【推荐3】American scientists say they’ve developed a way to grow wood materials in a laboratory. The method could create different wood products indoors in a single process, greatly cutting the time and money spent on production and reducing damage to the world’s forests.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) showed a proof of concept by growing wood-like structures from cells taken from the leaves of a flowering plant. The process can hopefully simplify and speed up the production of wood products.

“The way we get these materials hasn’t changed in centuries and is very inefficient,” lead researcher Luis said. “The present process for making any wooden product can take many years. First, a tree has to grow. Then, it must be cut down, transported, processed, etc. Lab-grown wood, however, could combine all those steps into one. If you want a table, then you should just grow a table.”

In the wood experiment, the MIT team collected live cells from the leaves of a zinnia plant. The plant cells were then cultured and kept in a special environment. The experiment was carried out indoors, without soil or sunlight. During the process, the researchers used a mixture of two plant hormones (荷尔蒙) that helped the cells grow a thick, strong wood-like structure. With further development, the researchers say they could use the same process to grow wood in specific shapes, such as a table or chair.

“The process can remove difficulties linked to weather and seasonality in traditional agriculture methods,” Luis said. “Though it is still in early development, our team will be working to learn how to better control the final materials that are produced. And, we will also carry out new experiments to see whether the same results can be reached with other kinds of plants.”

David Stern, a plant biologist and president of the Boyce Thompson Institute told MIT News, “It sounds that this technology is very powerful, but what the researchers ignore is that further development of the method would require major financial and intellectual investments.” He also said new issues would arise when parts of forestry and agriculture are brought into the lab.

【推荐1】Brown cows may not actually make chocolate milk, but pink silkworms（蚕）do produce pink silk, a team of scientists has discovered. To see if they could produce pre-dyed silk-silk that comes colored, straight from the source-the team fed ordinary silkworms mulberry（桑树）leaves that had been sprayed（喷洒）with fabric（织物）dyes（染色剂）. Out of seven tested dyes, only one worked, producing a thread that reminded me of pink-dyed hair.

And yes, the worms themselves take on some color before they produce silk. Their colorful diets did not affect their growth, the team, which included engineers and biologists from the CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory in India, reports in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. (The researchers didn't look too deeply into how the dyes affected the silkworms' health. After all, silkworms die when people harvest their silk.)

The team made dyeing silk this way because coloring fabric normally uses large amounts of fresh water. The water gets polluted with dangerous chemicals in the process, requiring costly treatment before factories can send it back into waterways. Dyeing silk directly by feeding silkworms would avoid those water-washing steps. Scientists are just starting to study this idea. However, it remains to be seen if it's commercially successful. In this experiment, the Indian team tested seven dyes, which are cheap and popular in the industry.

The scientists found different dyes moved through silkworms' bodies differently. Some never made it into the worms' silk at all. Others colored the worms and their silk, but the color disappears before the silk is turned into fabric. Only one dye, named "direct acid fast red", showed up in the final, washed silk threads. By the time it made it there, it was a pleasant, light pink.

【推荐2】Virtual reality(VR) technology has been captivating people’s imaginations for decades, offering a thrilling escape into entirely new and immersive(沉浸式的)experiences. It allows users to step into a computer-generated world, where they can interact with and control their environment in ways never before possible.

At its core, virtual reality relies on a head-mounted display(HMD)that uses lenses and sensors(传感器)to track the user’s head movement, creating a sense of immersion by adjusting the images seen accordingly. This technology, combined with headphones for audio, hand controllers and motion sensors, provides a fully interactive experience that is both immersive and realistic.

One of the most exciting applications of VR is in gaming. Many of the world’s top video game developers are investing heavily in creating virtual reality games and experiences that push the boundaries of what is possible in gaming. From exploring vast open-world environments to engaging in intense first-person shooters, it offers a level of immersion unmatched by traditional gaming platforms.

