2 . As a child in the 1970s, Prigi would swim, play and bath in the waters of the Surabaya River that flowed near his home. The water of the flowing river was clean enough to safely drink, and so clear that he’d look down and see his toes touching the sandy bottom of the river.

Prigi left his home in 1994 to study biology at Airlangga University. During a visit home two years later, Prigi was shocked to find the once clear river now dark brown and smelly. The river bed felt slimy (黏滑的) under his feet. Worse still, after only a very short swim, he itched (痒) all over.

Prigi set up a study group to find out why. The group studied the river, doing water sampling, and collecting information about the kinds of birds, insects, micro-organisms and fishes that still lived in and around the river. Tests confirmed they all had a range of heavy metals in their systems, such as zinc, lead and mercury, which were from harmful chemical waste from a paper factory built in the 1990s.

In 2003, Prigi launched the Surabaya River Detective Program to teach children how to collect environmental data, to observe and record the population of insects, micro-organisms, and fish in the river. Around 800 children, who take on the title of “river warrior”, have participated in the program and created informational books, posters, films, and press releases to gain the attention of the public and the government. In April 2008, the local governor set a maximum daily limit for chemical waste, and required all companies to release only treated wastewater into the river. Today, the Surabaya River is much clearer and children have even started to swim in the river.

Much of Prigi’s success has come from raising awareness among locals of the role the river plays in their lives. Today, locals work with scientists and local authorities to protect the river’s biodiversity wonders for future generations.

3 . Virtual Postgraduate Open Days 2023

Our events offer a great opportunity to find out more about the Cambridge University’s 300+ postgraduate courses, the application process, student life, and a range of funding opportunities, as well as to get an idea of what it’s like to study here. Attend our virtual open days to learn all about postgraduate study at Cambridge:

Week 1: Subject sessions (23 to 27 October)

Join us live for online sessions where you can:

● Find out more about our courses and explore your subject

● Chat with academics, current students and other staff

Week 2: Pastoral, ICE, College and Finance sessions (30 October to 3 November)

During this second week of live online sessions you can:

● Explore more about the Colleges

● Find out about funding opportunities

● Discover what pastoral support is available at Cambridge

● Learn about our Institute of Continuing Education (ICE)

● Watch recordings of the subject sessions from Week 1

On-demand content

Everyone who books a place at the Postgraduate Open Days will receive access to on-demand video content, including recordings of the subject sessions from Week 1 (to be uploaded by 30 October).

Visit us

If you can’t come to our Postgraduate Open Day, there are other ways to visit:

● Check department websites for subject-specific events or contact the department directly to arrange an appointment to visit facilities and talk to a member of staff.

● Many of the Cambridge Colleges are open to the public at during term time. Contact them in advance to arrange a time to visit and to meet with current students or staff.

4 . When my wife and I were young, our budget was tight. We benefited from the ______ of local merchants who understood that treating customers ______ did not mean they were treated the same way.

The local fishmonger (鱼贩), who supplied lobster and crab to fish steak houses, showed incredible ______. We were regulars because our two-year-old had ______ a passion for mussels (贝类). Without ______, after the mussels were weighed and priced, the scoop (铲斗) went back into the tank — “Just a few extra to ______ for the ones that don’t open.”

On one visit, a staff member asked if we had seen the Scottish fish that had come in that morning. “Looks ______,” I said. “Just the mussels, thanks.” He ______ if I could make use of some tails: “The restaurant only wants the best fish steaks, and I really don’t have much of a ______ for dealing with these.” Two tails went into the bag, no ______. “Mussels for the little guy and a ______ for you and your wife.”

When my wife was ______ our second child, she developed a strong desire for a local Chinese restaurant’s version of tai dop voy, a mixture of meats, shrimp and vegetables. Even though the owner rarely saw us, he always ______ us. One evening, well into my wife’s eighth month, I ordered tai dop voy to go. When I ______ the bill and left, the bag was ______ than normal. “We are closing soon,” the owner said. “There is some fried rice in there that would be ______. Enjoy. Have a healthy ______.” When I got home, there was not only fried rice but also an order of chow mein (炒面) and two orders of tai dop voy.

