【推荐1】In recent years, Ethiopia has become a regional leader in solid waste management. Last year, the country transformed the landfill (垃圾填埋场) in Addis Ababa into a new waste-to-energy plant, the first such project on the continent. The plant incinerates up to 1, 400 tonnes of waste every day, about 80 percent of the city's rubbish, supplying the capital with 25 percent of its household electricity needs.

However, despite these important steps, challenges remain in Ethiopia. Although the country has permitted the Basel, Stockholm and Rotterdam conventions, laws and policies for environmentally sound management of hazardous (有害的) wastes are still not effective in pre- venting littering waste illegally.

To help Ethiopia meet these challenges, the Chemicals and Waste Management Program is supporting the country with a three-year project to enhance its capacity for sound management of hazardous wastes.

In the initial stages, a project management unit will be formed, made up of many representatives from government departments and private organizations. This unit will be responsible for reviewing and assessing Ethiopia's current legal system, which, despite numerous advances in recent years, does not specifically target the recycling of hazardous waste. Once legal gaps are identified, the project will seek to update existing policies and strategies.

Many people in Ethiopia are not aware of the possible effect of environmental damage and the need to report such crimes to the police. To resolve this pressing issue, Ethiopia will be conducting a series of capacity-building activities, including creating awareness-raising programs, training trainers and providing equipment.

Ethiopia will also work to establish a national mechanism for chemicals and waste management by engaging government departments and civil society groups. Authorities will also make budgetary provisions (预算拨款) in national, regional and institutional planning to ensure funding for these activities is sustainable even after the project's completion.

【推荐3】Soda bottles and sour cream containers—these plastics (and many others) typically arrive at recycling plants mixed together in the same bin. But because they are made of different molecular (分子的) building blocks, called monomers, they must be sorted into different streams before they can be melted to make new products. Otherwise, their various monomers tend to separate from one another like oil and water.

“Until about a year ago, everybody thought the only thing you could do is take a plastic, break it down to a monomer and then reform it,” says Sanat Kumar, a chemical engineer at Columbia University. “Now we’ve come up with a different way of doing it.” His team has developed a process that allows different kinds of plastic to be recycled together. Their findings, reported recently in Nature, could give new life to many items that end up in landfills.

The new process solves the problem by adding chemicals called universal dynamic cross-linkers to the mix. Just as soap brings together oil and water, these cross-linkers form covalent (共价的) molecular bonds that tie the diverse monomers together. This process creates materials that can keep certain useful properties of each plastic, such as keeping oxygen from passing through. These materials can then be melted and remade again and again because the cross-linkers can break and re-form their bonds.

The researchers hope the technique could eventually help repurpose more plastic waste, and Kumar says the process consumes less energy than breaking plastics down into their original monomers—but it’s not yet cheap enough to be widely used at existing recycling facilities. Still, showing that it works could lead to profitable markets for less expensive recycled plastics, which Kumar says would be one way to help recyclers eventually address the plastic waste crisis. “The plastics problem is huge,” he says, “and you’re going to have to look for multiple solutions.”

【推荐1】The origins of the Christmas traditions are the most fascinating of any holiday. All our favourite activities can be traced (追溯) back to specific points in history, and knowing how these things came about just makes celebrating Christmas much more wonderful.

The original Nicholas was born in 280 A.D. in the small country of Lycia, which is now part of modern Turkey. Nicholas became first a priest (牧师) and then a bishop (主教) in the early Christian church. The first paintings of him show Nicholas wearing the clothes of a Christian bishop—red decorated with white. When we see Santa’s suit today, we’re still seeing the two kinds of colors.

Nicholas became famous for gift-giving. In the early fourth century, a story began to spread about Nicholas coming at night to the home of three poor girls who did not have money and therefore could not get married. While the girls slept, Nicholas left gold coins in their stockings, which were drying by the fire. That’s how the tradition of Santa filling stockings got its start.

