【推荐1】Automatic dishwashers have been around for more than 100 years. It started in 1886 with Josephine Cochrane, a woman in Shelbyville, Illinois. She was a rich woman who could afford servants to wash her dishes, so she really didn’t mind the work. What she did mind was that her servants broke the dishes. She hosted quite a few dinner parties, and after every party the servants broke more of her expensive dishes.

Finally, Cochrane took action. First, she measured her dishes and bent wire into racks to hold them. Next, she put the racks on a wheel in a large copper boiler. Then, the boiler sprayed hot, soapy water on the dishes as a motor turned the wheel. After a hot water rinse(冲洗), the dishes were clean!

Josephine Cochrane’s friends were impressed with the machine and asked her to build more. After that, word got out fast. Soon hotel and restaurant owners who didn’t like broken dishes also were interested. Cochrane then knew that she had a wonderful machine, so she received a patent from the government, which said that only the inventor can make money from an invention. Then in 1893 Chicago held a World’s Fair where inventions from all over the world were shown. Cochrane’s labor-saving machine was a big hit. Her dishwasher won the highest award.

Cochrane’s company came out with a smaller machine in 1914. It was supposed to be for the ordinary home, but it wasn’t an immediate success. Many homes couldn’t produce the extremely hot water it needed. Also, in most homes, dishwashing wasn’t considered very difficult compared to most other housework. In fact some people liked to relax at the sink after a hard day! Sales of the home model finally picked up in the 1950s when people had more money and wanted to have more time to enjoy themselves. Now many homes have electric dishwashers that aren’t very different from the one Josephine Cochrane invented more than 100 years ago.

【推荐2】Not only does the use of plastic water bottles hurt your wallet, but it also causes pollution, wastes energy, and surprisingly wastes water. Only 23% of the plastic in America ends up in recycling bins, meaning over $1 billion worth of plastic is treated as rubbish a year. Recently, Skipping Rocks Lab has invented a kind of water bottle called Ooho.

It’s a kind of convenient, clear water bottle that can either be drunk or eaten. To drink it, you can either get rid of the membrane (膜) or tear a hole in the membrane with your teeth to pour the water into your mouth. To eat it, you simply put the whole bottle in your mouth. It’s completely insipid so you needn’t worry about any taste.

It aims for large outdoor events where tons of plastic bottles are used and frequently left behind as litter. Too much plastic is sure to do harm to the environment, which could account for the purpose of such a new invention.

The team has been working for the past two years to develop the technology and materials that are needed to produce Ooho. The price for an only bubble (泡状物) or a unit of bubbles hasn’t been decided yet, but it costs about two cents to create a unit, which is cheaper than plastic bottles. The team has also been selling Ooho water bottles in London for the past six months.

Ooho is catching many people’s attention and has raised over $1 million in only three days. It’s mostly being sold at events at the moment to interest the buyers while the production machine is getting up and running. It’s quickly making a rise, so keep an eye out for these bottles of the future.

【推荐3】Bricks are one of the oldest known building materials, dating back thousands of years. But researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found a new use for bricks: as energy storage units. A team of engineers and chemists have found a way to transform an ordinary house brick into a pseudo (伪) battery — allowing it to conduct and store electricity. The bricks are powerful enough to light an LED light bulb and cost only about $3 to make.

“I love the idea of adding value to things that are inexpensive, things that are affordable, things that we kind of take for granted,” said Julio D’Arcy, an assistant professor of chemistry at Washington University and one of the researchers on this project.

The brick battery relies on the red pigment (色素) known as iron oxide, or rust, that gives red bricks their color. The scientists pumped the bricks with several gases that react with iron oxide to produce a network of plastic fibers. These microscopic fibers coat the empty spaces inside the bricks — and conduct electricity.

“What we’re trying to do is: we’re trying to make specialized plastics that are only used on the nano (纳米) scale — where we use very little of the plastic, and we can actually insert that plastic inside construction materials.” The study is in the journal Nature Communications.

In the future, D’Arcy says, a brick wall could potentially serve a double purpose: providing structural support and storing electricity generated from renewable energy sources, such as solar panels.

The technology is still at least a few years away from being ready for the commercial market. And right now the energy storage capacity of the bricks is still pretty low — about 1 percent of a lithium (锂) battery. But the team is now testing ways to improve brick performance — because it looks like you can teach an old brick new tricks.

【推荐2】A group of second-year college students have discovered hidden writing on a page from a book from the 1500s, using a special camera system they built.

