2 . Vehicles on our roads are now mostly petrol and diesel (柴油) cars, but their days cannot continue for much longer. A recent university study found that current electric cars could be used for 87 percent of daily car journeys in the US. That figure could rise to 98 percent by 2020.

One hurdle to the widespread adoption of electric cars has been “range anxiety” — drivers concerns about running out of electricity on a journey. While petrol stations are conveniently located across national road systems, the necessary network of electric charging stations is still being developed. That said, charging points are becoming increasingly common throughout the USA.

Attitudes towards electric vehicles have changed greatly over the last few years. Not that long ago, electric cars were met with distrust, and their high prices drove customers away. Thanks to improvements in battery capacity, recharging times, performance and price, the current generation of electric cars are starting to persuade picky consumers. Plug-in cars will soon give internal combustion engine (内燃机) models a run for their money.

As well as development on the road, electric vehicles are taking to the seas and skies. Electric boats are among the oldest methods of electric travel, having enjoyed several decades of popularity from the late 19th to the early 20th century before petrol-powered outboard motors took over. Now, the global drive for renewable energy sources is bringing electric boats back. Steps towards electric air travel are also being made, with Airbus and NASA among the organizations developing and testing battery-powered planes. The experiments could soon make commercial electric flight a reality.

Electric vehicles do not produce any emissions (排放). If the US could replace 87 percent of its cars with electric vehicles, it would reduce the national demand for petrol by 61 percent. However, because of the production processes and the generation of electricity required to charge these vehicles, they cannot claim (声称) to be completely emission-free. That said, as many countries continue to increase their use of renewable energy sources, electric vehicles will become even cleaner.

6 . The following are newly released devices all designed to help make your life more convenient, beautiful and vivid.

Tonal

$2,995 AT TONAL.COM

Tonal makes lifting and resistance training truly easy and accessible from your own home. It is great because I hate any sort of public weight training. Tonal has a remarkably easy user interface and gives data and feedback in a helpful manner. It also makes you feel great by keeping track of clear improvements.

Hisense 75” U800GR 8K ULED Roku TV

$1,800 AT BEST BUY

8k sounded like a luxury, but now that brands like Hisense, which focus on a more affordable end of the spectrum, have gotten some time with the tech, you can finally bring the deep color output and stunning detail into your living room. Calling it “affordable” may be a stretch, but compared to most 8k TV’s which all run over $5,000, it’s the most cost-efficient version of the tech we’ve got. It gets your money worth best.

VIVE Goggle

$499 AT VIVE.COM

Vive goggles will bring an extremely accessible and refreshing approach to the VR world. They are a pair of goggles not unlike something you’d wear to snowboard. They’re extremely lightweight with a lightning fast set — that’s connected with things like watching Netflix. It’s the calmest headset I’ve ever worn and uses cameras to let you control everything with just your hands. This one’s for the not-gamers.

Dyson Purifier Humidify+Cool Formaldehyde

$920 AT WALMART

For people who easily sneeze because of dog hair or something like that outside, Dyson has created a machine that saves them for time at home. This new purifier doubles as a humidifier, plus it has a cooling function, making it the end all be all for stuffy, hot, dry apartments.

7 . Coral reefs(珊瑚礁) are a unique ocean ecosystem consisting of rocky structures mainly formed by coral animals and some other ocean life. Despite only covering 0.2 percent of the ocean floor, coral reefs support at least 25 percent of marine species, as well as providing food and economic security for hundreds of millions of people.

However, coral reefs across the world are under threat. Warmer oceans can cause the coral bleaching(漂白). It happens when the corals lose colored algae(海藻) living in their bodies and turn completely white. Without the algae, the corals lose their main food source and can die. In addition, as oceans become more acidic(酸性的) from absorbing CO₂, corals in acidic conditions become weak in forming reefs.

In 2021, the United Nations reported a 14 percent loss of corals across the world largely from rising sea temperatures in the previous 13 years. Australia declared mass bleaching events in 2022 across large parts of the Great Barrier Reef, four times since 2016. Data from the Philippines showed higher than usual ocean temperatures between 2015 and 2017 had caused a serious three-year bleaching events in reefs across the planet.

Scientists have been cooperating to see how coral reefs can be protected. Thankfully, they find those coral reefs in the hot parts of the globe are the worst affected. They contain corals with better heat resistance. So their research focus on finding genes(基因) for heat tolerance so that they can be passed on to future generations. Biologists also mix corals that are more resilient to higher temperatures with those that are not and the resulting generation has a better chance of survival.

Ultimately, scientists add that without a serious reduction in greenhouse gas, 99 percent of the world’s coral reefs will be gone by the end of the century. There is a limit to how quickly corals can adapt warm climate, but if temperatures rise rapidly, then extinction is certain.

8 . Located among the forests where eagles fly overhead, Jabal Sawda has long been one of Saudi Arabia’s best places for mountaineers. At 2,999m, Jabal Sawda had been considered the kingdom’s highest peak until twin mountaineers, Matthew and Eric Gilbertson, climbed it in 2018, finding it to be about three metres shy of Jabal Ferwa.

For more than a decade, the twins have traveled to one country after another around the world, rewriting the mountain record books about places across the Middle East and West Africa. So far, they have reached the peaks of more than 100 countries and newly identified the highest points in Togo, Guinea-Bissau and Ivory Coast.

Matthew, a research scientist at Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, California, and Eric, an instructor in mechanical engineering at Seattle University, said their work was motivated by a need for accuracy and love for mountaineering. “If we’re going to go through all the effort to visit a country and visit the highest mountain, we want to be sure that we have indeed visited the highest mountain,” Matthew said. “We consider it assistance to future mountaineers to have an accurate survey done so that they can focus their efforts on getting to whichever peak they want to get to.”

The twins’ love of mountaineering began when they were children with family trips to the Great Smoky Mountains in the southeastern United States. When they were students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), they started climbing as many mountains as possible. In 2012, after achieving their goal of reaching the highest point of each US state, they turned their attention to the rest of the world.

10 . When I mentioned to some friends that we all have accents (口音), most of them proudly replied, “Well, I speak perfect English/Chinese/etc.” But this kind of misses the point.

More often than not, what we mean when we say someone “has an accent” is that their accent is different from the local one, or that pronunciations are different from our own. But this definition (定义) of accents is limiting and could give rise to prejudice. Funnily enough, in terms of the language study, every person speaks with an accent. It is the regular differences in how we produce sounds that define our accents. Even if you don’t hear it yourself, you speak with some sort of accent. In this sense, it’s pointless to point out that someone “has an accent”. We all do!

Every person speaks a dialect (方言), too. In the field of language study, a dialect is a changed form of a language that is featured by its variations (变化) of structure, phrases and words. For instance, “You got eat or not?” (meaning “Have you eaten?”) is an acceptable and understood question in Singapore Oral English. The fact that this expression would cause a standard American English speaker to take pause doesn’t mean that Singapore Oral English is “wrong” or “ungrammatical”. The sentence is well-formed and clearly communicative, according to native Singapore English speakers’ solid system of grammar. Why should it be wrong just because it’s different?

We need to move beyond a narrow idea of accents and dialects — for the benefit of everyone.

Language differences like these provide insights into people’s cultural experiences and backgrounds. In a global age, the way one speaks is a distinct part of one’s identity (身份). Most people would be happy to talk about the cultures behind their speech. We’d learn more about the world we live in and make friends along the way.