【推荐1】Shortly before he turned 60, Mark Fuhrmann realized what he wanted. He, now, at 65, has just returned from a second voyage. His 6,835 mile-round trip from Nova Scotia took in the great lakes of the US, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic.

Fuhrmann started these journeys “to kickstart retirement” from the maritime PR business he ran in Oslo for the past 30 years. Before he set off, in June last year, he swapped (交换) his house for a flat, and greatly reduced his possessions. “It was good to get rid of all of those things and say: ‘This isn’t a phase; this is a new season,’” he says.

Amazingly, he didn’t plan his trip, beyond committing to fundraise for Medecins Sans Frontières. “I thought: ‘I’ll try to do 40km each day.’ But I never knew where I was going to lay down my head.”

The challenges were psychological, physical, and sometimes life-threatening. In Florida, he was chased by an alligator (短吻鳄), but narrowly escaped from it. In the Boston area, he saw “a black fin moving towards me like a snake”. He lay his oar (划桨) across his lap and waited. “If a great white shark can swim leisurely, that’s exactly what it did. It just passed me,” he says. Ten minutes later, Fuhrmann pulled his kayak (小艇) into a cove, where he ran into a man who invited him into his home for coffee and apple pie. His whole trip was filled with these switchbacks and moments of connection with strangers, which Fuhrmann experienced as “a call to authenticity”.

What does he mean? “Nature is born within us. If you avoid that, you avoid experiencing something that is vital to who you are as a person. I want real things — life isn’t about having more. I think we need to accept where we are at this stage of life, at 60 or 65.”

“I look at retirement as a season,” he says. He started his latest voyage because “I wanted to have a better understanding of who I was. I wanted to have time for my thoughts to wander, to restart, to discover the value and power within myself.”

【推荐3】Time and money are life's most valuable resources. One of the great laws of economics is that time equals money. The phrase "time is money" is usually credited to Benjamin Franklin, who used it in an essay(Advice to a Young Tradesman, 1748).     1     He encouraged people to treat time like money. However, most people think about time and money in different ways.

    2     Poor or rich, we all have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Thus, No one can get more time than others. In world of scarcity, we should make the best use of time.

Time cannot be stored. One of the reasons we give little thought about how we use our limited resources is that we cannot save time.     3     You can't bottle time and exchange it for an object or event. However, when people are made aware of their limited life, they wonder if they did make the most of their life.     4    

In a word, time is anything but free. As a nonrenewable resource, time is quite expensive.     5     Do we want to spend these precious moments on social media or spend that time learning something new? Skills and knowledge take time. The more time you spend on them, the more you improve.

【推荐3】Hybrid workers take more exercise, get more sleep and eat healthier, according to a study conducted by IWG, a workspace provider.

A survey of 2,000 people who have become hybrid workers since the pandemic—meaning they spend only part of their week commuting (通勤) into a city-centre office—found that they now had more time for fitness, cooking and sleep.

Dr Sara Kayat, a General Practitioner (普通科医生) of National Health Service, said: “There is no doubt that hybrid working has facilitated some major health benefits. A balanced diet, physical activity and good quality sleep are the bedrocks of a healthy lifestyle.”

The study included people using local working centers and working from home. It found that the average hybrid worker was now getting 4.7 hours of exercise a week, compared with 3.4 hours before the pandemic, with the most common forms of exercise being walking, running and strength training.

They are also sleeping longer, with the additional time in bed each morning adding up to 71 extra hours a year.

Eating habits also reportedly improved, with 54 per cent saying they had more time to spend cooking nutritious meals during the week, and 46 per cent and 44 per cent eating more fruit and vegetables respectively.

Some 27 per cent said they had lost weight, and 66 per cent said their mental health was good because of the shift to hybrid working.

IWG said that demand for its workspaces outside city centres had grown by 36 per cent in 2022. Mark Dixon the company’s chief executive, said: “This study confirms what we have been seeing for a while now—how hybrid working is building and maintaining a healthier and happier workforce by reducing the need for long daily commutes.”

