【推荐1】While reviewing the literature in your research area, you may find that there aren’t too many journal articles.    1    Actually the global research output increases every year by about 2.5 million new journal articles. What should you do if you fail to find relevant (相关的) studies in your research area? These tips should help you get a head-start on your literature review.

Explore them in depth.

Having a limited number of references might work to your benefit.    2    In addition, with few sources in your specific research area, it is possible that you could find limitations in the existing literature and use them to build or strengthen your own research question.

    3    

You may have drawn very strict mental limits around your research question. If so, you might not be able to see other relevant research areas. Assuming that your research question is about studying whether plastic can be made compostable(可降解的), you could begin with looking into more environment-friendly plastic. This will not only help with more relevant reading, but also placing your specific research question in a broader way.

Make sure you use the right keywords.

One of the problems in your search for relevant sources could be unclear or unrelated keywords. Your keywords should be well defined and specifically targeted to the research papers you are looking for. This will indicate the relevance of those terms in your field.    4    

Ask for help.

    5    Start by approaching the librarian at your university and ask him/her if your library has ordered the journal you need. You could also ask a professor, or a senior colleague. Having gone through a similar difficulty as the one you are currently facing, they will surely have a few tricks up their sleeve.

【推荐2】In some parts of Africa, there are still big herds of wild animals like zebras, elephants, and giraffes. But today many of these wild animals are in danger and it worries many conservationists. Louis Liebenberg is one of them. He feels that having good information about animals is very important. People need to understand what happens to plants and animals over time. Are they increasing or decreasing in number? What plants are the animals eating?

African Bushmen may be able to help. For hundreds of years, Bushmen have understood the ways of wild animal: what the animals eat; where the animals go; and even where they sleep. However, the Bushmen don’t always speak the same language as the conservationists. This can cause problems when they work together. This is where the Cyber Tracker comes in.

The Cyber Tracker is an invention created by Louis Liebenberg. He hopes that together, the Cyber Tracker and the Bushmen can help protect the animals. The Cyber Tracker is a small computer that helps collect information about animals. It uses pictures, called “icons,” instead of words to record information. There are pictures for drinking, walking, fighting, sleeping, eating and other things. This way, the Bushmen can record what they see even without speaking the same language. The Cyber Tracker can collect very detailed and complicated information very quickly.

However, that’s not the only thing the Cyber Tracker can do. The small computer also contains a global positioning device. Each time a Bushman sees something interesting about an animal or plant, he pushes a button. The Cyber Tracker records exactly where the man is in the world. The Bushman can also record what the animals are eating by pushing different buttons to name about 50 plants.

However, Liebenberg adds that the human factor is also very important. A big part of the project is the Bushman’s ability to understand and correctly report everything he sees. The combination of machine and man seems to work very well. With the data collected by the Cyber Tracker, Liebenberg make maps showing where the animal herds are and what the animals are eating, indicating facts about their health.

【推荐3】In 2015, two inventors, Simon Jorritsma and Anne Koudstaal, had an unusual idea—what if you recycled plastic and turned it into a road? Now the world’s first plastic bike path has been created to test their idea.

The Netherlands is famous for being bike-friendly, and the city of Zwolle has just gone a little bit further. On September11, 2018, the city opened a 100-foot bike path made of recycled plastic. The path is not 100% recycled plastic, but the group that created it, PlasticRoad, hopes future paths and roads will be.

Most roads in the world today are made with asphalt—a black mixture that creates a lot of pollution. Asphalt is heavy to move and must be heated when people are making a road. Using asphalt to make roads takes a lot of energy.

PlasticRoad says their way of making roads is better in many ways than asphalt roads.

PlasticRoad creates their road in pieces in a factory, which are light and easy to move around. To make the road, a special truck simply drives along and lays down the pieces. This makes it much faster to make than an asphalt road.

PlasticRoad thinks their road will last three times as long as an asphalt road. And if part of it breaks, it is easy to take out the broken part and replace it. The broken part can then be recycled once more and turned into a new piece again.

The plastic road is hollow below the surface, allowing rainwater to flow away. The hollow area also makes it easy to run pipes under the road.

Many people think this is a creative way to recycle plastic, but some are worried. One of the biggest concerns is what will happen to the bits of plastic that break off as the path is being used. Besides, the world is facing a major problem with microplastics. However, some people think plastic roads will create more.

【推荐1】If he is in a tight spot, says Trouble Kalua, people mention his name, asking, “What do you expect?” Shortly before his birth in Malawi, his father had lost his job as a bus conductor, making the family even poorer. Then the baby nearly died. “This boy is trouble,” his father said. “His name is Trouble.”

