【推荐1】Have you ever heard of the group Westlife? Maybe you have, but I’m sure many of you don’t know very much about it.

Westlife is an Irish boy band group, which was made up of 6 boys in the beginning and called IOU. The group quickly became popular with young people thanks to their song Swear It Again, which was at the top of the UK charts (排行榜) in April 1999.

Chinese fans got their first chance to see Westlife on March 6th, 2006 in Beijing. Although the four-member group has been singing pop for seven years, the young boys have all grown up and their songs are still very popular. When they performed in Beijing, Westlife released (发行) their new album Face to Face in China. Face to Face has been at the top of the British charts for a long time. The album’s most popular song You Raise Me Up mixes traditional Irish music with pop music.

Although hip-hop is quite popular among the young, Westlife has no plans to change. They said, “Hip-hop is for the young, but pop can be enjoyed by moms who are busy cooking meals and raising the kids.

【推荐2】Under the first full moon of the year, music lovers in Norway sit on seats made of ice and covered with animal skins. On a frozen stage, musicians in furry hats and coats play instruments carved from ice! This show is the Ice Music Festival, the only concert in the world of its kind. This cool idea began in 1999, when musician Terje Isungset played music inside a frozen waterfall. The amazing sounds that he heard led him to start using ice as a musical instrument. Isungset spent years experimenting with ice instruments. The more he learned, the more excited he became. After years of trial and error, he was ready to start the Ice Music Festival in 2016.

To prepare the frozen instruments, Isungset hunts for the best natural sources of ice. He tests each source of ice by cutting out a piece, tapping it with his finger, and listening to the sound it produces. Experience tells him whether the ice will make a good instrument. He prefers not to use human-made ice, because he believes frozen lake water sounds better. This may be supported by science. Scientists have noticed that natural ice has fewer bubbles (气泡), which could lead to a clearer sound.

Once the ice has been sourced, professional ice carvers use tools to create instruments. They carve everything from saxophones to xylophones. The carvers often change the look of the instruments, which helps them produce special, even unique, sounds. Each year, the goal of the festival is to challenge musicians to make creative music when playing these one-of-a-kind ice instruments.

Playing the frozen instruments is a challenge. Each performance surprises both the musicians and the audience. After the concert is over, Isungset jokes that the musicians will drink their instruments. Actually, they just leave their stage and instruments behind, giving it all back to nature.

【推荐1】A team of researchers at the University of Cambridge have created an innovative floating device that uses solar power to transform polluted water or seawater into clean hydrogen (氢气) fuel and purified water.

This device is particularly beneficial for areas with limited resources or without access to the electricity, as it can operate with any open water source and does not rely on external power sources.

It takes its inspiration from photosynthesis, the process by which plants turn sunlight into food. However, unlike earlier versions of the “artificial leaf”, which could produce green hydrogen fuel from clean water sources, this new device operates from polluted or seawater sources and can produce clean drinking water-at the same time.

“In remote or developing regions, where clean water is relatively scarce and the basic facilities necessary for water purification are not readily available, water splitting (分解) is extremely difficult,” said Ariffin Mohamad Annuar, a member of the research team. “The device that could work using polluted water could solve two problems at once: it could split water to make clean fuel, and it could make clean drinking water.”

The device that can make clean fuel and clean water at once using solar power alone could help address the energy and the water crises facing so many parts of the world. For example, the indoor air pollution caused by cooking with “dirty” fuels, such as kerosene, is responsible for more than three million deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization. Cooking with green hydrogen instead could help reduce that number significantly.

“It’s such a simple design as well: in just a few steps, we can build a device that works well on water from a wide variety of sources,” said Ariffin Mohamad Annuar. “In addition, the new device uses more of the sun’s energy. The light-driven process for making solar fuels only uses a small portion of the solar spectrum (光谱) — there’s a whole lot of the spectrum that goes unused.”

【推荐3】The world’s largest paper airplane in history had a length of 45 ft. It had a wingspan of 24 ft. Its weight was 800 lb.

A 12-year-old boy named Arturo Valdenegro first created this design on a small scale and he won the contest organized by Pima Air & Space Museum. In the contest, children competed with each other to decide whose airplane was the farthest flyer.

A team of the Great Paper Airplane Project decided to build a much larger version of the winning airplane. They initially built a 5-ft model for trial. The trial model for the desert eagle project was fitted together by hand. This was done to determine how well the project design would perform on a grander scale. The next part of the project involved the building of a slightly larger model of the desert eagle. This model was a 15-ft plane. The team experimented with this model on the back of a pickup truck that was moving fast. For the final model, a type of corrugated (波纹状的) cardboard was used.

The team managed to free the airplane with the help of a Sikorsky S-58T helicopter. Initially, it was planned that the paper airplane would be released at a height of 5000 ft. However, some difficulties arose. The airplane was swaying (摇晃) heavily because of the surrounding wind. In this situation, it might be perilous for the helicopter. Thus, it was released at a height of about 2700 ft.

The paper airplane flew a distance of 59 ft. Even at a reduced height, it was able to glide (滑翔) for a period of about 10 seconds. It flew at a speed of at least 100 miles per hour even at a lower height. Although it crashed after that, it was considered a big step forward.

The project was conducted for a reason. It aimed to draw bright young minds to the engineering and the aviation industry (航空业). It seems to have been successful, at least to some extent. Young ones like Valdenegro have shown interest in the industry.

【推荐3】Indoor Skydiving

Have you ever dreamt of flying? Have you ever wanted to experience the excitement of skydiving, but didn’t want to jump out of a plane? Indoor skydiving has opened up a whole new world for you to try flying.

Indoor skydiving is an activity, simulating（模拟）the free fall of a skydive. That means you learn to fly in a column of air produced by a wind tunnel （风道） inside a limited area. Before flying, you need to wear certain equipment to protect you. And each of you is equipped with an instructor that helps you learn to control your body while flying. But you aren’t trained to be more aware in the sky as a normal skydiver.

To be an indoor flyer, you can be at all ages. Fear of height or lack (缺少) of experience won’t stop you from trying. The only real limitation preventing people from flying is weight limit. Countless physically challenged flyers have safely flown with the help of experienced instructors.

Although indoor skydiving gets its name from skydiving, the similarities between the two are actually very few. The one they are in common is in the sense that they both share the freedom of flying.

However, in traditional dives, skydivers usually step out of a plane from more than 10,000 feet high, while indoor skydiving just needs flyers to lean forward and lie on the air. Also, being an outdoor activity, skydiving depends on the weather. The wind, rain, or snow can cancel your plans to jump. Indoor skydiving removes this effect from the picture. Normally, a skydive lasts just between 45-60 seconds, but tunnels allow skydivers to fly longer and as much as they like.

While most people put skydiving in the must-do list, indoor skydiving is much more than that! What used to take skydivers tens of thousands of jumps and years of experience can be learned in a relatively shorter period of time. Skydivers could be trained at lower cost compared to being trained in the sky. Because people of all ages can fly, children are quickly becoming some of the most talented skydivers. Thus, all these will certainly benefit the development of skydiving.