1 . Across the world, humans purchase around 1.3 billion single-use plastic water bottles a day. Because only about 9% of plastic is recycled, the vast majority of those bottles wind up in landfills, the ocean, or elsewhere in nature.

When beach-loving Madison noticed those plastic bottles during her family’s trips to California, the 12-year-old “just felt like this needed to change,” she told Smithsonian Magazine.

So as she began thinking about what to do for her school science fair back in 2021, the idea of a project centered on reducing plastic pollution quickly came to her mind: she would design an eatable water bottle called the Eco-Hero.

“One of my biggest ambitions for my project was wanting to help the world,” the confident young inventor said in a video on the website.

To bring her idea to life, Madison built upon the already established method by experimenting with common food materials. She also took inspiration from previous versions of eatable water bottles, though she focused on making hers bigger and more durable. She found that the combination of water, lemon juice, natural gum, and Alginic acid (褐藻酸) resulted in a gel pouch that wouldn’t break, could hold up to 3/4 cup of water, and would last in the fridge for three weeks.

Though she’d like to improve the Eco-Hero by making it able to hold more water, she believes her current version would work well as a replacement for the paper cups used by runners in races. All one needs to do is bite a hole in the water ball, drink the water, and then eat the pouch or throw it away to biodegrade.

Madison hopes the Eco-Hero inspires others to take better care of the planet. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be in a big way,” she told Smithsonian. “People can still make a difference in the world, even if it’s just in a small way.”

3 . Traveling with family members can not only enhance the parent-child relationship, but also broaden the horizons and share happiness and memories. Take a trip with your family to one of the destinations below!

Yellowstone National Park

Kids will love watching Old Faithful, one of nearly 500 geysers (间歇喷泉) in Yellowstone, erupt, and there’s nothing like a hike for family bonding. Keep an eye out for wild animals, or visit the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center to guarantee some animal interactions. Hotels are expensive, so consider taking advantage of the park’s well-equipped campsites.

Orlando

Appealing, thrilling and fun, Walt Disney World Resort (度假村) is engineered specifically for families. Orlando also has a handful of other theme parks, including Universal Orlando Resort, where you’ll find The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and Discovery Cove, an all-inclusive day resort, where you can swim and dive around the park’s coral reef.

Destin

Big Kahuna’s Water & Adventure Park(open seasonally)features waterslides and a lazy river, while the Gulfarium Marine Adventure Park is home to animals kids love, including dolphins and penguins. And if you’re looking for an adventure on the water, consider booking a boat tour at Henderson Beach State Park or Crystal Beach Park. Just don’t forget to pack your beach hat.

Anaheim

Anaheim, California has been home to Disneyland Resort since 1955. After catching up with Mickey and friends, visit Anaheim’s Adventure City Amusement Park or Knott’s Berry Farm Theme Park—another top amusement park in the U.S. And if you’ re in town during baseball season, you can catch a game at Angel Stadium.

4 . Scientists train AI to read human thoughts

Scientists have created a new tool that can turn people’s thoughts into words. It works by using an AI program called GPT-1 to translate brain activity words. In order to achieve this, scientists did a lot.

First, scientists got everything ready before the tests. They invited some volunteers. Each spent sixteen hours listening to stories in a scanner (扫描仪). They imagined the stories as they heard them, and the scanner recorded their brain activity. GPT-1 made connections between the ideas in the stories and the recordings of the listeners’ brain activity.

Then came the tests. The scientists did them in three different ways.

Test 1

The researchers played a new story. GPT-1 was only given recordings of the volunteers’ brain activity. But the words that GPT-1 predicted were very similar to the words in the story that they were listening to. The words weren’t exactly the same, but they often carried the same meaning. For example, when a volunteer was listening to a story about a woman who didn’t have a driver’s license, the program came up with this: “She hasn’t even started to learn to drive yet.”

Test 2

The scientists also carried out the test when volunteers imagined their own stories. “It really works at the level of ideas. The ideas are the same but expressed in different words,” says Alexander Huth, one of the scientists behind the study.

Test 3

The researchers showed the volunteers silent movies, with no spoken words at all. GPT-1 could still figure out the basic ideas.

After the tests, the scientists say that GPT-1 is the first AI program to turn what people are thinking into words without brain surgery (外科手术). The tool isn’t something that can be easily used today, mainly because of the size and the cost of the scanner. In the future, they believe, a similar but cheaper tool could help people who have lost the ability to speak because of an injury or disease.

The scientists say their tool can’t be used to “read people’s minds” without permission. The tool only works if the person wants to share their thoughts.

6 . Thru hiking (徒步旅行) for long distances with your equipment on your back ________ placing yourself at the mercy of other people’s kindness. I thought it would be ________ to share some of the amazing experiences I’ve had regarding kindness of ________. Experiencing people’s kindness has left me inspired.

The first kindness is the Trail Angels who ________ their doors to hikers for support. They ________ rides to town for food or equipment and then provide essentials like showers, laundry and ship packages. They are people who ________ care for those who are away from home and need help.

Trail Magic can ________ at any time or place. The day I was climbing Mt. Baden Powell, there were two Japanese ladies sitting on the hillside resting. As I ________, they began clapping, stopped me, asked me about the trip, shared me some fruit and one woman bowed low and said, “I respect you.” Wow! What ________ words to hear!

