【推荐1】When Hurricane Ian made landfall on the southwest Florida coast as a Category 4 storm, it brought strong winds and heavy rain. It was a deadly hurricane, attacking more than four million people, and causing serious flooding and at least 150 deaths. However, during the disaster, there was one innovative community that weathered the storm well: Babcock Ranch, the brainchild of Syd Kitson.

Located 30 miles inland, Babcock Ranch is an environmentally friendly and fully sustainable town that Syd Kitson and his partners hoped would be hurricane proof. Its homes are built to go through severe weather without losing essential services like electricity, water, or the Internet. A significant factor in its design is that power and. Internet lines are buried to avoid wind damage. Additionally, large ponds surround the development to protect houses from flooding. As a backup, streets are designed to absorb floodwaters and spare the houses.

Central to Babcock Ranch’s sustainability is its extensive use of solar energy. The community possesses an 870-acre solar farm with 700,000 individual panels operated by Florida Power & Light, capable of powering 30,000 homes — far more than the 5,000 residents currently living there. At night and on cloudy days, a natural gas generator kicks in to fill the gap.

Hurricane Ian served as a true test for the community. While the surrounding regions suffered, Babcock Ranch’s minimum damage and quick recovery showcased its effective design against natural disasters. Residents even opened their community center, doubling as a storm shelter, to the victims from other hard-hit communities.

Kitson’s vision for Babcock Ranch is not just about creating a sustainable and resilient (适应性强的) community but also about learning and improving. He hopes that the lessons learned from Babcock Ranch can be applied to other developments, contributing to more climate-resilient communities across the United States. This approach reflects a growing awareness of the need for sustainable and resilient urban planning in the face of increasing climate challenges.

【推荐2】Heat waves are becoming more common in parts of the United States — and that means more people running their air conditioners for longer. But those air conditioners can make the problem worse, giving off greenhouse gases as they work that contribute heavily to climate change.

SkyCool Systems is trying to break that cycle, using technology that promises to offer buildings an alternative means to cool down in a similar way to how the planet cools itself. “Our planet naturally cools itself by sending heat out in the form of infrared light (红外线) or radiation,” said Eli Goldstein, SkyCool’s cofounder and CEO. “We do this through rooftop panels, which look like solar panels but actually do the opposite, reflecting 97% of the sunlight that hits them and cooling the surface below,” said Goldstein.

SkyCool’s model involves fixing a network of pipes below those panels. These pipes are filled with water, which is kept cool by the panels and then flows into an air conditioning system. This process is designed to take pressure off the system’s cooling mechanism. And because the panels cool naturally and don’t need external power to function, it helps the entire system use less electricity.

A Grocery Outlet store in California, which has been using SkyCool’s system since last year, says it saw a marked drop in its electrical bills. Jesus Valenzuela, the store manager, estimates that the panels have saved his store roughly $3,000 a month.

But perhaps the biggest barrier to making the technology ubiquitous (无处不在的) is its relatively high cost. Increasing production could help bring the cost down, Goldstein said, particularly for developing countries in Asia and Africa where SkyCool hopes to eventually expand. For now, the company is focused on commercial applications of the technology, though it hopes to start setting up panels on the roofs of individual homes. “We’re just excited to be able to use this new technology for good,” Goldstein said.

【推荐3】Adaptive clothing brand Befree was founded by Nikki Puzzo and Joanne DiCamillo, two Massachusetts mothers who saw a need for clothing for individuals with disabilities. The inspiration for the brand came from Puzzo’s daughter, Stella. She is an eighth-grader and leads an active lifestyle, participating in activities like swimming, gymnastics, and working out with a trainer.

When Stella had a surgery at the age of 5, she was left with casts on both legs and a bar between them, making it impossible for her to wear traditional pants. Stella had to wear dresses or long T-shirts during her three month recovery period, which was unbearable for her. Wanting to find a solution that would allow her daughter to wear pants, Puzzo took apart a pair of brightly colored pajama bottoms and sewed them in Velcro. This simple fix turned out to be a “game changer” for Stella.

Impressed by the pants, the doctor at Boston Children’s Hospital encouraged Puzzo to mass-produce them, as many parents often struggle with dressing their children with disabilities. This feedback from the doctor motivated Puzzo and DiCamillo to start Befree.

Their goal is for adaptive clothes to be commonly found in stores and sold alongside traditional clothing within the next five years. While Befree did raise funds through a crowdfunding campaign, the company is primarily self-funded. They have not sought outside investment yet.

DiCamillo emphasized that the market for adaptive clothing extended beyond children with disabilities and includes adults with disabilities and individuals recovering from surgeries. The team is currently working on expanding their product range to include leggings, shorts, joggers and even jeans. They have already received numerous requests for adult sizes.

