【推荐2】According to a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Vaccine Monitor, nearly a quarter of parents surveyed in the US would not allow their teenagers to be vaccinated.

To help her peers get rid of the embarrassing situation, Kelly Danielpour, 18, from the US, runs VaxTeen, a website that aims to answer questions from teenagers seeking advice about vaccines and what rights they have to make decisions about their health.

With her father as a doctor, Danielpour started volunteering in hospitals in middle school and learned a lot about medicines. Such experiences have made her realize that vaccinations are a good way to keep teenagers from developing health issues they may not be able to get care for later on.

But as she read her peers’ posts on Reddit, a social media platform, she was shocked to find that many of her peers are disapproved to get vaccines. This trend has been more obvious during the pandemic (大流行).

“I found hundreds of posts on Reddit,” the 18-year-old told NBC News. “Every few days, I could still find at least one new post.”

To help them, the first step, she said, is providing the teenagers with information and resources about vaccines so they could get rid of parents’ misinformation. But if that didn’t work, she would get the teenagers information about their healthcare rights.

But that was not easy. Danielpour told Time magazine that every state has different laws on the choices minors can make regarding their own healthcare.

She studied state laws and bookmarked countless pages from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Healthline website reported. “I did not put anything on the website that I didn’t think would hold up,” Danielpour explained.

The effort paid off. With the help of VaxTeen, more young Americans have been vaccinated.

In fact, she plans to continue encouraging teenagers to place their own medical choices in their hands for years to come. And she advocates for a medical system that provides equal access to healthcare for all.

“This is what I’m passionate about. This is what I do,” she told Healthline.

【推荐3】Soil is one of the most important materials of daily life. It’s necessary for growing the food and resources we depend on, protecting against drought (干旱) and flooding and storing carbon dioxide for years to come. But the dirt under our feet is constantly in danger because of rising temperatures and loss of biodiversity caused by climate change. Although we may think soil is simple, it’s pretty hard to know what’s really going on deep in the ground from the surface.

Scientists in Italy, however, think they may have a robotic solution—a seed-inspired (受种子启发的) robot. Scientists at the Bioinspired Soft Robotics (BSR) Lab have developed the first 4D-printed seed-inspired soft robot, which can act as sensors for monitoring pollutants, CO2 levels, temperature and humidity (湿度) in soil.

They were inspired by a South African geranium (a garden plant). The seeds of the plant have the ability to change shape in response to how humid their environment is. When the time comes for the seeds to leave the plant, they can separate themselves from the plant and move independently to find their way through soil. The curly seeds can find a home for themselves simply by becoming bigger or smaller depending on the water content in the air. The team imitated the seeds and developed robots that use materials that also change shape when exposed (暴露) to humidity.

When tested in a soil sample, the robot was able to rock from side to side, adapt its shape to the space, and get into holes in the ground like a natural seed. Not to mention, it was capable of lifting things about 100 times its own weight. First author Luca Cecchini said that the robot is easy to break down and causes no harm to the soil. It could be used as a wireless, battery-free tool for surface soil exploration and monitoring.

【推荐2】Road traffic accidents are caused by a number of factors which can be grouped into three categories: human factors, vehicle factors and road environment factors. Table 1 explains each factor and gives examples.

One factor alone or several factors together can cause an accident. However, human actions are by far the greatest causes of car accidents. Diagram 1 shows that human factors are involved in 95% of all car accidents. Although other factors are also involved in 28% of these accidents, in 67% of cases, human factors alone are the cause of the accident.

Although behavior such as not paying attention to road, swerving to avoid an animal and eating while driving causes accidents, most road deaths are caused by speeding, driving after drinking alcohol, driving when tried and not wearing seat belts. As shown in Diagram 2, speeding is involved in more deaths than any other behavior in both city (50%) and country accidents (32%). Drivers and / or passengers not wearing seat belts is the second most common cause of road deaths.

【推荐3】I’ve just asked Julie Gray, a biologist at the University of Sheffield, which species she thinks would be the last ones standing if we don’t take transformative action on climate change. “I don’t think it will be humans. I think we’ll go quite early on,” says Gray. Humans probably won’t be among the survivors, partly because humans produce young extremely slowly and generally just one or two at a time.

It may seem like just a thought experiment. But discussing which species are able to survive climate change is disturbingly concrete. As a report stated recently, one in four species currently faces extinction, which is closely linked to climate change. While the seriousness of climate change is undeniable, we can make some educated guesses about which species will have a better shot at going far.

According to Jen Lau, a biologist at University Bloomington, heat tolerant and drought resistant plants, like those found in deserts, are more likely to survive. So are plants whose seeds can be spread over long distances, for example by wind or ocean currents. Plants that can adjust their flowering times may also be better able to deal with higher temperatures.

We can also look to history as a guide. Cockroaches adapted to an increasingly dry Australia tens of millions of years ago, by starting to dig holes in soil to hide. Cockroaches also tend to not be picky eaters. Having broad diets means that climate change will be less of a threat to them.

Furthermore, species called “mobile generalists” by experts can move and adapt to different environments and are more likely to last long in face of climate change. For example, deer in the US are common in suburban areas and manage to live where forests have been removed or are regularly disturbed.

Certainly, some animals would also survive if they could find a buffer: an area that is relatively protected from climate change’s consequences, such as deep sea canyons, underground caves.