【推荐2】Look into the future of what we eat, and you'll start wondering what could happen to our meals. As the world's population surpasses nine billion, our food needs will grow by 50 percent. How do we meet them without clearing more forests or expanding industrial agriculture, one of the most significant contributors to climate change? How do we keep our soil healthy, so that crops can grow well?

These questions are challenging. "But one thing is clear," says food journalist Lin Yee Yuan. "To feed nine billion people," she warns, "we're going to need all hands to the pump."

Many of those hands likely will be trying to find new ways to produce protein as the environmental stress of animal production becomes increasingly great. Animal production represents about one-seventh of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions. Beef produced in concentrated feeding operations typically requires nearly eight times the water and 160 times the land per calorie as vegetables and grain. No wonder United Nations officials have been urging everyone to eat less beef—and new food companies are taking it seriously.

Among them is the producer of the Beyond Burger, a patty with beefy coloring and protein from plants that is already available throughout the United States in about 10,000 grocery stores and many restaurants.

Other solutions take inspiration from nature. By the early 2000s, staff at the Land Institute were selectively breeding a grain to create a variety with better production, seed size, and disease resistance.

Today the result, called Kernza, is growing on 500 acres in the United States. A variety of food producers are readying it for market—including Bien Cuit, a high-end bakery in New York, which has made bread with it, and Hopworks Urban Brewery in Oregon, which sells a Kernza beer. "Whatever our meals may be like in 50 years, climate change will require us to make better use of what we already have," says global food expert Raj Patel. "The 21st century is teaching us that things once thought to be weeds and pests could turn out to be food."

【推荐1】3D printing technology enables economies to produce goods locally, so conventional wisdom has been that it would greatly reduce international trade; however, new research by University of California San Diego and World Bank presents solid evidence that 3D printing expanded trade.

The paper, co-authored by Caroline Freund, economist and dean of the School of Global Policy and Strategy, finds that 3D printing varied production processes, but supply chains remained intact. The study is the first to examine the impact 3D printing has on trade.

Published in the Journal of International Economics, the paper looks at the production of hearing aids most commonly produced by 3D printing. The results show that the shift to 3D printing led to a doubling or near doubling in producers’ exports after five years and the technology was the main cause of the rise in exports. Freund and co-authors also examined 35 other products, such as running shoes and aircraft parts that are increasingly being 3D printed and they found similar patterns.

One reason behind the expansion is that printing hearing aids in large numbers requires a large investment in technology and machinery. The countries that were early innovators(改革者)—Denmark, Switzerland and Singapore-control exports of the goods, while middle-income economies such as China, Mexico and Vietnam also have been able to greatly increase their market shares. In addition, hearing aids are light products, which makes them fairly cheap to ship internationally. The same is true for the other products the authors examined-lighter products are associated with more trade growth.

“Policymakers often view 3D printing as a means to shorten supply chains while in fact it is more likely to improve trade and reshape supply chains,” said Freund, former global director of Trade, Investment and Competitiveness at the World Bank. “While the analysis of 3D printing’s effect on trade is positive, it has the possibility of being short-lived. If 3D printers become more accessible to local producers or even consumers in some sectors, production could be more localized, stopping development opportunities through trade.”

【推荐3】Deng Qingming, a Chinese astronaut and native of Jiangxi province in East China, aged 55, has never been to space. He was a member of the backup crew (后备人员) for the Shenzhou-9, Shenzhou-10 and Shenzhou-11 missions.

Of China's first group of 14 trainees for the space program, he was among the six who never made it onto the crew. Five of his colleagues retired in 2014 without a space flight, making Deng the last man standing, with feet firmly on ground. "Being backup doesn't mean you don't need to work. I must watch closely in the control center and offer all I know about the mission and the spacecraft in case of emergency. Only when the crew returns to Earth will my mission be complete." Deng said during an interview. No matter how difficult the road to space flight is, he never once thought of giving up. At the end of every mission, he would quickly clear his mind of distractions and welcome new challenges with a positive attitude.

In 20l3, Deng discovered a tiny kidney(肾)stone. While this is not a condition of immediate concern under normal circumstances, it is different for astronauts, who must maintain arigorousstandard of personal health. Deng underwent two surgeries, the first unsuccessful. After suffering from the disease for almost 2 months with a tube placed inside his kidney, the stone was finally removed.

When training for Shenzhou XI, scheduled to be launched in 2016, Deng along with crew member Chen Dong was limited in a spacecraft simulator no bigger than 10 square meters for 33 days. They had no showers, ate space food exclusively and bore loud noise and strong light as they tried to sleep. On the day of the announcement, however, he was not selected.

"The success of the mission comes before my personal wishes," said Deng. His passion has inspired his daughter Deng Manqi, who now works for ground control in Beijing.