2 . The conventional wisdom about insects has been that they are unthinking, unfeeling creatures whose behavior is entirely hardwired (天生的). But in the 1990s researchers began making surprising discoveries about insect minds. Some species of wasps (黄蜂) recognize their nest mates’ faces and acquire impressive social skills. For example, they can infer the fighting strengths of other wasps relative to their own just by watching other wasps fight among themselves.

Given the substantial work on the complexity of insect cognition (认知), it might seem surprising that it took scientists so long to ask whether, if they are that smart, could also be sentient, capable of feeling. Since we have no direct window into the inner world of an animal that cannot verbally communicate its thoughts and feelings, the question of whether insects are sentient remained academic.

15 years ago, I performed an experiment in which we asked whether bumblebees could learn about threat from their natural enemies. We built a plastic spider model with a mechanism that would briefly trap a bumblebee between two sponges before releasing it. The bumblebees showed a significant change in their behavior after being attacked by the robotic spider. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they learned to avoid flowers with spiders and meticulously scanned every flower before landing. Curiously, however, they some times even fled from imaginary threats, scanning and then abandoning a perfectly safe, spider-free flower. Although this incidental observation did not constitute formal evidence of an emotionlike state, it did open the door to the idea that such states might exist in insects.

Some research suggested that insects might have positive states of mind. Researchers discovered that bees actively seek out drugs such as nicotine and caffeine when given the choice and even treat themselves with nicotine when sick. Male fruit flies stressed by being robbed of mating opportunities prefer food containing alcohol, and bees even show withdrawal symptoms when removed from an alcohol-rich diet.

Why would insects consume mind-altering substances if there isn’t a mind to alter? But these suggestive hints of negative and positive mind states still fell short of what was needed to demonstrate that insects are sentient.

4 . The scientist’s job is to figure out how the world works, to “torture (拷问)” Nature to reveal her secrets, as the 17th century philosopher Francis Bacon described it. But who are these people in the lab coats (or sports jackets, or T-shirts and jeans) and how do they work? It turns out that there is a good deal of mystery surrounding the mystery-solvers.

“One of the greatest mysteries is the question of what it is about human beings — brains, education, culture etc. that makes them capable of doing science at all,” said Colin Allen, a cognitive scientist at Indiana University.

Two vital ingredients seem to be necessary to make a scientist: the curiosity to seek out mysteries and the creativity to solve them. “Scientists exhibit a heightened level of curiosity,” reads a 2007 report on scientific creativity. “They go further and deeper into basic questions showing a passion for knowledge for its own sake.” Max Planck, one of the fathers of quantum physics, once said, the scientist “must have a vivid and intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction (推论), but by an artistically creative imagination.”

......

As long as our best technology for seeing inside the brain requires subjects to lie nearly motionless while surrounded by a giant magnet, we’re only going to make limited pro gress on these questions,” Allen said.

5 . Stuck inside his room at an assisted living center, Bob Coleman knew he could not go out in public with the epidemic (疫). But he was not cut off from outside: he shared his love for country music over the Internet. “Hello, everybody. It’s a bright day in Tennessee,” he said into his microphone. “This is Bob Coleman, coming to you from Room3325…”.  Then Coleman began to play the music he loves-hits from country music stars. The 88-year-old carefully chooses each song.

Coleman and several other retirees have turned into DJs (流行音乐播音员), for a new online radio hour known as “Radio Recliner.” A marketing company called Luckie came up with the idea of Radio Recliner. Listeners can send song requests in honor of family or friends. For example, listeners might hear a message like this: “Hey, Granny. This is your favorite granddaughter Amy. We just wanted to call in and say we love you.” The 60-minute show started with retirees in middle Tennessee. It has since expanded, with residents of assisted-living centers in other states taking part in the project. Many jumped at the chance to work as a DJ to ease the loneliness of social distancing rules.

Mitch Bennett serves as Luckie’s chief creative officer. He says the idea was to provide a sense of community to older people. “For this generation, radio was the original social media,” Bennett said, “Dedicating a song to someone you love and having them hear it along with everyone else is a special way of connecting.”

In Georgia, 80-year-old Ed Rosenblatt, who had made full preparations for his show, said an hour he spent playing songs on Radio Recliner resulted in a flood of text messages, emails and calls from family and friends, and many of the messages were from people he had not heard from for years.

6 . New bio-plastics are being made in laboratories from straw, wood chips and food waste, with researchers aiming to replace oil as the source of the world’s plastic.

The new approaches include genetically modifying bacteria to eat wood and produce useful chemicals. But the bio-plastics are currently significantly more expensive to make than fossil fuel-based plastics.

Land and seas around the world, from high mountains to deep oceans, have become polluted with plastic, prompting major public concern. The world has produced 8bn tons of plastic since the 1950s and demand is still rising.

While some waste plastic is recycled, much of it is burnt to produce electricity, resulting in carbon emissions that drive climate change. In contrast to plastic made from oil, plastics made from plant-based materials only release the carbon the plants absorbed from the air as they grew. Bio-plastics will also give more options for products that biodegrade (生物降解) in the environment, although they can be made very long-lasting if required.

“Plastics are an incredible enhancement to our daily lives,” said Paul Mines, CEO of Biome Technologies in the UK, which has spent t5m in the last five years on bio-plastics research. “But we can’t go on using fossil fuel-based materials. About 6-7% of every barrel (桶) of oil is used to make plastics.”

“Using plant materials is feasible,” said professor Simon, at the University of York. “Replacing half of the nation’s plastic bottles could be done using just 3% of the sugar beet crop, 5% of wheat straw or 2.5% of food waste,” he said.

Currently, just a few thousand tons of bio-plastic are used in the UK each year, compared to millions of tons of conventional plastic. Mines said this could rise to about 20,000 tons in the next five years.

......

7 . As a kid growing up in a suburb of London. I loved to go looking for the perfect park bench. Some Sunday mornings, my dad could be persuaded to drive to new parks. We’d have a kick-around with a soccer ball, share a bag of Doritos and check out all the benches in the area, reading the words on them.

The good park bench leaves me in a state, somewhere between nostalgia (怀旧) and eager anticipation. Where once I was excited by the words carved on wood, I now find, as a 10-year-old, that I’m more appreciative of each bench’s quiet stoicism (坦然淡定), the way they are willing to wait out their turn in every weather, remaining available to all-comers. Like a good book or piece of music, a park bench allows for a sense of solitude (独处) and community at the same time, which is crucial to life in a great city.

Part of my obsession with park benches is as spaces where history settles. By planting seeds of curiosity, and making space for reflection, park benches become doors to the past. Maybe that’s the greatest power of the park bench: its capacity encourages the art of observation. A good bench catches us in our quietest, most vulnerable (脆弱的) moments, when we may be open to imagining new narratives and revisiting old ones. Our masks are taken off, hung from the bench’s wrought iron. On other nearby benches, babies are being burped. Glances exchanged. Sandwiches eaten. Newspapers read it .

......

9 . previous recessions (经济衰退), billionaires were hit along with the rest of us; it took almost three years for Forbes’s 400 richest people to recover from losses caused in 2008’s Great Recession. But in the coronavirus recession of 2020, most billionaires have gotten richer than ever before.

Billionaires increased their new billions just as millions of other Americans ran into terrible financial problems. More than 20 million people lost their jobs at the start of the pandemic. Food banks across the country are preparing for another great increase in demand. Why are American billionaires doing so well while so many other Americans suffer? People may find part of the reasons from the following fact. Stocks (股票) are overwhelmingly owned by the wealthy, and the stock market has recovered from its early-pandemic depths much more quickly than other parts of the economy.

......