2 . Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek has been honored with this year’s Templeton Prize. The award recognizes individuals whose life’s work brings together science and spirituality.

Wilczek is known for his research into the laws of nature. In a statement, the John Templeton Foundation said his work changes “our understanding of the forces that govern our universe.” It said he used physics to address “the great questions of meaning and purpose pondered by generations of religious thinkers.”

John Templeton created the prize in 1972. It is one of the most highly valued prizes at more than $1.3 million. Past winners include Jane Goodall, Mother Teresa and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Wilczek told The Associated Press, “It’s a company I’m very glad to join in.” He added, “It’s encouragement in a direction that I’ve really only taken up in a big way quite recently… which is thinking about not just what the world is and how it came to be this way but what we should do about it.”

Over a long career, Wilczek had many successes. He won the 2004 Nobel Prize along with David J. Gross, and H. David Politzer for their 1973 research explaining the unusual properties of the strong force. Wilczek is currently a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Arizona State University and Stockholm University. He is also the founding director of Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s T. D. Lee Institute. He has also written several books that are informed by science but look into spiritual and philosophical questions.

Heather Dill is the Templeton Foundation president. In a statement, she said, “Like Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, he is a natural philosopher who unites a curiosity about the behavior of nature with a playful and profound philosophical mind.”

4 . When I was young, our school once took us to pick berries. Before I left, my father said to me, “When you find a good _______ , don’t leave it to try to find a better one. The other students may _______ , trying picking here and there. If you do as they do, you will come back with an almost _______ basket! If you want to get berries, stick to your bush!”

Just _______ my father had said, the moment one boy found a _______ bush, his companions(伙伴)would leave their places and run off to _______ what he had found.

But I _______ my father’s words. When I had done with one, I went to another, _______ it and then I took another. Finally, I returned with more _______ berries than all the others picked but not half as ________ as they were.

From then on, I always kept my father’s words in mind. When I had a good place and was getting on well, 1 didn’t spend time ________ to find a better company. When others said, “Come and we will find you something ________ to do,” I refused and stuck to my ________ .

My employers took me into partnership with them in their ________ after a while. Sticking to my business led to my success. I owed all my ________ to the lesson my father taught me when he said, “Stick to your bush!”

5 . Humans are not the animal world’s only fashion followers. Tits (山雀) can be one of them, too. A study by Sonja Wild and Lucy Aplin shows that, given the chance, they make their nests (巢穴) with this season’s must-have color.

Dr. Wild and Dr. Aplin followed up on a study which noted that the blue tits preferred to put the same plants into their nests. This also suggested fashion-following—and it led Dr. Wild and Dr. Aplin to imagine that birds were studying the nests of others and copying them.

The birds they followed carried instruments on them. That allowed researchers to follow a large number of tits by their arrival at food dispensers (自动取物装置) throughout the woods.

One day in March 2021, Dr. Wild and Dr. Aplin used five dispensers with wool rather than food. Each contained two colors—either orange and pink or blue and purple—but all were rigged to give only one of these. This remained so until at least one local nest was seen to include wool from a dispenser. At that moment, the other color was discovered, too. As a comparison, Dr. Wild and Dr. Aplin set up four wool dispensers in a separate area, each providing two colors from the beginning.

Of 68 tits’ nests, 26 included wool from a dispenser. Of these, 18 were built after both colors had been gotten from all dispensers. Even so, 10 of that 18 included only the color of wool first chosen by a nest makers. By contrast (相比之下), all 8 nests with wool have mixed colors, which showed a clear difference in the record.

Tits, then, do seem to be “in fashion” when it comes to nest-building materials. Tits like those of the leaders of human fashions and it is worth more deep research.

6 . The characteristic (特征) of shyness is to feel frightened and nervous in new social situations or when being the center of attention. Whether shyness is part of your children’s personality or just something they feel when they are in front of a group of strangers, it is a common experience, according to a study.

To look at shyness, researchers brought 152 children aged 7-8 into a lab and told them they would give a speech, which would be filmed and shown to other children. The study showed that about 10% of the children showed a level of stress over time when giving the speech. About 25% of the children were not reported to be shy in the eyes of their parents, but in fact showed a level of social stress from giving the speech. This finding provides the fact that shyness may be a part of these children’s temperament (性情).

For children at this age, shyness may be a quite common and normal experience when they face a speech task. For a smaller group of shy children, however, being the center of attention may be stressful at different times and environments.

A shy temperament isn’t always valued by society like an outgoing personality, but that doesn’t mean there is something wrong. Everyone can feel shy at times depending on the environment. And those who are particularly shy often have happy social lives—they just aren’t likely to be the liveliest people in a crowded room.

Although shyness itself may not necessarily be a problem, parents should pay attention to signs of worry, particularly in their shy children. Importantly, however, we know that not all shy children are the same, and that many shy children grow up to be well-balanced adults.

8 . There are some palaces in Europe that you may be interested to know about.

It takes the title of the largest European palace by floor area and it is one of the largest palaces in the world. The Royal Palace of Madrid was built in the 18th century by order of Philip V on the site of the old Alcázar fortress, a former Moorish castle. With over 135,000 square metres and 3,418 rooms, it has seeded centuries of Spanish history. It is one of the few official seats of a head of state that is open to the public.

It is a historic and the most wonderful building in Brussels, Belgium, next to Brussels Park. The Royal Palace of Brussels is the King’s main workplace, where he works daily with his staff. A tradition has been established since 1965 to open the Royal Palace of Brussels to the public normally from the 21 July until the beginning of September.

It is the most popular attraction in Sintra, Portugal, and the main reason why so many people visit the small mountain town less than one hour’s drive from the country’s capital city, Lisbon. The colorful palace perched upon a hill looks like something out of a fairy tale. Its yellow and bright red appearance makes Pena Palace one of the most picturesque places in Europe. The UNESCO World Heritage (遗产) site has a rich history that dates all the way back to the Middle Ages.

It is a former royal living places and gardens located in Venaria Reale, near Turin in the Metropolitan City of Turin of the Piedmont region in northern Italy. It is one of the largest palaces in the world. It is one of the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy, included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997.

9 . The color of deep blue oceans is quickly changing when the planet warms, according to new research published in the journal Nature. The study’s authors found over half the world’s oceans, 56%, experienced a change in color. This is because of changes in the thickness and spread of plankton (浮游生物). These small living things contain chlorophyll (叶绿素), which helps plants get food from sunlight.

The recent study supports a similar prediction (预测) in a Nature Communications study published in 2019. The study copied the changes in plankton when oceans continue to warm. And though the new study used satellites to discover small changes in color, the former research predicted important changes by 2100. If the world keeps warming at its present speed, the blue areas in the oceans will become bluer, and the green areas will become greener. When the oceans warm, the movement of water in the oceans become more unusual, and the layer in the water become more, which means that warm areas are less likely to mix with cold areas.

There are thousands of plankton, which are used to warm or cold water. When oceans continue warming, some kinds of plankton may die off, some will thrive, and others will go to different areas. The 2023 study showed that many of these predicted changes have already happened.

But just looking at chlorophyll alone, we still don’t know how the warming climate is changing plankton. Some strange natural events can influence the number of plankton in an area.

It’s too early to say for sure what influence these changing colors will have on the environment, but scientists think more ecosystems could be controlled by smaller-sized plankton in the future, according to a press release from the National Oceanography Center in the UK.

“Plankton are the base (基础) of the food web in the ocean. Everything in the ocean needs plankton,” a marine ecologist Dutkiewicz says.