That was many years ago. But those small kindnesses from people who ran ______ businesses made a difference. It wasn’t just the savings — though they were ______. Customers were seen as more than a source of revenue; we were ______ of the community that the business served.

5 . He had been a Christmas present to my second son. Brian, at six, wanted something that was his alone, something not handed down — as were his clothes and toys — from his older brother.

And so, on Christmas Day 1954, I rose early with my wife to put the tiny kitten a neighbor had given us into the stocking that Brian had carefully fastened to the mantelpiece (壁炉台) the night before. From then on, the life of the cat, Tiger, was full of love. For a sometimes fumbling child, Brian showed great gentleness with Tiger, which was amazing. Every night, when I checked on the children, I would invariably find Tiger on Brian’s bed, stretched out beside him.

One evening our next-door neighbor rang the front doorbell. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” she said when my wife answered the door, “but when I backed out of the driveway this afternoon, I’m afraid I ran over your cat. I tried to help him, but he jumped up and ran away. I don’t know where he went or how badly he was hurt.”

Four weeks passed with no sign of Tiger. Brian tried to hide his fear that his friend had crawled away to die. It was a fear we all shared. And we came to accept his death — all of us except Brian.

Every evening Brian would go to the door and call Tiger’s name. Finally, on the 28th day after the neighbor’s unwelcome announcement, he had an answer. Out from under the front porch came Tiger, his tail high, walking with the pride, behaving as if he had never been away. As he approached the door, Brian’s face was transformed with joy. But neither he nor Tiger displayed open affection in front of the family. There was a calm acceptance, an honoring by each of the other’s dignity. That night, though, when I checked Brian’s room, I saw that his cheeks were wet and a smile was on his face and his arm encircled his cat, who lay purring quietly beside him.

6 . When physicist Stephen Hawking died in 2018 at the age of 76, the world mourned (哀悼), after the loss, there remains the enormous legacy of the scientist and the man to consider.

Despite being a renowned expert in cosmology and black holes, there is still much to discover about Hawking. In Stephen Hawking: A memoir of friendship and physics, theoretical physicist Leonard Mlodinow offers a close glimpse inside the famous scientist’s life, ranging from his early days at university and diagnosis at age 21 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to his later status as an international celebrity.

After co-authoring two books with Hawking, Mlodinow isn’t short of stories, particularly from time spent working together on their book The Grand Design. Hawking lived a colourful life often filled with hardship, and the possibility of death was never far away. Far from letting this be a setback, it is what Hawking credits for his achievements. “It helped me focus,” he tells Mlodinow after dinner one night.

Even so, Mlodinow admits that initially he couldn’t help but feel sorry for Hawking, living with a condition that required round-the-clock care and eventually left him unable to speak or voluntarily move anything but his eyes, brows and mouth. However, writes Mlodinow, “overtime all that pity would disappear like one of Stephen’s black holes”, adding that “ it occurred to me that Stephen had proved himself to be an iron man in a fragile man’s facade (外表)”. That view becomes one that readers will also tend to adopt as Mlodinow looks back.

Achievement came in many forms for Hawking, who refused to be restricted in thought or deed. As Mlodinow writes: “Often we limit our chances at success by limiting the goals toward which we strive. Stephen never did that. We can get used to anything, and we can accomplish, if not anything, then at least much more than we give ourselves credit for. To grow close to Stephen was to understand this.”

7 . The Christmas of 2020 was not a time of celebration but just tough for many. It was ________ by COVID-19. Anthony, Sara’s brother, put up some ________ in the yard to make the holidays special. ________, right after Christmas, Anthony was seriously infected and ________. For Sara, the pain was almost too much to ________. But when she pulled up to her house at the end of a ________ day, the shining Christmas lights ________ her a little joy. They were the last mementos (纪念品) Sara had of her brother when he was still alive and ________. Taking them down felt like a final act of closure she wasn’t ready to take. So she ________ them up.

