4 . Plenty of audiences have warned: don’t see the new French movie The Taste of Things on an empty stomach. Juliette Binoche plays a longtime personal cook to a man who’s a gourmand (美食家). They share a passion for food. Filled with delicious meals, the film celebrates food, and all the work and love that go into making it.

When you see a delicious meal in a movie or an ad, chances are that it’s not fit to eat. Food stylists have been known to substitute glue for milk, and coat meat with motor oil. All this was a big “No” for Vietnamese French director Tran Anh Hung.

Tran says he wanted everything in The Taste of Things “to be real,” from the raw ingredients (食材) to the menu to the way the cooks move in the kitchen. Real food can’t always handle multiple takes. Plus, Tran needed to show dishes at different stages of preparation. So he needed a lot of everything. For a classic French dish, “we needed 40 kilos of meat for the shooting.” He also had to find vegetables that looked like they were harvested in the 19th century. “They’re not as beautiful as today,” he says, “They’re not straight, and they have many spots on the skin.”

After doing extensive research into the history of French cuisine and working with a historian, Tran enlisted three-star chef Pierre Gagnaire to make sure the menu he’d come up with worked in real life.

Gagnaire also cooked for Tran for five days, so the director could study his movements in preparation for filming. Tran says watching Gagnaire move around the kitchen taught him that “simplicity is important and you don’t need to have the perfect gesture for this or that. You need only to be very free.” Gagnaire says the movie feels like a gift. “For my creativity, it’s an honor,” he says. The famous chef agreed to take a small part in the film.

“When you leave this film, you feel calm because instead of violence, there’s tenderness,” Gagnaire says.

5 . A huge section of the Milne Ice Shelf, located on Ellesmere Island in the northern Canada, collapsed into the Arctic Ocean, according to the Canadian Ice Service. This created an “ice island” which is about 30 square miles in size. As a comparison, Manhattan Island is about 23 square miles.

“Entire cities are that size. These are big pieces of ice,” Luke Copland, a glaciologist at the University of Ottawa who was part of the research team studying the ice shelf, told Reuters. “This was the largest remaining intact (完整的) ice shelf, and it’s collapsed, basically. ”

The Canadian Ice Service said on Twitter that “above-normal air temperatures, offshore winds and open water in front of the ice shelf are all part of the recipe for the ice shelf to break up.” A huge section of the Milne Ice Shelf has collapsed into the Arctic Ocean, producing a 30-square-mile ice island.

The ice shelf has now been reduced in area by about 43%. An ice shelf is a thick slab of ice, attached to a coastline and extending out over the ocean, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. “Some shelves have existed for thousands of years,” the center said.

So what’s going on up there? Though the planet is warming worldwide due to climate change, the Arctic has been warming at a rate twice that of the rest of the world. This summer has been particularly warm: Arctic sea ice melted to its lowest July level on record and in June, a town in Siberia soared (急升) to 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, believed to be a record high for the Arctic.

“When I first visited those ice caps, they seemed like such a permanent fixture of the landscape,” Mark Serreze, director of the NSIDC and geographer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a statement. “To watch them die in less than 40 years just blows me away.”

6 . Malin Pinsky had the first of two lightbulb moments in 2003 while crossing Drake Passage. He was then standing on the bridge of a research ship and was scanning the sky for seabirds, which was one of his duties as a research technician on the cruise (海上航游). Just five months earlier he had finished college, where he studied biology and environmental science.

As the ship entered nutrient-rich Antarctic waters, whales suddenly showed up all around the ship. That moment on the bridge helped him realize that the ocean looks featureless from the top, but there’s so much going on underneath.

The second lightbulb moment hit him several months later. Pinsky was then an intern (实习生) in Washington, D.C. His job was making photocopies. It was around the time when two big reports had come out. Both focused on what policies might best preserve U.S. ocean resources. “I realized we have all these laws and policies that determine how we as a society interact with the ocean. But they’re far out of date. We don’t yet have the science to know what the new policy should be,” Pinsky said.

Today he runs a lab with about 20 workers. His team wants to seek how our changing climate, as well as overfishing and habitat destruction, might be driving changes in fish and other animals in the sea. To find out, team members travel each year to coral reefs near the Philippines. There, they carefully catalog populations of different fish. They collect data on the growth and mating of these fish, their diversity and other factors.

“Pinsky’s broad approach to the problem — looking at species, where they live and how fisheries are managed — is setting the pace for other scientists,” says Kimberly Oremus, a fishery economist at the University of Delaware in Newark. “Pinsky is pushing the whole field to respond to his growing body of research.”

7 . Must-See Destinations in 2024

Are you ready to explore the world in 2024? Whether you dream of sailing down famous European rivers or exploring unique places, our list of must-see destinations is here to inspire your travels.

Throw yourself into the rich culture and history of Spain. From the sunny beaches of Tenerife to the Moorish architecture (建筑物) of Andalucía, there’s so much to explore in this lively country. Discover the UNESCO World Heritage (遗产) city of La Laguna and become amazed at the beauty of Cordoba, Seville, and La Alhambra, or relax on a beach holiday to Majorca or Tenerife.

Despite its size, Montenegro has beautiful beaches, rich history, and a breathtaking channel. Experience the beauty of the Montenegrin coast — Dalmatia’s jewel (宝石) is the UNESCO World Heritage listed oasis of Dubrovnik, famously praised by Lord Bryon as The Pearl of the Adriatic.

Discover the beauty that is Dubrovnik. Explore the 16th-century city’s defensive walls and red-roofed buildings. Sail along Croatia’s Adriatic Coast, where attractive villages and beautiful towns like Pula, Rovinj, and Poreč are just waiting to be explored...

Explore the wonders of South Africa, from the Garden Route’s nature reserves to the thrill of a Safari drive in the Kariega Game Reserve. Discover the different plants and animals while searching for the “Big Five” on an unforgettable South Africa holiday.

With over 25 years of experience creating holidays for the curious, Travel Department ensures that your journey is in good hands. Plus as a trusted Reader’s Digest Travel partner, you can get special deals when you travel with them across lots of different 2024 holidays. If you want to know more information, please click here.

9 . For most of December, Adele Adkins had the top-selling album in Australia, followed by Ed Sheeran, and then there was a collection of songs that took everyone by surprise.

Songs Of Disappearance is a collection of calls from endangered Australian birds. Last month, it briefly reached No.3 on the country’s top 50 albums chart (排行榜) — ahead of Taylor Swift.

Anthony Albrecht, a PhD student at Charles Darwin University, produced the album with Professor Stephen Garnett. “I knew it was a crazy thing to suggest. But Stephen’s a little bit crazy like me and he let me do it,” Albrecht said.

Songs Of Disappearance was published with a university report which found that 1 in 6 Australian bird species are now threatened. The album records 53 of those species.

“Some sing what you might think of as bird songs, but not all of them,” said SeanDooley, who represents the conservation organization Bird life Australia. “Songs from the golden bowerbird sound like a death cry from some sci-fi series. And the love songs from Christmas Island frigate bird, which has a piece of skin hanging under its mouth that caninflate (膨胀) like a huge red balloon, sound as bizarre as its unusual looks.”

There’s also the Christmas Island pigeon. When people hear that pigeon, they might think that it’s a human making silly noises, Dooley added.

The Charles Darwin University and Bird life Australia report does document successes in protecting endangered birds, the hope being that the album will protect more species.

“The increased awareness can make a difference,” Dooley said. “When we have a community on board, that brings pressure to the government to do the right thing. We know that these conservation actions do work.”