【推荐1】Fast fashion has been sweeping the whole world for its accessibility and price. However, these quick and easily accessible clothing brands aren’t as safe as they appear. As fast fashion grows, so does the environmental influence it leaves behind. Fast fashion brands search for the cheapest and fastest way to keep up with the latest trends, and many clothing items require large amounts of cotton, nylon and polyester (聚酯纤维). These materials may appear safe to the eye, but they have a greater impact on the environment than most people believe.

Cotton is the most profitable non-food crop in the world. The cotton industry makes up 7% of all labor in developing countries. Cotton, however, is not very safe for the environment once it’s mass-produced for clothing. Cotton planting, the process of putting the leaves of the cotton plants under the soil to grow new cotton, actually destroys the quality of the soil in which it is grown. Cotton production usually includes the use of fertilizers and pesticides, which not only pollute the soil, but also the water through polluted runoff.

Nylon, unlike cotton, is a fully synthetic (合成的) material. It is the first fabric (布料) to be made fully in a laboratory. Nylon is not biodegradable (可自然降解的) and its production is an energy-wasting process that creates unsafe gases and sends them into the atmosphere.

Polyester is made out of petroleum. This fabric is one of the world’s most popular and cheapest fabrics to make. Its whole production process sends unsafe gases into the air. Besides, once the polyester clothing is made, washing it sends microfibers into the environment, specifically in waterways. So polyester is considered one of the most perilous materials to the environment.

Despite various companies making clothing out of unsafe materials, it’s up to you to put a stop to it. Try shopping for more environmentally friendly materials. And when it’s time to get rid of old clothes, don’t throw them away. Instead of having your clothes become landfill, sell them, or even donate them to somebody else.

【推荐3】Ensuring that your home is as energy-efficient as it can possibly be is essential. Take the steps listed below, and you’ll be living in an energy-efficient home in no time.

    1     To stop it in its tracks, you must invest in having your house insulated (隔热的). Taking such action may demand some cost in advance, but it will be sure to save you over £100 a year when it comes to your energy bills.

The old boilers (锅炉) are not as energy-efficient as the very latest models in this field.     2     By investing in a top of the line boiler, you’ll no doubt tap into a number of savings. What’s more, making this kind of investment will also be sure to lower your home’s carbon emissions.

Only when you know how much energy you use can you take action to be less wasteful and more resourceful in this instance.     3     To assist you in taking on this extremely important challenge, you might want to consider fitting an energy monitor in your home.     4     But if you’re lucky, your electricity provider will give you one for free. This monitor will provide you and your family with constant updates on the amount of energy you are using on a day-to-day basis.

With just twelve years (now seven years) to go until climate change alters earth forever, now is the time for you to play your part in protecting the planet that you live in.     5    

【推荐1】Some say you can tell a lot about a person by the way they decorate their homes. There is no denying that the way we decorate our homes is very personal. And while many of us have plenty of options, there are always people who go that little bit further. So, when it comes to minimalism and maximalism, which one appeals to you more?

Minimalism was an art movement that started in the 1950s. Its basic principles come from a concept of less is more, reducing things to their most basic. Some people took that art style and used it as a way of living. Their houses are usually decorated in simple colors, often just black and white. For some, especially maximalists, it may seem a bit boring or depressing. However, living in this way is seen by many as more organized and practical.

Maximalism started in the 1970s. It embraces the core ideals that ^“more is more”. While minimalism centres around the principle of removing, if it’s easy to imagine that a maximalists’ home is piled with items—but that’s not the basic idea. It's more about making the most of the area. Organized excess and bright colors combined with mixed patterns is what you will see in a home like this. For a minimalist, being used to more simple designs, it could be uneasy. But for those who embrace it, those things give a space personality.

The way you have your home is up to you! But, if you choose maximalism, you may need to prepare for a bit more dusting.

【推荐2】What Do Babies Know?

As Daniel is settled into a highchair and wheeled behind a black screen, a sudden look of worry appeared. His dark blue eyes dart left and right in search of the familiar reassurance of his mother’s face. She calls his name and makes soothing noises, but Daniel senses something unusual is happening. He sucks his fingers for comfort, but finding no solace, his mouth crumples, his body stiffens. This is the usual expression when babies are left alone or abandoned.

Watching infants piece life together, seeing their senses, emotions and motor skills take shape, is a source of mystery and endless fascination at least to parents and developmental psychologists. We can decode their signals of distress or read a million messages into their first smile. But how much do we really know about what’s going on behind those wide, innocent eyes?

Daniel is now engaged in watching video clips of a red toy train on a circular track. The train disappears into a tunnel and emerges on the other side. A hidden device above the screen is tracking Daniel’s eyes as they follow the train and measuring the diameter of his pupils 50 times a second. As the child gets “habituated”, as psychologists call the process— his attention level steadily drops. But it picks up a little whenever some novelty is introduced. The train might be green, or it might be blue. And sometimes an impossible thing happens—the train goes into the tunnel one colour and comes out another.

Variations of experiments like this one, examining infant attention, have been a standard tool of developmental psychology ever since the Swiss pioneer of the field, Jean Piaget, started experimenting on his children in the 1920s. Piaget’s work led him to conclude that infants younger than 9 months have no innate knowledge of how the world works or any sense of “object permanence”(that people and things still exist even when they’re not seen). Instead, babies must gradually construct this knowledge from experience. Piaget’s “constructivist” theories were massively influential on post war educators and psychologists, but over the past 20 years or so they have been largely set aside by a new generation of “nativist” psychologists. They asserted that infants arrive already equipped with some knowledge of the physical world. Nowadays, these smart-baby theories through a rigorous set of tests tend to be more Piagetian. That is, babies know nothing.