【推荐1】In honor of National Park Week, here’s a list of some of the striking features that you can find throughout America.

Petrified Forest National Park

Petrified Forest National Park is not necessarily a dangerous place…as long as you don’t steal the stones. The fossils (化石) are beautiful and somewhat look like precious stones, which makes them an attractive souvenir. But as with all National Park lands, visitors aren’t allowed to take anything from the site, including rocks, plants and animals. And for good reason, removing any of these items can harm the local ecosystem or degrade the geological features. Legend has it that taking a rock can bring about misfortune. Due to this reason, the park receives letters with returned rocks from people wishing for forgiveness for fossil theft.

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park was the first-ever national park, established in 1872. With scenic mountains and rivers and an abundance of wildlife, Yellowstone is home to more than 10,000 hydrothermal features. These include hot springs, mudpots, and over 500 geysers formed from the 2.1 million-year-old super volcano hiding below Yellowstone’s surface. Visitors from all over the world flock to Yellowstone National Park for its geysers.

Mammoth Cave National Park

With tunnels stretching over 420 miles, Mammoth Cave is the world’s largest cave system. Nearly 10 million years ago, water began to swirl its way through the limestone bed, eventually shaping the cave’s massive tunnels. Inside the cave are the classic stalactites and stalagmites, but you’ll also find other unique formations.

Devil’s Tower National Monument

The origins of this unique rock formation is that Devil’s Tower once constituted the inside of a volcano. Eventually, the softer outside rock of the eroded, leaving only the harder igneous rock behind. Among the local peoples, Devil’s Tower is highly sacred. Each community passes down legends of its creation, which typically include someone escaping a big bear and finding refuge atop the rock.

【推荐1】Mexico City is making various strategies to fight against severe water shortage, as a years-long lack of rainfall continues to impact the local water supply. The water crisis is a direct result of falling levels of rain within the Cutzamala System, which supplies the city of nearly 10 million people, and of its primary water source, the Valle de Bravo reservoir. Levels at the reservoir have fallen significantly after years of limited rainfall.

“Mexico currently has a major problem in terms of water due to climate change,” Sandra Lopez, a research er at the public policy research center Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, said. “But it can also be very much linked to the country’s management problems, since we have different factors, such as the fact that not enough resources and financing have been allocated to management.” This, for obvious reasons, means that the population and Mexican society in general is experiencing water stress, which we are only just identifying as a potential problem.

The water shortage affects about one-fourth of the population in the Mexican capital, which is witnessing daily water disruptions (中断) in various areas, making it difficult for residents to undertake essential tasks such as cooking, cleaning and bathing. “In the neighborhood where I am, they start to cut off the water supply at about 1 1 am. It comes very slowly,” Sergio Ramos, a clerk at Navycar car wash in Mexico City, said. The water supply only lasts seven or eight hours a day, he said. Amid the continuing crisis, the federal, state and city governments are urging citizens to conserve water by fixing faulty faucets (水龙头), making use of waste water, and taking shorter showers. These actions, aimed at reducing consumption, could contribute to extending the city’s water supply. With the shortage projected to last until May, water conservation efforts will have to continue for some time.

Some citizens are actively employing measures such as using rainwater or bottled water, while the government is pursuing additional strategies, including reducing water consumption in public buildings, using innovative water-saving devices, and making a plan to augment the city’s water supply. Educational initiatives are also underway to the Cutzamala System.

“The Cutzamala System dams are at low storage levels due to the lack of rain and the drought in the country,” said Mexico City Water System, which manages the city’s drinking water supply. “In this context, at the same time there have been low levels of storage in the tanks that distribute water in the Azcapotzalco district.”

The National Water Commission, or Conagua, explained that there is a 29 percent deficit(缺乏)in the country’s reservoirs, compared with historical data for November.

【推荐1】Children can gain a stronger connection with the environment through story writing, according to a new study. The research was focused on the issue of plastic litter in Latin American countries along the Pacific Ocean.

The experts set out to explore how a story-writing activity may influence the opinions of children about plastic litter, as well as how their behavior may be affected. “A key element of our project was to examine the children’s responses to questionnaires (调查表) they completed before and after writing these stories,” said study co-author Dr. Kayleigh Wyles. “We found that their knowledge on the topic increased and they became more active, as they reported doing more pro-environmental acts afterwards.”

