【推荐1】Picture this: You' re at a movie theater food stand loading up on snacks. You have a choice of a small, medium or large soda. The small is $3.50 and the large is $5.50. It's a tough decision: the small size may not last you through the whole movie, but $5. 50 for some sugary drink seems ridiculous. But there's a third option, a medium soda for $5.25. Medium may be the perfect amount of soda for you, but the large is only a quarter more. If you're like most people, you end up buying the large（and taking a bathroom break midshow）.

If you're wondering who would buy the medium soda, the answer is almost no one. In fact, there's a good chance the marketing department purposely priced the medium soda as a decoy（诱饵）, making you more likely to buy the large soda rather than the small.

I have written about this peculiarity in human nature before with my friend Dan Ariely, who studied this phenomenon extensively after noticing pricing for subscriptions（订阅）to The Economist. The digital subscription was $59, the print subscription was $125, and the print plus digital subscription was also $125. No one in their right mind would buy the print subscription when you could get digital as well for the same price, so why was it even an option? Ariely ran an experiment and found that when only the two "real" choices were offered, more people chose the less-expensive digital subscription. But the addition of the bad option made people much more likely to choose the more expensive print plus digital option.

Brain scientists call this effect "asymmetric dominance" and it means that people gravitate toward the choice nearest a clearly inferior option. Marketing professors call it the decoy effect, which is certainly easier to remember. Lucky for consumers, almost no one in the business community understands it.

The decoy effect works because of the way our brains assign value when making choices. Value is almost never absolute; rather, we decide an object's value relative to our other choices. If more options are introduced, the value equation changes.

【推荐1】Zion is among the most visited parks in the USA and is particularly crowded because many of its most popular sites sit in a narrow six-mile canyon. Last year, about 4.3 million people visited it, up to 60 percent from a decade ago. So this year, park managers announced they were considering a first for any national park: requiring reservations for entry.

The National Park Service was created in 1916 to protect the country’s growing system of parks and monuments. Its aim is to conserve scenery and wildlife while also protecting visitor enjoyment for generations to come. For years, the lack of a reservation system for park entry associated with the spirit of adventure: Anyone could come, pretty much anytime.

But lately, both visitors and nature are suffering. Mr. Burns, who is on a team that is considering a reservation system, said some people showed up for a vacation they had planned for months, spent a day in the traffic jam and turned around. Mr. Burns said he favored a reservation policy. He recalled the days when he would jump in a car and pull up to parks across the West with no plans.

When he first came to the park in the 1980s, he wrote a letter home. “I’m living in a no-man’s-land,” he told his parents. He could hike for hours, even days, without seeing a soul, and he remembered the constantly changing light on the canyons, the brilliant green of the trees, the blue water of the Virgin River. Today, he said, when he wants to find solitude (清静), it is usually accompanied by the distant rumble of the shuttle bus.

“There is only one Zion National Park,” he said to those struggling to see a need for limiting access. “And it’s sacred. Its beauty is sacred.”

【推荐2】“If you think the oil wars are bad, wait until the water wars begin.”

Ron Jones, president of Green Builder Media, recently made this alarming prediction. With severe drought conditions expanding across the globe, the future water crisis he warns of may become a reality more quickly and acutely than we think. Fortunately, many entrepreneurial companies are in hot pursuit of solving water crises and reducing water use in homes.

WaterFX, a company in Fresno County, uses solar thermal technology to turn salty and polluted irrigation runoff into pure water. Its pilot system produces about 14,000 gallons per day for its customers, who are mostly local farmers, and the company has plans to significantly increase production to 2 million gallons daily in the next few years.

Advances in water purification are encouraging, and residential (住宅的) water conservation also plays a role in meeting water-efficiency goals. Homebuilding company KB Home recently built its first Double ZeroHouse in Lancaster, Calif, one of the most water-challenged areas of the country. It’s a net-zero-energy building (potentiallyyieldingan electric bill of $0) that reuses greywater, and saves water with ultra-efficient appliances.

KB Home estimates that the structure can conserve 150,000 gallons of water each year when compared with a typical home, which is an average reduction of approximately 70 percent. The Double ZeroHouse’s advanced greywater system first pipes greywater from sinks, tubs, showers and washing machines into a heat-recovery system. As hot water runs through the system, the heat is extracted (提取) and used to preheat fresh water in the tankless water heater. This heat exchange results in about a 30 percent savings on water heating. Next, the greywater is channeled into a collection tank, where it’s stored for watering the landscape or garden.

As the cost of water rises, employing creative conservation solutions is not only vital to addressing our water crisis, but also important to keeping monthly utility (水电费) bills affordable for homeowners.

【推荐3】Earth Day: Kid Heroes for the Planet

On April 22, we celebrate Earth Day. On that day, people around the world work to help our planet. But many people, including kids, protect the Earth all year long Read about five inspiring kid heroes for the planet.

Saving the Frogs

Justin Sather is from Los Angeles, California. He has always loved frogs. When Justin was 5, he learned that their habitats (栖息地) were in danger. Justin started a group called For the Love of Frogs. He sold toy frogs to raise money to help them. Up till now, he has raised more than $20, 000 to support frog protection.

Growing Right

Aadya Joshi lives in Mumbai, India. When she was 15, she turned a junk lot in her neighborhood into a garden. She used native plants. Joshi said native plants attract native insects and animals. Now, she’s the leader of the organization The Right Green. She founded it to educate people about growing native plants and maintaining healthy ecosystems. Joshi also created a database of more than 2,000 plants in India. Joshi’s database is a resource where people can learn which kinds of plants are native to their area.

Cleaning Up

Jeremy Muchilwa, 13, and Michelle Muchilwa, 15, are siblings. They live in Kenya In June 2020, they participated in the Ocean Heroes Bootcamp. This inspired them to fight plastic pollution. They decided to create a campaign to pick up plastic waste in nearby Lake Victoria. Also, they worked with a research institute to find new ways to draw attention to plastic waste.

Creating Energy

Eleven-year-old Xavier Iglesias is from Florida. One day, Xavier was playing with a friend on an Astroturf field (人造草坪). He noticed the field was much hotter than real grass. It inspired him to invent SoleX Turf, which uses the heat from Astroturf to make electricity. Xavier said his invention creates electricity in a way that’s less harmful to the environment.