1 . Your kindness to others can save them and make them spread the kindness to help more people. Thea Rhiannon was driving her old car down a road. When she rolled down the ________ to let in some fresh air, the sun visor(遮阳板) was blown off onto the floor.

She was about to pull off and ________ down to grab it when she found the oncoming ________ accidentally pulled the steering wheel(方向盘) and was driving to her. In panic, she pulled the wheel ________ in the other direction. The car ________ over three times, and Rhiannon was thrown out. When she ________, she found herself lying in the middle of the ________, and bleeding from injuries. Rhiannon remembered a young man ________ her. “The young man stayed with me until the ________ got there,” she recalled. “He covered me with a blanket and ________ me first aid, including putting a tourniquet(止血带) on my left arm, where I was ________ badly.”

An emergency room doctor spent hours removing all the ________ glass of windshield from her arm, and gave her three dozen stitches(缝线). The next day, one of the doctors told Rhiannon that without the ________, she would have probably bled to death before the doctors arrived.

Over years, the hero may not realize his ________ on others, but Rhiannon has spared no effort to ________ his kindness.

3 . Plastic is everywhere in our modern world. Its toughness makes it an extremely useful material from household items to vehicle parts, but that same toughness makes it hard to break down for recycling or disposal (处理). However, Japanese scientists at the University of Tokyo have developed a new plastic material that can be broken down more easily and can self-heal and remember past shapes.

Based on a kind of plastic called an epoxy resin vitrimer, which is brittle (脆性的), the new plastic boasts a huge range of advantages. Once scratched with a knife, it can completely patch itself up after being heated to 150 ℃ for just 60 seconds. When shaped into the shape of a crane, then flattened, it can fold itself back into the crane shape by being heated up. It does all of this much faster than others of its type.

The new plastic can also break down easier. Even if it’s discarded (丢弃) into the environment, it still poses less of a, problem than other kinds of plastic, which the team demonstrated by placing it in seawater for 30 days. It biodegraded by 25% and released molecules (分子) that are essential food for marine life.

The new plastic is more resistant to breaking. It can also repair itself, and can recover its original memorized shape. It even biodegrades safely in a marine environment, according to Shota Ando, a researcher of the study.

The material can be used in a variety of applications, “Infrastructure materials for roads and bridges are often composed of epoxy resins mixed with compounds such as concrete and carbon,” said Ando. “By using the new plastic, these would be easier to maintain as they would be stronger and healable using heat. Unlike conventional epoxy resins, this new material is hard but stretchable, so it could also be expected to strongly bond materials of different hardness and stretch.”

4 . 4 Ice Rinks (溜冰场) In The UK

This r ink is see-through, allowing views of Cardiff Castle while being sheltered from the elements. For further fun on the ice, travel down the Ice Walk that extends through the grounds for 150 m with a breathtaking backdrop of the Norman Keep.

The magical r ink is at Somerset House. This rink offers skate school classes and wheelchair sessions, so everybody has access to it. Treat yourself post-skating with the Skate Extras at the Chalet Suisse in the West Wing of Somerset House, including a hot chocolate and chocolate fondues(奶酪火锅).

Those summer scorchers at the seaside might be a distant memory, but there’s still reason to head to the coast this Christmas. Set against the city’s Indo-Saracenic-style former royal residence, Brighton’s green-energy ice rink has special free sessions for under-5s, and warming offers at the rink side Bar &Kitchen include hot chocolate with marshmallows.

When you’ve had enjoyed the delicious food at the Christmas Markets along Princes Street, make your way to George Street to enjoy a glide across the ice. Fixed between Castle Street and Charlotte Square, the covered r ink makes its mark with its scenic backdrop of the City Chambers.

5 . Landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom has designed a new green roof on the Rangsit Campus of Thammasat University, about 25 miles north of central Bangkok, Thailand. Her imaginative work challenges the common thinking that urbanization has a negative impact on the planet, whether flooding, excess (过度的) energy use, disrupted (扰乱) biodiversity or the heat island effect.

The 236, 806-square-foot structure, which opened in December 2019, includes a flood water management system and Asia’s largest rooftop organic farm. It combines modern landscape architecture with traditional agricultural knowledge, creating a green and friendly environment.

The green roof, containing an H-shaped landscape, looks like a futuristic hill with a brick building beneath it. The hill features a complex pattern of zigzagging terraces (之字形梯田) of planted beds, leading all the way down to the bottom. When rainwater hits the roof, it flows down the zigzags while being absorbed by the soil in the beds, The excess water is directed into four storage ponds — with a capacity of up to 3 million gallons. The process slows down the flow speed of rainwater runoff compared to a normal concrete rooftop. This keeps the area from flooding during heavy rains.

The roof’s terraces are filled with organically grown crops, including a drought tolerant variety of rice, many local vegetables and herbs. The farm can supply the canteens on campus with a large amount of rice, herbs and vegetables a year. The food waste is composted (把……制成堆肥) to fertilize the farm, and water from the storage ponds is used to water plants, creating an entirely localized and circular system.

The farm serves as an outdoor classroom and a source of local jobs, too. Farmers offer workshops on sustainable agriculture and nutrition as part of the university’s sustainability curriculum. “Students and community members are invited to participate in seasonal seeding, harvesting, and so on,” says Voraakhom. “The urban farm is training a new generation of organic farmers with real-world skills. It also promotes a sense of community.”

7 . This month I finally lived my dream: I visited behind the scenes at Disneyland, “the happiest place on Earth.” Watching thousands of smiling employees rushing, around the park, completely absorbed in their work, I suddenly understood the magic behind the park and why joy had escaped me for so long.

