【推荐3】There’s a day for just about everything, and the United Nations has designated May 20 as World Bee Day to celebrate the pollinators (传粉昆虫) living in hives, fields and gardens around the globe since 2015. It draws much concern on bees and there’s a good reason to pay attention to them.

“There are 20,000 species of bees around the world and a lot of these bees are in decline,” says Hien Ngo, a pollinator expert from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. That includes honeybees, of course, but Ngo says they only make up a minority of all the kinds of bees in the world. Climate change, pesticides and habitat loss are putting many of those species at risk.

“Bees really provide for us in many ways, like food and human well-being. They’re also important to our culture, dating back thousands of years in terms of heritage, inspiration of art,” Ngo says. They even provide inspiration for TikTok, where Erika Thompson，a professional beekeeper in Austin, Texas, shares her work.

“The landlord wanted to call an exterminator (根除者), but the family who lived here wanted to save the bees, so they called me,” she says in her video.

Her fans watch with happiness—and sometimes a little horror—as she picks up mounds(成堆) of bees with her bare hands and then moves them somewhere safer.

“I’ve removed bees from a lot of crazy places,” Thompson says. “You know, I’ve removed bees from homes, RVs, tires, speakers and even a toilet.”

Thompson’s work is about more than getting millions of views per video. “Bees are just a key factor in creating diverse and healthy ecosystems,” she notes.

【推荐1】Are you smarter than your parents and grandparents? According to James Flynn, a professor at a New Zealand university, you are! Over the course of the last century, people’s IQ test scores have gotten steadily higher --- on average, three points higher each decade. This improvement is known as the “Flynn effect”, and scientists want to know what is behind it.

IQ tests are designed to measure general intelligence rather than knowledge. Flynn believes that intelligence partly comes from our parents and partly is the result of our environment, but the improvement in test scores has been happening too quickly to be explained by heredity. So what has occurred in the 20th century to help people achieve higher scores?

Scientists have proposed several explanations for the Flynn effect. Some suggest that the improved test scores simply reflect an increased exposure to tests in general and the learning of test-taking techniques that help us perform better on any test. Others have pointed to better nutrition. Babies now are born larger, healthier, and with more brain development than in the past. Another suggested explanation is a change in educational styles, with teachers encouraging children to learn by discovering things for themselves rather than just memorizing information, which improves their problem-solving skills.

Flynn has limited the possible explanations after carefully examining test data and discovering that the improvement in scores has taken place in only certain parts of the IQ test. Test-takers are not doing better on the maths or vocabulary sections of the test; they are doing better on the sections requiring reasoning and problem solving. For example, one part of the test shows a set of shapes, and test-takers must find the patterns and connections between them.

According to Flynn, this visual intelligence improves as the amount of technology in our lives increases. Every time you play a computer game, you are exercising exactly the kind of thinking and problem solving that helps you do well on one kind of intelligence test. So are you really smarter than your parents? In one very specific way, you may be.

【推荐2】I recently spent half a weekend sitting on the sofa watching the Davis Cup. I thought about going for a run, but I did not want to miss the rest of the match. Soon it was starting to get dark, so I did not bother (费神). Whenever I watch tennis, I think how nice it would be to play it regularly. But I have been thinking that for almost 20 years without actually setting foot on a court. The evidence would suggest that I’m not the only one.

When a country or city competes to host an international sporting event, it often promises that more people will take up sports as a result. London was no exception. Tessa Jowell, who helped to bid for (申办) the 2012 Olympics for London, said that by 2012 two million more people would be physically active. And 60 percent of young people would be doing at least five hours of sports per week.

In the end, just over one-third of people in Britain take part in sports once a week. A report on Olympic and Paralympic influences has said that a big change in participation levels simply has not happened.

Why isn’t there a big increase in people taking part in sports after most sporting events? Perhaps it is a mistake to assume a definite link between watching sports and playing it. While the games are on, they actually encourage people to do just the opposite — to spend whole sunny days not out playing sports, but inside sitting on the sofa with the curtains shut to stop the sun shining on the TV screen. We don’t expect half the audience of a hit musical to apply to drama school the next day, yet we seem to expect it of sporting events.

The high-level performances on show only remind people that they could never match the excellent athletes in their sporting achievements even if they trained full time.

Maybe participation in sports is not the right thing to expect after a major sporting event. The Olympics can do many things, but maybe this cannot necessarily be one of them.

【推荐3】Recently there was a major discovery in the scientific research—the mapping of all DNA in a human gene is complete. Several years ago, it seems an impossible task for scientist to accomplish. All this progress in science leads us to believe that the day when human being will be cloned is not far away. Human cloning has always been a topic of argument in terms of morality (道德) or religion.

Taking a look at why cloning might be beneficial, among many cases, it is arguable that parents who are known to be at risk of passing a genetic limitation to a child could make use of cloning. Moreover, cloning would enable women who can't get pregnant to have children of their own.

Cloning humans would also mean that organs could be cloned, so it would be a source of perfect transfer organs. This surely would be greatly beneficial to millions of unfortunate people around the world who are expected to lose their lives due to organ problems. It is also arguable that a ban on cloning may be unlawful and would rob people of the right to reproduce and limit the freedom of scientists.

However, arguments against cloning are also on a perfectly practical side. Primarily, I believe that cloning would step in the normal "cycle" of life. There would be a large number of same genes, which reduce the chances of evolution, since it may be difficult for living creatures to naturally adapt to the ever-changing environment, which will result in ultimate disappearance. Furthermore, cloning would make the uniqueness that each one of us possesses disappear. Thus, leading to creation of genetically engineered groups of people for specific purposes and, chances are that those individuals would be regarded as "objects" rather than people in the society.

Scientists couldn't surely guarantee that the first cloned humans will be normal. Thus this could result in introduction of additional limitations in the human "gene-pool".

Regarding such arguable topics in "black or white" approach seems very innocent. We should try to look at all "shades" of it. I believe that cloning is only legal if its purpose is for cloning organs; not humans. Then we could regard this as for "saving life" instead of "creating life". It is believed that cloning humans is morally and socially unacceptable.

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