【推荐1】Solar power is now the cheapest source of electricity in history, according to a 2020 report. But there’s something holding this clean energy powerhouse back: Space. Unlike fossil fuel power stations, solar farms need a lot of room. While conventional solar farms sometimes attract controversy due to the amount of land they use, floating solar farms occupy much less valuable space above bodies of water.

“As demand for land increases, water bodies are increasingly being targeted for renewable energy. Deployment of solar on water increases electricity production.” said Giles Exley, PhD researcher and lead author from Lancaster University. The research team set about computer modelling using the My Lake simulation programme and data collected by the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology from England’s largest lake, Windermere.

Their results show that floating solar arrays can cool water temperatures by shading the water from the sun. At scale, this could help to mitigate against harmful effects caused by global warming. However, some complex conditions can result in the bottom layer of water becoming deoxygenated and makes water quality worse- if floating solar farms are stationed.

“Floating solar could help to reduce the negative effects of global warming which will influence on these bodies of water,” Exley said. “However, there are also real risks of disadvantageous impacts, such as deoxygenation causing undesirable increases in nutrient concentrations and killing fish. We need to do more researches to understand the possibility of both positive and negative impacts.”

The larger the solar installation the greater the effect on water temperature increases. Further studies will be needed to determine the suitable size array and design and their effects for individual lakes and artificial lakes.

【推荐2】Can everything be recycled? No, not all things can be recycled. But you might be surprised to learn how many things can be recycled. You may already know about plastic bottles. Did you know you can also recycle glass?

Glass can be recycled to make all sorts of things. Recycling glass really helps the planet. Making new products from recycled glass causes less air and water pollution. It also uses less energy than making new glass.

When glass arrives at a recycling plant, people and machines sort it by color. Similar colors of glass must be recycled together. That way, recycled products are as pure as possible. This makes them stronger and less likely to break. Once the glass is sorted, it's washed. That's when the breaking begins. That's right! To be recycled, glass has to be broken to make a material called cullet(碎玻璃).

Glass manufacturers love cullet. It's cheaper than the raw materials they'd need to make new glass. It also melts at a lower temperature. That means they save energy during the production process. Glass manufacturers mix cullet with other materials like sand and soda ash. Then they heat it to over 2,600℉. This makes liquid glass, which can then be poured into a mold (模具). There, it cools and forms a finished glass product.

Most recycled glass is used to make new glass containers, such as jars and bottles. However, recycled glass can also find its way into all sorts of other products including a variety of construction products.

Do you recycle at home or school? What glass products should you be sure to recycle when you’ re done with them? With everyone doing their part, recycling glass can make a huge difference to the planet!

【推荐1】Jae-Yeol Tae recalls the time he broke into a cold sweat after noticing a long line behind him as he struggled to order a hamburger on a local fast-food restaurant’s self-order kiosk (自助服务终端). “I kept reading the instructions on the kiosk, but they were difficult to follow,” Tae, 78, said.

The South Korean senior is not the only one who has felt powerless and at the mercy of such self-serve digital kiosk machines. Adults aged 65 and older have taken part in the senior digital education program at Seoul-based Seocho Joongang Senior Welfare Center to learn how to use the devices in this modern digital age.

Seocho District’s senior community center has been providing digital education classes and resources for willing seniors over the past two years. Since September 2019, more than 1500 senior citizens have learned how to use digital machines and devices like self-serve kiosks through the program.

After two years of suffering from the pandemic (流行病), a large number of restaurants and stores have adopted self-service electronic kiosks as alternatives to keep personnel costs down while continuing to keep their businesses running. The size of the domestic kiosk market is expected to grow 5.7% annually by 2023, according to the report from Shinhan Investment Corporation.

Digital education for senior citizens has become a necessity as South Korea continues to speed up its digitization according to the nation’s pandemic regulations. At the start of 2022, Seoul introduced the “cash-free bus” plan asking 418 buses to only accept transportation cards or mobile tickets. The project offers passengers instant mobile tickets by scanning QR codes (二维码) at bus stations, but it makes public transportation more complicated for less tech-savvy senior citizens who typically carry around cash only.

Seocho District’s senior community center is not the only one promoting digital education for older adults. The Seoul Metropolitan Government also recently announced that it will invest over $1.68 million to further expand education resources necessary for senior support.

【推荐3】As the carbon countdown clock ticks on, cities must be more imaginative and cooperative, a lively round table hosted in Newham by a non-profit organization Friends of the Earth said.

