1 . Four Hotels That Will Make Your Life Easier

It’s such an ideal option for business travelers in a hurry. Here is the basic idea: You download the iPhone or Android app. The night before, you can “check-in” virtually. When you arrive you get a message that the room is ready and your key, which is already tied to your reservation, is waiting for you at the desk.

The self-service kiosks (一体机) at this high-tech New York hotel are open 24x7 and work just like the ones you’d see at an airport. There are just five-steps to register and obtain your room card. There’s even a luggage robot. You tap in the number of bags you’re carrying, then wait for a robot arm to swing down and store your luggage in a locker.

Business travelers like the fast kiosk check-in works. Like the Yotel, the kiosk asks you to put in your credit card. The whole process takes about three minutes. When travelers leave, they can be equally impressed with the fast check-out. You never have to wait in line.

The Radisson is trying to make the kiosk process even faster, you use a mobile app to register and then receive a password by email or text. When you get to the kiosk, you can scan the password to get your key without any other steps required. It’s incredibly fast.

2 . As a child, Liu Wenwen didn’t like the suona, a “loud” traditional Chinese musical instrument, also an ancestral treasure of her family that was to become her career.

Liu says she felt ashamed. In the 1990s, people admired things that were modern and international. The suona was considered out of date. Her father’s family has performed with the suona for seven generations, while the tradition on her mother’s side of the family can be traced back to the early Qing Dynasty. Despite her unwillingness, she followed her parents to play the suona as early as 3 years old. Besides it, Liu has also learned traditional Chinese vocal music and dancing—skills that have improved her oral muscles and sense of rhyme, helping equip her to be a professional musician.

It wasn’t until 2008 that she first found suona music beautiful. That was when she entered the Shanghai Conservatory of Music to learn the instrument more systematically from Liu Ying, a professor and top player. “The music played by the professor is just amazing, and different from what I had heard before,” she says.

She loves exchanging ideas about suona playing techniques with her students. “It’s wonderful to see the younger generation carrying on this cultural tradition.” Liu Wenwen said she is pleased to see the suona regain popularity among young people, sometimes combined with jazz, opera and other art forms. This has stopped its decline in the 1990s. Her name, when mentioned on China’s social media platforms, often is followed by a video of her live performance at a concert in Sydney, Australia. Westerners were amazed by the loud, unfamiliar instrument and its colorful music. “I felt my hard work had paid off. I trained for over 20 years, probably just to win cheers and applause for traditional Chinese music on the international stage”.

6 . Your smartphone breaks. The repair costs too much money. So you give up and buy a new device (设备) . That this happens so often is no coincidence (巧合) .

Many big device makers are putting more new products on the market. But they do not sell specialized tools and parts needed for repairs. And they offer no instruction on how to repair their products. As a result, the independent repair shops in your neighborhood find they cannot repair your broken smartphone. You can only go to faraway authorized (经授权的) repair shops to get the necessary repair service, which is often costly.

In recent years, some producers have taken steps to make repairs easier, but there’s a growing effort across the world to push them to do more. Last week, the “Right to Repair movement heard good news from the White House. The president of the US on Friday signed an order aimed at encouraging healthy competition in the US economy. It includes a condition for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) . The FTC was asked to make rules preventing producers from limiting independent device repair shops and DIY repairs.

“Right to Repair” is a global movement to make sure everyone has the right to fix the products they own. The idea has generally come from the United States. The earliest known published reference using the group of words comes from the auto industry dating back to2003. Its supporters require companies to provide their parts, tools and information for consumers (消费者) and repair shops. They also encourage the government to make laws to force producers to increase device reparability.

The FTC in May presented a 56-page report. It said that “many consumer products have become harder to fix.” The report also found that “the burden (负担) of repair limits may fall more heavily on communities of color and consumers having little money” because many independent repair shops are owned by people of color and because high-cost repairs hit low-paid consumers harder.

9 . When micro-plastics end up in farm fields, the pollution can damage plant growth. But two young researchers now report that combining fungi (真菌) with certain farm wastes can partly overcome that problem.

May Shin, 20, and Jiwon Choi, 18, met in a research design class at the Fryeburg Academy, a high school in Maine. May had desired to explore how micro-plastics might affect the ecosystem. Jiwon was crazy about plants and fungi. The young scientists cooperated to test how long-lived plastics might affect farm crops.

Scientists have shown certain fungi can aid root growth and a plant’s nutrient uptake. Those organisms are named arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). Certain farm wastes, like straw, can provide nutrients to plants and help stabilize their roots. Such wastes are also known as mushroom substrate (基质) and people often grow mushrooms in them.

May and Jiwon planted over 2,000 scallion (大葱) seeds in pots of soil. Half the seeds got soil polluted with micro-plastics. The rest grew in plastic-free soil. The plants then were further divided into four groups. The young scientists added AMF to the soil in one group. Another group had a top layer of mushroom substrate. A third group got both treatments. The last group got none. For three weeks, the pair tracked how many scallions sprouted (发芽) in each group and measured the plants’ height once each week.

About twice as many scallions sprouted in clean soil compared to that containing plastic bits. But among plants surviving in the polluted soil, a combination of AMF and mushroom substrate helped them out. Those getting both treatments grew 5.4 centimeters per week. That was faster than either of the treatments alone or those getting none.

Jiwon and May then looked at the plant roots with a microscope. Where AMF had been added, it grew into those roots. That increased the scallion roots’ surface area, May said, which should promote their uptake of nutrients. So “I see this project as coming up with a sustainable solution for plant growth in polluted soils,” said May.

10 . Four years ago, Rome Leykin was on his way to work when he accidentally fell onto the tracks of Brooklyn's train as a subway was approaching. The incident resulted in the loss of both of his legs.

But surprisingly, with the loss of his legs, Leykin gained a new passion for racing. Before his accident, he wasn't really that athletic. He would just occasionally play basketball. But that all changed after he was introduced to hand cycling. “When I saw it, I was like, ‘Oh, this is great. You don't even need legs to use it. This is perfect.’” he said. “So, I got on it, I rode and fell in love with it right away.”

Within a few months, he completed the TD Five Boro Bike Tour, a 40-mile ride through New York City. After that, he did his first marathon in 2021. He fished that race in 2 hours and 11 minutes, placing 12th out of 38.

“I'm going to attend this year's marathon and take on challenges. My hands are on the wheel, my eyes are focused, and I think my time is going to speak for itself.” he said. He's made a significant commitment to training. He hand cycles at least 13.1 miles a couple times a week and spends a lot of time in the gym.

And he plans to keep pursuing his athlete goals. He wants to complete the Abbott Six-the world's six largest marathons. One day, he said, he'll maybe even make the Paralympics.

For those who might be following his journey, he hopes they will take some lessons from his story. “There will be ups and downs but the trend is what's important. Focus on the good,” he said. “And also, take your big problems and split them into small solutions. And then all of a sudden, your big problems turn into many small wins.”