Hoarding disorder is a persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions because of a perceived need to save them. A person with hoarding disorder experiences distress at the thought of getting rid of the items. Excessive accumulation of items, regardless of actual value,     1    .

Hoarding often creates such cramped living conditions that homes may be filled to capacity, with only narrow pathways     2     through stacks of clutter. Countertops, sinks, stoves, desks, stairways and     3     all other surfaces are usually piled with stuff. And when there's no more room inside, the clutter may spread to the garage, vehicles, yard and other storage facilities.

Hoarding ranges from mild to severe. In some cases, hoarding may not have much impact on your life, while in other cases it seriously affects your functioning on a daily basis.

People with hoarding disorder may not see it as a problem, making treatment challenging. But     4    treatment can help people with hoarding disorder understand how their beliefs and behaviors can be changed so that they can live safer, more enjoyable lives.

Getting and saving an excessive number of items, gradual buildup of clutter in living spaces and difficulty discarding things are usually the first signs and symptoms of hoarding disorder, which often     5     during the teenage to early adult years.

As the person grows older, he or she typically starts     6     things for which there is no immediate need or space. By middle age, symptoms are often severe and may be harder to treat.

Problems with hoarding gradually develop over time and tend to be a private behavior. Often, significant clutter has developed by the time it reaches the attention of others.

Excessive acquiring and refusing to discard items results in:

● Disorganized piles or stacks of items, such as newspapers, clothes, paperwork, books or     7     items

● Possessions that crowd and clutter your walking spaces and living areas and make the space unusable for the     8    purpose, such as not being able to cook in the kitchen or use the bathroom to bathe

● Buildup of food or trash to unusually excessive, unsanitary levels

● Significant distress or problems functioning or keeping yourself and others safe in your home

●     9    with others who try to reduce or remove clutter from your home

● Difficulty organizing items, sometimes losing important items in the clutter

Hoarding disorder is different from collecting. People who have collections, such as stamps or model cars,     10    search out specific items, categorize them and carefully display their collections. Although collections can be large, they aren't usually cluttered and they don't cause the distress and impairments that are part of hoarding disorder.

The scientist’s main task is to discover how things work in the universe. But few scientists have placed themselves under the    1     So even though the     2    scientific method, which mainly includes hypothesis, data collection, and statistical analysis, is written down, the method by which scientists come to     3     conclusions is hard to identify. Two of the essential qualities a scientist needs to have seem to be curiosity and creativity. People who are curious usually have a mixture of seemingly     4     desires: They are looking for originality and yet they also want everything in its proper place. To settle the conflict between statistics and     5     scientists often have to be creative, and think outside the box-approach the problem from different erections. They must have a vivid imagination and a strong intuition in order for new     6     to be made. It echoes something the    7     Carl Sagan once said. He believes that every child “starts out as a scientist” and every child is    8     with the “sense of wonder and awe”.

When Yoshino akira, a Japanese chemist, worked on rechargeable batteries in the 1980s, it was with a view to powering portable devices. His Nobel prize-winning research led to the first     1     lithiumion (Lion) battery. These now power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles (EVS). But the Japanese firms that, building on Mr Yoshino's work,     2     the Lion business early on have lost their edge. CATL, China's battery giant, and the energy arm of LG, a South Korean group, have surpassed Japan's Panasonic as the world's largest     3     of EV batteries. Others are catching up in the production of materials and components.

Japanese battery-makers want to regain their rightful place at the     4     of the pack. To do so they are betting on solid-sate batteries. These still shuttle lithiunions between the anode (阳极) and the cathode (阴极) to charge and discharge, but the electrolyze (电解液) where this shutting happens is solid not liquid. That makes the batteries more stable and potentially more powerful. It also avoids the need for bulky cooling systems, required for fast-charging Lion systems. Cars equipped with solid-state batteries could be lighter, which increases     5    .

Japan     6     more battery-tech patents a year than any other country; second ranked South Korea files half as many. Japanese firms and inventors accounted for more than one in two solid-state-related patents between 2014 and 2018. More are coming. Industrial and chemicals firms, of which Japan has plenty, are preparing for the materials needed to bring the technology to market.

Murata, a big manufacturer which bought Sony's battery     7     in 2017, plans to begin mass-producing smaller solid-state batteries this autumn. Nakajima Norio, Murata's boss, sees "lots of     8     in wearables", since the batteries do not bum or get hot (which is hwy they are already used in things like pacemakers). Honda and Nissan, two other carmakers, are also eyeing the technology.