In 1841, Santa first appeared at a department store in Philadelphia. This Santa tried to climb down a chimney to impress the children who were watching, but he got stuck halfway down. In 1890, department store Santas began appearing all over America, especially on the East Coast around Boston. Parents in other countries joined together and hired passenger trains to take their families to see these Santas.

At the same time, Ralph E. Morris of the New England Telephone Company suggested that strings of lights be hung on Christmas trees. After all, lights would be much safer than candles. Our modern-day image of Santa as a fat man is based on ads of the Coca-Cola company in the 1930s. Artist Hans Sundblom used a retired salesman named Les Prentice as his model.

【推荐2】Over the past few decades, children have been taking part less in free play and more in organized sports. While participation in organized sports has both social and physical benefits for young children, concerns about safety and benefits increase as participants get younger.

Though most children are naturally likely to be physically active, not all kids are willing to get up and move. Soccer coach Joseph Luxbacher says, “Every kid has the potential to be a good sportsman in different kinds of sports. Participating in organized sports such as the school soccer team introduces direction to children’s physical activities. Following a team schedule gives kids a set time and place to exercise. As a result, kids can be safe from accidents and be protected against hurt.”

What’s more, participating in organized sports gives children time to communicate with others and showing good sportsmanship. For young children who may still be very self-centered, participating in team sports teaches them to think about the group and encourages them to be happy about the success of their teammates. Kids can also benefit from spending time with their coach and having a chance to develop a positive relationship with an adult other than their parents, especially if the coach is both skilled and devoted to being a positive mentor.

Playing organized sports requires a lot of time for practice and games, so it would seem that this could influence students’ study. Actually it can ameliorate students’ test performance. That’s because to play organized sports well, players have to memorize information, do repetitive actions, and learn from teammates. All these types of learning skills can make students score higher.

Though it can come from many different sources——parents, coaches, teammates or themselves——many children who participate in organized sports feel pressured to succeed. While a little stress can be helpful in leading children to perform with increased focus and strength, too much stress will leave young kids feeling very tired. Organized sports are more likely to put the right amount of pressure on them.

【推荐3】Guangzhou has long been famous for various kinds of flowers and local people have developed their enthusiasm for flowers since the time of Nanyue King in the Western Han Dynasty, which was founded over 2,000 years ago.

According to historical records, in the Western Han Dynasty, blooming flowers were seen everywhere in ancient Guangzhou, also known as Canton. Many people, whether men or women, wore flowers as decorations (装饰). There were even more varieties of flowers and plants grow n in the royal garden owned by Zhao Tuo, the founder of Nanyue Kingdom.

During the Tang and Song dynasties, Huadi, the land of flowers in Chinese, located in present-day Fangcun area of Guangzhou, was where Datong Port (港口), a major harbor for foreign trade, lay. Many businessmen from different places brought various flower seeds to the port by sea, turning a large wetland into flower fields. Besides, Cantonese farmers also grew flowers on the farmlands of thirty-three villages located south of the Pearl River.

The flower trade also contributed to the boom (繁荣) of Canton, which was the starting point of the ancient Maritime Silk Road (海上丝绸之路). As early as the Western Han Dynasty, people of Lingnan region had sailed to Sri Lanka. In the Tang and Song dynasties, a shipping route of over 14,000 kilometers was established, allowing people to travel to as far as the Persian Gulf. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, several ocean-crossing routes had connected Canton with many other parts of the world. In the period of Emperor Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, Canton was served as the only port open for foreign trade.

Starting off from the Lingnan region, all kinds of flowers found their way to the West, including camellia and Chinese rose, which were developed into more varieties in only 300 years.

The ancient Maritime Silk Road played a key role in supporting the selling of locally-grown flowers of the Lingnan region to other countries. It also brought special foreign flowers from countries and regions along the route to Canton, which promoted the city’s fame for giving people excellent views of blossoms of flowers in all seasons.