【推荐1】Do cliché (陈词滥调) work sayings have you rolling your eyes? You’re not alone. Almost half of Americans have a colleague difficult to work with—due to their communication habits.

A survey of 2,000 remote workers revealed these feelings might result from their co-workers’ use of workplace jargon (行话) they dislike, like “give it 100 percent,” “think outside the box,” and “team player” ranking in the top 10 most overused phrases. Two thirds of workers surveyed also think it’s displeasing. It’s found that even though respondents dislike when others use jargon, they catch themselves doing it too. Besides workplace jargon, the results found the level of formality can also have a huge impact. It turns out 70%of remote workers actually encourage others to use slang (俚语) and abbreviations (缩略语). That’s how respondents say they prefer to communicate, too.

“Informal messages have made work feel more flexible and help them work more efficiently and productively. There should be little doubt that informal communication has evolved to become a mainstay of positive, inclusive and efficient workplace culture,” says Ali Rayl, senior vice president of product at Slack. “Informal communication through modern cooperation platforms brings informative discussions between senior leadership and their employees and makes work more fun, allowing employees to express themselves and create a more welcoming work environment.”

The desire for informal communication has been especially true during the Covid-19. “In this new world of working where teams are distributed, it’s important to be thoughtful and intentional in how we choose to communicate with our co-workers of all backgrounds, locations and ages, to ensure they stay connected and engaged,” Rayl adds. “Most survey respondents hope to continue to use informal work messages instead of workplace jargon. Going forward, we all need to consider which communication styles may be more effective with various co-workers. Being mindful of how we communicate, you can help build a productive and connected workplace. This is why we have created tools to allow for various text-based communication.”

【推荐2】Although living on the shores, the children in the coastal villages in Kenya rarely eat seafood. In 2020, Lora lannotti, a public-health researcher at Washington University asked people why the children weren’t eating seafood but corn flour, even though all the parents fish for a living. The parents said it made more financial sense for them to sell their catch than to eat it.

So, lannotti and her team are running a controlled experiment. They have given fishers improved nets with small openings that allow young fish to escape, thus improving the health of the overfished ocean over time, and eventually increasing incomes. Then, community health workers are using home visits and messaging to encourage parents to feed their children more fish. Later the scientists will track whether children from these families eat better and are growing taller.

Lannotti is trying to deal with questions that are a major focus of the whole world looking for diets that are good for both people and the planet. More than 2 billion people are overweight or obese (肥胖), mostly in the Western world while 811 million people are not getting enough calories or nutrition, mostly in low-income nations. As the world’s population continues to rise and more people start to eat like Westerners do, the production of meat, dairy and eggs will rise by about 44% by 2050.

That causes an environmental problem alongside the health concerns. Our current industrialized food system already sends out about 1/4 of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. It also accounts for 70% of freshwater use and 40% of land coverage, and relies on fertilizers (化肥) that are responsible for much of the pollution in rivers.

“We need to make progress toward eating diets that have greatly lower ecological footprints, or it’ll be a matter of a few decades before we start to see global falls of biodiversity (生物多样性), land use and all of it.” says Sam Myers, director of the Planetary Health Alliance.

【推荐3】What fisherman Moul Thun from a remote island in the Mekong River, in northern Cambodia, didn’t know was that stingray he hooked would eventually be named the largest recorded freshwater fish. For Zeb Hogan, who’s been documenting large freshwater fishes for almost two decades, the discovery of the stingray, which was released alive back into the river, filled him with hope. “It proves these underwater big fish, which are in critical danger, still exist,’’ says Hogan.

Hogan’s pursuit for big fish, called the Megafishes Project and supported by National Geographic Society , began in 2005 when fishermen in northern Thailand pulled a 646-pound cafish out of the Mekong River. The species is known that it was the largest, that is, the heaviest-ever caught in the area.

Arriving at the island, the team found Thun’s fish, a female that appeared to be in good health. It was more than 13 feet from nose to tail. The researchers were shocked to see her weight at 661 pounds. She set a new world record. The original aim of the Megafishes Project was to find, study, and protect the world’s largest freshwater fishes. The project focused on species that could grow to at least the size of a human and that lived only in freshwater.

Hogan initially drew up a list of roughly 30 species to focus on.

The challenge, as Hogan soon learned, was that many of these fish are hard to find. They live in remote, inaccessible places, and often in deep waters. Early on in the search, there were relatively few scientists studying them.

What was clear was that the river giants were shrinking in number, threatened by a host of factors including overfishing, water pollution, and the presence of dams, which block migrating fish from completing their life cycles. As Hogan’s work progressed, its focus increasingly turned to conservation. “It was never about just finding the biggest fish,” Hogan says, “but looking for ways to protect these extraordinary animals that, in some cases, have been on Earth for hundreds of millions of years but are now drifting out of entities.”

【推荐3】Being a pilot was first seen as a male occupation, however, these amazing female aviators proved that to be wrong.

Amy Johnson

On May 5, 1930, Amy Johnson, an English pilot, set out in her airplane, hoping to beat the record for the fastest flight between England and Australia: 15 days. Flying through sandstorms, monsoons, and terrible heat, she made several forced landings and landed in Australia 19 days later. She didn’t beat the record, but she was the first female to make the solo flight. Johnson set other solo records and eventually earned the nickname “Queen of the Air.”

Lee Ya-Ching

Lee Ya-Ching was China’s first woman pilot. When war broke out between China and Japan in 1937, Lee volunteered to be a combat pilot(空战飞行员)but the government declined that offer. Determined to do more to help her country, Lee set up a hospital and refugee(难民)camps. Then she bought a plane and set out a goodwill tour. She flew all over the United States, Canada, South America, and the Caribbean to raise money to help Chinese refugees by entertaining crowds with her flying.

Lotfia El Nadi

During the 1910s in Egypt, girls were expected to become housewives. Lotfia El Nadi, however, wanted a more exciting life. While attending the college, El Nadi secretly enrolled a flying school, working as the school’s secretary to pay for her lessons. In 1933, at the age of 26, she became the first female pilot in the Arab world. El Nadi’s fame inspired many other young Egyptian women to become pilots.