【推荐3】How many hours do you spend sitting in a chair every day? Eight hours in the office plus three hours in front of the TV after work is the norm for many people.

You probably don’t need an expert to tell you that sitting too much is not good for your health—from an increased risk of heart disease and obesity in the long term, to reduced cholesterol(胆固醇) maintenance in the short term, not to mention the strain on your neck and spine.

To make matters worse, many researches show a good diet and regular exercise can’t reduce the negative effects of sitting too much.

A 2010 study of nearly 9,000 Australians found that for each additional hour of television a person watched per day, the risk of dying rose by 11 percent. Another study tracked the health of 123,000 Americans between 1992 and 2006.The death rate for men who spent six hours or more per day sitting was a-bout 20 percent higher than for men who sat for three hours or less.

So what can we do about it? Health experts suggest we breakup those many hours spent sitting with more hours spent standing.

The BBC conducted a simple experiment with a group of 10 volunteers who usually spent most of the day sitting. They were asked to stand for at least three hours a day. The researchers took measurements on the days when the volunteers stood and when they sat around. When they looked at the data, there were some striking differences, the BBC reported.

Blood sugar leveled off much more quickly on the days when the study subjects stood compared with the days they spent in a chair. Standing also burned more calories—about 50 calories an hour. A member said although doing exercise offers many proven benefits, our bodies also need the increase in muscle activity that standing provides.

The researchers believe that even small adjustments, like standing while talking on the phone, will help.

【推荐2】Increased human activity and climate change have caused a rise of algae (藻类植物) in water bodies around the world—sometimes choking ecosystems of sunlight and oxygen. In more extreme cases, they can produce dangerous poisons that can sicken or kill people and animals. But the plenty of algae could prove crucial as our population rises beyond eight billion people worldwide because algae are crops that don’t need land, freshwater, or fertilizer to fill nutritional gaps.

And even though they are so closely associated with human’s bad impact on Earth, algae could also play vital roles in slowing climate change and helping fight against pollution, viruses, and more. With microplastic pollution documented in almost all habitats related to water, a study showed that algae can help filter microplastics from water. Algae can also filter chemicals that can be used for fertilizer.

Algae can produce more effective biofuel than traditional sources. Rescarchers at a German algae growing facility are already using it to fuel plane. Researchers believe this and other sustainable fuels could reduce carbon released from airplanes by up to 80 percent.

Animal feed containing a kind of red algae reduces harmful methane(甲烷)released from cattle by more than 80 percent. The addition works by changing the environment in a cow’s stomach, stopping the production of methane before it can be released.

Red algae can stop the copies of some viruses, and have been shown to stimulate the body’s immune (免疫的) system and could become a powerful anti-HIV medicine.

In 2019, freshwater algae were launched into space to change the CO² breathed out by astronauts on the International Space Station into oxygen. Since algae are also high in protein, they could replace up to 30 percent of astronaut food in the future.

【推荐1】While Romano’s classmates were beginning their college life, the 19-year-old Croatian young man had different dreams. In Croatia, taking a gap year is not as common as in other countries, but Romano decided to take a break for a year or two after high school and try volunteering in Africa.

Upon arrival in Arusha, Tanzania, Romano found a volunteering project through an organization. Now he helps poor children and teaches them English and math. These children are not abandoned. They come from low-income families and any help is welcome. There is no soap or running water in the school, and to learn English, the children depend on volunteers because there are not enough qualified teachers.

“They don’t have much, they are poor, but honest and happy, because they are not aware that there may be something better out there for them. As I was lecturing, I saw the materials they used for learning: worn-out pencils, one eraser for 20 children, torn and printed notebooks, and not to mention clothes and shoes. I will only tell you that uniforms are worn to conceal（掩饰）their clothing and thus to mask material inequality,” says Romano, who was therefore encouraged to launch a charity action to collect donations for children’s necessities.

Romano believes that every child has the right to the basics, including education. It is for this reason that he wants to help these little ones. “Now I realize how privileged I am in life just because I was born on another continent. I learned to appreciate more what I have and manage without the basics. As a result, I met a different culture, tested my limits and looked at things from a different perspective — a gratitude perspective,” concludes Romano, hoping that little by little, both he and other volunteers will contribute to positive change through their work.

【推荐2】Governments, financial institutions, employers, border security and police services are increasingly using facial recognition technology. This allows them to quickly confirm an individual's identity. Systems are becoming so competent that a wanted criminal can be picked out. of a crowd of thousands of people. All that's required is an image in a database to compare with the image of any number of people in a crowd.

Ordinary people, too, are using facial recognition to unlock their phones, computers and other devices. Such systems are generally quite secure. They also are instantaneous (瞬间的) and relieve people of the need to memorize passwords or PINs ( Personal Identification Numbers).

Despite these advantages, human rights groups in the U. S. have protested against the growing use of facial recognition technology for two main reasons. The first is that current facial recognition systems frequently make mistakes with certain groups of people. A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined three systems and found that they wrongly identified up to 34 percent of women who had dark skin. Another government study on facial recognition systems found that their error rates were higher for black women and Asians as well as for African men and women. The systems were much more reliable when they were used to identify white men, suggesting that their facial recognition technology had mainly been trained using white faces.

The second reason is that these systems could be used in ways that would harm human rights. If the systems improved enough to become one hundred percent reliable, police departments might use them to identify people taking part in legal protests and demonstrations. Gathering and storing such information about citizens could violate their privacy rights.

In response to such concerns, the U. S. city of Portland has forbidden the use of facial recognition by government agencies as well as by stores, restaurants and hotels in the city.