1 . Metaura Pro claims to be the world’s first wearable air-conditioning device capable of constantly blowing cold air to keep the wearer cool.

Conventional wearable cooling systems only circulate the surrounding air, and thus don’t do a very good job of cooling people down. The stronger the wind blows, the hotter you get. This is definitely not what you want during those hot summer days. Metaura Pro, on the other hand, relies on a cooling solution to produce genuinely cold air that is 7 degrees Fahrenheit (华氏的) cooler than that of the surrounding area, in fan mode, and up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the surrounding air, in cooling mode. The device has a smart app and relies on artificial intelligence to regulate air temperature.

Metaura Pro is driven by a powerful motor and its cooling modules are made up of 26 lightweight flat objects that wrap around the wearer’s neck and help to reduce heat. The motor is linked to a high-speed fan at the back of the device which also drives away some of that warm air around the neck. The device also has a VC plate, which has a liquid-cooled, heat-equalizing mechanism, efficiently creating a temperature differential between hot and cold temperatures.

“What sets Metaura Pro apart from the competition is that it produces genuinely cold air lower than the surrounding temperature, refreshing you during those dog days of summer,” the Metaura Pro Kickstarter crowdfunding page reads.

Metaura Pro not only supplies a cooling function, but also has the capacity for heating as well in winter, it can be used to warm your body to a comfortable temperature, when the surrounding air feels cold.

The device intelligently monitors itself, so when you take it off, it recognizes that it is no longer in use and will automatically shut off and switch to standby mode to save power consumption. Metaura Pro wearable collar is powered by a chargeable battery that can provide only 3 hours of cooling on a single charge. The device weighs 435 grams, which is not heavy, but definitely noticeable.

2 . Would you take a trip if you couldn’t use your cellphone? A new tour company called Off the Grid is asking travellers to put their cellphones away and not even use them for photos. The company founder, Zach Beattie, is developing his business, using money he saved from a tech job at a mapping company. He’s hired guides for every trip but will help lead the first few himself.

The first trip is to Lisbon, Portugal, in July. It takes 7 to 10 days, with small groups of up to 16 people. Prices range from $1,500 to $1,650, including accommodations, meals and ground transportation. The plan includes at least three excursions (远足) and two social events, with an emphasis on unique experiences over bucket-list sightseeing. The tour also includes surfing lessons, yoga on the beach, a day of sailing and dinner with a local family.

“When you’re somewhere new, there’s a lot to see and a lot of cool and interesting people to meet,” Beattie said. “Your phone can distract (使分心) you.” The phone ban won’t be enforced quite as strictly as it seems at first glance. “We want it to be voluntary,” he said. “We’re not collecting phones and throwing them in a locked trunk. It’s held by you, but put in your pocket, and you state your intentions for the week, whether that’s checking your social media once or twice a day or a total blackout.”

Tour-goers also get a “dumbphone” without Internet access that’s loaded with numbers for group leaders and other participants, both for emergencies and to promote socializing. Participants may bring regular cameras, but Beattie is hiring a photographer for each tour so there will be plenty of photos to remember the trip. Once the trip is over, participants will have access to those photos for use in social media posts.

3 . Christ Mocked, by the Florentine master Cimabue, was sold at auction(拍卖)for €24 million in 2019. But the Chilean buyers never got to include the work in their collection because the French government refused to give it an export licence.

Ministers declared the painting a national treasure, officially giving the Louvre 30 months to raise the funds for its purchase. The Louvre recently reached an agreement with the owners.

Laurence des Cars, the president of the Louvre, said it was a “great joy” to have acquired the painting, which “constitutes a crucial landmark in the history of art”. The museum did not say how much it had paid, nor who had sold the painting, which will be exhibited in 2025.

The painting was spotted four years ago by Philomene Wolf, an auctioneer, when she was asked to assess the content s of a house that was being cleared. The owner, in her nineties, thought it was a painting from Russia of no value and was preparing to put it in the dustbin.

Wolf was struck by its quality and guessed that it could be Italian. Experts using modern technology confirmed that it was by Cimabue, who is widely regarded as having opened the gateway to Renaissance art. It is believed to date from 1280. Christ Mocked is one of about 15 known Cimabue’s works.

The Louvre launched an appeal on Tuesday for donations to buy another painting, The Basket of Wild Strawberries by Jean Simeon Chardin, the 18th-century French still life(静物画)master. The work, which was first exhibited in 1761, was in a private collection from the 19th century until last year, when it was sold for €24.3 million to an American art museum at an auction in Paris.

Luckily, many groups and individuals donated two-thirds of the sum. The museum must pay the remaining € 8 million and is hoping that members of the public will help to ease the burden by responding to its appeal, which aims to raise € 1.3 million.

4 . This question has fascinated behavioural scientists for decades: why do we give money to charity?

The explanations for charitable giving fall into three broad categories, from the purely altruisic (利他的)— I donate because I value the social good done by the charity. The “impurely” altruistic— I donate because I extract value from knowing I contribute to the social good for the charity. And the not-at-all altruistic— I donate because I want to show off to potential mates how rich I am.

But are these motives strong enough to enable people to donate as much as they would want to? Most people support charities in one way or another, but often we struggle to make donations as often as we think we should. Although many people would like to leave a gift to charity in their will, they forget about it when the time comes.

Many people are also aware that they should donate to the causes that have the highest impact, but facts and figures are less attractive than narratives. In a series of experiments, it was found that people are much more responsive to charitable pleas that feature a single, identifiable beneficiary(受益者), than they are to statistical information about the scale of the problem being faced. When it comes to charitable giving, we are often ruled by our hearts and not our heads.

