【推荐3】Hunger and malnutrition still exist in the world. Luckily, there are exciting, creative solutions to solving the extra food coming from restaurants, grocery stores, and farmers.     1    

On June 7, 2022, Spain adopted a draft bill on leftovers. Food businesses will have to submit their plans to reduce food waste.     2     Restaurants will soon be required to provide containers for customers to take home their leftovers. Although this may seem like normal practice, in Spain, this is not the custom. With this upcoming law, diners can request their leftovers to be wrapped in recycled packaging for no extra cost.     3     Supermarkets will also be asked to donate their unsold food to food banks and neighborhood organizations.

    4     It can help reduce greenhouse gasses, ensure there is more food for the hungry, and save money in an economic depression. It may also heal nature as there’ll be less demand to destroy forest to grow crops and raise livestock. This, in turn, could reduce the usage of water and decrease pollution in the agricultural sector.

Along with France and Italy, Spain is paving the way for other countries to address this global issue. Spain hopes to enforce these new laws by 2023 and is also developing an awareness program to educate the consumer. Much food waste also comes from within the household.     5     Hence, teaching children about food waste is a big step towards making the world a better, less hungry place.

【推荐1】Recently I’ve been drawn to books which motivate me to look at myself, and hopefully make me a better “me”. The Courage to Be Disliked, by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koya, has a title I just can’t go past.

The book has taken Japan by storm, using the theories of philosopher Alfred Adler to create conversations between a fictional philosopher and a young man. The conversations cover many broad, interesting and touchy topics. The philosopher character sticks by the theories of Adler, and explains how we are competent to determine our own lives, and be free of the influence of past experiences and others’ expectations. It’s a way of thinking that allows us to develop the courage to change and to ignore the limitations placed on us.

These often complex topics are played out in a conversational style between the two men. While it’s easy to follow the conversations, the topics will knock around in your own head as you work out whether you sit on the side of the philosopher, the young man, or somewhere in between. The book is well-received by readers primarily owing to the fact that it presents two well-balanced perspectives in the arguments. You’ll find yourself doing household chores, or at your keyboard, unpacking all the information in your mind and coming to your own conclusions.

You will wholeheartedly agree on some points and want to throw the book at the wall at others. Its content is polarising (两极化的) and I certainly don’t agree with everything the philosopher or the young man says, but I think that’s the point. The Courage to Be Disliked is there to spark a conversation with yourself and do some slightly uncomfortable soul-searching.

【推荐2】Professors at the University of California San Diego have developed microrobots, which can be a potential treatment for life-threatening cases of bacterial pneumonia, a serious disease affecting lungs and making breathing difficult. In mice, the microrobots safely removed pneumonia-causing bacteria in the lungs and resulted in 100% survival while untreated mice all died within three days after infection.

The microrobots are made of algae (藻类) cells whose surfaces are covered with substances that are filled with antibiotics (抗生素). The algae provides movement, which allows the microrobots to swim around and make antibiotics go directly to more bacteria in the lungs, helping absorb bacteria and clear them of infected cells. This give the microrobots the ability to reduce bacterial infection, which in turn makes them more effective at fighting lung infection.

The work is a joint effort by engineering professors Joseph and Zhang Liangfang. Together, they have pioneered the development of tiny drug-delivering robots that can be safely used in live animals to treat bacterial infections in the stomach and blood. Treating bacterial lung infection is the latest in their line of work.

“In the traditional treatment, sometimes only a very small number of antibiotics will get into the lungs. That’s why many current antibiotic treatments for pneumonia don’t work as well as needed,” said Victor Nizet, a co-worker of Joseph and Zhang “Based on these mouse data, we see that the microrobots could potentially improve the use of antibiotics to kill bacteria and save more patients’ lives.”

The work is still at the proof-of-concept stage. The team plans to do more basic research to understand exactly how the microrobots interact with the immune system (免疫系统). Next steps also include studies to confirm the effectiveness of the microrobot treatment before testing it in larger animals and eventually, in humans. “We’re pushing the boundary further in the field of targeted drug delivery,” said Zhang.

【推荐3】The Bridegroom's Oak, a 500­-year-old tree just outside of Eutin, in Germany, has its own postal address and receives around 40 letters every day. They're sent by love seekers from around the world, in the hope that someone will read them and write back.

