【推荐1】You can see a sea turtle named Herman, an octopus (章鱼) called Octavia, and a seal named Lidia at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Rather than real animals, they are actually artworks made out of plastic trash from the ocean.

These artworks are part of a traveling exhibit called “Washed Ashore: Art to Save the Sea”. The Washed Ashore project, led by the artist called Pozzi, works to raise awareness about plastic pollution in Earth’s oceans.

More than 315 billion pounds of plastic litter the world’s oceans today. Most of the plastic is garbage from towns and cities, as well as trash that people leave on beaches. Rainwater, winds, and high tides bring the trash into the ocean or into rivers that lead to the ocean. Once it is under the waves, the plastic begins to break up into smaller and smaller pieces.

Thousands of sea animals die each year from eating plastic bags and other things. Each year, millions more pounds of plastic end up in the ocean. A recent study found that if that continues, by 2050 the total weight of plastic will be more than that of all the fish in the ocean.

The Washed Ashore project is working to stop that from happening. Since 2010, Washed Ashore volunteers have collected 38,000 pounds of plastic trash from more than 300 miles of beaches. They helped Pozzi create more than 60 artworks of sea creatures harmed by plastic pollution.

“These artworks are a powerful reminder of our personal role and global responsibility in preserving biodiversity (生物多样性) on land and in the sea,” says Dennis Kelly, director of the National Zoo.

In the ancient walled city of Sana’a, mud skyscrapers rise high into the sky. The towering structures are built entirely out of earth and decorated with amazing geometric patterns. The local mud architecture is so unique that the city has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

“As an outstanding example of architecture reflecting the spatial (空间的) characteristics of the early years, the city in its landscape has an extraordinary artistic quality,” UNESCO writes in its description of Sana’a. “The buildings also show exceptional craftsmanship (工艺) in the use of local materials and techniques.”

Even though the buildings in Sana’a are thousands of years old, the ancient structures are still inhabited today and most remain private houses. It is easy to see why these mud buildings have not lost their appeal—they are well-insulated (隔热的), sustainable and extremely adaptable for modern use. “It is the architecture of the future,” says Damluji, co-founder of the Mud Brick Architecture Foundation.

Architects around the world are reviving (复兴) raw-earth construction as they seek to construct sustainable buildings that can survive extreme weather events such as flash floods and intense heat. Could this ancient form of architecture influence the design of our future homes?

The construction industry accounts for 38% of global carbon dioxide emissions. The building sector has an important role to play if the world is to meet the goal of reaching net zero by 2050. Concrete, a common modern construction material, has a huge carbon footprint. Replacing concrete with less polluting materials is important to achieving our climate goals, scientists warn.

The ancient material, mud, could be the perfect sustainable replacement for concrete, according to Damluji. Constructing with mud has a very low impact on the environment and the material itself is fully recyclable, she says. “If you want to pull down a wall or change the design, you can recycle all the materials.” An added benefit is that mud buildings are warm in the winter and cool in the summer. This reduces the need for air conditioning units, which consume large amounts of electricity and contain refrigerants (制冷剂) that make up greenhouse gas emissions. Mud structures are also incredibly strong and resistant to extreme weather, such as heatwaves, floods and droughts, which scientists say will become more frequent and intense as temperatures continue to rise.

Therefore, people who wish to live in a modern, comfortable home should consider one made of mud. Overall, it makes for highly advanced as well as sustainable design.

【推荐3】Ancient Fish Returns to Illinois Waters

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources is returning a fish called the alligator gar to the state’s rivers.Some people call the fish a “living fossil.” Experts believe the fish first appeared during the Early Cretaceous period more than 100 million years ago.

Randy Sauer is an Illinois state fisheries biologist. He says the fish disappeared from the state’s rivers in the 1990s, although they have continued to do well in southern states. Sauer says biologists want to bring the fish back to northern rivers “because it is important to have top predators to balance the species below them,” he said.

Sport fishermen like to try to catch the alligator gar. Alligator gar are the second-largest freshwater fish in North America. They can grow as large as 2.7 meters and weigh more than 136 kilograms. Sauer says their large size is one reason they disappeared in the 1990s. Experts say alligator gars are “opportunistic feeders.” This means they will eat almost anything -- including small turtles or ducks. They also eat invasive species such as Asian and silver carp. Sauer hopes the re-introduction of the alligator gar will help the state’s efforts to control the carp. Because gar can live up to 60 years, the program will continue to increase for many years.

Sauer notes that female alligator gars do “not sexually mature until 11 years, and the male not till 6 or 7 years.”That means the biologists will try to raise and release a lot of fish early in the program to re-introduce them.

“We’re probably going to stock more heavily than 10 or 20 years down the road when hopefully these fish will find each other and start doing the job on their own,” Sauer says.

Small devices have been placed in 7,000 of the fish so they can be observed after they are released into the waterways of Illinois. As it rains and floods, biologists expect some of the fish will follow the rivers into the states of Louisiana and Texas.

【推荐2】During the outbreak of novel coronavirus, cities are locked down and borders are closed. Science, on the contrary, is becoming more open. And this “open science” is already making a difference.

Soon after the epidemic started in China, a research team from Fudan University in Shanghai successfully sequenced（测定序列）the DNA of the virus. But they didn’t keep the information to themselves. Instead, they placed the sequences on GenBank, an open-access data platform, so researchers around the world could download them for free and start studying the virus.

