1 . The Atlantic salmon (鲑鱼) of Scotland are hardy and determined animals. Each spring and summer, they return from the North Atlantic Ocean to lay eggs in Scotland’s shallow rivers,leaping up waterfalls and over barriers, pushing themselves upstream in enormous efforts. Some fail, and others succeed, but today they face yet another challenge.

During the mid-1980s, there were between eight and ten million salmon swimming around Scotland’s Atlantic coast; that number has now dropped sharply. There’s evidence of reducing the availability of the salmon’s prey (猎物) as climate change warms and acidifies oceans. New research suggests climate change is also bearing down on rivers, which is bad news for salmon.Adapted to life in cold water, salmon experience slow growth and population changes at high temperatures. Heat influences their health and reduces their resistance to disease.

“Now salmon are struggling to deal with the rising temperatures. There are recent records of 27°C in the upper reaches of the Dee catchment,” says Peter Cairns, director of an environmental charity. In 2018, Scotland recorded the lowest pole catch for salmon since records began. Evidence suggests that the degraded quality of river worsens the impact of our changing climate. “Atlantic salmon evolved using river systems in Scotland that were once way more forested and therefore shaded.” Yet Scotland is today one of the least wooded countries in Europe, with just 3 percent of its native woodland undamaged. Scientists have found that just 35percent of rivers in Scotland have enough tree cover for salmon survival.

A movement to get trees back on riverbanks is gathering pace. “Broad-leaf trees close tothe bank can reduce the light that enters the water,” explains fisheries scientist Anthony Hawkins. A new initiative called Riverwoods — led by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and supported by Scottish Water and several other government and regulatory bodies — aims to create a network of woodlands along Scotland’s riverbanks, and has already received a number of large funds.“Money is not the pressing business. River health is complex, but tree planting is one of the most basic things we can get started with right away,”says Cairns.

2 . My eighteen-year-old daughter Julia called twenty minutes after she left, saying she had an accident. I grabbed my shoes and was in the car in less than a minute. When I finally saw her, I hugged her tightly. Then I looked at the other driver. Learning that he fell asleep behind the wheel at about seventy miles an hour when the speed limit was forty-five, I could have choked him.

“It could have been worse,” I reminded myself as she cried all the way to the doctor’s office. Luckily, four days after the accident, Julia felt better. At her appointment, her doctor cleared her to resume normal activities, including driving. But I could tell by her look that she had no intention of getting behind the wheel.

Later that day, I sat with Julia as she spoke on the phone with our insurance agent. On the phone, she was professional, telling the agent what had happened in a clear, brief way. I realized she sounded like an adult. And adults drive cars. I realized that no matter how I felt about it, allowing Julia to give in to her fear wasn’t good for her. When she hung up, I hugged her. “You’re stronger than you think,” I said. “And tomorrow you’re going to drive my car and meet your friends for lunch. You just have to push through the fear and do it, and it will get easier each time you do.” I ignored the fear in her eyes and the way my heart   sped up when I thought about Julia behind the wheel again.

The next day, Julia drove my car to meet her friends. As I watched her leave, I felt nervous and proud. She texted me when she got to the restaurant, and I felt my heart rate return to normal. The tears I’d been holding back all week flooded my eyes. Watching her leave the house without me for the first time since the accident was frightening, but it was also necessary.

3 . I once coached volleyball for a group of kids for the Special Olympics. One particular Tuesday night, after warming up, the kids began their _______. Brian was sitting in the _______ by himself, as usual, _______ between watching the other kids and resting his head on his knees.

His family _______ greatly with what they referred to as his “condition.” _______, this caused him a lot of anger and sadness. With a _______ ability to fully understand and deal with the negativity in his life, Brian often _______ and wouldn't communicate with others. Working with Brian each week, I knew I had to be _______.

On this particular Tuesday night, as I had done so many times before, I simply told him that we'd love to have him _______us, and made my way over to the other kids.

As the volleyball lesson __________, I saw Brian come out of his corner and was moving closer, __________ in the fun the other kids were having. Hesitantly, he __________ me and asked if he could play. On this night, Brian had finally decided to move past his __________ and take part in the fun.

