【推荐1】In the past, music recording was primitive. A recording engineer placed microphones in front of instruments. The producer pressed record and signaled the band to play. There was a human touch to recordings, and this way of recording gave rock music its raw edge. But here we are today. Complex and advanced audio software sits in every recording studio. The higher cost and greater practicality make creating digital music common.

However, the modern recordings aren’t beneficial to a rock record. Let’s not forget, being in a band is laborious. You need like-minded musicians to rehearse for hours on end. Nowadays, this isn’t a necessity.

Programming drums on a computer is as simple as filling cells on a spreadsheet, and there you have it, a drumbeat. Only a few professionals are aware that they aren’t listening to true live drums. Such tech is even accessible on your smartphone. Whether on a train or in a bedroom, you can create a full band track without a live band.

What happened to rock music? With pop and hip hop dominating the charts, it feels like the time for bands is over. Is rock music really dying out? Is it really on its last legs, or are we just not trying hard enough?

Artists, inspired by the great rock bands, seek to put their own spin on this classic genre. The spirit of rock music still remains. One singer mixed soul and rock while one band combined indie rock with elements of techno, both with underlying rock characteristics.

The truth is that fresh rock bands are out there and you just need to dig deeper. A search through online music blogs shows a growing number of new rock bands. While rock bands are now not as popular as before and not receiving mainstream exposure, the flame still burns brightly.

【推荐2】Music is present in any part of the world, and it is appreciated and felt everywhere. Without its presence, life could be boring. Studies show that music is good for your body and mind.     1    

Music can increase pain management. Listening to music can help increase your pain tolerance (耐痛性).     2     Listening to music can help you gain a sense of control over your ability to deal with pains. If you have a certain pain, for example, listening to music that you enjoy can help reduce the pain that you experience.

●    3     Listening to certain types of music, such as relaxing music, can naturally reduce both your heartbeat rate and breathing rate. Additionally, music has shown promising results as a treatment for heart disease. Whether it involves listening to music or composing music, the calming effect that music produces further improves your heart’s health by supporting it throughout the healing process.

●Music can reduce anxiety and depression     4     When it comes to anxiety and depression, music treatment can help to reduce the amount of stress hormones. For example, listening to music that you enjoy can naturally decrease the amount of cortisol (皮质醇) that your body releases.

●Music can improve self-expression and communication. Self-expression and communication are an important part of the human experience, especially when it comes to basic emotional and mental health needs.     5     By listening and singing along to music, kids who struggle to interact and communicate with others can practice using the very skills needed to do so.

【推荐1】When hydrogen(氢气) burns, the only by-product is water—which is why hydrogen has been an attractive zero-carbon energy source for decades. Yet the traditional process for producing hydrogen, in which fossil fuels are exposed to steam, is not even remotely zero-carbon. Hydrogen produced this way is called gray hydrogen; if the CO₂ is captured and sequestered (封存), it is called blue hydrogen.

Green hydrogen is different. It is produced through electrolysis (电解), in which machines split water into hydrogen and oxygen, with no other by-products. Historically, electrolysis required so much electricity that it made little sense to produce hydrogen that way. The situation is changing for two reasons. First, significant amounts of excess renewable electricity have become available at grid(输电网)scale; rather than storing excess electricity in arrays of batteries, the extra electricity can be used to drive the electrolysis of water, “storing” the electricity in the form of hydrogen. Second, electrolyzers are getting more efficient.

Current renewable technologies such as solar and wind can decarbonize (脱碳) the energy sector by as much as 85 percent by replacing gas and coal with clean electricity. Other parts of the economy, such as shipping and producing, are harder to electrify because they often require fuel that is high in energy density (密度) or heat at high temperatures. Green hydrogen has potential in these sectors. The Energy Transitions Commission, an industry group, says green hydrogen is one of four technologies necessary for meeting The Paris Agreement goal of decreasing more than 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide a year from the most challenging industrial sectors, among them mining, construction and chemicals.

Although green hydrogen is still on the early stage of its development, countries—especially those with cheap renewable energy—are investing in the technology. Australia wants to export hydrogen that it would produce using its plentiful solar and wind power, Chile has plans for hydrogen in the country’s dry north, where solar electricity is abundant. China aims to put one million hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles on the road by 2030. All of which is why, earlier this year, Goldman predicted that green hydrogen will become a $ 12-tilion market by 2050.

【推荐2】A new smartwatch app alerts users who are deaf or hard of hearing of nearby sounds, such as knocks at the door or fire alarms.