With so many dating apps and services available nowadays, sending letters to a tree hardly sounds like the best way to find love. However, there's something charming about sending a letter and allowing fate (命运) to work its magic, so the Bridegroom's Oak remains popular even now.

In 1890, a local girl named Minna fell in love with a young chocolate maker named Wilhelm, but her father didn't allow her to see the boy. Instead of giving up on each other, the two started exchanging love letters secretly, by leaving them in a knothole (节孔) of an oak tree. After about one year, Minna's father found out about their continued relationship, but instead of punishing them, he gave them permission to marry. The two lovers got married on June 2, 1891, under the oak tree that helped keep their romance (罗曼史) alive.

The couple's story spread around Eutin, and soon, people unable to find love started writing romantic letters and leaving them in the tree's knothole. By 1927, it was already known as Bridegroom's Oak and was so popular that it had its own address and postal code, allowing people from all over Germany and even abroad to send in their letters.

Love seekers visiting the Bridegroom's Oak need respect only one simple rule. They can check all the letters in its knothole, and take with them the one they wish to reply to, but they have to put the others back for other people to find.

So far the Bridegroom's Oak has been responsible for at least 100 marriages and many other romantic relationships.

【推荐1】Steel plays a significant role in the automobiles we drive and the transportation infrastructure that connects us. However, it also contributes to 7% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. In recognition of this, 45 nations made a pledge in 2021 to strive towards nearly zero-emission steel production within the next ten years.

However, how is it possible to produce the steel required for society with zero emissions?

A new study shows that if we are truly committed to reaching zero emissions, we must be prepared for a scenario where the amount of steel we can produce is lower. Japan has set a target for a 46% reduction in emissions from steel by 2030, and zero emissions by 2050. So far, the roadmap for achieving this relies heavily on future innovations in technology.

In the study, Dr. Takuma Watari, a Japanese researcher argues that there is no silver bullet. He says that current plans to cut carbon emissions underestimate how difficult it will be to develop CCS and hydrogen technologies and deploy them widely: “These technologies still face serious technical, economic, and social challenges, and have yet to be implemented at scale.

According to Dr. Watari, “zero-emission steel production is possible by 2050, but in limited quantity and quality compared to current total production. This is due to the limited availability of zero-emission compatible resources and downcycling practices of scrap steel.”

The implication is clear. It is not enough to rely on a technological silver bullet materializing to transform the supply of steel. We also need to look seriously at strategies to reduce demand by shifting our culture of steel use and improving our material efficiency.

Dr. Watari concludes that we do need to invest in technological innovations, but we cannot simply wait for them to appear. Instead, steel users need to prepare for a world where there is less steel available: “We do not deny the need to invest in innovative production technologies. Rather, what we want to highlight is that we should look for far more strategic options, instead of simply relying on silver bullet production technologies.”

【推荐2】International airline Emirates says it successfully flew a Boeing 777 on a test flight with one engine running on a mixture of “sustainable” fuel.

The test flight took place Monday and lasted about an hour. “The plane took off from Dubai International Airport and then headed out into the Persian Gulf before returning to the airport. It was powered by two General Electric engines. One ran on the sustainable mixture. The other was powered by traditional airplane fuel to ensure safety. Emirates’ chief operating officer, Adel al-Redha, called the flight “a milestone moment for Emirates and a positive step for our industry”. The flight demonstrated the airline’s desire to deal with one of the industry’s biggest problems, carbon pollution releases related to air travel.

The mixture included fuel provided by Neste, a Finnish company, and US-based fuel maker Virent. Virent says it uses plant-based sugars to make the compounds needed for sustainable jet fuel. Neste’s fuel is made from vegetable oils and animal fats. Those fuels cut the release of heat — trapping carbon dioxide burned off by engines in flight. Airline flights release only one-sixth the amount of carbon dioxide produced by cars and trucks, the Washington-based World Resources Institute reports. However, airplanes are used by far fewer people per day than road vehicles. This means flying has a higher per-capita (人均) release of carbon emissions. But experts have noted that fuels considered sustainable can be three times or more the cost of traditional jet fuel. This added cost is likely to be passed onto flyers if sustainable fuels became more commonly used across the industry.

Airplane and engine manufacturers have been designing more environmentally-friendly versions in recent years. The general goal is to produce less-polluting engines to reduce fuel emissions in an effort to help limit the effects of climate change.