At the end of that Tuesday night, as I watched Brian and the other kids leave the volleyball court __________, I knew that I was making at least a small __________ in these kids’ lives.

4 . Several years ago, I was at a pre-season football practice at a high school where I was working with the team on a concussion (脑震荡) research project. The players were lined up in two rows facing each other and with little more instruction from the coach than, “on the whistle, hit the man across from you”, great concern rushed through my mind.

Professional sports get the lion’s share of attention, but over three million children and teenagers in the United States play the same game. This directly places concussions as a significant public health concern for all.

However, for decades, concussion has been considered a temporary injury with no long-term consequences. Many athletes will do just about anything to stay on the field and “play through the pain” as a sign of toughness. In 2005, with the release of the brain tissue pathology (病理学) report of Mike Webster a, a retired National Football League player, our thinking on concussion began to shift. Since then, public attention has focused on this link between brain injury and blows to the head. As our understanding of concussion progressed to understanding its significance as an injury, so too did the development of player equipment.

In the early 1900s football was played without helmets (头盔), but severe injuries, like skull fractures, led to the occasional use of leather helmets in the 1920s.The first facemask entered the game in the 1950s. Modern helmets use advanced shell materials, have moveable panels to absorb forces, and multi-layered padding that responds to different impacts. Companies will continue to improve helmets as new materials become available, guided by the newest science.

Sports are an important part of a society’s culture and they give millions of children much-needed exercise. Yet, participation in any sport carries injury risk, and concussion will always be part of that. As those children become adults and make sport their hobby or even career, ensuring them play safely at all levels is essential.

5 . Eyes are said to be the window to the soul — but researchers at Google see them as indicators of a person’s health. A study suggests that Google’s computers can predict whether someone is at risk of a heart attack by analyzing a photograph of their retina (视网膜).

The research relied on a convolutional neural network, a type of deep-learning algorithm (算法) that is transforming how biologists analyse images. Google’s approach is part of a wave of new deep-learning applications that are making image processing easier and could even identify overlooked biological phenomena.

The approach took off in the tech sector around 2012, but scientists struggled to apply the networks to biology, in part because of cultural differences between fields. “Take a group of smart biologists and put them in a room of smart computer scientists and they will talk two different languages to each other, and have different mindsets,” says Daphne Koller, chief computing officer at Calico.

However, through years of study, some scientists have seen a shift that has never happened before in how well machine learning can accomplish biological tasks that have to do with imaging. Others are most excited by the idea that analysing images with convolutional neural networks could unknowingly reveal unnoticeable biological phenomena, encouraging biologists to ask questions they might not have considered before.

Such discoveries could help to advance disease research. If deep learning can reveal markers of cancer in an individual cell, it could help to bring about new assumptions about how cancer spreads.

Other machine-learning experts in biology have set their sights on new frontiers, now that convolutional neural networks are taking flight for image processing. “Imaging is important, but so is chemistry and molecular (分子) data,” says Alex Wolf, a computational biologist. Wolf hopes to improve neural networks so that they can analyse gene expression. “I think there will be a very big breakthrough in the next few years,” he says.

6 . Leaving our hostel in the centre of Phnom Penh, we climb inside our small Tuk Tuk cabin attached to the back of Kiwi’s motorbike; a bottle of water in one hand and a surgeon-style mask in the other we set off on our 45-minute commute. It is a familiar start to the day for me and two other volunteers. We are setting out to work in an orphanage just outside Cambodia’s capital city.

The morning rush hour in Phnom Penh is crowded and chaotic. Kiwi directs our path between the trucks, 4×4 Lexus’ and countless motorbikes, which often carry entire families. We reach the dusty highway, masks and sunshades firmly in place to protect our eyes and lungs. A mixture of concrete buildings and huts exist along the side of the road among a sea of rubbish. The residents often smile and wave as we pass by.

We turn onto a farm track. The last part of our journey is a roller coaster, jumping out of potholes (路面坑洼) and turning to avoid falling off the sinking road. We pass huts on stilts (木桩), skinny cows and farm yards where children jump and scream upon seeing us. The stream along the side of the road is almost bone dry and vegetation is rare across the fields.

