3 . With nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas coming from all types of transportation, can we keep ourselves off gas-powered vehicles to avoid the worst effects? As more governments push for urgent action on climate change, quite a few companies are betting their future – that millions of consumers are finally ready for electricity-powered vehicles. Modern battery-powered cars are selling fast and zero- emission ( 排放) planes are coming. These changes, both leading to a more sustainable future, are reinventing how we get from here to there.

Cars and trucks are undergoing their greatest improvement since the automobile’s (汽车) existence more than a century ago. Almost overnight, the era of the electric car has arrived. Electricity has the advantage that it works without smell and with less noise. Global annual sales of electric vehicles are expected to soar from just over 3 million today to 14 million by 2025. Just a month after Ford unveiled an electric version of the popular F-150, customers had reserved more than 100,000 of them. The price is about $10,000 above the gas-powered one, but Ford says the electric model will cost much less to maintain. Everything creating a green revolution on the ground is of limited help in the sky for the time being.

High-storage batteries are useless at present when it comes to the technological challenge of launching a few hundred people into the sky and carrying them thousands of miles. No battery yet invented can power, say, a Boeing 747 from New York to London. Promising improvements, however, do add up. Developments with zero-emission, battery-powered electric engines are already happening in commercial flight, involving trips of limited duration and distance. Airlines specializing in short journeys with small planes will lead the way to electric flight.

Our planet’s health depends on zeroing out carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, and yet, by the timetable needed to address the climate challenge, the shift away from gas-powered vehicles remains far too slow. Nevertheless, the train has left the station. Someday, electric-powered transportation will be as common as air.

6 . Recently, many climate change campaigns and organizations have marketed themselves using images of polar bears losing their habitat.This has led many people to view the polar bear as the global icon(象征物)for our climate crisis.

The polar bear has become so widespread because it does an excellent job of playing on an audience's emotions and convincing them that there is an urgent problem on Earth. The imagery of a polar bear is also much more attractive than a scientific graph(图表)or chart of increasing sea levels or extreme weather event occurrences.

However,using polar bears as the only icon of our changing climate is flawed(有错的).For one,it only represents one effect of climate change, global warming,and not climate change itself. It neglects to address other aspects such as extreme weather events, ocean acidification, etc.While global warming is an important impact of climate change, the other aspects need to be communicated as well since climate change may not even cause warming in certain parts of the world—it could lead to severe snowstorms or colder winters instead. Thus, communicating these other elements is vital because it can reduce much of the misinformation surrounding our climate and gives the audience a more comprehensive understanding of our planet.

Moreover,using polar bears is problematic because most people do not live anywhere near polar bear habitat.This makes polar bears feel far removed from our own personal reality-thus making climate change feel far removed from our lives. Since climate change is anything but a distant phenomenon, a symbol that communicates the ways in which the climate crisis affects humans could be more convincing and push more people to act.

Even though using the polar bear as the icon of climate change is limited in conveying the full scope of our climate crisis, it can act as an agent of opening up the conversation about environmental issues and inspiring viewers to dive deeper into learning about climate change.

7 . Joey Hudicka began his entrepreneurial (企业家的) journey by creating a strategy game called Puckz when he was just 10 years old, by combining two of his favorite interests – strategy games like checkers, and sports like ice hockey. Seeing the amazing experiences unfold for her big brother, Heidi Hudicka set out to create her own first business, a fashion clothing line for her 18 dolls.

But one day, Joey and Heidi met after school and experienced a real breakthrough. “I was telling Joey I was asking friends if they would like me to outsource（外包给）the sewing of my designs to them, since it is not really my favorite part of that business, but none of my friends understood what I meant by outsourcing,” recalls Heidi.

“When Heidi told me what happened after school that day I was like, ‘Yeah! I have the same problem.’ Most kids just don’t understand when we talk about our business, or even why it is important to understand how businesses work,” says Joey. “And that’s when we decided to do something about it, to create a fun and engaging way to teach more kids about the power of their creativity through innovation and entrepreneurship.”

Joey and Heidi, along with their parents, founded Fizzee Labs, and began creating engaging learning resources such as Outta This World, a board game that activate your imagination by applying it to invent amazing new products or experiences, in a fast-paced, competitive format.

“Outta This World is a journey through the depths of outer space. You have brought very limited supplies with you on your mission, and you must creatively repurpose these supplies, transforming them into brand-new products or experiences that can be sold to the different civilizations you will meet along your journey, raising the funds you need to reach your destination!” describes Joey.

9 . Brown cows may not actually make chocolate milk, but pink silkworms（蚕）do produce pink silk, a team of scientists has discovered. To see if they could produce pre-dyed silk-silk that comes colored, straight from the source-the team fed ordinary silkworms mulberry（桑树）leaves that had been sprayed（喷洒）with fabric（织物）dyes（染色剂）. Out of seven tested dyes, only one worked, producing a thread that reminded me of pink-dyed hair.

And yes, the worms themselves take on some color before they produce silk. Their colorful diets did not affect their growth, the team, which included engineers and biologists from the CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory in India, reports in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. (The researchers didn't look too deeply into how the dyes affected the silkworms' health. After all, silkworms die when people harvest their silk.)

The team made dyeing silk this way because coloring fabric normally uses large amounts of fresh water. The water gets polluted with dangerous chemicals in the process, requiring costly treatment before factories can send it back into waterways. Dyeing silk directly by feeding silkworms would avoid those water-washing steps. Scientists are just starting to study this idea. However, it remains to be seen if it's commercially successful. In this experiment, the Indian team tested seven dyes, which are cheap and popular in the industry.

The scientists found different dyes moved through silkworms' bodies differently. Some never made it into the worms' silk at all. Others colored the worms and their silk, but the color disappears before the silk is turned into fabric. Only one dye, named "direct acid fast red", showed up in the final, washed silk threads. By the time it made it there, it was a pleasant, light pink.

10 . Are you waiting for a sequel (续集) to your favourite films or a new movie adapted from your favourite video game? Read on to find out what to expect in movie theatres in 2018.

★Tomb Raider

Release date: 16 March

This year will see the long­awaited movie Tomb Raider, starring well­known video game heroine Lara Croft. In the film, she seems like many other inhabitants (居民) of this poor but fashionable district in east London. She earns a living as a courier (快递员), and she is confused by her father’s mysterious death. So she first starts to search for the cause of his father’s death. It takes her to a wild island where she has to use her fierce fighting skills to survive.

★Pacific Rim : Uprising

Release date: 24 March

The film is about Jake Pentecost, the son of the legendary (传奇的) pilot Stacker Pentecost, who saved the human race in a previous fight with the monstrous Kaiju. But Jake isn’t the man his father was. He gives up his pilot training and falls in with some criminals. However, when the monsters rise again to threaten the human race, Jake is persuaded to take responsibility for fighting them by his sister. It is not known if they can succeed in their fight against the Kaiju.

★Dead pool 2

Release date: 1 June

Dead pool (2016) was part of the X­Men series by Marvel. It was a movie for people who wanted to laugh a little more at the kind of humour that adults enjoy. Now, there is a new Dead pool in which Ryan Reynolds will again play the mercenary (唯利是图的) Wade Wilson, who likes to tell jokes as many as he can.