【推荐2】In my second year of high school, I took my first computer science course, which helped me realize I was interested in software. The idea of creating something from just lines of codes and logic was very fascinating. And I didn't put as much time into music as I used to, thinking practicing the piano was just a waste of time.

A year later, when I got back on the piano, I quickly noticed my musical ear was not as strong as it was before. I could no longer hear the difference between a perfect 4th and a perfect 5th or between a D and D flat. Then I had a firm decision to get my skills to where it used to be. After weeks of practicing, I didn't see much progress. I was extremely discouraged and felt that I would have to accept that I no longer will be able to play as well as I used to.

While watching hundreds of tutorials online on how to code in Swift I came up with an idea. What if I used the knowledge I gained from these tutorials to develop an app that would help train my musical ear. After hours of coding, I developed an app that would play a different series of notes, then the user would have to type in the corresponding notes to what they heard. When I was on the subway or had some extra time I could easily open up the app on my phone and use it to help my musical ear. In about 2 months, I regained the skills I lost.

This experience helped me see something that I never noticed before. Programming gives me a platform to express my ideas; in a similar way, playing the piano gives me a way to express my feelings. When playing through a song for the first time I hear many errors. Similarly, when I run my program for the first time there are usually many mistakes. In both of these cases, it takes patience to go through each measure or line to hear or find the error. I realized when I’m playing the piano I am also practicing my programming skills and vice versa.

【推荐1】Plastic pollution has long been a problem, but now it's gotten to a new height literally. Microplastic, referring to plastic fragments and particles less than 5 millimeters in diameter, have been found on Mount Qomolangma as high as 8,440 meters above sea level, just 408.86 meters below the peak of the mountain, according to a recent study published in the journal One Earth.

“These are the highest microplastics ever discovered so far.” lead author Imogen Napper from the University of Plymouth, UK, said in a statement. Scientists collected snow and water samples from 19 different locations from 4,200 meters above sea level all the way up to the summit of Mount Qomolangma. They found microplastics in all the water samples and part of the snow samples. The most polluted sample was from the Base Camp in Nepal, where most human activities on the mountain are concentrated. It had 79 particles of microplastics per liter of snow.

But how have these fragments made it all this way and in such a great abundance? The answer is apparent human activities. It is climbers who bring plastic products to the mountain. Even if they don't litter, just walking for 20 minutes or opening a bottle of water can release microplastics into the environment.

The harsh fact is that plastic pollution has reached even the most remote places on Earth. Researchers even found a plastic bag al the deepest point in the world's oceans—in the Mariana Trench, located in the Pacific Ocean. The bag is the same as the ones commonly used in grocery stores. Even covered in ice, the Arctic is still a victim of plastic pollution. A 2020 report published in Nature suggests that there are 2.000 to 17,000 plastic particles per cubic meter in Arctic ice cores, and between 0 to 18 microplastic particles per cubic meter from the water beneath ice floes. Experts think microplastics may be transported by air and then reach the North Pole in snowfall.

“What we don t yet fully know is the potential problems these tiny pieces of plastic could be having to ecosystems, to organisms and even to our own health as well,” said Christian Dunn of Bangor University, UK. Then what can we do? “We need to start focusing on deeper technological solutions that focus on microplastics, like changing fabric design and including natural fibers instead of plastic when possible.”

【推荐2】At the World Economic Forum last month, President Trump drew claps when he announced the United States would respond to the forum's proposal to plant one trillion(万亿) trees to fight climate change. The trillion-tree idea won wide attention last summer after a study published in the journal Science concluded that planting so many trees was “the most effective climate change solution to date”.

If only it were true. But it isn't. Planting trees would slow down the planet's warming, but the only thing that will save us and future generations from paying a huge price in dollars, lives and damage to nature is rapid and considerable reductions in carbon release from fossil fuels, to net zero by 2050.

Focusing on trees as the big solution to climate change is a dangerous diversion(偏离). Worse still, it takes attention away from those responsible for the carbon release that are pushing us toward disaster. For example, in the Netherlands, you can pay Shell an additional 1 euro cent for each liter of regular gasoline you put in your tank, to plant trees to balance the carbon release from your driving. That's clearly no more than disaster slightly delayed. The only way to stop this planet from overheating is through political, economic, technological and social solutions that end the use of fossil fuels.

There is no way that planting trees, even across a global area the size of the United States, can absorb the huge amounts of fossil carbon released from industrial societies. Trees do take up carbon from the atmosphere as they grow. But this uptake merely replaces carbon lost when forests were cleared in the first place, usually long ago. Regrowing forests where they once grew can undo some damage done in the past, but even a trillion trees can't store enough carbon to head off dramatic climate changes this century.

In a sharp counter argument to last summer's Paper in Science, Justin Gillis wrote in the same journal in October that the study's findings were inconsistent with the dynamics of the global carbon cycle. He warned that “the claim that global tree restoration(复原) is our most effective climate solution is simply scientifically incorrect and dangerously misleading”.