【推荐1】The great outdoors: it’s the place to head for when you’re in need of peace and quiet, open spaces, beautiful scenery and exercise. Whether a huge mountain range or a local country park, these natural areas are perfect for us to refresh from our stressed-out lives, and their therapeutic (治疗的) effect is being used more and more to treat mental health.

As an example, in the foothills of the Snowdonia National Park in the UK, specialist therapy sessions are held to help people who suffer from depression, anxiety and stress. Outdoor art-related activities are held for patients, but the setting alone has been credited with improving the mood of patients. Art psychotherapist Pamela Stanley told the BBC that there was a “growing body of evidence” to support eco-therapy.

It’s true that for most of us connecting with the natural world definitely lifts our spirits. But the mental health charity Mind says eco-therapy has been recognized as a formal type of treatment that can sometimes be prescribed to someone by a doctor. It doesn’t involve taking medication, but instead it just develops a person’s relationship with nature. This natural remedy can take on many forms, including doing yoga in a forest, gardening or even hugging a tree.

Evidence has shown there are many benefits of this “green” therapy, including improving social contact, social and work skills and coping abilities. It’s what Dr. Rachel Bragg from the University of Essex calls “psychological recovery”. She told the BBC’s All in the Mind programme that nature-based therapies should be part of a “toolkit” of care for patients.

Of course, eco-therapy won’t cure everything, but it is an option for therapists to use. And as we become more aware of the causes and effects of mental health, it’s good to know that help might lie outside our towns and cities, and that nature can give us a helping hand.

【推荐2】Why are people taking pictures of their faces, their hobbies and their food? Why do we capture every single moment?     1    

The special thing about photography is that we can capture moments anywhere and anytime. All we need for this is our smartphone—something that rarely leaves our side.

    2     Every single one of us can get started with this wonderful hobby, no matter if your goal is to sell your photographs or just to keep them for your own viewing pleasure.

Every picture you take is a personal story. There is no painting without context(背景). However, unlike a painting, you don’t need to spend hours of your time on it.     3    

If you prefer to share your pictures with the world, you can also get immediate feedback(反馈).     4     Pictures connect and show the people around us what’s going on in our life right now.

The most amazing thing for me is without question the ability to capture every single click of a button.     5     It’s crazy how the emotions of one single picture can throw you back in time. We can connect to our past, no matter where we are and preserve those memories that are most meaningful.

【推荐1】“A beautiful field of flowers can be a rather noisy place. It’s just that we can’t hear the sounds.” Scientists at Tel Aviv University have done a six-year experiment, which proves (证明) that plants make noise in certain stressful situations.

Plants produce a high frequency (频率) clicking sound, and when short of water, or damaged, the clicks (咔哒声) become far more regular. They also make different sounds, depending on whether they are thirsty or injured. “Each plant and each type of stress is related to a specific sound,” said Professor Lilach Hadany.

Focusing on tomatoes, wheat (小麦) and corn, the researchers placed the plants in a soundproof (隔音的) room. Some plants were short of water, others cut, and a control group was left undamaged. The researchers used an algorithm (算法) to separate the noises, successfully telling the difference between the sounds depending on whether they were dry or cut. The algorithm did this in a greenhouse setting (温室环境) which included far more surrounding sounds, but it was still able to recognize the particular cries for help of the plants.

On average, the human ear can hear sounds up to around 20 kHz, while the sounds produced by plants are in the 40-80 kHz region, far beyond our hearing. The sounds made by plants can’t be heard by humans but can probably be heard by various animals, such as bats, mice and insects,” Hadany tells us. Though this has not been proven, it’s possible that these creatures use this information to choose which plants to eat.

A study led by Reda Hassanien of China Agricultural University in Beijing years ago, also proved that plants reacted to (对……作出反应) sound waves, with some plants greatly increasing their yield (产量). While evidence shows that plants can react to sounds, there’s no evidence today that they can actually hear them.

【推荐2】Many people know that rubbish is a big problem on planet Earth. What many people don't know is that rubbish has become a problem in outer space too. Years of space exploration have left tons of “space junk” in orbit around the planet. According to BBC News，there are more than 22,000 pieces of junk in space around the earth. And these are just the items that we can see from the surface of the earth by telescopes. There are also millions of smaller pieces of junk that we can't see.

Objects，like bits of old space rockets or satellites，move around the planet at very high speeds，so fast that even a very small piece can break important satellites or become dangerous to people，particularly astronauts. If the tiniest piece of junk crashed into a spacecraft，it could damage the vehicle. That's because the faster an object moves，the greater the impact if the object collides(相撞)with something else.

To help reduce additional space junk, countries around the world have agreed to limit the time their space tools stay in orbit to 25 years. Each tool must be built to fall safely into the earth's atmosphere，or the mass of gases that surround the earth. In the upper parts of the atmosphere, it will burn up. Many scientists are also putting forward different ways to clean up space junk. In England a metal tool is being tested that can be fired into space rubbish，catch the rubbish，and then pull the rubbish into the earth's atmosphere to burn up. The Germans have been planning a space project with robots that would collect pieces of space rubbish and bring them back to Earth so that they can be safely destroyed.

The problem of space junk is very challenging，and it's quite urgent as well. One reason why it's urgent is that countries are sending more and more objects into space. Many of these objects are tools that help people use their cell phones or computers. The time to act is now. As we go farther in time we will need to remove more and more fragments(碎片).

【推荐3】Range anxiety, the fear of running out of power before being able to recharge an electric vehicle, may be a thing of the past, according to a team of Penn State engineers who are looking at lithium iron phosphate batteries (磷酸铁锂电池) that have a range of 250 miles with the ability to charge in 10 minutes.

“We developed a pretty clever battery for mass-market electric vehicles,” said Chao-Yang Wang, a professor and director of the Electrochemical Engine Center at Penn State. “There is no more range anxiety and this battery is affordable.” The researchers also say that the battery should be good for 2 million miles in its lifetime.

They report today in Nature Energy that the key to long-life and rapid recharging is the battery’s ability to quickly heat up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, for charge and discharge, and then cool down when the battery is not working.

The battery uses a self-heating approach previously developed in Wang’s center. The self-heating battery uses a thin nickel foil (镍箔) with one end attached to the negative terminal and the other extending outside the cell to create a third terminal. Once electrons flow, it rapidly heats up the nickel foil through resistance heating and warms the inside of the battery. Once the battery’s inner temperature is 140 degrees Fahrenheit, the switch opens and the battery is ready for rapid charge or discharge.

“This battery has reduced weight, volume and cost,” said Wang. “I am very happy that we finally found a battery that will benefit the mainstream consumer mass market.”

According to Wang, these smaller batteries can produce a large amount of power upon heating — 40 kilowatt hours and 300 kilowatts of power. An electric vehicle with this battery could go from zero to 60 miles per hour in 3 seconds and would drive like a Porsche, he said. “This is how we are going to change the environment and not contribute to just the expensive cars,” said Wang. “Let everyone afford electric vehicles.”