Another area where VR has the potential to have a huge impact is education. Virtual reality can provide a more engaging and interactive learning experience, bringing history to life by transporting students to ancient civilizations or helping them understand complex scientific concepts through hands-on simulations(模拟).

Despite the many potential benefits of VR, there are some challenges and concerns that must be addressed. For instance, the cost of high-quality VR equipment can be unaffordable for some users, limiting its widespread adoption. Additionally, prolonged use of virtual reality can cause motion sickness and discomfort for some individuals.

As virtual reality continues to evolve and advance, it is clear that this technology holds immense potential to revolutionize countless aspects of our daily lives. Whether we are exploring fantastical game worlds, diving into immersive educational experiences, or honing our skills in realistic simulations, VR offers an unparalleled gateway into new and incredible worlds.

【推荐3】Farming is destroying the planet, but there could be a much more environmentally friendly way to feed ourselves: using renewable energy to turn carbon dioxide into food. “This is becoming a reality,” says Pasi Vainikka at Solar Foods, a company that is building the first commercial-scale factory that will be able to make food directly from CO2.

There can be no doubt that immediate attention to find greener ways to grow food is required. Conventional agriculture, including organic farming, causes damage to the environment in many ways. It requires a lot of land, leading to habitat loss and deforestation. It is also the source of a third of all greenhouse gas emissions and releases other pollutants. It isn’t very efficient, either. Crops typically transform less than 1 percent of light energy into usable biomass (生物量).

Instead, Solar Foods plans to avoid photosynthesis (光合作用) altogether, and grow bacteria that use hydrogen as their source of energy. At the factory, renewable electricity will be used to split water to produce hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen will be added to large containers, where the bacteria grow, along with CO2 and ammonia (氨气). The end result will be a yellow powder called Solein.

Solein is made of bacterial cells and is up to 70 percent protein. It can be used as an ingredient in all kinds of foods. “We are aiming at replacing animal-sourced proteins, which we think have the highest environmental impact,” says Vainikka.

Compared with plant crops, Solein will use 100 times less water per kilogram of protein produced, 20 times less land and emit a fifth as much CO2, according to Solar Foods. There are other benefits, too: factories could be situated anywhere in the world and production won’t be affected by weather conditions.

“With Solar Foods and other companies scaling up their systems, this is truly beginning a new era of agriculture,” says Dorian Leger at Connectomix Bio in Germany. “I think these trends are exciting and will help bend the carbon curve as well as lead to improved global food supply security.”

【推荐2】Those who don’t live in cities often complain about or feel surprised at the fact that strangers don’t talk to each other in urban public places. They feel sorry about the way we seem to increasingly get lost in mobile devices, seemingly oblivious to what’s going on around us. But sociologists recognize that the space we give each other in the urban places serves an important social function.

Well-known sociologist Erving Goffman developed the concept of   “civil inattention” in his book Behavior in Public Places. Far from ignoring those around us, Goffman proved through years of studying people in public that what we’re actually doing is pretending to be unaware of what others are doing around us, therefore providing them a sense of privacy, as they do the same for us. Goffman proved in his research that civil inattention typically involves at first a mirror form of social interaction, like very brief eye contact, the exchange of head nods, or weak smiles. Following that, both parties then typically shin their eyes from the other party.

Goffman theorized that what we achieve, socially speaking, with this kind of interaction, is mutual (相互的) recognition that the other present causes no threat to our security, and we both agree, tacitly (默契地), to let the other alone to do as they please. When we provide civil inattention to others, we effectively approve their behavior. Sometimes, we use civil inattention to save face when we’ve done something we feel embarrassed by, or to help manage the embarrassment that another might feel if we witness them trip, or drop something.

Civil inattention is thus not a problem, but an important part of maintaining social order in public. For this reason, problems arise when this norm (规范) is broken. Because we expect it from others and see it as normal behavior, we may feel threatened by someone who doesn’t give it to us. This is why women feel threatened by those who catcall (发嘘声)to them, and why for some men, simply being stared at by another is enough to cause a physical fight.