One Saturday morning in the San Gabriel mountains, as we crossed a highway, trail runners in their vehicle pulled over to ________ us fruit. An hour down the trail, day hikers stopped and asked about our trip, opened their packs of ________ and asked, “What would you like to eat.” A few miles further we ________ Glennwood Cabin (格伦伍德小屋) and were fed pizza and drinks. At 9: 00 a. m. we were all pumped up and talking about this ________ day of kindness.

Now I am preparing for the next section hike to the Mojave desert. Thank you God for those who show a ________ heart and express the spirit of ________.

7 . I was ten when my mother was diagnosed with cancer. Prior to that, she had been a(n) _______ woman, active to an extent most people found astonishing. As a child, I was amazed by her accomplishments. But at thirty-one, her life _______. And so did mine.

She could do anything, I _______. She won tennis tournaments. She took photographs and held her own exhibition. She _______ as a newspaper columnist, and she cooked Spanish dishes for the family.

Now, she faced her illness with the same _______. Words like “disabled” and “physical therapy” became part of a(n) _______ new world we entered together. _______, I began to help take care of her. And it became routine to _______ her into the kitchen, where she instructed me in the _______ of peeling carrots and potatoes and how to prepare a decent breakfast.

Every accomplishment was a ________ for us both: the electric typewriter, the car with power steering and brakes, her return to ________, where she earned a master’s degree in special education. She eventually founded an activist support group called The Handicappers. One day, without ________ much beforehand, she took me to a Handicappers meeting. I had never seen so many people with so many ________. I returned home, thinking how ________ we really were.

Because my mother accepted her condition with such optimism, I rarely felt sad or resentful about it. Instead, I viewed her drive to look forward to things I ________ as a great mystery and powerful inspiration in my life.

8 . Cultural Websites

This is a guide with rich information and pictures to Ancient Greece, covering art, architecture, politics, Olympics, geography, history and other topics. The photo gallery with bird’s-eye images of Greek art is of note. Contents include maps, biographies and related links, though little in the way of engaging multimedia. The website last updated in 2008, and some links are broken.

Getty, an online museum, focuses on the visual arts and serves both general audiences and specialized professionals. Its Research Library is accessible to both on-site and far-away users. The Explore Art part permits you to look through many of the works of art on show. You can also view present or past exhibitions. There are also topics for discussion on many sides of art and art history.

The website contains main source materials connecting to the history and culture of the United States. It offers more than 7 million digital artworks from more than 100 historical collections. You can select collections to search and explore teaching and learning ideas with American memory.

The website is wonderful collections of public area and copy-permitted historical texts for educational use. With pages designed specifically to help teachers and students, it contains hundreds of well-organized sources and also includes links to visual and hearing materials, as art and archeology play an important role in the study of ancient history.

9 . In the 19th century the novel came into its own. Thousands upon thousands of novels were published. Of those novels, very few are remembered today. However, there are exceptions: the works of Jane Austen—Pride and Prejudice (《傲慢与偏见》)，Sense and Sensibility (《理智与情感》)—for example. They achieved only modest success at first but grew and grew in fame (名声) and reputation.

How did Jane Austen become so popular? Of course, the novels are romantic (浪漫的). Everyone knows the love story of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett (in Pride and Prejudice), and how they overcome their own pride and prejudice to live happily ever after. The lovers are almost as famous today as Romeo and Juliet.

But there is more to Austen’s popularity than the fact that she wrote about love. The books are very witty (机智的) and ironic (讽刺的), and show a great understanding of society and of people. Pride and Prejudice opens with what must be the most famous sentence in the English novel: “It is a truth universally acknowledged (认可), that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

The truth, of course, is the opposite: wealthy, unmarried young men are extremely attractive to young women. And women—especially penniless (身无分文) or near­penniless ones—are the subjects of Austen’s tales.

Women nowadays may be more equal to men than they were in Jane Austen’s day. However, a sense that women still basically live in a world dominated (控制) by men ensures that Austen still has many keen readers.

a．They are mostly love stories.

b．Most of them have a happy ending.

c．They are full of wit and irony.

d．People can still relate to them today.

e．They explain how to succeed in a male­dominated society.

10 . MicroSD cards are common in smartphones, tablets, and action cameras. Finding the right microSD card doesn’t have to be difficult — we can help you find the best microSD cards for your needs.

This microSD card can handle the needs of nearly any device and any type of user, and it offers the fastest speeds and highest storage of the cards we considered while keeping a low price tag. The write speed isn’t provided for this microSD card, which isn’t uncommon — manufacturers often focus on read speed instead because it’s where you’ll notice a la g if there is any.

Bob Sacha, a photographer and associate professor of video storytelling, recommends getting a card like this one. “This card may have a lower read speed and write speed, but it works in all the cameras I use,” he says. This microSD card is also shockproof, waterproof, and able to withstand high temperatures, which makes it suitable for action cameras.

If you’re into portable gaming, and are planning on keeping more than a game or two on hand at any given time, you’ll need enough storage to back that up. The SanDisk Ultra 512GB is just a version of our pick for Switch gaming with more storage, since the read and write speeds are perfectly fine for gaming. It also has plenty of storage to work with a 4kdrone (无人机) or a home security camera.

Where write speed really comes into play is when you’re recording video. That’s also when you’ll want to pay attention to the video class, which measures the minimum levels of write speed for recording video. Ultra-high-speed class is a number inside a U on the front of the card. A U1 card should be able to handle 1080p recording without any issues, but if you want to record 4K, get a U3 card like the PNY Pro Elite.