1 . Turning soil, pulling weeds, and harvesting cabbage sound like tough work for middle and high school kids. And at first it is, says Abby Jaramillo, who with another teacher started Urban Sprouts, a school garden program at four low-income schools. The program aims to help students develop science skills, environmental awareness, and healthy lifestyles.

Jaramillo’s students live in neighborhoods where fresh food and green space are not easy to find and fast food restaurants outnumber grocery stores. “The kids literally come to school with bags of snacks and large bottles of soft drinks,” she says. “They come to us thinking vegetables are awful, dirt is awful, insects are awful.” Though some are initially scared of the insects and turned off by the dirt, most are eager to try something new.

Urban Sprouts’ classes, at two middle schools and two high schools, include hands-on experiments such as soil testing, flower-and-seed dissection, tastings of fresh or dried produce, and work in the garden. Several times a year, students cook the vegetables they grow, and they occasionally make salads for their entire schools.

Program evaluations show that kids eat more vegetables as a result of the classes. “We have students who say they went home and talked to their parents and now they’re eating differently,” Jaramillo says.

She adds that the program’s benefits go beyond nutrition. Some students get so interested in gardening that they bring home seeds to start their own vegetable gardens. Besides, working in the garden seems to have a calming effect on Jaramillo’s special education students, many of whom have emotional control issues. “They get outside,” she says, “and they feel successful.”

3 . To become the Olympic champion in the individual (个人) all-around event, Gabby Douglas had to leave everything she _________ best. She had to _______   her bedroom in Virginia. She had to say _________ to her two dogs and to the beach, where she loved to _________ waves on her board. But it was _________ to take the leap (飞跃), however _________ it would be. Even at 14, Douglas knew that. So she _________ about 1,200 miles away from home, to _________ with a coach from China. She lived with a family she had never _________ and everything was new to her.

As it turned out, Douglas did __________ what she needed to do to become Olympic champion when she __________two Russians. The Chinese coach __________ Douglas into one of the best gymnasts in the __________, helping her skyrocket from an __________ member of the national team to the top of the sport. By __________ the Olympic all-around title, she became the first black woman to do so. She __________ the competition from beginning to end. She said she had felt __________ all along that she would win.

Not so long ago, Martha Karolyl the coordinator (联络人) of the women’s national team, did not think Douglas had what it __________ to be an Olympian. As time went by, she thought __________ that she could make the London Games — and win.

“I’m going to inspire so many people,” she said. “I’m ready to __________.” And shine she did.

4 . During an interview for one of my books, my interviewer said something I still think about often. Annoyed by the level of distraction (干扰) in his open office, he said, “That’s why I have a membership at the coworking space across the street — so I can focus”. His comment struck me as strange. After all, coworking spaces also typically use an open office layout (布局). But I recently came across a study that shows why his approach works.

The researchers examined various levels of noise on participants as they completed tests of creative thinking. They were randomly divided into four groups and exposed to various noise levels in the background, from total silence to 50 decibels (分贝), 70 decibels, and 85 decibels. The differences between most of the groups were statistically insignificant; however, the participants in the 70 decibels group — those exposed to a level of noise similar to background chatter in a coffee shop — significantly outperformed the other groups. Since the effects were small, this may suggest that our creative thinking does not differ that much in response to total silence and 85 decibels of background noise.

But since the results at 70 decibels were significant, the study also suggests that the right level of background noise — not too loud and not total silence — may actually improve one’s creative thinking ability. The right level of background noise may interrupt our normal patterns of thinking just enough to allow our imaginations to wander, without making it impossible to focus. This kind of “distracted focus” appears to be the best state for working on creative tasks.

So why do so many of us hate our open offices? The problem may be that, in our offices, we can’t stop ourselves from getting drawn into others’ conversations while we’re trying to focus. Indeed, the researchers found that face-to-face interactions and conversations affect the creative process, and yet a coworking space or a coffee shop provides a certain level of noise while also providing freedom from interruptions.

7 . In 1959, Handler changed how toy dolls were made when she introduced “Barbie” to the world. With her mature figure, Barbie was one of the first “grown-up” dolls to hit the retail market.

Handler wanted to create a toy that was different from the baby dolls that dominated little girls’ toy boxes. She wanted a doll that girls could project their future dreams upon and allowed for limitless clothing and career choices. Inspired by paper dolls of the time, Handler, to much disagreement, made sure Barbie had the body of a grown woman.