The good news is that charitable giving is contagious—seeing others give makes an individual more likely to give and gentle encouragement from an important person in your life can also make a big difference to your donation decisions— more than quadrupling them in our recent study. Habit also plays a part— in three recent experiments those who volunteered before were more likely to do donate their time than those who had not volunteered before.

In summary, behavioural science identifies a range of factors that influence our donations, and can help us to keep giving in the longer term. This is great news not just for charities, but also for donors.

5 . Fiji is an island nation with mountains to climb, jungles to explore, vast reefs under the waves to dive, and beaches to walk on. You can go to the open-air souvenir markets to shop for authentic Fijian crafts (工艺品) like wooden kava bowls and visit the Fiji Museum. You can also attend Fire walking ceremony, the traditional practice of fire walking, where men walk barefoot across hot stones.

Best Time to Go

There is no bad time for Fiji vacations. However, November to April is the wet season, when temperatures and humidity (湿度) are higher and there is a greater risk of hurricanes. August and October are some of the most popular months to visit Fiji’s islands, but this also means you will have to deal with high-season crowds and prices. Brave the heavy but short downpours in the wet season if you want to escape the crowds and get some great deals.

Accommodation & Transport & Food

Some restaurants are expensive and attract the world’s rich and famous, but you can find much cheaper options with equally beautiful locations. Budget hotels start at around $30 a night for a double room with sea views.

If you don’t mind getting about on a bus, you will find this is a cheap and efficient form of transport. Traveling from Suva to Nadi, for example, costs around $25 for a four-hour trip.

You can eat for as little as 5insmallrestaurants, and mid—range restaurants start at around 15 for a meal. Many accommodation options include meals, so you can take full advantage of this to save some money.

All up, Fiji is a very reasonably priced destination with priceless experiences on offer. So, what are you waiting for?

6 . “In the United States, 40 million Americans are food insecure. They don’t know where their next meal is going to come from,” said Aidan Reilly, who co-founded Farmlink. “Meanwhile, in the United States we’re throwing out over 100 billion pounds of food every year.”

Started during the hard period in spring 2020, Farmlink was initially supposed to help struggling families and food banks. Reilly and his childhood friend James Kanoff were reading and watching news about food shortages, and they learned that local farms were forced to destroy spare produce that they couldn’t sell, especially with restaurants, schools and hotels closed. Reilly, Kanoff and a group of friends worked together over Zoom, text and e-mail to contact farms. They didn’t really set out to start a nonprofit then but just thought it would be great to figure out one way to help starving (饥饿的) people.

With “we’ll come to you” as their catchphrase, the group rented trucks and attempted to do all the food pickup and deliveries themselves. They had a lot of difficulties in the beginning, but they made it work, moving more than one million pounds of produce from farms to food banks within just two months and transforming their project into a massive logistics operation in the process. Word spread, and more and more young people at home during the pandemic reached out to help.

Farmlink has worked with more than 100 farms and 300 communities in the United States, rescuing and moving enough food to distribute (配送) more than 64 million meals. “The bigger Farmlink gets, the bigger our worldview gets. There are everyday Americans who live next to us and don’t know how they’re going to feed their kids. And that’s exactly who we’re doing this for,” Reilly said.

8 . Marva Collins’ journey as a teacher began in the 1960s, when she was assigned to teach at a public school in Chicago. At the time, the school was plagued (困扰) by violence, low academic standards, and a ______ of resources, and many of its students were ______ as “unteachable” or “at-risk.”

Despite these ______ , Collins was determined to make a difference. She ______ to create a classroom environment that helped to develop a love of ______ , a sense of discipline, and a belief in oneself. Collins’ teaching methods proved ______ , and her students soon began to show remarkable progress. They ______ well above average on standardized tests, and many of them went on to ______ top universities.

Collins also ______ the importance of building relationships between teachers and students. She believed that strong relationships were the foundation of effective teaching, and she ______ teachers to get to know their students as individuals and to personalize their instruction ______ .

Collins’ impact on education was recognized by educators across the world, and she was ______ to speak at conferences across the world. Today, Collins’ legacy (遗产) lives on through the many students and educators inspired by her work. Her emphasis on ______ , hard work and relationships continues to be a model for effective teaching, and her ______ in the potential of every student ______ to inspire educators to make a difference in the lives of at-risk students.

10 . Everyone has unique needs and preferences, and individual sleep requirements are no different. However, the amount of sleep you need per night is mainly determined by your age.

Official recommendations for the length of a person’s sleep are broken down by age group:

Older adults (65+): 7–8 hours

Adults (18–64 years): 7–9 hours

Teenagers (14–17 years): 8–10 hours

School children (6–13 years): 9–11 hours

Preschoolers (3–5 years): 10–13 hours (including naps)

Toddlers (1–2 years): 11–14 hours (including naps)

Infants (4–12 months): 12–15 hours (including naps)

Newborns (0–3 months): 14–17 hours

However, some people might need more or less sleep than is generally recommended, depending on the following factors.

Genetic makeup

Your genetics are an important factor in how many hours of sleep you need per night.

For example, those with one specific genetic mutation (基因突变) need only around 6 hours, whereas people without it require about 8 hours, on average.

Sleep quality

The quality of your sleep can also affect how much you need.

If your sleep quality is poor, you may find that you still feel tired after getting what should be considered enough.

Therefore, it’s not only important to focus on sleeping long enough but also on sleeping well enough. If you often feel like you aren’t sleeping well or are extremely tired and don’t know why, it’s a good idea to check in with your healthcare provider.