【推荐3】The Great Wall in China is an iconic cultural landmark that has stood for a long time. But the long structure is also at risk of disappearing because of natural erosion. Now, scientists have discovered that some parts of the wall are better conserved from the elements than others. Some plants have created a layer of biocrusts (生物外壳) on some sections of the wall, according to a study published in a journal. In addition to strengthening the wall, the biocrusts shield it from wind and water. The researchers report the “living cover” also insulates the wall from temperature changes.

The Great Wall was constructed and connected over thousands of years ago to help create a “united defense system” for China’s northern border. Some sections were built using rammed earth (夯土), a process that involves compacting natural materials like stones and soil to create firm structures. Those materials also provided an ideal habitat for organisms to grow—and over time, they created a biocrust layer atop the rammed earth.

Scientists in China wanted to better understand the wall’s biocrusts, so they took samples from a roughly 300-mile-long section. When they analyzed the samples, they found that 67% of the area they studied was covered in biocrusts. They also conducted a series of experiments to compare the bare and biocrust-covered samples. The biocrust-covered sections held up better in tests measuring their strength and stability. Some biocrust samples were three times stronger than the bare rammed earth samples.

The new research could help inform conservation strategies for the Great Wall and other heritage structures created from rammed earth. Some conservationists have supposed that biocrusts may cause historic structures to worsen more quickly, but this study suggests otherwise. Instead, biocrusts helpfully combine the functions of several conventional measures into one nature-based, eco-friendly and long-lasting strategy.

【推荐1】Saving the environment might seem like a tall order, but living an environmentally friendly life is actually quite easy.     1     Read on for some practical tips on how a single individual can help save the environment.

Recycle

Recycling is a simplest lifestyle to lower the amount of environmental waste. Every resident can get involved by taking advantage of nearby recycling services.     2     For instance, some places may not accept glass, while others might require you to separate the different materials. If you dispose of something improperly, the whole load will likely be rejected and end up in a landfill.

Buy locally-sourced foods

Eating fresh, local food consumes less fuel and packaging materials. Shipping products by truck, rail, flight, or boat creates pollution and goes against an environmentally friendly lifestyle. Instead, shop at local farmers’ markets and grocery stores stocking locally-sourced products.     3     .

Cut back on driving

Applying alternate forms of transportation consumes less gasoline.     4     If that isn’t an option, consider organizing carpools or using public transportation. By doing this, you help reduce traffic jams and the overall amount of gasoline consumption. Also, combine multiple trips into one to help minimize the distance traveled and fuel consumed.

    5    

Advocacy allows more people to create a positive impact. Spread the word about environmental conservation by sharing some of the lifestyle changes you’ve made on social media and in conversations with people around, calling on everybody to play a role.

【推荐2】During the COP27 climate conference (会议) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, an important deal on “loss and damage” was reached. This was a big step forward because at COP26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland, there were no talks on loss and damage at all. The plan is that richer countries will pay money into a special fund that will be used to help poor countries.

Loss and damage means the damaging impact of climate change on developing countries. For nearly 30 years, poorer countries have been asking richer countries for money to help to protect communities from the effects of climate change. Richer countries have produced the most greenhouse gases, but poorer countries are often the worst affected by extreme weather conditions because they are less well equipped to face extreme climate events.

Brazil’s newly elected President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made a speech about preserving the largest rainforest on Earth, the Amazon. During the last 50 years, more than 17% of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed to make way for farms and towns. However, in his speech, Lula promised that there would be zero deforestation (伐树) in the Amazon by 2030. The conference didn’t just focus on world leaders. It brought together more than 45,000 people to discuss how climate change is affecting their lives. Climate refugees (难民) also had their voices heard. Tshilombo from the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya said, “Refugees don’t only flee because of war or conflict. It’s also about drought, the effects of climate change.”

Some countries weren’t happy with the overall outcome of COP27 because decisions weren’t made on cutting the use of fossil fuels, such as coal, gas and oil, etc. The UK Government’s Alok Sharma said, “I’m incredibly disappointed.”

However, this deal was a great achievement for developing countries. Sherry Rehman, the climate minister for Pakistan, said, “I am confident we have tuned a comer in how we work together to achieve climate goals.”

【推荐3】A man from Ivory Coast has found a creative way to repurpose (稍加改动) footwear that washes up on the beach-he turns it into artwork.

Aristide Kouame is a 26-year-old artist. But he says no one would know this when they see him going around beach areas picking up flip-flops (人字拖) and other kinds of footwear. They probably think he is gathering the old objects to sell on the street. But Kouame has recognized the real value of such waste. He has created artworks from the material that can sell for up to $1,000. He cuts the rubber and plastic bottoms from the footwear into pieces and uses them to create largo collages (拼贴画).

