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.”

2 . According to the Solar Energy Industry Association, the number of solar panels installed(安装)has grown rapidly in the past decade, and it has to grow even faster to meet climate goals. But all of that growth will take up a lot of space, and though more and more people accept the concept of solar energy, few like large solar panels to be installed near them.

Solar developers want to put up panels as quickly and cheaply as possible, so they haven’t given much thought to what they put under them. Often, they’ll end up filling the area with small stones and using chemicals to control weeds. The result is that many communities, especially in farming regions, see solar farms as destroyers of the soil.

“Solar projects need to be good neighbors,” says Jordan Macknick, the head of the Innovative Site Preparation and Impact Reductions on the Environment(InSPIRE)project. “They need to be protectors of the land and contribute to the agricultural economy.” InSPIRE is investigating practical approaches to “low-impact” solar development, which focuses on establishing and operating solar farms in a way that is kinder to the land. One of the easiest low-impact solar strategies is providing habitat for pollinators(传粉昆虫).

Habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change have caused dramatic declines in pollinator populations over the past couple of decades, which has damaged the U.S. agricultural economy. Over 28 states have passed laws related to pollinator habitat protection and pesticide use. Conservation organizations put out pollinator-friendliness guidelines for home gardens, businesses, schools, cities—and now there are guidelines for solar farms.

Over the past few years, many solar farm developers have transformed the space under their solar panels into a shelter for various kinds of pollinators, resulting in soil improvement and carbon reduction. “These pollinator-friendly solar farms can have a valuable impact on everything that’s going on in the landscape,” says Macknick.

3 . Grizzly bears, which may grow to about 2.5 m long and weigh over 400 kg, occupy a conflicted corner of the American psyche — we revere (敬畏) them even as they give us frightening dreams. Ask the tourists from around the world that flood into Yellowstone National Park what they most hope to see, and their answer is often the same: a grizzly bear.

“Grizzly bears are re-occupying large areas of their former range,” says bear biologist Chris Servheen. As grizzly bears expand their range into places where they haven’t been seen in a century or more, they’re increasingly being sighted by humans.

The western half of the US was full of grizzlies when Europeans came, with a rough number of 50,000 or more living alongside Native Americans. By the early 1970s, after centuries of cruel and continuous hunting by settlers, 600 to 800 grizzlies remained on a mere 2 percent of their former range in the Northern Rockies. In 1975, grizzlies were listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Today, there are about 2,000 or more grizzly bears in the US. Their recovery has been so successful that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has twice attempted to delist grizzlies, which would loosen legal protections and allow them to be hunted. Both efforts were overturned due to lawsuits from conservation groups. For now, grizzlies remain listed.

Obviously, if precautions (预防) aren’t taken, grizzlies can become troublesome, sometimes killing farm animals or walking through yards in search of food. If people remove food and attractants from their yards and campsites, grizzlies will typically pass by without trouble. Putting electric fencing around chicken houses and other farm animal quarters is also highly effective at getting grizzlies away. “Our hope is to have a clean, attractant-free place where bears can pass through without learning bad habits,” says James Jonkel, longtime biologist who manages bears in and around Missoula.

4 . I was about 13 when an uncle gave me a copy of Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World. It was full of ideas that were new to me, so I spent the summer with my head in and out of that book. It spoke to me and brought me into a world of philosophy (哲学).

That love for philosophy lasted until I got to college. Nothing kills the love for philosophy faster than people who think they understand Foucault, Baudrillard, or Confucius better than you — and then try to explain them.

Eric Weiner’s The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers reawakened my love for philosophy. It is not an explanation, but an invitation to think and experience philosophy.

Weiner starts each chapter with a scene on a train ride between cities and then frames each philosopher’s work in the context (背景) of one thing they can help us do better. The end result is a read in which we learn to wonder like Socrates, see like Thoreau, listen like Schopenhauer, and have no regrets like Nietzsche. This, more than a book about understanding philosophy, is a book about learning to use philosophy to improve a life.

He makes philosophical thought an appealing exercise that improves the quality of our experiences, and he does so with plenty of humor. Weiner enters into conversation with some of the most important philosophers in history, and he becomes part of that crowd in the process by decoding (解读) their messages and adding his own interpretation.

The Socrates Express is a fun, sharp book that draws readers in with its apparent simplicity and gradually pulls them in deeper thoughts on desire, loneliness, and aging. The invitation is clear: Weiner wants you to pick up a coffee or tea and sit down with this book. I encourage you to take his offer. It’s worth your time, even if time is something we don’t have a lot of.

5 . Simply saying thank you doesn’t seem enough in certain situations. I was considering this while working as a _______ just a few weeks ago. And it came to me then how much easier it would be if we had a range of words that express different _______ of gratitude (感谢).

My thoughts were soon _______. We had a woman patient who was _______ from a knee replacement operation. One afternoon, while _______ to get into bed she collapsed (倒下) from what was _______ discovered to be a heart attack. The collapse was disastrous, _______the emergency medical team and good teamwork. But she recovered, though _______, and was ready for discharge (出院) after four weeks.

