【推荐1】Honey can be used to measure air pollution, according to a new study from researchers at the University of British Columbia’s Pacific Centre for Isotopic and Geochemical Research (PCIGR).

The research, which was recently published in Nature Sustainability, drew on a survey of urban beehives (蜂房) around Vancouver that contained small levels of lead, according to The New York Times. Using beehives to measure pollutants could be a cost-effective way to monitor what is in the air.

“The good news is that the chemical composition of honey in Vancouver reflects its environment and is extremely clean,” the study’s lead author Kate E. Smith told the school’s website. “We also found that the concentration of elements increased the closer you got to downtown Vancouver, and that the lead largely came from man-made sources.”

The Vancouver area honey showed levels that were below the global average for things like lead, and the University of British Columbia website said someone would “have to consume more than 600 grams, or two cups, of honey every day to exceed tolerable levels.”

Hives for Humanity, a nonprofit in Vancouver, started the study when it asked a professor at the University of British Columbia to look at honey for pollutants. Through the honey samples alone, Smith said the researchers could find higher concentrations of lead in areas with heavy traffic or industrial activity. Researchers also noted that the lead wasn’t traceable to any local sources, which led them to think that large ships entering Vancouver from Asia could be the source of the pollutants.

“One of the exciting parts of this study is that it bridges science with community interests,” Smith told the school’s website. “Honey sampling can easily be performed by citizen scientists in other urban centers, even if they lack other environmental monitoring skills.”

【推荐2】The world itself is becoming much smaller by using modern traffic and modern communication means. Life today is much easier than it was hundreds of years ago, but it has brought new problems. One of the biggest problems is pollution. To pollute means to make things dirty. Pollution comes in many ways. We see it, smell it, drink it and even hear it.

Man has been polluting the earth.The more people，the more pollution.Many years ago，the problem was not so serious because there were not so many people.When the land was used up or the river was dirty in one place，man moved to another place.But this is no longer true.Man is now slowly polluting the whole world.

Air pollution is still the most serious.It’s bad for all living things in the world，but it is not the only one kind of pollution. Water pollution kills our fish and pollutes our drinking water. Noise pollution makes us angry more easily.

Many countries are making rules to fight pollution. They stop people from burning coal in houses and factories from putting dirty smoke into the air. Pollution by SO₂ is now the most dangerous kind of air pollution.It is caused by heavy traffic.We are sure that if there are fewer people driving，there will be less air pollution.

The earth is our home. We must take care of it.That means keeping the land，water and air clean.And we must take care of the rise in pollution at the same time.

【推荐2】A study found that of young Danes who played video games in English, those who did so regularly outside school scored higher on English vocabulary tests than their peers who did not.

With video games, “all of sudden English becomes an instrument, something that's very useful for them in order to progress in the game, "says the author of the study, Signe Hannibal Jensen, professor at the University of Southern Denmark. This changes kids' focus from "learning to learn", as in a classical school setting, to "learning to play".

It makes sense that “the very things that we can't drag out of students in school are the kinds of things that they're doing for fun on their own outside school,” says Steven Thorne, a professor of second language acquisition at Portland State University. “You're sharing an activity. You're sharing a passion,” he says.

The language learning isn't only effective in learning English. From Internet-spotty central Pennsylvania, Fiona Girotti explained how her love of K-pop led her to turn to an online gaming platform she used to learn Korean. She says learning grammar online is tough, and gaming isn't a direct replacement for in-person- instruction. “But you get good at conversations, sentences, and things you can say to anyone,” says Fiona.

And her online language practice is working. When Ms. Girotti listens to pop now, she can understand many words. It's not really the same as being in class, though. “Of course, classes are structured. When you're just me, earning independently, you don't really understand the grammar,” she says. She uses a grammar app on her phone to understand tricky sentences.

Dr. Thorne notes that video games are not a perfect solution. "Some gaming environments are very language heavy and language rich. Others don't really require much language at all,"he says. He warns that gaming isn't always good, and players can become dependent on games. But combine a quality, communication-dependent game with the 15 hours a week kids spend gaming, and learning will come out of that, he says.

In the future, video games might become a more practical option among the instruments language learners already use, including phone apps, podcasts. YouTube videos, and in-person instruction Jonathon Reinhardt, an associate professor at the University of Arizona and president of the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium(CALICO), says it makes sense that gaming would increasingly enter into more formal classroom settings. “What we're going to see is generation who grows up with games and recognizes their potential as learning objects,” he says. “They have the skills and the abilities to build these sorts of things.”

【推荐3】It hadn't been easy, but Elia Gonzalez had always managed to keep her family fed by stretching her husband's modest income as a cook at a restaurant in Puerto Rig's capital, San Juan. But that changed in mid-March, when those bars closed and her daughter's school, where she'd gotten free breakfast and lunch, did too.

By April 20, Elia and her husband had to skip meals to save food for their children. Still, by the end of April, all they could give their children was a bowl of rice with an egg mixed in.

Her sons, 4 and 5-year-olds, would ask for more. But her oldest daughter, Angellia, a talkative kindergartener, tried to comfort her mother.

“She said, 'Mama, I'm still hungry',   Elia said, “but she told me it was OK because she was big and could wait until I got more food. That hit me hard."

A study in 2015 found that 22 percent of adults reported skipping meals because they didn't have money for food in Puerto Rico. "Now, the rate is much higher,“ said Jose Caraballo-Cueto, co-author of the study. "The unemployment rate has risen to 46 percent and the average saving rate here is zero. "

The worsening food crisis has brought people in Puerto Rico closer. Christel Galindez, a community leader, has been picking up thirty cooked meals a day from a church near her home and delivering them to different families every day. "Do you know when people are really in need?” Christel asked. "When you show up with a plate of food and they start to cry!"

During her daily food delivery run last Wednesday, she drove up to Elia's front door playing a birthday song through her car's speakers. Angellia rushed out with a big smile and started dancing to the music when Christel handed three containers of food and three cupcakes to her mother.

"Thank you so much. Today happened to be Angellia's sixth birthday. But I had nothing in the kitchen," said Elia, who was struggling to hold back her tears.