【推荐1】As heat waves continue to ravage the planet, air conditioners are becoming more and more common. However, these "active" cooling devices are posing problems because the electricity consumption which most people are concerned about and the release of ozone-damaging chemicals worsen the greenhouse gas effect, resulting in the creation of heat islands and further thermal pollution. Therefore, "passive" cooling, which doesn't have such effects, has attracted considerable attention from both scientists and ordinary people in recent years.

In a recent study, a team of researchers from China and US presented an eco-friendly, low-cost smart coating to keep buildings cooler while consuming zero electricity. Infrared radiation-based passive cooling has been investigated since 2014, but challenges, mainly the expensive and unsustainable design, have greatly limited their large-scale and widespread application. Besides, the imbalance in cooling ability of these coatings during the day and night tends to lead to great day-night temperature differences as more heat is lost than gained at night.

The solution therefore requires a "smart" mechanism that can both enhance daytime cooling and minimize nighttime heat loss. To do this, the researchers created a new smart coating comprised of conventional building materials, including titanium dioxide nanoparticles, fluorescent microparticles, and glass microspheres that were engineered to reflect most of the sunlight. Specifically, the titanium dioxide particles effectively reflect sunlight through light scattering（撒播）while the fluorescent particles increase the amount of reflection by changing the absorbed sunlight into fluorescence emissions, which drive more heat away from the building. Meanwhile, the glass microspheres re-send mid-infrared broadband radiation, allowing not only heat loss, but allowing heat exchange to take place between the building and the sky.

The coating was tested on a model concrete building. Through this efficient heat exchange with the sky, daytime cooling was strengthened while nighttime cooling was reduced. The building's inside temperature was always maintained at around 26℃, even when the out-side temperature varied from 24℃ to 37℃ during the day. We believe this new coating will make it to commercialization soon, enabling a sustainable, passive cooling technology that could help to fight climate change and the global energy crisis.

【推荐2】For some climate challenges, there are relatively straightforward fixes. For example, renewable energy sources can already replace much of the energy needed to power buildings, cars and more.

There’s no substitute for food, but shifting what we eat is possible. If everyone on the planet ate vegetables, greenhouse gas emissions from the food system could be cut by more than half; a planet of vegetarians would reduce food emissions by two thirds. If we stopped consuming conventional food and relied on a lab-grown nutritional food instead of soil or water-produced food, we could prevent about 1 degree centigrade of future warming, according to a recent paper that considered the unique thought experiment.

“What this work says is: Hey, look, we can still get pretty big wins even if we’re not making these really big changes in dietary composition,” says Clark. “I think that’s really powerful, because a lot of people just don’t want to make those really big dietary changes, for many reasons. While vegetarian diets are becoming more common in America and some European countries, it’s absolutely ridiculous to assume that everyone will be eating a vegetarian diet 30 years from now,” he says.

Food choices are personal, deeply connected to cultural, religious, emotional, economic concerns and so much more. “Rather than dictate how to do it, it’s much better to try to give choices,” says Naglaa, a food, nutrition and environment researcher at Tufts University. This approach aims to inform people so that they can make choices that correspond with their needs and values instead of waiting for the authority’s rules and orders. As a whole, those choices can benefit both human health and the planet. For that to happen, it is necessary to work alongside large-scale efforts to reshape industrial food production.

“But what people choose to eat daily is far from insignificant,” says Clark. “We don’t all have to become vegetarians overnight. Small changes can make a big difference.”

【推荐3】How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change is the latest movie from filmmaker and climate activist Josh Fox. The movie is the third film in a three-part series about climate change.

In 2010, Fox’s documentary Gasland explored the hotly debated process of removing natural gas from the ground. He examined the subject again in Gasland II. Fox was against traditional fossil fuels(矿物燃料) and in support of renewable energy. In his third film, Fox says pollution from fossil fuels must be reduced. Without limits, there will be more extreme weather, like dry weather, rising sea levels and lack of food and water. “When you really meet that head on, it causes unbelievable danger.”

Fox notes there are things that climate cannot change. “Those are our value structure and that is what the film starts to explain. We start to really emphasize the things that are inside-courage, love, generosity and creativity. I think those are the centers of what we talk about when we talk about a response to climate change.”

In the new film, Fox travels through a sunless forest in the Amazon with local activists to measure oil spills. He goes to a village in Ecuador to learn how people there stopped a pipeline from being built. He joins young people in Australia to stop ships from entering the port of Newcastle.

“You should probably know the negative part of what we’re about to do. This is the short list: drowning, arrest, being run over by boats, being carried away in water into the Pacific Ocean, cultural disrespect and big waves.”