“This is the rubbish people have thrown into the sea and the sea brings it back to us because it doesn’t want it,” Kouame told Reuters News Agency. He was collecting material from a beach in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s economic and cultural capital. “I make art from used shoes. It’s a way to give Life to the objects that litter the beaches,” the artist explained.

Sitting on the floor of a narrow street, Kouame creates shapes, letters and faces with the rubber pieces he picked up on the beach. His method is not costly and does not harm the environment. Plastic and other waste-including large amounts of lost flip-flops-litter most city beaches in West Africa. The waste is thrown away in cities and carried out to sea. But a lot of it ends up on the beach later.

In just a few years, Kouame’s methods have caught the attention of Ivory Coast’s art establishment and his works have hung in galleries in Ivory Coast and in oilier countries. His works have included large portraits of civil rights and political leaders such as Nelson Mandela. Other pieces were created to draw attention to world problems, including climate change, COVID-19 and economic inequality.

The United Nations estimates that about 13 million tons of plastic waste is put into the world’s oceans each year. Two of Africa’s biggest waste producers, Ghana and Nigeria, share the same Atlantic coastal areas as the beach where Kouame searches for supplies. For his part, Kouame says he plans to keep collecting and creating. “My goal is to get people lo question the issue of their environment, in order to create a better life.”

【推荐1】Developing new materials requires significant time and labor, but some chemists are now hopeful that AI could one day shoulder much of this burden. In a new study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a team used a popular AI model, ChatGPT, to perform one particularly time-consuming task: searching scientific literature. With that data, they built a second tool, a new model to predict experimental results.

Reports from previous studies offer a vast amount of information that chemists need, but finding and analyzing the most relevant details can be laborious. For example, those interested in designing highly porous, crystalline (晶体) metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — which have potential applications in areas such as clean energy—must sort through hundreds of scientific papers describing a variety of experimental conditions. Researchers have previously attempted to let AI take over this task; however, the language processing models they used required significant technical expertise , and applying them to new topics meant changing the program. Omar Yaghi and colleagues wanted to see if the next generation of language models, which includes ChatGPT, could offer a more accessible, flexible way to extract information.

To analyze text from scientific papers, the team gave ChatGPT prompts (提示符) it through three processes intended to identify and summarize the experimental information the papers contained. The researchers carefully constructed these prompts to minimize the model’s tendency to make up responses, and to ensure the best responses possible.

When tested on 228 papers describing MOF syntheses (合成), this system drew more than 26, 000 factors relevant for making roughly 800 of these mixtures. With these data, the team trained a separate AI model to predict the crystalline state of MOFs based on these conditions. And finally, to make the data more user-friendly, they built a chatbot to answer questions about it. The team notes that, unlike previous AI-based efforts, this one does not require expertise in coding. What’s more, scientists can shift its focus simply by adjusting the narrative language in the prompts. This new system, which they call the “ChatGPT Chemistry Assistant,” could also be useful in other fields of chemistry.

【推荐3】Researchers say new evidence suggests Mimas, the icy moon of Saturn (土星), likely has a large underground ocean. Researchers based their finding on data collected by the American space agency NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Cassini observed Saturn and its more than 140 moons for more than 10 years before ending operations in 2017.

Researchers reported the data provided the best evidence yet of a hidden ocean about 20 to 30 kilometers beneath the frozen surface.

Mimas is a relatively small moon, about 400 kilometers wide. Researchers say Mimas doesn’t have formations (构造) on its surface found on other moons, which suggests the presence of underground water. These can include a broken surface as well as spring activity.

The amount of water thought to exist below the surface of Mimas would represent just 1.2 to 1.4 percent of Earth’s oceans. That is because the moon is very small.

However, Mimas does have a very large crater caused by a crash with a space object. The edges of it are raised very high. For this reason, the appearance of the moon has been compared to the fictional “Death Star” space station in the popular movie series Star Wars.

The researchers said the underground ocean appears to have formed recently in space terms, possibly between 5 and 15 million years ago. The ocean would likely have an overall temperature of around zero degrees Celsius. But the temperature at the seafloor might be much higher.

The water is in contact with the moon’s rocky center, which may create the right complex (复杂的) chemical conditions to support life. But the researchers noted that because the ocean is believed to be young, it might be a challenge for life’s development.

However, nobody knows how long life needs to appear from a suitable environment. The ocean on Mimas may offer a unique opportunity to explore the first stage of life’s development.

Scientists have said that in the past another moon of Saturn, Enceladus, might possess the warmth, water and chemical materials necessary to support life.