The health condition of Yaya, a 23-year-old giant panda who has lived in Memphis Zoo in the US for 20 years, attracted public concern recently. Tourists posted pictures of Yaya and claimed she suffered from skin disease and malnutrition,    1    (call) for her return. With it being decided that Yaya will come back home, this episode raises the question of    2    giant pandas are so difficult to feed and breed.

Giant pandas only feed on bamboo. The Calgary Zoo in Canada sent two pandas back to China in 2020 due to a    3    (short) of bamboo. Pandas also have trouble absorbing nutrients. They can only digest 17 percent of what they eat.

Their low reproductive rate is a crucial reason as well.    4    (general), giant pandas can breed when they reach 4 to 8 years old. Females breeding only once    5    year leave their scent on bamboo so that males can locate them. Even if a pair meets, successful breeding is not certain.

Females normally give birth    6    one or two cubs(幼崽). If twins are born, the mother may only raise the    7    (strong) of the cubs. A newborn panda baby only    8    (weigh) about 0.1 percent of the weight of a fully    9    (grow) panda, making its survival extremely difficult.

Despite these    10    (issue), progress has been made in breeding and protecting the widely loved animals.

4 . Imagine having the opportunity to sing together with hundreds of other people while you are at home alone. You can do this in a virtual choir. Virtual choir members record themselves while they perform alone on video. These videos are uploaded onto the Internet, and then they are put together into one video that you can see online—a virtual choir. Anyone can take part in a virtual choir from anywhere—all you need is a video camera and an Internet connection. A virtual choir enables people to add their voices to those of other individuals and become part of the global community. It has proved to be a positive influence on the lives of many people.

The virtual choir was the idea of award-winning composer and conductor Eric Whitacre. He fell in love with Mozart’s classical music when he sang for the university choir. Moved by this music, he said, “It was like seeing color for the first time.“ Over ten years after his graduation, Whitacre’s original compositions began to become quite popular among choirs and singers. This led to the creation of the virtual choir.

In 2009,Whitacre received a video of a girl who was singing one of his works. Inspired, he asked his fans to make videos, which he then joined together into one performance. His first virtual choir, “Lux Aurumque”, had 198 singers from 12 different countries. It has received millions of views on the Internet. Since then, the virtual choir has become a worldwide phenomenon. Whitacre’s next effort was the virtual Youth Choir for UNICEF, which was first seen on stage on 23 July 2014 in the UK. Altogether, 2,292 young people from 80 countries joined in to sing Whitacre’s song “What If”.

The virtual choir is a wonderful way for people around the world to sing with one voice and thus make the world a better place.

5 . Ministers will offer rewards such as clothes vouchers (票卷) and discounted theme park tickets in return for exercising and eating healthily, under plans to solve Britain’s obesity crisis.

The anti-obesity project, which uses an app to help people make changes to their diet and physical activity, will launch in 2023, initially in a pilot (试验性的) project. Participants will wear Fitbit-style devices that can generate personalized health recommendations, such as increasing their step count, eating more fruit and vegetables and reducing portion (分量) size. Those increasing their exercise by taking part in organized events such as parkruns or walking to school or work may accumulate extra points in the app. The app could also be used to monitor supermarket spending, rewarding those who cut their calorie intake and buy healthier options. Participants will collect points for their healthy behaviors, which will unlock rewards that could include gym passes, clothes or food vouchers and discounts for shops, cinema or theme park tickets.

After a competitive tender (投标) process, HeadUp has been chosen to deliver the project, with 3 million pounds coming from the Department of Health and Social Care to provide incentives in the pilot. Evidence suggests financial incentives can improve rates of physical activity and inspire healthier eating. HeadUp will work with a range of organizations to provide rewards such as the vouchers, discounts and gift cards. Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said: “This new pilot will pave the way for developing innovative ways to improve the lives of individuals, and also help to reduce stress on the National Health Services (NHS). This pilot is an excellent opportunity to find how best to inspire people to make small changes to their daily lives that will have a lasting positive impact on their health. ”

7 . The Best Free Movies on Amazon Prime Video

Here are some of the best free movies on Amazon Prime Video, sorted out for convenience.