Also in the film, Fox talks to Ella Zhou, an energy expert. She explained the importance of what she calls“moral(道德) imagination”. “I think that it forces us to get out of our box of thinking about, for example, what is being successful. It allows us to have a moral value about what we want as a person. What do we want to do for the world and for ourselves? ”

【推荐1】Nowadays, the most effective way to get power comes from burning fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. They are less costly than other forms of energy. But burning fuels releases carbon dioxide, known as CO₂ gas. Scientists agree that increasing amount of CO₂ in Earth’s atmosphere is partly to blame for the rising temperature. It's clear the change in the atmosphere can have a big effect on the weather condition around the world.

However, keeping extra CO₂ from entering the atmosphere is a difficult process. It’s not enough to advise people to burn the fuels in a clean way. As a result, scientists are looking for the best method for capturing the gas and storing it away from the atmosphere. Some of this research is taking place in Norway. The Technology Center in Mongstad (TCM) is the largest facility in the world for major testing of the CO₂-capturing technology.

Tore Amundsen is its chairman. He says TCM has produced important information since it opened. The center is connected to a nearby electric power plant. It treats the waste gas from the plant using the chemical solvent (溶剂) which attracts the CO₂ molecules. Then researchers take the solvent with the CO₂ molecules and boil it. In this way, they can separate CO₂ from the solvent and use the solvent again to capture more CO₂. TCM can help capture 90 percent of the CO₂ from the waste gas. With the current state of technology, it will increase the cost of electricity between perhaps 30% to 40% when the technology is applied to a power plant.

Experts say the best way to store the captured CO₂ gas is to place it below the surface of the ground. Scientists can use the pumping technology to put it into areas left empty after the removal of oil or natural gas. But TCM does not pump the CO₂ it captures. Instead, it releases the gas into the atmosphere. Tore Amundsen says only highly developed industrial nations can afford the pumping technology. So far, only Canada has a power plant that pumps CO₂ gas. In total, there are just a few similar power plants in the world.

【推荐2】Have you ever had the feeling that you can’t think when there is too much noise around Did you ever think a fish could experience that feeling too? A recent published paper, combined over10,000 scientific papers, confirms that undersea life knows that exact same feeling, more often than not. Anthropogentic ocean noise, also known as underwater noise pollution, has created a huge impact on sea life due to “human-caused” activity within and neighboring our oceans.

The film Finding Nemo educated us about the ocean, and specifically within the ordinary world of a clown fish. A fact many may not know is that clown fish spend the first part of their lives as larvae (幼虫),moving slowly with the current of the ocean until they become strong enough to swim against it. Once they are powerful and strong, they head home in sheltered coral reefs. There is only one drawback—the fish can’t physically see the reef, but they can hear it. The only problem is, if they can’t hear it, will they ever make it home?

Our ocean noise, such as cargo ships, ship and boat propellers (螺旋桨),surfing, deep sea mining, etc. are causing destruction of sea life. Some researches found that sound is the sensory signal that travels the farthest through the ocean. The ocean noise drowns out the natural soundscapes, putting sea life under great stress. Altogether, this stress then affects their general health, disturb their behavior, reproduction and, in extreme cases causes death. Marine life can adapt to noise pollution, however, only if they can escape it. This only causes further complications of straying（使偏离）species from their traditional breeding regions or separating them from their families.

Now, what if we told you there is already a solution? Multiple ways, ideas and designs are currently in the works or already exist to remove the damage of the ocean noise. As the previous research explains, from wind-powered ships to noise-reducing propellers, a great many solutions are already available and in some cases, cost-effective. The authors of the paper hope it will catch the attention form the society.

【推荐3】B vitamins（维生素）may offer some protection against the effect of air pollution,a new study suggests.

The scientists say the effect is real but stress the limitations of their work.Follow-up studies are urgently needed, they say,in heavily polluted cities like Mexico.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO),over 90% of the world's population live in heavily-polluted areas.The one of the pollutants that is considered the most dangerous is very fine particulate matter, referred to as PM2.5.At around 1/30 the width of a human hair,PM2.5 can go deep into the human lung and contribute to lung and heart health problems in the young and old.

Scientists have long suspected that PM2.5 causes what are termed epigenetic（表观遗传）changes in our cells that can damage our health.Now in this new human trial,an international team of scientists wanted to see if exposure to concentrations of PM2.5 could be mitigated by daily B vitamins.

Ten volunteers were tested initially exposed to clean air and their basic responses were measured.The same volunteers were later tested with large doses（剂量）of B vitamins while exposed to air containing high levels of PM2.5.The researchers found that a four-week B vitamin intake limited the PM2.5 effect by between 28-76% at ten gene locations.They found a similar reduction in effect on the mitochondrial DNA,the parts of cells that produce energy.

However,the researchers caution that their study,while observing a real effect,has limitations.As well as the small number of participants,there was little information on the size of the B vitamin dose that caused the response.