In February, Sara ________ a typed note in the mail. “Take your Christmas lights down!” the unsigned letter read. Sara looked at the paper ________ and got angry. She could have bottled up that ________, but she wrote about it instead. “I wanted to ________ people that we all had a tough year and people should be a little more ________ toward each other.” She shared it on Facebook. Sara’s inbox quickly filled with messages of ________. People started sending Sara messages about how they had ________ loved ones around Christmas. Then something strange happened. One evening, she ________ that Christmas lights were appearing — or reappearing — on houses in her neighbourhood.

The mystery had a ________ explanation: her neighbours had got together and ________, collectively, to hang their lights back up in honor of Anthony.

Sara never learned who sent the ________. But for her, that one mean-spirited deed was far outweighed by so many more acts of kindness.

8 . Plants do not suffer in silence when thirsty or stressed, according to a new study published today in Cell.

Plants that need water or have recently had their branches cut produce up to roughly 35 sounds per hour, the authors found. But well-watered and uncut plants are much quieter, making only about one sound per hour.

The reason why you have probably never heard a thirsty plant make noises is that the sounds are so high-pitched that very few humans could hear them. Some animals, however, probably can. Bats, mice and moths could possibly live in a world filled with the sounds of plants, and previous work by the same team has found that plants respond to sounds made by animals, too.

To overhear plants, Lilach Hadany at Tel-Aviv University in Israel   and her colleagues placed tobacco and tomato plants in small boxes provided with microphones. The microphones picked up any noises made by the plants, even if the researchers couldn’t hear them. The noises were particularly obvious for plants that were stressed by a lack of water or recent cutting.

Plants do not have vocal cords (声带) or lungs. Hadany says the current theory for how plants make noises centers on their xylem (木质部) that transport water and nutrients from their roots to their branches and leaves. Water in the xylem is held together by surface tension, just like water moving through a drinking straw. If an air bubble (气泡) forms or breaks in the xylem, it might make a little popping noise; bubble formation is more likely during dry seasons. But the exact system requires further study, Hadany says.

The team produced a machine-learning model to check whether a plant had been cut or was water-stressed from the sounds it made, with about 70% accuracy. This result suggests a possible role for the audio monitoring of plants in farming and gardening.

To test the practicality of this approach, the team tried recording plants in a greenhouse. Pilot studies by the authors suggest that tomato and tobacco plants are not exception. Wheat, corn and wine grapes also make noises when they are thirsty.

10 . For adults, communicating in our first language feels easy and natural. Yet learning language is a complex process that is influenced by several factors. When young children are beginning to learn language, some influences, such as the amount of speech a child hears and the amount of time they spend in back-and-forth language interactions with others, have what may appear to be obvious connections to language learning. Perhaps less obvious is that children’s own physical experiences with their environment help them learn new words.

In new research in the cognitive sciences, we investigated how this is the case by considering how children learn words that refer to something they can touch, grasp and interact with. We asked parents to rate how easily a child can physically interact with the object, idea or experiences that a word refers to. We found words that refer to objects that are easy for children to interact with are also words that are learned at an earlier age.

For instance, a word such as spoon is usually learned earlier than a word such as sky. And this relationship remains even when we consider other things that can affect word learning, such as how common a word is in everyday language. Words such as spoon and sky are both relevant to everyday life, and so children will probably hear those words quite early in their development. One difference between them is that spoon refers to something they can touch, grasp and interact with, whereas sky does not.

Our findings agree with those of studies where babies wore small head-mounted body cameras to record their interactions with objects. Those studies show that the children’s own physical experiences helps them learn new words. For instance, in one study researchers found that 18-month-old babies were more likely to learn the name of a new object when they held that object, and less likely to learn the name if their parent held the new object. Another study found that 15-month-olds who spent more time using new objects had learned more nouns by the time they were 21 months old.