We all know there is a problem with plastic pollution. Five trillion plastic bags are used every year. One million plastic drinking bottles are bought every minute.

What if we could use plastic waste to build roads? This is exactly what Toby has done.

In 2019, Toby’s company built the world’s first plastic road in Elgin town, Scotland. The plastic waste was made into grains and then mixed with biturnen. The road looks just like any other road. But it has improved strength and is more stretchy.

“Our technology can not only help solve the problem of plastic waste but also produce roads that deal better with changes in the weather, reducing cracks (裂缝) and holes,” Toby said.

The idea came from a trip to India. “I saw people in India would put plastic waste into pots and burn it. The plastic would melt down and form a seal (封口) in the hole,” said Toby.

“I knew that there must be some similarities between the plastic and biturnen, which both come from oil. That’s how I started to think about mixing them,” he said.

After lots of testing, Toby found the perfect way. And now his company has built many plastic roads around the world. A one-kilometer stretch of road uses about 684,000 plastic bottles or 1.8 million plastic bags. The road itself can be recycled at the end of its lifespan (使用期限). The materials can be reused to build new roads.

“We’re just a small part of ending the plastic problems, but it’s nice to be part of it,” Toby said. “I just don’t want my daughters to live in a world where there are more plastics in our oceans than fish.”

【推荐3】Artificial Intelligence is called for Al for short. It is becoming more and more popular in our life nowadays. And it has greatly influenced（影响）the ways we live, work and play.

Recently, a scientist has invented（发明）a special robot that can be a table tennis coach（教练）.That means people can practice table tennis not only with humans but also with a robot.

Named Forpheus, the smart table tennis robot is quite special.Itcan study the movements of human players and the speeds of the ball. In this way, it can exactly know the players’skill levels（水平）.Then it uses the information to change the ways to play. If the players are just beginners, Forpheus will play in a slow and easy way, but if the players are better ones, the robot will play in a faster and more difficult way. What's more, while playing, it encourages players to try their best with the words like “Good job!”，”Come on!" and so on. At the same time, it gives some good advice to improve their skills. So it is both a good partner and a clever coach.

Science and technology（科技）is developing（发展）quickly these days and it's hard to imagine（想象）what will happen in the future. "In the next 20 years, it will be possible that one robot teaches another to play table tennis or even invents another one!" the inventor of the robot said.

【推荐1】The world uses about a thousand million (百万) tons of water a day. Water is a human right and everyone should have their share. Yet more than 700 million people around the world have trouble getting clean, safe water.

Treating waste water is a good way to provide fresh water for us. And it also helps the environment by keeping waste out of rivers and oceans. 80% of waste water around the world is not treated at all, and it is running into oceans. But now we have got the technology to treat and reuse the waste water. While 75% of our planet is covered with water, only about 2% is freshwater- that comes from rivers, lakes, ice and snow. The rest, 98% of the water, is in seas and oceans. It is too salty to drink. Then desalination businesses come in. More than 19000 factories have been built around the world, mostly in coastal countries. They process (加工) more than 92 million tons of water every day. But the technology they use requires a lot of energy.

Scientists are working to create a less costly technology. They want to produce 20 times more clean water and make sure everyone has enough. But for now, the world still faces each day with not having enough water for everyone.

【推荐3】A question has made the public think a lot for more than a century: Whether(是否) there is life on Mars.

A British spaceship and Europe’s Mars spaceship plan to land on Mars or enter the orbit(轨道) around it. One of the NASA’s spaceships is going to land on January 3, and the other is going to land on the opposite side of Mars on January 24.

Since 1960, over twenty spaceships sent to Mars have failed. Most were lost when they started flying up or landing because those were the most difficult time of any flights.

Scientists wanted to find out whether there was water on Mars. In October, a team of scientists reported that Mars was a dry wasteland(荒地). But weeks later, a second team reported differently that they had found some marks(痕迹). They showed clearly that they were made by the rivers. Such marks told us that Mars was a warmer place billions of years ago—just as life first appeared on Earth. Scientists at once asked the following questions: If it was true, what happened on Mars? Then what about the earth?

Maybe one day, in the near future, human beings will land on Mars, settle on Mars, and directly look for life.