1 . The Silk Road is arguably the most famous long-distance trade route of the ancient world. This passage connected Europe in the West with China in the East, and allowed the exchange of goods, technology, and ideas between the two civilizations. Although merchants could make huge profits travelling the road, it was not without risk.

The main Silk Road started in Chang’an (known today as Xi’an), the early Han capital. Travelers commencing their journey from this city could take a northern route that would take them across China’s northwestern provinces. After this, they would face the Gobi Desert, arguably the greatest danger of the Silk Road.

The Gobi Desert, the largest desert in Asia, consists mainly of rocky, hard earth. This feature made it easier for traders to travel across, compared to sandy deserts like the neighboring Taklamakan Desert. Like other deserts, the Gobi Desert is dry and hot, and therefore the biggest challenge travelers faced was obtaining enough water for themselves as well as for their camels.

So, rest stops were created along the route, allowing travelers to rest, eat and drink. These places also promoted the exchange of goods, and even ideas, amongst the travelers who stopped there. Usually, the rest stops were placed within a day’s journey of each other. In this way, travelers could avoid spending too much time in the desert, which would make them targets for robbers, another danger of the Silk Road.

Once through the Gobi Desert, travelers would continue their journey into Iran, Turkey, and finally Europe. While this part of the journey may have been less dangerous, it is not entirely without its perils (风险).

3 . The story of The emperor’s new clothes is one of Andersen’s best-known works. Cheaters fool the emperor into believing they have made him a fantastic suit. Courtiers (侍臣) dare not say that the emperor is naked; it takes a child to point out the obvious. How many companies have ploughed ahead with expensive projects that were favoured by the CEO, even when other managers have had doubts? The moral is that people are often too restricted by social practice to state their views.

In his new book Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking, Matthew Syed argues that the key to dealing with this problem is “cognitive (认知) diversity”, in other words, assembling a team of people with different perspectives and intellectual backgrounds. It is not just about selecting people for teams from both sexes and various races. Hire only Cambridge politics graduates or Stanford software engineers and they will have studied under the same professors and absorbed similar world views regardless of their gender or skin colour.

There is another element to selecting a good team: ensuring that those viewpoints are heard and respected. A study of over 300 projects by the Rotterdam School of Management found that those led by junior managers were more likely to succeed than those led by senior managers—maybe because other team members were less scared about pointing out potential dangers to someone of lower rank.

The ability to speak up within an organization, without fear of punishment, is known as “psychological safety”. Mr. Syed cites a study of teams at Google, which found that self-reported psychological safety was by far the most important factor behind successful teamwork at the technology giant.

One way to overcome shyness while brainstorming, for instance, is for everyone to write down their ideas but ensure their names are never known. That way, opinions about thoughts are less closely tied to the status of the thinker and can be tested against each other with less fear or favour.

6 . The major drivers of climate change are collective enterprises such as power grids (电力公司), industry, large-scale agriculture and transportation systems. About half of all greenhouse gas emissions comes from electricity generation and industrial fossil-fuel use. Substantial (大量的) emissions reductions in these settings most likely will not come from personal actions; they will come from laws and policies such as carbon-pricing systems, revised building codes and supports for green investment. But one effective act is to consume less meat.

Cutting meat consumption is a powerful and personal thing most Americans can do to tackle (解决)the climate crisis, and they can do it immediately. About 40 percent of greenhouse gases come from agriculture, deforestation and other land-use changes. Meat-particularly beef-drives climate change in two ways: first, through cows’ emission of methane(甲烷), a strong greenhouse gas, and second, by destroying forests as they are changed into grass land.Despite the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (流行病), atmospheric greenhouse gas levels continued to rise in 2020, in large part because of an emissions increase in the Amazon as rain forests were changed into land for cattle to satisfy the global demand for beef. By eating less beef, we can start to decrease that demand.

You do not have to become a vegan (素食主义者) to do this. According to one recent study, if every person in the U.S. cut their meat consumption by 25 percent, it would reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 1 percent. That might not sound like a lot, but it would help protect the rain forest, so the positive effects-including reduced water and fertilizer use, improved biodiversity and safeguarded rights of local peoples-would be amplified (放大).

Perhaps, social action is kind of infectious (有感染力的) in a good way. If lots of us begin to eat less meat and if we talk about it constructively, we will likely influence others. Pretty soon the 1 percent reduction becomes 2 percent or more. Reduced demand for meat could motivate my local supermarket to carry better produce, making it easier for me and my neighbours to prepare a few more satisfying meat-free meals. Ultimately changes in demand will influence industry. Forty years ago few mainstream supermarkets carried organic (有机的) products; now nearly all do. Consumer demand did that.

Above all, cutting back on red meat also has the added benefit of being good for your health.