    9    , if making solid-state batteries were easy, manufacturers would be mass-producing them. It isn't. Water stains the materials, so factories must be kept ultra-day. Mitsui Kinzoku, an engineering firm, has been testing mass production of solid electrolytes and found that it is "indeed a very difficult process", in the words of Takahashi Tsukass, who is involved in the project.

Even if they can get the technology right, Japanese firms are not running     10    , as they had seen in Liion's early days. Most big carmakers, including Ford, Hyundai and Volkswagen, have solid-state cars in the works. They may want to make the batteries themselves. That's some solid competition.

China’s GPS Challenger Takes Its Place on the World Stage

GPS was created in the early 1970s U.S., when the Department of Defense (DOD) wanted to guarantee a stable, accessible satellite navigation system for military use. This-system reached fully operational     1     in 1993. GPS currently delivers two levels of service: Standard Positioning Service, which is available to all users on a continuous, worldwide basis; and Precise Positioning Service, whose     2     is restricted to the U.S. Armed Forces, U.S. Federal agencies.

In keeping with its pattern of imitating U.S. technology, the Soviet Union decided to field its own GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System). Development of GLONASS began 3 years after the United States started work on GPS. GLONASS provides “real-time positioning and speed data for     3    , sea, and airborne objects around the world.”

An agreement in 2000 allowed China to use GLONASS for basic navigation. Multiple sweeping agreements with China in 2019 include both the use of GLONASS and     4     with ground radar stations built to support BeiDou.

Galileo is the European GNSS. The European Commission and European Space Agency built Galileo together to provide their member states with an independent, European     5     to GPS or GLONASS whose owners can degrade or     6     the system at any time. Galileo went live in 2016 and currently has 26 satellites in orbit.

China decided to develop BeiDou after the 1995 — 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, when an unexpected disruption in GPS caused the People’s Liberation Army to lose track of its ballistic missiles (弹道导弹) fired over the Taiwan Strait. China decided it could not afford to repeat such an incident. Even though China had a     7     agreement with Russia to use GLONASS for basic navigation, China persisted with its plan to develop BeiDou.

Although every GNSS broadcasts a more accurate signal for only military and government use, BeiDou     8     provides these sensitive users with information about the status and current accuracy of the navigation signal in real time. China aggressively     9     BeiDou to private sectors, especially as part of its BRI in Asian countries. By the end of 2019, more than 70 percent of Chinese smartphones utilized BeiDou. China aims to use BeiDou, together with its fifth-generation cellphone technology, to dominate the market for telecommunications services, which China     10     will include next-generation technologies such as autonomous vehicles. Agreements to use BeiDou have already been signed with 120 partners in more than 30 countries.

Satellites Can Help Us Fight Climate Change

At the beginning of 2021, President Joe Biden exclaimed that “science is back” as we continued our efforts to     1     the COVID emergency. That phrase continues to ring true across the federal government. Science and its applications are being used at every agency to deal with public health     2    , build new transportation infrastructure, inform policy decisions and tackle the climate crisis.

Recently the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological Survey assumed     3     of Landsat 9 from NASA, which built and launched it in 2021.This satellite is designed to     4     Earth’s land, water and other natural resources. Landsat missions support environmental sustainability and climate resilience. The Landsat program, which launched in July 1972, has helped us understand our planet and the changes that are occurring on it. That partnership has propelled research and observation forward through the launch of     5     Landsat satellites, each replacing its predecessors and working in tandem with new capabilities and strengths.

I attended the historic launch of Landsat 9 in California. It was nothing     6     of amazing. I toured the mission control center and met a young scientist from the Navajo Nation living far away from home. She uses Landsat     7     to see her home from many miles away, and with such data, she enables her community to manage water resources in the face of a changing climate. This is the power and beauty of science at work.

All around the globe, scientists are using Landsat and other imagery to interpret what is happening on Earth today and to compare it with the 50 years’     8     of data the Landsat program has collected.

This science-based program and those like it across federal agencies are powerful tools in our efforts to responsibly manage our resources. Their prioritization helps to demonstrate the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to lead with science. So, too, the resources provided through the president’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act will be key to the development of longer-term sustainability measures as we     9     to climate change, including building more resilient communities and protecting our natural environment.

Landsat NEXT is the upcoming mission we will develop with NASA to power better science and decision-making for the next 50 years. Science is indeed     10     us on a path to a brighter future.