Due to this openness, pharmaceutical（制药的）companies across the globe are now able to work simultaneously to develop a vaccine. “There may be room for multiple different vaccines for different purposes and different age groups,”Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security in the US, told Al Jazeera.“The bigger menu we have of vaccines, the more resilient（有适应力的）well be against coronavirus outbreaks in the future. ”

Major drug companies around the world are also sharing their study results. Remdesivir, a drug originally developed by US company Gilead Sciences to treat Ebola, s found to be promising in fighting against the novel coronavirus. Currently, two trials of the drug are already underway in China, and the results might be available as soon as April, according to The Verge.

This openness in science is going to be even more crucial in the future. With climate change, increasing globalization, and population shifts, epidemics will not go away, and might even become more frequent, Dan Barouch, a Harvard Medical School professor, told Harvard Magazine.

He said, “No one group can do everything. It has to be a coordinated（合作的）approach. But I do think that the world has a greater sense of readiness this time to develop knowledge, drugs, and therapeutics（疗法）very rapidly.

Every epidemic is indeed a crisis, but it can also be a learning opportunity. One redeeming（补偿的）factor of the COVID﹣19 outbreak is that it is helping science adapt for the better.

In recent years some extreme weather events have arisen from global warming because of human activities, with studies indicating an increasing threat from extreme weather in the future. Scientists were certain that global warming is being caused mostly by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and other human activities.

Its effects include warming global temperature rising sea levels and expansion of deserts in the subtropics (亚热带). Warming is expected to be greater over land than over the oceans and greatest in the Arctic, with the continuing loss of glaciers, permafrost and sea ice. Other likely changes include more frequent extreme weather events including heat waves, droughts, heavy rainfall with floods, heavy snow-fall and species extinction due to great change of temperature. Bad effects on humans include the threat to food security from decreasing crop yields and the loss of populated (住人的) areas because of rising sea levels.

Possible responses to global warming are reduction of emissions (排放), adaptation to its effects, building systems resilient to its effects, and possible future climate engineering Most countries are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose objective is to prevent dangerous climate change. It has adopted a range of policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas and to assist in adaptation to global warming. It is agreed that future global warming should be limited to below 2.0℃ (3.6°F) relative to the pre-industrial level.

On 12 November 2019, NASA scientists reported that human-made carbon dioxide continues to increase above levels that have not been seen in hundreds of thousands of years: currently, about half of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels remains in the atmosphere and is not absorbed by vegetation and the oceans.

【推荐2】For decades, India’s time zone has been a hotly debated issue. Back in 1884 when time zones were officially established, two time zones were used — Bombay Time and Calcutta Time. Indian Standard Time (IST) was introduced in 1906, but Calcutta Time and Bombay Time continued to be maintained after India’s independence in1947, until 1948 and 1955 respectively. The current single time, though a legacy (遗留物) of British rule, is often viewed as a symbol of unity. Yet, not everyone thinks it is a good idea. India stretches 3,000 km from east to west, extending across roughly 30 degrees longitude. This corresponds to a two-hour difference in mean solar time, based on the position of the sun in the sky. Thus, the sun rises nearly two hours earlier in the east than in India’s far west. In Northeastern states, sunrise can be as early as 4 a.m. in summer and sunset by 4 p.m. in winter, much earlier than the official working hours. This results in great loss of daylight hours and more consumption of electricity, and often reduced productivity.

Meanwhile, recent studies point out that the current system leads to a serious problem in education for some students. Nationwide, the school day starts at roughly the same time; thus, children go to bed later and have reduced sep in west India, where the sun sets later. Such sleep deprivation (剥夺) caused by later sunset is more pronounced among the poor, mostly due to their noisy environment and lack of facilities that assist seep, like window shades or indoor beds. On average, an hour’s delay in sunset time reduces children’s sleep by 30 minutes, and an hour’s delay in annual average sunset time reduces education by about 0.8 years. As a result, children living in locations with later sunsets are less likely to complete primary and middle school education.

Despite various requests and proposals for multiple time zones, the government is keen to maintain the current system. Reasons provided include prevention of confusion and safety issues regarding railway and fight operations.

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【推荐3】When facing an extremely annoying problem, we often gather a group to brainstorm, aiming to get the best ideas quickly. I love seeing it happen — except for one tiny wrinkle. Group brainstorming usually backfires.

In brainstorming meetings, many good ideas are lost — and few are gained. Extensive evidence shows that when generating ideas together, we fail to maximize collective intelligence. Surprisingly enough, individuals working alone tend to produce more and better ideas compared to brainstorming in groups.

To unearth the hidden potential in teams, instead of brainstorming, a shift to a process called “brainwriting” is more effective. Initially, you ask everyone to generate ideas independently. Next, you pool them and share them anonymously (匿名地) among the group. To preserve independent judgment, each member evaluates them on their own. Only then does the team come together to select and refine the most promising options. By developing and assessing ideas individually before choosing and detailing them, teams can surface and advance possibilities that might not get attention otherwise.

For instance, during the 2010 Chilean mine rescue, time pressing, the rescue team established a global brain writing system to crowd source independent ideas, avoiding time-consuming brainstorming. An entrepreneur offered a tiny plastic telephone that became the sole means of communicating with the miners while a 24-year-old engineer’s suggestion resulted in the creation of a specialized drill that ultimately saved the miners.

Research by organizational behavior scholar Anita Woolley and her colleagues helps to explain why this method works. They find that a key to collective intelligence is balanced participation. In brainstorming meetings, participation can easily become dominated by the most influential people. The brainwriting process ensures that all ideas are brought to the table and all voices are brought into the conversation. The goal isn’t to be the smartest person in the room — it’s to make the room smarter.

Collective intelligence begins with individual creativity, but it doesn’t end there. Individuals working alone produce greater varieties of novel ideas, both brilliant and terrible, than groups. It takes collective judgment to locate the signal within the noise and extract the best ideas.