Overall, Befree is a company founded by mothers who saw a need for adaptive clothing and took action to meet this demand. Their determination and innovation have resulted in a brand that aims to make dressing easier and more inclusive for individuals with disabilities. With their focus on expanding their product range and making adaptive clothing mainstream, Befree is prepared to have a significant impact on the fashion industry.

【推荐3】Many of the world’s most famous landmarks now offer virtual tours, meaning people can visit museums, world heritage sites and other attractions from the comfort of the sofa. Such virtual travel experiences, as some experts have considered as an eco-friendly solution to the problem of overtourism, are seeing an increase in popularity. For overcrowded destinations, virtual reality experiences can help divert (使改道) some tourists, easing the burden on the location’s infrastructure (基础设施).

However, there’s a big gap between using virtual reality to “try before you buy” and treating virtual reality like the destination itself.

To start with, the technology isn’t ready yet. 360-degree virtual reality videos are usually experienced through a headset or an app. The headsets are expensive and heavy, and aren’t comfortable to wear for more than 30 minutes. The apps have none of these problems, but simply aren’t as impressive.

Limited physical feelings are another problem. The videos focus on sounds and sights but can’t do much with smell, touch, or taste, and VR experiences tend to only be a few minutes long—hardly equal to a two-week vacation in Spain. Some researchers are creating a full-body suit with enhanced sensory experiences, but it still doesn’t satisfy the deeper needs that make people travel.

What’s more, tourists on virtual tours see a world only to the extent that someone was able to film and construct it. In a virtual experience, visitors can’t choose to wander down a side street and discover a charming café—unless those options have already been programmed. It can definitely disappoint those who tend to be less directed in their explorations and more focused on new experiences and discoveries.

Virtual reality may never replace traditional travel, but it still offers possibilities. If the technology becomes advanced enough, those who are more environmentally conscious among us—especially those aiming to reduce our carbon footprint—might prefer this form of escape. Also, VR travel does bring parts of the world to people who are physically unable to visit certain landmarks.

【推荐1】The walking, park-touring, and dancing robots made by Boston Dynamics have been darlings of the internet for years, as they danced from labs to Softbank and most recently Hyundai, while owners tried to figure out how to get them off the dance floor and into the factory. Michael Graham Richard showed the family of robots doing all kinds of things a few years ago, but this new video that starts off with two Atlas robots is just amazing. It's designed to assist emergency rescue (紧急救援) workers in search-and-rescue operations, performing tasks such as shutting off gas, opening doors, and operating powered equipment in environments where humans cannot survive.

But Atlas has never really been out of the lab. In fact, very few of Boston Dynamics robots have been used for work. But after they were bought by Japanese investor Softbank in 2017, they had to go out and get a real job, and Spot, who also dances in the video is the first commercial offering. There are about 400 of them out in the field now. You can buy one for $75,000 and use it as a platform for many different functions (功能), from checking for gas leaks to working for bomb groups, although that did not work out too well. But with that robotic arm option, it looks like it might be able to bring you coffee.

The last robot to join the dance party was Handle, which looked less impressive because of its use of wheels instead of legs. Now that it has been sold to a real manufacturing company, we can probably expect Hyundai to pay off the money to make real working, instead of dancing robots.

【推荐3】In a new PBS video, a sleeping octopus (章鱼) changes colors, making scientists believe that the animal is hiding itself to the environments in its dream.

Octopuses are highly intelligent creatures. With a brain-to-body ratio (比例) similar to that of mammals, octopuses are able to solve problems and use tools. They can remove lids, open jars, and break into child-proof containers. These amazing animals have even been reported escaping aquariums and finding their way back to sea and taking apart the plumbing (管道装置) of their own tanks.

Like mammals, octopuses’ sleep is made up of quiet and active sleep stages. Similarly to how a human’s breathing and heart rate increases during dreams in REM sleep — in active sleep, an octopuses’ skin change colors, their bodies twitch, and their suckers (吸盘) retract (缩回).

Unlike humans, however, active sleep for octopuses does not last very long. “If they are dreaming, they are dreaming for about a minute,” said Sidarta Ribeiro, a scientist at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil. Likely, octopuses’ dreams are not very complex considering how short their bursts of active sleep are. The scientists compare these dreams to short video edits, only a few seconds to a minute long.

“For around 40 seconds, octopuses dramatically change their color and their skin texture. Their eyes are also moving,” said Sylvia Medeiros of the Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. “All of this happens very obviously.” These invertebrates (无脊椎动物) cycle through active and quiet sleep stages every 30-40 minutes.

To confirm the animals were actually sleeping, the scientists performed a series of visual and tactile (触觉的) stimulation tests. The researchers checked to see if the octopuses would respond to a favorite food item like a swimming crab, or to vibrations (振动) made by tapping on the glass. In each instance, the octopuses required a stronger stimulus to produce a reaction than when they were awake, confirming that the observed behavior was indeed sleeping.

In future studies, researchers want to explore the link between octopuses’ dreams and their extreme intelligence, thinking, and learning.