“The main motivation for the app came from my own experience, and conversations that my colleagues and I have had with deaf and hard of hearing people over several years, ”says Dhruv Jain, who presented the system, called SoundWatch.

Jain, who is hard of hearing, uses SoundWatch at home to avoid sleeping through a smoke alarm. “On a nature walk, it’ll tell me that there’s birds singing, or there might be a waterfall nearby, ” he says. “Those sounds make me feel more present and connected to the world. ”

Sound awareness apps for smartphones exist. But Jain prefers the immediacy of sound notifications on his wrist, rather than in his pocket-and surveys of people who are deaf or hard of hearing show he’s not alone.

The SoundWatch app pairs an Android smartwatch and phone. The watch records surrounding noises and sends that data to the phone for processing. When the phone finds a sound of interest, the smartwatch vibrates (振动)and displays a sign.

Jain, a computer scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and his colleagues designed the app to identify 20 noises. In experiments, SoundWatch correctly identified those 20 sounds 81. 2 percent of the time. When set to listen only for urgent noises-a fire alarm, door knock or alarm clock-the app was 97. 6 percent accurate. Eight deaf and hard of hearing people who used SoundWatch around a university campus gave the app broadly favorable reviews, but noted that the app misclassified some sounds in noisy outdoor settings.

Disability is highly personal, and Jain hopes his team can find ways for people to personalize this app for their own specific needs. For example, people can be told about the sounds they care about-a husband’s or wife’s voice versus general speech, the back door opening versus the front door opening, and more.

【推荐2】Evelyn Glennie is a unique musician. She is a percussionist (打击乐手) who plays with classical orchestras. When she performs, she hits the gongs, snare drums, vibraphones, timbales, cymbals, conga drums, bells, and bass drums that are in front of her. Although classical musicians usually wear formal clothes in concert, Glennie performs in bare feet. What really sets her apart, though, is that she is a musician who cannot hear. Glennie has been almost totally deaf since she was 12 years old. Despite being deaf, she has become the first solo star to play her type of percussion instruments in classical music.

Glennie was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. At the age of eight, she started taking piano lessons. She found that she preferred the drums, so she began to concentrate on other percussion instruments. Her doctors were never able to find out why she started to lose her hearing. By the time Glennie was 12, most of her hearing was gone. Glennie stayed in her school and learned to read lips. She also continued her music lessons. She learned how to play percussion instruments by using her sense of touch. She learned to feel the difference between high and low notes. She became very sensitive to the vibrations created by different sounds. Glennie took off her shoes to make it easier for her to feel the vibrations made by her instruments.

Glennie was very talented. At 16 she was accepted to the Royal Academy of Music in London, England. She was the music school’s first solo percussion student, graduating when she was 19. To build her career, she performed anywhere she could. There was very little solo music written for her instruments, so she asked for percussion music to be written for her. She then performed the new pieces in her solo concerts. Glennie attracted attention by performing in radio and television concerts. One 1988 concert was recorded live and made into a CD. This recording earned Glennie her first Grammy Award for a classical music performance.

Today Glennie performs all around the world. In addition to classical orchestras, she plays with folk musicians and rock stars. She has written music for movies, television shows, and commercials. Every year more new compositions are written for Glennie to perform. She has even taken up a new instrument: the bagpipes. Glennie considers herself a pioneer in music, not because she is deaf but because she has become a solo percussion star in classical music.

【推荐3】Arun Kumar Bajaj has a very unusual skill — he can paint with a sewing machine. Technically, it’s embroidering, not painting, but his artworks are so detailed that they can pass as paintings to the untrained eyes. And the fact that he does it all with a sewing machine just makes that much more impressive.

Arun was really good at drawing and painting while growing up and dreamed of becoming a famous painter, but his father died suddenly 15 years ago, which destroyed his plans and forced him to give up school in order to run the family business. His father was a tailor and he became one too, but he didn’t let the artist in him die. He started “painting” with a needle and thread, but instead of using his hands, he decided on a rather unusual tool — the sewing machine. It took him a while to master this unique art form, but today he is recognized as the world’s only sewing machine artist. His works become very popular both in India and abroad. It’s easy to see why, just by looking at them, but what really makes his embroideries special is the tool he uses.

“You need to be very careful because once you’ve stitched the cloth, there’s no way you can repair it,” Arun said. “It’s all done in a single layer to give the painting a neat look.”

Some of Arun’s most impressive works include a 4×2 feet painting of the court of Ranjit Singh which took the artist over a year to finish. Arun runs a tailoring business in the Adalat Bazar of Patiala, but he devotes a lot of his time to his artistic dream as well.