The children were asked to use their imaginations about litter items that are commonly found on the beach, such as straws and plastic bags. They were then instructed to imagine how these items ended up on the beach in the first place. The writing project showed that children were more likely to think about ways of preventing litter from entering the environment, rather than just cleaning it up. According to the researchers, the most popular solutions suggested in the stories were the regeneration and reduction of litter.

Overall, nearly 90 children participated in the study and in more than half of the stories, the children showed awareness of the dangers of plastic pollution in the marine (海洋的) environment, including the risk of animal involvement. Many stories described consequences of animals ingesting plastic, such as injuries or death.

“Stories offer a new and different way to explore what people believe and how they understand their environment,” said lead study author Estelle Praet. “The results were truly inspiring and showed the children’s awareness of plastic’s impact on marine life and the environment.”

【推荐2】We’ve all been in a position where life gets busy, schedules are difficult to coordinate and connecting with friends feels harder than ever. With some friendships, we may lose touch and want to reconnect. However，the more time that passes, the more uncertain it can feel if they want to hear from us.

A recent study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says it’s time to reach out. Researchers found numerous benefits when reaching out to friends and old acquaintances. Especially if you’re unsure of how well they’ll receive hearing from you. The study, led by Dr Peggy Liu, is called The Surprise of Reaching Out: Appreciated More Than We Think. In the study, researchers posed the question: Do people accurately understand how much other people value being reached out to by someone in their social circle? To answer this question, researchers carried out 13 experiments with more than 5,900 participants. In the experiments, researchers measured how much people estimated their friends or acquaintances would appreciate them reaching out versus how much those on the receiving end did appreciate it. They also examined different forms of communication-phone calls, texts, emails, notes or even small gifts—and their impact.

Over the series of experiments, experts discovered a similar trend: those reaching out significantly underestimated how much their friends would appreciate hearing from them. Plus, the more unexpected the communication was, the more the friend on the receiving end appreciated it. “People are fundamentally social beings and enjoy connecting with others,” the researchers wrote.

In fact, what made these moments of reaching out so impactful was the effort they showed—no matter the form of communication. Dr Amie Gordon, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan, emphasises the importance of small moments and making efforts in relationships in a Psychology Today article. “In a busy life, these little moments might feel just like that—little moments that don’t really matter ... But each moment we ignore is a missed opportunity to connect and build up an emotional bank of positive moments.”

The science is clear—people appreciate the effort we put into our friendships. And we greatly underestimate it. One phenomenon that may explain why those who reached out underestimated their positive impact is because of “the liking gap”. Psychologist Terri Apter writes in Psychology Today that the liking gap is a tendency to “how we often underestimate other’s responses to us”, and the reality that other people like us more than we may think.

【推荐3】For all those who agree with Neil Gaiman’s motto in American Gods that “a town isn’t a town without a bookstore,” what might be the perfect holiday choice has just been listed on Airbnb: the chance to become a bookseller for a week or two.

For the total cost of ￡150 a week, guests at The Open Book in Wigtown, Scotland’s national book town, will be expected to sell books for 40 hours a week while living in the flat above the shop. Given training in bookselling from Wigtown’s community of booksellers, they will also have the chance to put their “own stamp” on the store while they’re there. “The Open Book’s aim is to celebrate bookshops, encourage education in running independent bookshops and welcome people around the world to Scotland’s national book town,” says the Airbnb listing.

The Open Book is leased (出租) by the Wigtown Book Festival from a local family. Organisers have been letting paying volunteers run the shop for a week or two at a time, and opened the experience up to the world at large.

“I wouldn’t call it a working holiday,” said Adrian Turpin, director of the Wigtown Book Festival. “It’s not about cheap labour (体力劳动) — it’s about offering people an experience.” The money is “just necessary to cover our costs,” said Turpin,admitting that “it can be a hard life, selling books in a small town, so it’s not a holiday for everybody.”

“I think the shop would have closed,without this,” he said. “So part of the idea was to get new people in — people who would hopefully end up having a good time and a long-standing relationship with the town.”

The idea comes at a difficult moment for independent booksellers. In 2005, there were 1,535 independent bookshops in the UK, with the number dropping to 939 by 2014.

So far, The Open Book has been leased around 10 times, with guests including those from The Bookshop Band, a librarian from Portland, a Dutch government employee, and an 80-year-old couple.