salmon, because they look nearly the same. However, some of them are endangered, and the scientists need to keep track of them.

In the past, the scientists would catch the Chinook salmon and measure them to tell them apart. “It’s not very accurate,” said Andrea Schreier, an associate professor at the University of California in Davis. Now she is working on the salmon. Schreier said when they catch the fish, the Sherlock machine can quickly tell them if they have one of the special salmon. It’s important because it allows the scientists to do things that will help the endangered salmon live longer. For example, they can catch them in lakes far away from the coast and take them by truck to the San Francisco Bay. In the past, the fish might have tried to make it to the Bay by swimming in rivers. However, due to climate change, the river water is sometimes too warm for the fish to make the trip safely.

Schreier said she feels good about the project because she likes being able to assist with conservation. “I really want to work to maintain our ecosystems and our native populations as much as possible, given all of the pressures that we humans place on them through our different activities.”

【推荐3】Children experience advertising in many forms — on TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, movies, the Internet, text messages, social media and more. And advertising works on children. For example, the more TV a child watches, the more toys that child is likely to want and ask for. This is why it's important for children to learn that advertisements are trying to make people purchase something. And advertisers always aim to make their products look good, perhaps even better than they really are.

Advertising affects children in different ways. How children think of advertising can depend on several things, including their age, what they know or have experienced.

At 0-2 years, children can't tell the difference between advertising and actual programs.

At 3-6 years, children can recognize advertisements and tell them from programs, but they don't understand that ads are trying to sell something. And they are likely to think of advertisements as being funny.

At 7-11 years, when children go to primary school, they can understand that advertisements are trying to sell them something, remember advertising messages and recognize some advertising techniques (策略) like advertisements overstating (夸大) how good products are. However, they might not always understand that products aren't as good as advertisements say they are, or that advertisers might not be telling them any of the products' bad points.

To limit the effects of advertising on school-age children, the most important thing parents can do is talk about advertisements and encourage their children to think about what they're trying to do.

It's a good idea to focus on the advertisements that a child sees most often. For example, parents can get their children thinking and developing a questioning attitude. In other words, what's the product in this advertisement? What is it for? Who is it for?

They can also ask their children about the techniques that are being used to sell a product. This can help them work out how an advertisement makes its product look good.