“My own philosophy of Barbie,” Handler wrote in her autobiography, “was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a woman had choices.”

There’s even a Barbie for cancer patients — Brave Barbie — a partnership between Mattel and CureSearch that sends a bald (光头的) Barbie to families affected by cancer. “Gifting my daughter a Barbie who suffered from cancer was tremendous,” Michelle, a cancer survivor said, “We would play with that Barbie together and I’d heartbreakingly watch her pretend to take the doll to the hospital for chemo (化疗), or place its long wig on top of its head and tell the doll ‘It’s time to be beautiful again.’”

Bald Barbie was super brave and went on awesome adventures after chemo. Sometimes she felt sick and needed to sleep, but would feel much better after a rest. Bald Barbie always beat the cancer and went on to live a long and happy life with her family. That Barbie became so much more than a plastic doll — she was a means of communication and a coping mechanism during an extremely distressing time for little families.

8 . People have come to understand the enormous impacts-beneficial as well as harmful- plastics have on human lives and the environment. As polymer (聚合物) scientists committed to inventing sustainable solutions for real-world problems, we set out to tackle the issue of plastic waste by rethinking the way polymers are designed so we could make plastics with recyclability built right in.

Everyday items including milk jug, grocery bags, and takeout containers are made from a class of polymers called polyolefins. These plastics are really durable (耐用的) because the chemical bonds in those polymers are extremely stable. In a world set up for disposable (一次性的) items, durability is no longer a design feature but rather a design drawback. Imagine if half the plastics used today were recyclable through twice as many processes as they are now. Also conventional recycling requires careful sorting of all the collected materials, which can be challenging with so many different plastics. For example, separating paper from metal doesn’t require complex technology, but sorting a container from a milk jug of a different polyolefin is difficult to do without the occasional mistake.

In a study published in Science in October 2023, we described a series of polymers with only two building blocks-one soft polymer and one hard polymer-that behave like polyolefins but could be chemically recycled. Connecting two different polymers multiple times until they form a single, long molecule (分子) creates what’s called a multiblock polymer. By changing how much of each polymer type goes into the multiblock polymer, our team produced a wide range of materials with properties that covered all polyolefin types.

Using the same strategy but by adding hydrogen, we could disconnect the polymers back into their building blocks and easily separate them to use again. When we made new polymers out of these recycled plastics, they performed just as well as the original materials even after several rounds of chemical recycling. So we were able to create materials with similar properties of the plastics the world relies on. We believe this work is a step toward more sustainable plastics.

9 . Hiring processes can be thought of as a battle between integrity and dishonesty. You might imagine this is a simple fight between truth-seeking firms and self-promoting candidates, and to a certain extent it is. But companies themselves are prone (有倾向的) to bend reality out of shape in ways that are self-defeating.

Start with the obvious wrongdoers: job applicants. When it comes to writing the resume (简历), they tend to massage (美化) reality into the most appealing shape possible. Everyone beyond a certain level of experience is a transformational leader personally responsible for generating millions income; the world economy would be about 15 times bigger than it actually is if all such claims were true. The average British spends four and a half hours a day watching TV and online videos. But each average job candidate is an enthusiast for public welfare, using their spare time only for worthy purposes, like volunteering in soup kitchens.

But the tendency to stretch the truth infects companies as well as applicants. The typical firm will write a job description that invariably describes the work environment as fast-paced and innovative, and then lays out a set of improbable requirements for the “ideal candidate”, someone who almost by definition does not exist. Sometimes, the requirements include an ability to go back and change the course of history.

Too few firms offer an accurate account of what a position actually involves in their job previews, which are supposed to give prospective employees a genuine sense of the negatives and positives of the job, as well as a clear idea of the company’s corporate culture. One effective strategy is to lay out in text or video, what a typical day in the role would look like.

Such honesty can be its own reward. Research has long suggested that realistic job previews lead to lower turnover and higher employee satisfaction. A paper in 2011 by David Eamest of Towson University and his co-authors concluded that favourable perceptions of the organisation’s honesty are the best explanation for why. So a process designed to uncover the truth about job applicants would run a lot more smoothly if firms were also honest about themselves.