She was _______ for everything that the medical and nursing team had done for her. On her day of discharge, we shared in her ____________ at her recovery. As she was ____________ she was eager to say ____________ to each of us in the nursing team. When she ____________ one nurse, she tried to press a five-pound note into her hand. My colleague ____________ to accept it, saying that we were all just ____________ our job. The patient looked puzzled, and then ____________:“Oh this isn’t for the____________ I had. I take that as a ____________. No, this is for setting my hair yesterday.”

7 . In August, Jason M. Allen’s piece “Theatre D’opéra Spatial” — which he created with Al image generator Midjourney — won first place in the emerging artist division’s “digital arts photography” category at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition. The definition for the category states that digital art refers to works that use “digital technology as part of the creative process”.

Allen’s award-winning image has led to debates about what, exactly, it means to be an artist and whether AI can truly make art. “It felt bad for the exact same reason we don’t let robots participate in the Olympics,” one Twitter user wrote. “This is the literal definition of ‘pressed a few buttons to make a digital art piece’,” another tweeted.

Yet while Allen didn’t use a paintbrush, there was plenty of work involved, he said. First, he played around with phrasing that led Midjourney to generate images of women in elegant dresses and space helmets, in an attempt to mix Victorian-style costuming with space themes. Over time, with many slight changes to his written prompt (提示符), he created 900 different versions of what led to his final image. Then he improved its resolution through Gigapixel AI and finally had the images printed.

Allen is glad the debate over whether AI can be used to make art is attracting so much attention. “Rather than hating on the technology, we need to recognize that it’s a powerful tool and use it for good so we can all move forward,” Allen said.

Cal Duran, one of the judges for the competition, said that while Allen’s piece included a mention of AI, he didn’t realize that when judging it. Still, he sticks by his decision to award it first place. “I think the AI technology may give more opportunities to people who may not find themselves artists in the conventional way,” he said.

9 . Jonathan the tortoise, the world’s oldest land animal, turned 190 over the weekend on the island of St. Helena, where he enjoyed a “cake” of seasonal fruits, leafy greens and vegetables, including carrots carved into the number “190”.

Jonathan was brought to St.Helena from the Seychelles in 1882 as a gift. According to Guinness World Records, Jonathan surpassed the previous record holder, Tu’i Malila, who lived in the 1770s until 1965and could be even older. He arrived in St.Helena as a fully mature tortoise, meaning he was at least 50 in 1882.

“The vet is still feeding him by hand once a week to boost his calories, vitamins, minerals and trace elements, as he is blind and has no sense of smell. His hearing though is excellent and he loves the company of humans, and responds well to his vet Joe Hollins’ voice as he associates him with a feast, Guinness World Records said.

“The tortoise enjoys the sun but on very hot days takes to the shade. On mild days, he will sunbathe his long neck and legs stretched fully out of his shell to absorb heat and transfer it to his core,” according to Hollins. When it’s cold, Jonathan has been known to “dig himself into leaf mold or grass cuttings and remain there all day.”

In most cases, the lifespan of a tortoise or turtle depends on the species and level of care they receive. They generally live much longer in captivity than in the wild, because in the wild, they must find their own food in addition to evading predators while not getting medical treatment. Larger turtle and tortoise species also tend to live longer than their smaller counterparts. For more information about animal record holders, click here.

10 . Goldfish may seem like simple creatures swimming in a glass tank, but they possess a rather complicated navigation system, as discovered by researchers at the University of Oxford Led by Dr. Adelaide Sibeaux, the study aims to shed light on our understanding of how fish, and potentially humans, estimate distances using what could be described as an internal GPS.

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Sibeaux and colleagues report how they created a tank in their experiment with 2cm-wide black and white vertical stripes (条纹) on the walls, connected by similar stripes across the floor. The team trained nine goldfish to swim a set distance of 70cm and then return to their starting point when waved at. The experiment aimed to investigate how the fish would estimate this distance without any gestures, under different patterns.

Over multiple trials, the goldfish averaged a swim distance of 74cm, give or take 17cm, when presented with the vertical 2cm-wide stripes. However, when the stripe pattern was altered to either narrower vertical stripes, checked patterns, or horizontal stripes, the fish’s behavior changed significantly. Narrower vertical stripes led them to overestimating the distance by 36%, while horizontal stripes resulted in highly inconsistent estimations.

According to the researchers, the goldfish appeared to be using an “optic (光学的) flow mechanism” based on the visual density of their environment. They kept track of how frequently the vertical pattern switched between black and white to estimate how far they had traveled. The study suggests that different optic flow mechanisms are used by mammals, including humans, based on angular (有角度的) motion of visual features. The study implies that the use of visually based distance information could have emerged early in the evolutionary timeline.

“This study is novel because, despite knowing that fish respond to geometric information regarding direction and distance, we don’t know how they estimate distances,” Professor Colin Lever, although not involved in the study, said, “it’s exciting to explore fish spatial mapping because fish navigation evolved earlier and better than most mammals.”