【推荐1】The major drivers of climate change are collective enterprises such as power grids (电力公司), industry, large-scale agriculture and transportation systems. About half of all greenhouse gas emissions comes from electricity generation and industrial fossil-fuel use. Substantial (大量的) emissions reductions in these settings most likely will not come from personal actions; they will come from laws and policies such as carbon-pricing systems, revised building codes and supports for green investment. But one effective act is to consume less meat.

Cutting meat consumption is a powerful and personal thing most Americans can do to tackle (解决)the climate crisis, and they can do it immediately. About 40 percent of greenhouse gases come from agriculture, deforestation and other land-use changes. Meat-particularly beef-drives climate change in two ways: first, through cows’ emission of methane(甲烷), a strong greenhouse gas, and second, by destroying forests as they are changed into grass land.Despite the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (流行病), atmospheric greenhouse gas levels continued to rise in 2020, in large part because of an emissions increase in the Amazon as rain forests were changed into land for cattle to satisfy the global demand for beef. By eating less beef, we can start to decrease that demand.

You do not have to become a vegan (素食主义者) to do this. According to one recent study, if every person in the U.S. cut their meat consumption by 25 percent, it would reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 1 percent. That might not sound like a lot, but it would help protect the rain forest, so the positive effects-including reduced water and fertilizer use, improved biodiversity and safeguarded rights of local peoples-would be amplified (放大).

Perhaps, social action is kind of infectious (有感染力的) in a good way. If lots of us begin to eat less meat and if we talk about it constructively, we will likely influence others. Pretty soon the 1 percent reduction becomes 2 percent or more. Reduced demand for meat could motivate my local supermarket to carry better produce, making it easier for me and my neighbours to prepare a few more satisfying meat-free meals. Ultimately changes in demand will influence industry. Forty years ago few mainstream supermarkets carried organic (有机的) products; now nearly all do. Consumer demand did that.

Above all, cutting back on red meat also has the added benefit of being good for your health.

【推荐2】Researchers say they have translated the meaning of gestures that wild chimpanzees (黑猩猩) use to communicate. They say wild chimps communicate 19 specific messages to one another with a “vocabulary” of 66 gestures. The scientists discovered this by following and filming groups of chimps in Uganda, and examining more than 5,000 incidents of these meaningful exchanges.

Dr Catherine Hobaiter, who led the research, said that this was the only form of intentional communication to be recorded in the animal kingdom. Only humans and chimps, she said, had a system of communication where they deliberately sent a message to another group member.

“That’s what’s so amazing about chimp gestures,” she said. “They’re the only thing that looks like human language in that respect.”

Although previous research has shown that apes and monkeys can understand complex information from another animal’s call, the animals do not appear to use their voices intentionally to communicate messages. This was a significant difference between calls and gestures, Dr Hobaiter said.

Chimps will check to see if they have the attention of the animal with which they wish to communicate. In one case, a mother presents her foot to her crying baby, signaling: “Climb on me.” The youngster immediately jumps on to its mothers back and they travel off together. “The big message from this study is that there is another species (物种) out there. that is meaningful in its communication, so that’s not unique to humans,” said Dr Hobaiter.

Dr Susanne Shultz, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Manchester, said the study was praiseworthy in seeking to enrich our knowledge of the evolution of human language. But, she added, the results were “a little disappointing”.

“The vagueness of the gesture meanings suggests either that the chimps have little to communicate, or we are still missing a lot of the information contained in their gestures and actions,” she said. “Moreover, the meanings seem to not go beyond what other animal convey with non-verbal communication. So, it seems the gulf remains. ”

【推荐3】The twilight (朦胧的) time between full wakefulness and being sound asleep may be packed with creative potential, In a new experiment, people who went into a light sleep were better problem solvers later.

It is said that the famous inventor, Thomas Edison, used to fall asleep in a chair holding two steel balls. As he nodded off, the balls fell into metal pans. The resulting noise woke him. Then, he could write down his inventive ideas before he fell into a deep sleep and forgot them.

Researchers tested Edison’s method of cultivating creativity with 103 healthy people. Volunteers came to the lab to solve a tricky number problem. They were asked to change a string of numbers into a shorter sequence (序列). They were told to follow two simple rules. What the volunteers weren’t told was that there was an easy trick to do this task. The second number in the sequence would always be the correct final number, too. Once discovered, this trick dramatically cut the solving time.

After doing this task 60 times, the volunteers earned a 20-minute break. This downtime was spent in a quiet, dark room. Volunteers sat in chairs and held a version of the steel balls that Edison used as “alarm clocks”— it was a light drinking bottle in one dangling (悬垂) hand. The researchers told participants to close their eyes and rest or sleep if they desired.

About half of the participants stayed awake. Twenty-four fell asleep and stayed in the shallow, twilight stage of sleep called N1. Fourteen others progressed to N2, a deeper stage of sleep.

After their rest, participants returned to their number problem. The researchers saw a clear difference between the groups. People who had fallen into a shallow, early sleep were 2.7 times as likely to spot the hidden trick as people who stayed awake. Shallow sleepers were 5.8 times as likely to spot the trick as people who reached the deeper N2 stage.