【推荐1】What will astronauts eat when a space trip takes years?

“Lots of fresh vegetables,” says Dr. Janet Williams, whose team have spent the last 10 years learning how to grow plants in a space station. And it’s a good thing that she has already started her work, because space gardening can be really hard.

As usual, astronaut George White looked into the closed plant room. He had planted Dr. Williams’s quick-growing seedlings in it, but none of the stems were showing. He opened the room to check and found the problem. The stems weren’t growing upward and the roots weren’t growing downward. On Earth, gravity helps a plant’s stems and roots to find “up” and “down”. However, in the space station, there was almost no gravity.

Dr. Williams suggested a solution: give the plants more light, as plants also use sunlight to find their way. And it worked. When the plants had more light, the stems turned up and the roots went down.

Now Dr. Williams was free to worry about the next problem: Would her baby plants live to flower? Can we grow food on a space journey?

Many plants died in the space station. Dr. Williams thought she knew why: the space plants were hungry for air. Plants live by taking up CO₂ from the air. Since a plant uses it up in the air around, the plant needs moving air to bring more CO₂ close to its surface. On Earth, the air is always moving—gravity pulls down cold air, and warm air rises. And with these air movements, plants get enough CO₂.

Many earlier experiments with plants in space had used closed rooms. Dr. Williams tried a new greenhouse that had a fan to keep the air move. The plants loved it. They flowered and even produced more seeds. Using Dr. Williams’s method, astronaut George completed the first seed-to-seed experiment in space, and moved one plant closer to a garden in space.

“And this,” says Dr. Williams, “is good news for long-term space travel.”

【推荐2】Soon computers and other machines will be able to remember you by looking at your eyes! The program works because everyone’s eyes are different. So in the future you won’t have to remember a number when you want to use a machine or take money out of a bank. You’ll just have to look at the machine and it will be able to tell who you are.

The eye-recognition (眼睛识别) program is already being tested in shops and banks in the USA, Britain and France. Soon, this technology (技术) will change all other ways of finding out who people are.

However, scientists are working on other systems. Machines will soon be able to know you from the shape of your face or hands or even your smell! We already have machines that can tell who you are from your voice or the mark made by your fingers.

Eye-recognition is better than other kinds because your eyes don’t change as you get older, or get dirty like hands or fingers. And even twins have different eyes, so the program can be up to 94％ correct, depending on (依靠) how good the technology is. Some programs may only be right 51％ of the time. In Britain, it was found that 91％ of people who had tried it said that they liked the idea of eye-recognition.

In the future your computer will be looking at you in the eye. So smile!

【推荐3】You might not think much about where your garbage goes. But now you might want to know. On July 1, Shanghai introduced a new garbage-sorting policy (垃圾分类政策). People there need to put different kinds of garbage into different bins (垃圾桶). Other cities in China will do the same soon.

Garbage sorting is a big problem because there is too much garbage these days. It is bad for our home—the earth. In fact, we can make use of some garbage again. But first, we need to sort it.

For example, if you put an old battery (电池) into the “ harmful waste” bin, people can use it to make new batteries. But if you don’t, the battery will end up somewhere else. Then, it will pollute the environment.

Garbage sorting and recycling around the world

Germany: There are big machines in supermarkets. You can put bottles in the machines and get money back.

Japan: A truck playing music comes to people’s doors to pick up their garbage. There are eight or more kinds of garbage. If you sort any of them wrong, you will get a notice on your door.

Indonesia: People can take buses for free if they give plastic bottles to bus stations. An-hour bus ride costs three large bottles.

Four kinds of garbage in Shanghai

Recyclable garbage includes paper, books, plastic items and glass bottles. Harmful garbage includes lamps, batteries and other things with harmful chemicals (化学品). Wet garbage usually comes from the kitchen, such as food and vegetables. Dry garbage is anything you cannot put into the other three bins, pens and towels, for example.

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【推荐2】①There are 56 ethnic (民族的) groups in China. Different ethnic groups have their own special cultures. Let’s enjoy some of them.

②The Bai people use a very old way, tic-dye (扎染), to dye clothes. Tie dye has a history of nearly 1, 500 years. During the Tang and Song dynasties, people chose tie dyed clothes as gifts.

③The Mongolian people live in the Mongolian yurts (蒙古包). These yurts are large round tents and their tops look like umbrellas. They are the traditional homes of the Mongolian people. The yurts are usually white because they’re made of sheep’s wool. And white is a symbol of happiness.

④The Zhuang people like singing even more than talking. On the third day of the third Chinese lunar (阴历的) month, they hold a big singing festival. It is thrilling and wonderful. All the people can’t help singing happily. Men and women singers sing in pairs. The winners are the “king”, and “queen” of singing.

⑤The Miao people have a special festival, Manghao Festival. It’s in the first Chinese lunar month every year. The Miao people consider Manghao as a hero who helped to protect their homes. At the festival, young men dress up like Manghao and touch others to express good wishes.

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