Surprisingly, finding hidden writing on very old documents isn’t all that unusual. In fact, there’s even a special name for documents like this: a palimpsest (再生羊皮纸卷).

Long ago, writing was done on parchment — thin, dried animal skins specially prepared for writing. But parchment wasn’t easy to make and wasn’t cheap. So it became common to erase the old writing off a parchment and then reuse it for another piece of writing. That’s what creates a palimpsest.

The writing erased off the parchment can’t be seen directly, but scientists have learned ways to use special lighting to reveal the original writing. But it’s unusual for young college students to discover palimpsests.

Last year, first-year students at the Rochester Institute of Technology took part in a class that brought together many students to take on a project as a group. The project was to build a special camera system that could take pictures using different kinds of light.

Over the summer, the students working on the imaging camera managed to finish it. When they were done, they borrowed several old parchments from the collection at the school’s Cary Graphic Arts Collection. When they put one of the pages under their camera system with UV light, the hidden writing suddenly appeared. Under the UV light, handwriting in French could easily be seen behind the fancy writing and decorations normally visible on the page.

Zoe, a student involved in the project, said, “This was amazing because this document has been in the Cary Collection for almost 10 years and no one noticed it.” The students are even more excited because even though the parchment is no longer part of a book, they know where 29 other pages from the same book are. The students, who are now working with others to locate the other parchments, hope these, too, will have hidden writing and that they can figure out what it means.

A．Writing.	B．Decorating.
C．Imaging.	D．Collecting.

【推荐3】To address the plastic pollution troubling the world’s seas and waterways, Cornell University chemists have developed a new polymer (聚合物) that can degrade (降解) plastic when exposed to ultraviolet radiation, according to the research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

“We have created a new plastic that has the mechanical properties required by commercial fishing gear. If it eventually gets lost in the water environment, this material can degrade on a realistic time scale,” said lead researcher Bryce Lipinski, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University. “This material could effectively reduce persistent plastic accumulation in the environment.”

Commercial fishing contributes to about half of all floating plastic waste that ends up in the oceans. Fishing nets and ropes are primarily made from three kinds of polymers, none of which easily degrade. “While research of degradable plastics has received much attention in recent years,” Lipinski said, “obtaining a material with a mechanical strength comparable to commercial plastic remains a difficult challenge.”

Coates and his research team have spent the past 15 years developing the new plastic called isotactic polypropylene oxide, or iPPO. While its original discovery was in 1949, the mechanical strength of this material was unknown before this recent work. The high isotacticity and polymer chain length of their material makes it different from previous plastics and provides its mechanical strength.

Lipinski and other scientists want no race of the polymer to be left in the environment. He notes there is precedent (先例) for the biodegradation of small chains of iPPO which could effectively make it disappear and ongoing efforts aim to prove this.

【推荐1】When we are born, we are unflawed. As we grow, we develop many complexities due to many influences in our lives. Our brain collects and retains all visual, auditory（听觉的）information from the moment we are born and to the smallest of the details. Apart from our brain having memory, cells in our body, in billions, have their own memory. In other words, our body stores both physiological and psychological memories. We are complex emotional beings in nature compared to any other living animal.

Apparently, physical and psychological memories strongly influence our emotions! Interestingly, we can create, store, and release emotion like energy. Moreover, if we do not process our negative emotions properly and suppressed for a long time, they can find a way out violently and unexpectedly. Unfortunately, we carry our guilt throughout our lives putting ever-increasing burden on our shoulders. We become heavy with guilt and anger for things we could or did not achieve, and for things we cannot have.

Both guilt and anger are useless for us. They give us no advantage. Therefore, one may ask: is there a way to put down the burden from our heavy shoulders? It is possible, indeed. Importantly, since our guilt and anger inside us neither released nor given attention, they are stored. Actually, we should process and address our emotions in order to remove from our system. We cannot just wish them away.

In fact, by acknowledging their presence and providing a channel for them to dissipate, we can dissolve our emotions gradually. Taking drugs and consuming alcohol only worsen situation. They only provide short-term comfort. Is there a better way to unload our burden? Luckily, we have a natural gift to process our feeling and emotions. Forgiveness stands first of all the other natural remedies.

Indeed, there is no better way than forgiving ourselves. Of course, we should also learn to readily forgive others. But when we learn to forgive ourselves, we also naturally forgive others.

In summary, there is no benefit carrying our years of emotional baggage. By forgiving, we can throw away the emotional baggage we carry for years. Forgive your past mistakes. The moment you start forgiving, you feel a lot lighter and years of heaviness lifted magically! To your surprise, you start feeling a lot energetic and optimistic in your daily life.