【推荐2】Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia (百科全书), is the largest encyclopedia ever. An encyclopedia is a collection of informative articles about various things. Encyclopedias used to be printed as books.     1    

“Wiki” is an internet term that means "a website that can be edited by the public." It comes from “wikiwiki”, a Hawaiian word for "quick". Two Americans, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, created Wikipedia in 2001.     2    It has about 6 million articles in 300 languages and is visited by billions of people each day, who want to find information on just about anything – science, math, languages, art, culture, and company histories. There are articles on sports stars, too, and even long-forgotten soap operas from the 1970s.

    3    Except for a small number of pages, anyone can edit articles, anonymously (匿名地) or with a user account, and registered (注册的) users can create their own articles. Editing is unpaid, although Wikipedia does employ a small staff. Wikipedia is freely available to anyone with an internet connection. Its founders hoped that the model would make use of humanity's collective knowledge.

    4    Many Wikipedia pages contain errors, although the organization has a content review system that works to fix this problem. Several studies have concluded that Wikipedia is as accurate as most print encyclopedias. Indeed, a 2005 report in the journal Nature found it to be only slightly less reliable (可靠的) than Encyclopedia Britannica.

    5    It does not rely on advertising. Instead, all of its funds (资金) come from donations. Perhaps more importantly, the number of its volunteer editors is shrinking.

Despite these difficulties, Jimmy Wales says he will still stick to his dream. He has big plans for the future. He wants Wikipedia available in all of the world's languages.

【推荐3】A healthy amount of sunshine may be the secret to staying young. British scientists have discovered.

Vitamin D is produced naturally by the skin in response to sunlight and may help to slow the ageing process and protect against heart disease, according to the study.

Researchers from King’s College London studied 2,160 women aged between 18 and 79, looking at their telomeres—a biological marker of ageing found in DNA. As people get older, their telomeres get shorter and they become more susceptible to certain illnesses.

But the study found women with high levels of vitamin D had comparatively longer telomeres--- a sign of being biologically younger and healthier.

The study suggests vitamin D may help to slow down the ageing process of DNA, and therefore the ageing process as a whole.

Lead researcher Dr Brent Richards said, “These results are exciting because they show for the first time that people who have higher levels of vitamin D may age more slowly than people with lower levels of vitamin D.” This could help to explain how vitamin D has a protective effect on many ageing related diseases, such as heart disease and cancer.”

Professor Tim Spector, a co-author of the report, added, “Although it might sound absurd, it’s possible that the same sunshine which may increase our risk of skin cancer may also have a healthy effect on the general ageing process.”

Vitamin D made by the action of sunlight on the skin accounts for 90 percent of the body’s supply, but lower levels can also be got through food such as fish, eggs and breakfast cereals.

Other studies have suggested the vitamin plays a key role in protecting against cancer and heart disease.

【推荐1】Reading doesn’t come naturally to people, but most of us have learned how. Eighty-six percent of the world’s population is literate (有读写能力的), and this rate has been increasing for centuries. Literacy makes it possible to sail in a world filled with books, websites, text messages, road signs and more.

Could a growing number of people take part in today’s world without reading or writing at all? Technology makes it possible. Most of our devices now talk to us and take spoken commands. Smart cars ask for a destination and then give directions. Smart virtual assistants listen for requests to report the weather, play a song, set a timer, order groceries, and much more. Software can also read text aloud or turn speech into text. These interactions aren’t perfect — the software still makes silly mistakes. But it’s getting better and better. It’s possible to imagine a future world where all of our communication with our devices and each other is spoken.

But reading and writing are powerful tools. For one, most people read faster than they speak. A podcaster or audio book narrator (讲述者) speaks at around 150 to 160 words per minute, while a strong reader can go through a text at 300 to 400 words per minute. That’s twice as fast! Research has also found that people remember more information and stay more interested when they read compared with when they listen. Learning to read also creates new connections in the brain. In her book Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf writes that with the invention of reading, human beings “rearranged the very organization of our brain, which in turn widened the ways we were able to think, which changed the intellectual evolution (进化) of our species.” Would we really choose to give up that progress? What do you think? Do you hope people keep on reading and writing, or will technology make literacy out of date?

【推荐1】The Tiangong space station, the first space station, is not just for China but for all humanity. The completion of Tiangong, expected by the end of next year, will be yet another milestone for an ambitious space program. The construction of the station is based on the experience gained from its pioneers, Tiangong-l and Tiangong-2. The first module(舱), the Tianhe core module, was launched on 29 April 2021, followed by multiple crewed and uncrewed missions and two more modules to be launched by 2022.

According to China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), which operates the space station, the purpose and missions of Tiangong space station are listed as: breakthrough in key technologies such as permanent human operations in orbit, long- term autonomous spaceflight of the space station, life support technology; development of technology that can aid future deep space exploration.

The Tianhe Core Cabin Module (CCM) provides life support and living quarters for three crew members and provides guidance, navigation (导航) for the station. The module also provides the station’s power and life support system. The station is equipped with a small kitchen for food preparation and the first-ever microwave oven in the spaceflight, so that astronauts can always have hot food whenever they need. 120 different types of food, selected based on astronauts’ preference, are stored aboard.

China’s intention to build its own space station was amplified(增强的) after NASA refused Chines participation in International Space Station in 2011.On 22 February 2017, CMSA and Italian Space Agency (ASD) signed an agreement to cooperate on long-term human spaceflight activities. The agreement holds importance due to Italy’s leading position in the field of human spaceflight with regard to the creation and development of the International Space Station and it shows Italy’s increased expectation in China’s developing space station program. Tiangong is also expected to host experiments from many other countries.

【推荐2】On July 11th Virgin Galactic (维珍银河)finally realized the promise that it would take passengers on life-changing trips in its spaceships. For 4 minutes, its 6 temporarily weightless passengers, including the firm’s co-founder, Sir Richard Branson, saw the planet’s curvature (曲度)against the blackness of outer space. He may have been pleased to beat Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s retired boss, who would go slightly higher for slightly less time in a vehicle built by his own company, Blue Origin, on July 20th.

The two are among a growing group of fans who believe space travel’s time has come. Suborbital (亚轨道的) tourism is part of a broader space economy that has boomed over the past decade thanks to technological advances. Those at Morgan Stanley expect the entire space economy to bring in $1 trillion by 2040, from $350 billion today. UBS expects the entire space economy to produce $800 billion by the end of this decade. Space travel, it thinks, will make “a big contribution” to that total.

But that is highly unlikely. For example, space travel is not even Blue Origin’s main goal. The company is focusing on developing a large new rocket for launching satellites, on selling advanced rocket engines to other companies and on winning NASA contracts such as that for a system to land humans on the Moon. In the long run, Mr. Bezos doesn’t see Blue Origin as a provider of services to thrill-seekers.

The business can be promising once regular flights begin to offset (抵消)the rockets’ development costs. But how fast and by how much is uncertain. Without tourist-friendly places to visit, space travel, with its far higher ticket prices, will not be a huger earner.

Another challenge—also the biggest uncertainty—relates to safety. History has shown that a disaster can set progress back by years. Even with no accidents, problems may come up. Strict top-down rules could mean that industry will no longer have the freedom to pursue new approaches to improving safety.

Space travel may remain a hobby for a few super-rich with a desire to take risks and lots of time to spare. Not exactly a mass market, then, for the time being.