When I was younger, I tried to pursue happiness directly by creating as many happy moments as I could. However, no matter how many happy moments I had, they could not protect me from sadness. The sadness would unexpectedly arise when it shouldn’t when I was with friends or family, when I had achieved success, and when I tried to create art. It was the persistence (持续) of this sadness that finally made me realize the truth: the Happy/Sad model was wrong.

I updated my mental model to the Pleasure/Pain model. I saw that what I had called happiness was simply emotional pleasure, which was anything that confirmed the way I saw myself and the world. As I removed emotionally and physically painful moments from my life, I established a mental image of myself as a “happy person.” However, I was stuck in a one-dimensional emotional world.

Wandering down the 19th street and waving to the 100th friendly costumed character, I finally found the words that completed my third model — Joy/Fear, one that gives real depth to life. Disneyland, with its immersive (沉浸式的) world and perfect performances, goes beyond creating happiness and lessening pain. It is carefully getting rid of fear. It removes the possibility of anything going wrong, of disappointing us. And behind the scenes, Disneyland works tirelessly to ensure that everything always run the way it should.

Life is not Disneyland, however. Try as we might, we can’t control the world around us or completely erase our fearful moments. But we can control how we approach life and how we understand our fears. And in the absence of that fear, joy arises.

8 . It was just before Christmas that my brother Jeremy and I were ready to watch a Nationals baseball game. We_________it very early that morning. With his brown beard to his chest, Jeremy was in a bright Nationals-red shirt and pale khaki shorts, in the_________of baseball.

On the subway, Jeremy caught the_________of a five-year-old girl. She stared at him, trying to_________the world’s greatest mystery.

Jeremy is always_________with children, and in his deep, charming voice said, “Hello!” The little girl could not contain her_________. She cried, “Santa!” Jeremy leaned down to her and _________ , “How did you know it was me?”

“Oh, it was the _________. No one has one like that but Father Christmas!” The little girl said. She_________ “Santa” up and down. “But, why isn’t your beard__________?” she asked.

Jeremy was__________. “Before Christmas, Santa goes undercover. I dye my beard brown so that people won’t__________it’s me.” he explained, “Now you know my secret so you can’t tell anyone.”

The little girl nodded with__________ , her eyes never leaving “Santa”.

As the little girl hopped off the subway, Jeremy called out. “I’ll see you at__________! Be good!”

“I will! Your secret is__________ with me, Santa!” she called back.

9 . Italian company Lablaco is working with fashion houses and brands to digitize their clothes in the growing “phygital” fashion market. Lablaco was founded in 2016 by Lorenzo Albrighi and Eliana Kuo, who both had backgrounds in luxury fashion. They were looking to improve the industry’s sustainability and promote circular fashion — the practice of designing and producing clothes in a way that reduces waste.

Pushing fashion into digital spaces helps generate data that is vital in efforts to move toward circular fashion. With Lablaco’s model, customers can buy both a physical fashion item and its digital “twin” designed to be collected or worn in virtual environments. The physical and digital items remain paired even after sale, so if a physical item is resold, the digital one is transferred to the new owner’s digital wallet. The item’s creator can follow its after-sales journey. Without digitizing the product, as Albrighi emphasizes, there wouldn’t be any data to analyze and understand the fashion’s impact.

The fashion industry creates roughly 92 million tons of waste annually, and it is believed that digital fashion could have a role in reducing that figure. Kuo said digital spaces could be used as a test bed for the physical world. For example, a designer could release an item of digital clothing in 10 colors in digital spaces, and use the sales data to inform which colors to use for the real-world version. This on-demand model can help reduce fashion waste. Trying on virtual clothes could also reduce the amount of clothes that are returned in the physical world. Additionally, staging fashion shows in virtual spaces reduces the need for the fashion world to travel, thereby reducing its carbon footprint.

But for this innovation to become widespread, Albrighi says motivating brands is the key. With the phygital model, they can receive royalties (版税) when an item is sold and resold throughout its lifetime — a way to “produce less and actually earn more”.

10 . Most animals are active around people, which makes observing them in the wild a challenging effort for researchers. The issue is worsened with naturally shy creatures like emperor penguins (企鹅), who show signs of physical sorrow in front of humans.

The French scientist Le Maho and his team began a project to test if sending tiny robots to collect the required information would affect the penguins as harmfully. They began by fitting 34 emperor penguins with outside heart rate monitors, which could be read from a distance of 60 centimeters. They then sent a simple, four wheeled robot into a place of hatching penguins that were stationary because they were using their legs to protect eggs.

Though the penguins were a little alarmed and even cried, they did allow the robot to read their heart monitors. Even more encouraging was the fact that as soon as the robot stopped moving, the penguins' heart rates returned to normal, much more rapidly than when humans entered the place.

However, for the extremely shy emperor penguins it was still too disturbing. After some discussions, their first attempt failed terribly. Fortunately, the scientists decided to try to cover the robot as a penguin chick for Le Maho's team, a British production company working on a news film, and it was also trying getting into the penguin place using secret cameras. The two worked together to create a lovely chick robot that the emperor penguins immediately considered as one of their own.

Covered in soft fuzz (绒毛) just like a real baby emperor penguin, it is so believable that the chicks gather around it, just as they do with each other. The penguins not only accept the robot, but they even sing to it, and appear a little disappointed when the “chick” doesn't respond—an error the scientists plan to correct with the next group of robot penguins. Not surprisingly, the penguins show almost no stress as the lovely “spy” walks around the place, gathering all kinds of information about their day-to-day lives.