“Net zero is around the corner,” said Mike Wake, Director of Friends of the Earth. “The UK has cut greenhouse gas emission (排放) by 40% to date mostly through the growth of large renewable generation on the grid (输电网), but further cuts will be needed as London tries to find new ways of using energy.

“While Newham has lower greenhouse gas emission per head than the UK, it has high levels of fuel poverty, poor air quality and leaky homes. Vastly improved energy efficiency, especially on older and leakier homes, along with more efficient forms of heating and an expansion of low carbon heat networks, will help,” said Wake.

“But the future requires a shift to a more communal solution,” the representatives said. District heating, which pipes hot water from a central source to connected homes or businesses, is often a cheaper and lower-carbon method of heating highly populated areas. “It’s the lowest cost and low carbon solution for the future,” Wake added.

“There are new technologies to use wasted heat,” Wake said. “We worked with businesses to decarbonise (使环保) energy supply. Rather than wasting, spare heat generated by manufacturing and other activities can be captured and used to heat nearby properties. Friends of the Earth has already helped save Newham thousands of tonnes of emissions through district heating plans, solar PV and more energy efficient measures in the homes.”

But the challenges are substantial. Newham has London’s second-highest rate of fuel poverty. “Anyway, I’m confident and hopeful about the collective challenge,” said Wake. “But for Newham to be at the forefront of a green economy, to solve fuel poverty and deal with structural equalities, we must spare no effort.”

【推荐2】Geoffrey Holt was a “nobody” in the public eye. He worked in his eighties as a caretaker at a mobile home park in Hinsdale, New Hampshire.

Holt collected hundreds of model cars and train sets that filled his rooms. He also collected books about history, with Henry Ford and World War II among his favorite topics. Holt had an extensive record collection too, including Handel and Mozart. Very often, he’d find a quiet place and study financial publications.

After retiring, Holt did various jobs for others. Despite having taught driver’s education course to high schoolers, he’d given up driving a car. He opted for a bicycle instead and finally the mower（除草机）. His mobile home in the park was mostly empty of furniture—no TV and no computer, either. The legs of the bed went through the floor.

But Holt did have two things. He had a big secret and an even bigger heart. He passed away in early 2023. In a move that surprised the tiny town of 4,200 people, he left all his worldly goods to the people of Hinsdale.

With his casual lifestyle, no one would have guessed that Holt had a wealth worth up to $3.8million! Holt, who earlier in life had worked as a production manager at a grain factory that closed down in nearby Brattleboro, Vermont, spent his money on communications, hoping to earn more out of it. In the end, it was doing better than he’d ever expected.

Holt grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. His father, Lee Holt, was a professor who taught English and world literature in a college. His mother, Margaret Holt, was an artist. Holt went to boarding schools and attended the former Marlboro College in Vermont, where students had self-designed degree plans. He graduated in 1963 and earned a master’s degree from the college where his father taught in 1968.

【推荐3】How many friends do you have? Not counting the hundreds on Facebook or the names gathering dust in your address book. But real friends, the ones cast in stone. The kind who would lend you $100 without asking why, or put you up if you were kicked out of your house.

Anthropologist Prof Robin Dunbar feels he can put a number on it: five. No matter how much of a social butterfly you are, you can count your real pals on one hand, he says. To that he says you can add an ideal number of 15 “good friends”, the kind of people you would see in a group and would join for a drink if you bumped into them in the pub, and up to 150 “meaningful contacts”.

Prof Dunbar’s latest research is an exact formula(公式) for friendship: new friendships take 34 hours of one-on-one time to form, in which you’d spend an ideal duration of three hours and four minutes per interaction together over the course of six months. Note that this is to turn an acquaintance into a friend, not one of the close friends that makes up your inner circle of five—to do that, you’d have to devote 90 hours, according to a 2018 University of Kansas study.

According to the experts, the pandemic years have changed the number and nature of our friendship. It gave people more grounds for disagreement: over adherence(遵守) to social-distancing rules, for example. Plenty of people lost relationships in the cracks. “We are always on the outlook for new and better friends, but lockdown has had a big effect in making people reevaluate,” says Dunbar. “Perhaps they’ve decided the time has come to part with some and therefore there’s an empty space to fill.”

The forecast for British friendship was already gloomy before the pandemic. Three million people said they feel lonely “often or always”, according to the Government’s 2019 community life survey. But the average British adult lost four friends over the course of the pandemic, according to the poll.