7 . Starch (淀粉) is the main component of flour, rice and corn among others, while carbon dioxide makes up the vast majority of greenhouse gases. One day, humans may be able to “eat” carbon dioxide, and global warming could be “eaten away” by carbon lovers. Although it sounds wild, the day is coming.

Chinese scientists have created starch using carbon dioxide, hydrogen and electricity, according to a study published in Science in September, 2021.

“Plants create starch through photosynthesis (光合作用), which is a complex and inefficient (效率低得) process,” Ma Yanhe, the director of the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told China Daily. He added that it would take a plant about 60 steps to turn carbon dioxide, water and sunlight into starch.

“Our breakthrough shows that making starch is achievable in a lab. This method makes it possible to produce food in factories and there are many industries that can benefit from this technology,” Ma told China Daily.

The team has been working on the process for 6 years. “The first step of the method is to convert carbon dioxide and hydrogen into methanol (甲醇), which is a molecule (分子) that contains a single carbon atom,” Cai Tao, one of the first authors of the study, told China Daily.

Scientists then piece these single-carbon molecules into bigger and more complex molecules. With the help of super computing, Chinese scientists have simplified the natural starch-making process from about 60 steps into 11.

“The new process has made it possible to turn starch production from traditional agricultural farming to industrial production. And it may be possible to satisfy our needs without farming in the future. This will not only help save water, fertilizer and land but also help recycle carbon dioxide to deal with climate change,” a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Sciences told the Global Times.

The study can also benefit space exploration in the future. The starch may provide a secure food source for astronauts as they travel long distances in space by simply turning the carbon dioxide they breathe out into food.

8 . Elizabeth wouldn’t walk or talk as an infant. Angela’s left leg was so enlarged that it hurt to stand. Emma needed a breathing machine just to sleep. Their suffering may take different forms, but their stories share a common thread: Neither they nor their families knew what was actually causing these issues.

Those cases are precisely where the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) steps in. Established in 2008, the UDN’s mission is to provide answers for patients with diseases that doctors are unable to diagnose. Anyone can apply to the program and the UDN works hard to screen every application it receives.

Today, the UDN covers 12 clinical sites around the country, and has evaluated over 1,400 patients. More than 400 of those patients have received a diagnosis thanks to the UDN. In some of these cases, the network is able to match a patient with an already known condition. In others, UDN researchers must work to describe an entirely new disease and enter it into the medical dictionary. The program has added at least 25 entirely new diseases in this way. Additionally, the UDN covers the cost of the tests, meaning patients aren’t burdened with crushing medical debt.

“I think they’ve really advanced and changed the whole model for how we approach many of these illnesses, ” says Anne Pariser, director of the Office of Rare Diseases Research. She says the UDN’s multidisciplinary (多门学科的) approach—bringing different specialists together to talk about challenging cases—has helped advance the field of rare disease research, especially when it comes to genetic diseases.

Living with a disease without a name can be its own kind of suffering. “You grow up feeling like, I’m in this, crazy, all by myself, and no one really understands me, ” says Angela Moon, a UDN participant. For patients like her, the UDN offers hope for treatment, but also for finally being seen.

10 . If someone created a flying machine capable of tracking you down by listening for your voice, you might be terrified. But what if you were trapped in ruins after a natural disaster and first responders couldn’t locate you? Maybe then a human-seeking drone (无人机) wouldn’t be such a terrible idea. That concept is the focus for engineers at German’s Fraunhofer FIE Institute, who’ve built a drone to find people by detecting (探测) human screams.

“The human-seeking drone would be ideal for post-disaster situations, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and wildfires”, said Macarena Varela, one of the lead engineers. “They could hover over an area that rescue crews have difficulty getting to and locate exactly where people may be trapped.”

Locating people by sound presents its share of challenges. An auditory (听觉的) system would need to distinguish human cries from sounds that often happen in nature, such as animal calls and wind. It might also need to recognize patterns associated with kicking, clapping or other ways people try to get the attention of rescue teams.

Engineers took those situations into account when building out their concept drone. They recorded themselves screaming, tapping and creating other noises that might be a sign of people in trouble. Then, they analyzed each sound frequency to find common signatures and used those to train artificial intelligence software. They also worked to remove the noise created by the drone and other environmental sounds.

Once the software part was complete, the team placed tiny digital microphones under the drone and used signal processing techniques that enabled them to track where human noises are coming from. The microphones also enhanced the volume and clarity of the speech. So far, they have conducted successful open field experiments, finding that the drone can estimate a victim’s location within a few seconds of picking up sound.

Next, they would like to add a higher frequency microphone to a drone to acquire more audio sound signals. The idea is to pick up noises from hundreds of meters away, Varela said. In the real world, victim's location data might one day be sent wirelessly to emergency crews carrying a tablet.