【推荐2】Scientists have discovered one of the largest turtles on record. The turtle, about the size of a small car, lived in Europe 83 million years ago.

Researchers recently described remains discovered in northeastern Spain. The remains belonged to a turtle named Leviathanochelys aenigmatica. It was about 3.7 meters long. It lived during the Cretaceous Period (白垩纪) — the final time in the age of the dinosaurs. It is Europe’s biggest-known turtle.

The ancient turtle was much larger than today’s largest turtle — the leatherback, which can reach 2 meters long. Leviathanochelys nearly matched the largest turtle on record — Archelon, which lived roughly 70 million years ago and reached about 4.6 meters long. Other large turtles from Earth’s past include Protostega and Stupendemys, both reaching about 4 meters long.

“Leviathanochelys was as long as a Mini Cooper while Archelon was the same size as a Toyota Corolla,” said study co-writer Albert Sellés of the Institut Català de Paleontologia (ICP).

“Attacking an animal of the size of Leviathanochelys possibly only could have been done by large predators in the marine context. At that time, the large marine predators in the European zone were mainly sharks, which live on small fishes and other marine creatures.” said Oscar Castillo, a lead writer of the study that was published in Scientific Reports.

Castillo said during the Creataceous, marine turtles had increased body sizes. Leviathanochelys and Archelon could have been the biggest examples in this process. “The reason for this increase in body size” might have been “predatory pressures,” Castillo said.

A hiker in the Southern Pyrenees mountains saw the Leviathanochelys’s bones partially covered by the ground. To date, researchers have found parts of the back of the shell, and most of the pelvic area, but no skull, tail or limbs.

The bones suggest the creature had a smooth shell similar to leatherback turtles. Leviathanochelys appears built for the open ocean, returning to land only rarely — for instance to lay eggs.

The presence of a couple of bony areas on the front side of the pelvis (骨盆) differs from any other known sea turtle, suggesting that Leviathanochelys represents a newly discovered lineage (血统).

Leviathanochelys aenigmatica means “enigmatic leviathan turtle” owing to its large size and the curious shape of its pelvis that the researchers suspect was related to its breathing system.

【推荐3】For many years now, scientists have reported that we, as human beings, are affecting and changing the Earth’s climate. They say that, in particular, the last 50 years has seen a huge increase in the quantity of greenhouse gases being released into our atmosphere from factories and vehicles, and that this increase is speeding up the process known as global warming. Scientists believe global warming to be by far the biggest environmental problem of the 21st century. So what is it, how is it a danger, and why is it relevant to us?

Global warming is the term used to indicate a rise in the Earth’s temperature which, in turn, causes changes to the Earth’s climate. Scientists have discovered that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which trap the heat from the Sun, control the temperature. When the greenhouse gases increase, more heat is trapped and the Earth’s temperature rises.

The Earth’s temperature has increased by one degree Fahrenheit in the last 100 years. Much of this has been attributed to human activities, such as increased industry, agriculture, the falling of forests, the rise in transport and the burning of fuels.

One degree Fahrenheit may not sound like much, but if we continue to produce greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, we will have to face the repercussions(影响、后果). Scientists warn that global warming will cause catastrophic climate changes, including more frequent flooding, drought and extreme weather. The increase in pollution will also cause serious health impacts and affect agriculture directly.

The melting of the polar ice caps will also have direct consequences, with sea levels rising causing flooding in low-lying areas, such as islands and coastal cities.

So, how can we stop this from happening? Governments everywhere have a responsibility to reduce the production of greenhouse gases. But we can make small changes too. Every person needs to play his/her part. Suggestions include recycling, using public transport, using less water at home, using more energy efficient appliances and switching off lights. Small personal changes will add up to big changes worldwide if we all develop these habits for all of our lives, that is, 70 years or so.