Finally we arrive at our destination: the oasis (令人快慰的地方) is Samrong Farm. By the gates, a group of 10-year-old children compete in the area of marbles. We’re greeted by the shouts of “Cha, cha(short for ‘teacher’)!” from several other kids gathering round. As we climb out of our vehicle, the sun is already hot and the oasis is as dry as the fields surrounding it. In such conditions you would imagine life to be hard, but you wouldn’t know it to see the warm smiles and hear the laughter of the residents at Samrong Orphanage.

Compared to children in the Western World they have little and yet they give so much in generosity of spirit and enthusiasm for every day. Despite the journey, it is so good to arrive at work in the morning.

8 . A Malawian woman, Gloria Majiga-Kamoto, was recently awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa — the world’s leading award for grassroots environmental activists.

Gloria Majiga-Kamoto was then working for a local environmental organization with a program that gave goats to rural farmers, who would use the goat waste to produce low-cost, high-quality organic fertilizer (肥料). The problem? The thin plastic bags covering the Malawian countryside. “We have this very common street food, chiwaya, which is salty and served in little blue plastics,” Majiga-Kamoto says. “Goats eat the plastic for salty taste and they die because it blocks the ingestion (摄食) system.” For her, this was the moment when it all changed. All of a sudden, she started noticing how plastics were everywhere in the Malawian environment and food system-affecting people’s living and health.

“I remember back in the day when we’d go to the market and buy things like fish, you’d get it in newspapers,” the 30-year-old says. But thin plastics took off in the last decade or so as new producers sprung up in Malawi, selling products like thin plastic bags at cheap prices. In fact, the Malawian government decided to ban the importation, production and distribution of single-use plastic in 2015. But before the ban could go into full effect, Malawi’s plastics-producing industry appealed to the country’s High Court against the ban, causing it to be suspended.

When Majiga-Kamoto and her fellow environmentalists heard about this, they were annoyed. She organized marches and rejected the plastic industry’s argument that the ban would hurt Malawi’s economy — and even debated with an industry spokesman on TV. Finally in 2019, Malawi’s High Court ruled in favor of the ban. The following year, the government began closing down illegal plastic producers.

Michael Sutton, executive director of the Goldman Environmental Foundation, said, “Majiga-Kamoto’s fight with the plastic industry is a perfect example of the spirit of the prize.”

10 . Keeping a language alive can strengthen people’s sense of identity and most importantly lead to the preservation of a whole culture. This is probably why a group of Cherokee music artists decided to create a music album (唱片) exclusively in the Cherokee language, a highly endangered Native American language. Currently, there are fewer than 2,000 fluent speakers of the language remaining in the world, and the number is declining every year.

The album, tilted DOAP oaV and pronounced ‘Ah’ ‘Nuh’ ‘Duh’ ‘Nah’ ‘Lees’ ‘Gi’, means “Performers” in English. It is comprised of a range of contemporary styles, including Pop, Reggae, Country, Heavy Metal, Hip Hop, and Folk. With a planned release date of Labor Day weekend, the record company is using the platform of the National Cherokee Holiday to give this album as much exposure as possible.

Jeremy Charles, a key figure in getting this album off the ground, has said that the “music will shine a spotlight on Cherokee artists and speakers, and increase exposure to our culture and language worldwide”. He aims for the album to be an inspiration to the next generation of Cherokee language learners. Featuring 12 Cherokee artists ranging from ages 14 to 50, you can see how this album is going to do a lot for the promotion of Cherokee music and can inspire people of any age to make music that connects with their heritage (遗产).

The youngest contributor on the album, Lillian Charles, is only in 8th grade but had a major contribution to the Goth-pop song   “Circus”—a song she wrote at the age of 12. It originally written in English, she worked with translators Bobbie Smith and Kathy Sierra to be able to fully express herself in Cherokee.

Projects like the DOOAP oaV album bring a modern approach to revitalizing language and culture and encourage a younger audience, to get involved and start learning the Cherokee language. On average, a native language is lost forever every two weeks, and these people want to make sure that the Cherokee language isn’t one of them.