【推荐2】“The really frightening thing about middle age,” the actor Doris Day is said to have joked, “is that you know you'll grow out of it.” We may bravely try to claim that life begins at 40- but for many people，it can feel more like the beginning of the end.

Mid life wasn't always seen this way. It isn't clear why we have a more negative view today, but Margie Lachman, director of the lifespan development lab at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, suggests it may be linked to the pressures that begin piling up in our 30s. “Midlife is a period of high stress today, more so than in the past,” she says. “One is exactly in the middle of work and family careers. This can affect one's ability to focus on one's own well-being.”

There are, however, many reasons to feel positive about this crucial period. In a series of experiments, Laura Germine at Harvard Medical School has tested tens of thousands of people to examine the differences in cognitive abilities between age groups. Germine's studies have included the famous “mind in the eyes” test, for instance, which gets people to infer emotional states from small differences in facial expressions. She found that people in their late 40s scored highest. This may be due to practice, she suggests. “When you think about the amount of social differences that one has to learn across the lifespan- that's where we think that comes from.”

Germine found similar patterns in a task demanding continuous attention. In this, the participants had to watch different scenes fade into one another and adapt their response according to what they saw-pressing a button when they saw a city and releasing it when they saw a mountain. 40-somethings found it much easier to “get into the zone” than younger people.

It is interesting to note that middle-aged people frequently bring in the most supplies in traditional hunter-gatherer societies. According to various studies, hunter-gatherers often take decades to learn their skills, and these abilities continue to grow into their 40s.

There are some downsides to hitting this age, of course. Our skin tends to become loose and our body fat starts to be redistributed around the midriff. But after a drop in life satisfaction, happiness is already set to rise at the end of this decade and the beginning of the next.

Contrary to popular opinion, humans seem to have evolved to flourish into middle age and beyond.

【推荐3】Charlotte’s Web, a best-selling children’ s book, was described as a story of friendship on a farm. If you’ve already read the book, you may know about the friendship that grows between Wilbur, a small pig, and Charlotte, a spider. But you may not know that the author, E. B. White, was also a friend of animals.

In Charlotte’s Web, a spider saves a pig from being killed. In real life, the author had tried to save a pig too, but failed. A few years before Charlotte’s Web, White wrote an article about caring for a dying pig on his farm. Even though White raised the pig to make bacon, he found himself trying to save its life.

Although farm pigs were born to die, White had mixed feelings about this fact. “I began to feel sorry for the pig because he was born to die,” he recalled. “This made me sad. So I started thinking of ways to save the pig’s life.” Soon the story of Wilbur was born.

Charlotte, the heroine of the book, was also born of the observations on White’s farm. “I had been watching a big, gray spider at work and was impressed by how clever she was at weaving its nets,” he remembered. But what would happen if a clever spider could weave not only webs, but also words? Charlotte’s Web explores this possibility.

In a letter to a young reader, White wrote, “In real life, a spider doesn’t speak. But the real life is also a life of imagination. And although my stories are imaginary, I like to think that there is some truth in them — truth about the way people and animals feel, think and act.”

【推荐2】Supermarket shoppers could soon be checking the environmental impact of food before putting it in their trolleys, thanks to new research.

Many consumers want to know how their weekly food shop affects the planet. However, reliable information of this kind hasn’t been available because food companies only have to list their main ingredients (原料). The food industry has also been crying out for a new tool and this algorithm (运算法则), which is already being used by some companies to make their meals more eco-friendly, helps fill the gap.

Dr Mike Clark, who led the research at Oxford University, called the tool “a significant step towards providing information that could enable informed decision-making”. The team estimated the composition of 57,000 foods and drinks in supermarkets. It then assessed the impact of growing methods, processing and transport, against key environmental measures including greenhouse gas emissions and impacts on nature. Finally, an eco-score was worked out.

However, the analysis has limits. Under the algorithm, the higher the score, the higher the environmental impact. As expected, foods containing more meat and dairy score much higher than those with more plant-based ingredients. But there was wide variation within specific types. For example, the highest-impact pork sausage scored about a third higher than the least one. And the impact of biscuits rose the more chocolate they contained.

COOK, a frozen food producer looking to diversify away from meat, has worked with the researchers. It wants to explore whether putting eco-labels on its products would help customers embrace a more sustainable diet.

An official from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs welcomed the plan. “We want to give everyone the information to make healthier, greener and more sustainable choices with the food they buy.” However, the researchers don’t foresee eco-labelling becoming compulsory (义务的) in the near future. They want firms to adopt it voluntarily, something they believe would make a difference to the food industry in cutting their environmental footprint.

【推荐3】A bike path in Krommenie, a city in the Netherlands, isn’t just helping people get around — it’s also producing energy. The path, named SolaRoad, is paved (铺) with solar cells (太阳能电池), which use the power of the sun to make electricity.

The project was created to show that the places where people ride, walk, or drive can also serve to produce energy. And the solar-powered path is doing a better job than expected. So far, it has created enough electricity to power three houses for a year.

Many cities already cover rooftops with solar panels (太阳能板). By using renewable (可再生的) sources of energy, urban areas can decrease their dependence on fossil fuels, like coal, oil, and natural gas. Renewable sources of energy don’t get used up or create pollution as fossil fuels do.

Roads could provide an even larger space than roofs to harvest energy from the sun. Sten de Wit, one of the researchers behind SolaRoad, says, “In the Netherlands, we have about 140,000 kilometers of roads. It’s a huge area, more than all of the rooftops combined.”

To create the experimental bike path, the SolaRoad team laid down concrete slabs (混凝土板) with rows of solar cells above. A layer of strong glass covers and protects the cells. Sunlight passes through the glass and into the cells, which turn the sunlight into electrical energy.

Although the bike path was expensive to build, with the energy it produces, it could pay for itself within 15 years. By building solar-powered bike paths and roads, cities could produce enough energy to power streetlamps, traffic lights, and even electric cars. Most people don’t notice that the bike path is different from a traditional street. Sten de Wit says, “That is exactly what we want: it does whatever it has to do to be a proper road while harvesting solar energy at the same time.”

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