Across Africa names can have a story behind them. Yewande, for instance, is a Yoruba name meaning “mother has paid me a visit”, given when an older female relative dies just before a girl is born. Kiptanui may suggest at a difficult birth for mothers who speak one of the Kalenjin group of languages in Kenya.

But southern Africa stands out for nominative (提名) creativity, at least when it comes to English names.

Ask Zimbabweans about their school friends and you will hear different registers: Lovemore, Hopewell, Innocence, Patience, Knowledge, Fortune, Brilliant. A Malawian (himself Golden) lists friends named Goodfriday, Wisdom and Iron.

In Zimbabwe children were long given African names with meaning. This practice switched after British colonization (殖民), when having an English name was seen as a way of getting ahead. Names may refer to conditions around the birth, a quality parents see in the child, an aspiration (期望) for them or even for the country.

Under white rule some children were called Democracy, Freedom or, allegedly, Polling Station. Other names suggested progress. One venture capitalist recalls school friends named Computer.

Names, and the language they are in, reflect changing times, too. In Zimbabwe, whose economy is falling down, one comes across people named No Money. In many places African names are supplanting (取代) English ones. In recent years in South Africa, Enzokuhle (“to do good” in Xhosa), has become one of the most popular names, perhaps inspired by a popular song, “Enzo”.

It may be that names such as Salad Nthenda will become relics. The Malawian, whose mother ate lots of vegetables when pregnant (怀孕的), says his “name felt good from day one”. He loves the “uniqueness”. Although he is teased at times, he does not care.

【推荐3】You might think that simple things like saying hello and goodbye are the same in every culture. Think again!

Shaking hands to say hello or goodbye was a Western custom at first.     1    

Traditionally, the Chinese custom for greeting was to hold one’s hands together and nod their head a little.

Japanese people greet each other by bowing.When greeting an older or more important person, it is usual to bow lower and for longer.    2     But only men did it.

People in European countries such as Italy often greet each other with a kiss on both cheeks (脸颊). Even men greet each other like this.    3    

Eskimos, a group of people living in the very cold northern areas of North America, greet each other by lightly rubbing their noses together.    4     Often, Eskimos only leave their eyes and noses uncovered. And the rest of their bodies are covered with warm clothing and their hands with gloves.

When you’re not sure what the customs are in a new country, there’s one greeting that is the same all over the world: a smile.    5    

【推荐1】When parents ask, “What grade did you get?” there is a common follow-up question: “So who got the highest grade?” The practice of making such social comparisons(比较) is popular in all corners of the world. Many teachers choose and publicly announce the “best student” in a class. Adults praise children for doing better than others. People cheer for the athletes who defeat others.

Social comparisons are well meaning: we want to make children feel proud and push them to achieve more. Yet social comparisons can backfire: children can learn to always compare themselves with others and become caught up in a harmful cycle(循环) of competition.

One well-known method to remove social comparisons is to provide participation prizes for children who take an active part in activities. Such prizes, however, may not end social comparisons: A high achiever who receives the same prize as a low achiever may feel unfairly treated. More generally, those who are highly praised unexpectedly may come to believe that they do better than others and thus have reason to be given a prize.

How, then, can we make children feel proud of themselves and encourage them without the unwanted side effects? We believe a better way is to use temporal comparisons—encouraging children to compare themselves with their past self rather than with others, such as by checking on their progress. Adults should teach children that doing better than oneself is more important than doing better than others and that even small achievements can be celebrated.

【推荐2】Turning soil, pulling weeds, and harvesting cabbage sound like tough work for middle and high school kids. And at first it is, says Abby Jaramillo, who with another teacher started Urban Sprouts, a school garden program at four low-income schools. The program aims to help students develop science skills, environmental awareness, and healthy lifestyles.

Jaramillo’s students live in neighborhoods where fresh food and green space are not easy to find and fast food restaurants outnumber grocery stores. “The kids literally come to school with bags of snacks and large bottles of soft drinks,” she says. “They come to us thinking vegetables are awful, dirt is awful, insects are awful.” Though some are initially scared of the insects and turned off by the dirt, most are eager to try something new.

Urban Sprouts’ classes, at two middle schools and two high schools, include hands-on experiments such as soil testing, flower-and-seed dissection, tastings of fresh or dried produce, and work in the garden. Several times a year, students cook the vegetables they grow, and they occasionally make salads for their entire schools.

Program evaluations show that kids eat more vegetables as a result of the classes. “We have students who say they went home and talked to their parents and now they’re eating differently,” Jaramillo says.

She adds that the program’s benefits go beyond nutrition. Some students get so interested in gardening that they bring home seeds to start their own vegetable gardens. Besides, working in the garden seems to have a calming effect on Jaramillo’s special education students, many of whom have emotional control issues. “They get outside,” she says, “and they feel successful.”