Honey Bay

Written by Shia LaBeouf based on his own experiences of growing up, Honey Boy is a surprisingly heartfelt and influential movie. Describing the life of a former child actor who is addicted to alcohol, this semi-autobiographical work offers profound insight into the pain and pressure of a man forced to evolve in the public eye.

The Avengers

Start your hero’s journey all over again by rewatching the first Avengers movie. Of course, Disney has the most Marvel movies of any streaming service, so if you want to do a marathon, that’s the place to start. But if you didn’t subscribe to anything there and just want to relive the Baule of Neu York, then this is a great opportunity.

Eighth Grade

Director Bo Burnham and star Elsie Fisher timelessly reflected on growing up in this work. An occasionally painful yet consistently spectacular story told a 13-year-old girl’s final week of middle school, a chance to t the record straight and reimagine her future high school sell.

The Farewell

The star Awkwafina delivers an amazing performance in writer-director Lulu Wang’s attractive story of a granddaughter saying goodbye to her grandmother. Played by Zhao Shu-zhen, a mixture of comedy and heartbreak. The Farewell touches on timeless themes of pity and grief in a way that is both clever and moving.

8 . The oceans play a crucial role in lightening global warming by absorbing carbon dioxide emissions. However, in a study conducted by the University of Texas, researchers found that the oceans’ capacity to absorb carbon dioxide (CO₂) would reach its maximum by 2100 and decrease to half of its current efficiency by 2300, based on a climate simulation (模拟) that was set for a worst-case emissions scenario (设想).

The decline happens because of a surface layer of low-alkalinity (碱度) water that can hinder the ability of the oceans to absorb CO₂. Alkalinity affects how much CO₂ can dissolve in seawater. Although the emissions scenario used in the study is unlikely because of global efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions, the findings reveal a previously unknown tipping point that if activated would release an important brake on global warming.

“We need to think about these worst-case scenarios to understand how our CO₂ emissions might affect the oceans not just this century, but next century and the following centuries. Climate simulations had previously shown that the oceans slow their absorption of CO₂ over time, but none had considered alkalinity as an explanation. We recalculated pieces of a 450-year simulation until we hit on alkalinity as a key cause of the slowing.” said Megumi Chikamoto, who led the research at the University of Texas Institute.

The effect begins with extreme climate change, which slows ocean currents. This leaves the surface of the oceans covered in a warm layer of fresh water that won’t mix easily with the cooler, more al kaline waters below it. That means more of it is left behind in the atmosphere. This in turn produces faster warming, which sustains and strengthens the low-alkalinity surface layer. Co-author, Pedro DiNezio, said that the discovery was a powerful reminder that the world needs to reduce its CO₂ emissions to avoid crossing this and other tipping points.

9 . These days, there’s a green version of just about everything. There are cars that run on electricity and alternative fuels, houses that are powered by solar energy and wind farms seemingly popping up on every open space from California to coastal Japan. Even drones (无人机) ate getting in on the action. The unmanned air vehicles are also being put to environmental uses around the globe.

The eye in the sky that they provide helps researchers better understand what’s going on with the natural world in which we live. For environmentalists and earth scientists, the flying machines can be sent way up in the air to record sweeping footage of a large area to track the impact of things like climate change, migration and the acts of cutting down and burning forest trees, which can be done without having to buy a helicopter, rent a plane or tape a video camera to a bird.

Sure, there’s plenty of satellite footage already out there, but drones let researchers accurately position the data set that they want to get a quicker, closer look at the area that they’re looking to monitor. In 2013, for example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent a drone into the Turrialba Volcano in Costa Rica to gather data about its emissions. The temperature, ash height and gas concentration information collected during the mission helped earth scientists determine which way the volcanic and potentially poisonous gas erupting from the volcano was moving and take steps to limit its environmental impact.

Similarly, Arctic researchers are using drones to help study temperature change and the melting of glaciers. They use drones equipped with infrared (红外线的) cameras to sweep into places that they may otherwise not be able to reach to monitor and collect data on the melting ice. The same flying machines may also eventually be used to transport other data collection tools into the wild.