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【推荐3】Here’re the best music festivals of 2024 you need tickets to.

Where: Great Stage Park in Manchester, Tenn. Bonnaroo has been a king in the festival world since 2002. This year’s headliners include Pretty Lights, Fisher and so on. The main venue（场地）, “Centeroo,” stays open 24/7, so you can jamout until the sun comes up if that’s your style. When taking a break from the music, there’re tons of activities to keep you occupied, cool off, or relax.

The first Coachella was actually held on October 9-10, 1999. Like most festivals, fashion is a big part of the event. Headliners for Coachella 2024 include Lana Del Ray and Doja Cat. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Where: Bayfront Park in Miami, Florida. It was first held in Miami in March, 1999. Unlike many festivals, you don’t camp on Ultra grounds and instead can book a stay at one of the nearby hotels. Who are the talented artists making an appearance? Headliners include Calvin Harris, and Afrojack, to name a few.

This three-day party came to be in 2010 and has been popular since. What’s better than your feet in the sand and live music? This year’s top performers to look out for are Odesza, and Zach Bryan. But that’s just a few names out of the long list of acts to see.

【推荐1】If you live in a region where winter weather is a regular risk, you are likely used to pouring salt on your sidewalks. But how does it work? And how much salt do humans pour onto our planet’s surface? The second question is easier to answer: a lot.

Salt doesn’t directly melt ice, nor does it make snow simply disappear. Instead it makes water less likely to freeze in a phenomenon called freezing point depression. In the case of simple rock salt, which is a rawer, less pure version of table salt, each molecule (分子) splits into smaller elements. Normally, when water freezes into ice, its molecules line up to form a stable, orderly structure. Salt interrupts the process, however, and temperatures must drop lower to overcome that interruption and for freezing to occur.

But if salt needs to interact with liquid water, how does it do anything when temperatures are stubbornly below freezing, and water should already be in the form of ice? That’s where cars help clear their own way by creating friction and, in turn, heat. The friction allows for the ice that has already frozen to melt a little bit, making it unlikely to freeze.

Beyond rock salt’s ability to clear icy streets, it can also be destructive. Chloride ions (氯离子) can cause wear and tear on vehicles and facilities. Increasing chloride densities in North American lakes could begin to upset local ecology and degrade sources of drinking water.

Many local governments are looking for alternatives to rock salt. Other salts such as magnesium chloride and calcium chloride work in the same way as rock salt, and they’re perhaps even more efficient. Some experiments are testing other ice-preventing solutions, including those that contain sugars instead of or in addition to salts. Another approach relies more heavily on sand, which can mechanically make roads safer. All of this experimentation is aimed at ensuring people can travel in any weather condition — a Herculean task when winter brings its worst.

【推荐1】Facial recognition cameras are everywhere, including in your smartphone. Many people rely on this technology to unlock their phones, open doors or make quick payments, but there is a problem: Everyone is wearing a mask. What a hassle!

Now, tech companies have updated their software. Facial recognition technology can now identify people even if they are wearing a mask.

Beijing-based tech company Hanwang has announced a software which can correctly recognize 95 percent of people wearing masks, Engineering & Technology (E&T) reported. What's the secret? It's all about your eyes.

Marios Savvides, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, US, studies facial recognition technology. As we get older, he said, our faces change shape, but not the area around our eyes. It stays the same-even if we put on weight.

Another company, Geneva-based Tech5, has also been working on this kind of software. Tech5 has AI that measures the shape of your face. It also scans your iris (the colored part of your eyes). Tech5 hopes to ignore all of the face below the nose.

Facial recognition software is about more than just unlocking your phone. It's about public safety. For example, you don't need to present an ID card, which can be lost or stolen. It also means that germs aren't spread by touching things, said NEC's Shinya Takeshima. “Touchless verification(验证) has become extremely important due to... the coronavirus,” he said to Reuters. “[We] hope to contribute to safety and peace of mind.”

More than that, facial recognition can be used to fight crime. “It can detect crime suspects, terrorists,” said Huang Lei, Hanwang's vice president. Hanwang's technology is used by police in high-security settings, Reuters reported. This means places like government buildings, subway stations and airports. Similar technology is used by the United States Air Force and other governments.

【推荐2】In a study in the journal Science, researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois reported that they had developed an effective and inexpensive method for breaking down chemicals called poly fluoro alkyl substances (PFAS).

PFAS, first created in the 1930s, are chemical compounds (化合物). They are used to make a wide range of everyday products, including nonstick pans, carpeting, electronics, and fast-food wrappers. Once the chemicals are in the environment, they are almost impossible to eliminate because they are designed to avoid breaking down. Researchers have linked regular levels of exposure to these chemicals with several health problems, including liver damage, an increased risk of cancer, and reduced immunity.

Scientists had previously figured out how to remove PFAS from polluted water or soil but, until now, had no safe and effective way to destroy them once they were removed. The study reported that when the team boiled PFAS molecules (分子) with two common substances, the PFAS quickly broke down and became harmless.

In 2020, William Dichtel, a chemist and professor at Northwestern, read a study in which chemists at the University of Alberta, in Canada, found an easy way to break down chains of molecules. He asked a graduate student, Brittany Trang, to try the method on PFAS molecules.

Trang had spent months in the lab unsuccessfully attempting to pull apart PFAS, and at first she thought Dichtel’s idea was too simple to work. But she tried it, boiling PFAS with a common solvent (溶剂) called dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). Trang was shocked when the process destroyed the PFAS. She later mixed DMSO with a chemical called sodiumhydroxide and broke down PFAS even more quickly.

The scientists will work on ways to destroy PFAS outside the lab so large amounts of forever chemicals can be broken down at once. “It’s a huge challenge, but it’s in our grasp,” Dichtel told The New York Times. Scientists are also calling for a decrease in the amount of PFAS being released into the natural world. In June, the US government announced new plans to monitor PFAS, decrease the amount released into the environment, and address the effects of PFAS on human health.