1 . Liu Jichen, founder and CEO of Clear Plate®, designed a mini-program that recognizes empty plates and rewards users with points. These points can be exchanged for gifts like books and cellphones, or better yet, they can be used to purchase charity meals donated to poor children in rural areas of China.

In 2016, Liu, a then student of Tsinghua University, noticed a popular campaign called “Leftover Party”, where people brought their leftovers to eat together, intending to raise awareness of food waste. Liu and his classmates organized one such event, which was attended by hundreds of people. The success encouraged him to spread the concept of reducing food waste to a wider audience.

The idea of a mini-program struck him at a dinner in 2017 when Liu dined at a restaurant, which rewarded diners who finished off their food. Liu found that the restaurant would give these diners a card every time and offer them small gifts when they collected a certain number of cards. “Everyone who values food can enjoy a sense of gain at a lower cost,” Liu said, noting that such an idea could be realized online.

He formed a team to work on the project. Yet it was quite a challenge for the AI system to identify the uploaded photos. Liu and his team, assisted by more than 1,000 others, spent half a year collecting over 100,000 samples across the country to train the digital brain.

“There were so many uncertainties in research and development. For our team members, the biggest challenge was whether we were confident enough to complete it,” Liu said. They not only achieved their goal, but now, the mini-program has more than five million registered users. “We hope to inspire everyone to take action against food waste and to contribute Chinese wisdom and solutions to global food security challenges,” he added.

2 . What Are the Roots of Your Self-Esteem?

Self-esteem is a person's subjective assessment of his or her worth to himself or herself. Self- esteem covers various beliefs about oneself (such as 'Tm a failure" and "I'm beautiful") as well as physiological states, including sadness, joy, and shame. The more we believe that we are worthy of happiness and good things in life, the more self-fulfilled we will be. When we don't believe that we are worthy of these things, our ability to enjoy them can suffer.     1    

Healthy self-esteem as an adult can be a gift given in your childhood. It is a blessing that most people overlook. There are so many ways adults with high self-esteem were supported as children that resulted in them having high self-esteem. For instance, they were praised for what they had achieved.

    2    They likely experienced affection and were given enough attention. It is also possible that they excelled in studies or in sports and were admired for it by peers.

    3    As children, many of these people were criticized, yelled at, or abused in one way or another. There is also a high chance that they were given no attention by the adults who were supposed to care for them. In some cases, adults with poor self-esteem were often ridiculed for their shortcomings or bullied by peers.

It is common that these adults also believe that in order to be appreciated they need to be perfect.

    4    There are people who are obsessed with their careers or hobbies because in their mind they need to tie their worthiness to something concrete. Oftentimes these people have to pretend to be something they are not just to get approval.

How you feel about yourself impacts how you live your life. People with high self-esteem tend to have better relationships than those with low self-esteem.     5     So if you struggle to reach out for assistance, it could be rooted in your low self-esteem.

3 . For today’s increasingly interconnected food supply chains, “efficient” is what it’s supposed to be: Each country specializes in what it’s best, at and puts it on the global market. Producers and processors within countries specialize, too, as a way to minimize costs. As a result, at least in theory, prices stay low, the world gets fed and everyone wins.

However, the coronavirus crisis demonstrates what is wrong with this approach. When barriers prevent food from reaching its markets, or demand suddenly drops — both of which are happening now — the system falls apart.

Specialization of the food system makes it hard to shift into different markets when disruptions arise. Belgium, a leading exporter of potatoes, lost sales not only to local restaurants but also to other countries because of lockdowns（封锁）. At least the Belgians can try to eat the potatoes at home. That strategy won't work for every crop: Ghana, the world’s top cocoa exporter, lost markets when people stalled focusing on buying essential items instead of chocolate.

The loss in export income in Africa more generally could have a huge impact if the pandemic continues, as many countries there rely heavily on imported wheat and rice. The prices of these grains have soared not only because of rising demand for these grains during the crisis, but also because a few countries — including Russia and Vietnam — imposed export restrictions out of fear that sending food abroad would lead to higher prices at home.

Concentrated markets dominated by just a handful of companies heighten food system fragility. For example, just three meatpacking plants process over 95 percent of Canada’s beef and nearly all of its beef exports. Now, those meat processing plants have had to temporarily shut down because of outbreaks of COVID-19 among workers.

Seeing the spoiled products across the world should force all of us to rethink our “efficient” food supplies. We need to rejuvenate（使恢复活力）local and regional food systems to reduce the vulnerabilities that come with being too reliant on imported and corporate-dominated foods. This doesn’t mean cutting off all trade or abolishing all packaged foods, but it does mean building diversity, and increasing opportunities for small and medium-scale enterprises to flourish in shorter, more sustainable food supply chains that are closer to home.

One place to start is for governments to shift their support from the large-scale, specialized and export-oriented food system to building infrastructure for more diverse local food systems. Around the world, small-scale and organic producers have been overwhelmed with the surge in interest from customers who want to buy directly from farmers during the crisis. But these producers often lack the infrastructure to meet that demand. As governments around the world pass stimulus packages to address the crisis, building more diverse and localized food systems should be an obvious inclusion.

4 . Jeremy can no longer read, drive a car or even recognize faces. But the 20-year-old, who lost his central vision two years ago, can _________ hit a small white ball into a slightly larger hole from a considerable distance.

Jeremy was diagnosed with an extremely rare disease called LHON. Faced with the onset of blindness, Jeremy admits he _________ into depression for a couple of months and feared he’d never play golf again.

One day on TV he saw a guy crying bitterly who had just lost his family when a plane crashed down on his house. Jeremy thought, “If this guy can make it through this, then I can _________ having no central vision.” That became his motto: “Things could be _________.”

So six months after losing his sight, Jeremy decided to _________ his golf club again. He had played every Sunday since the age of twelve with his Dad Lionel. Blind golf brought them even closer because, unlike the regular version of the sport, it’s a _________ game.

Lionel acts as his son’s sighted coach on the course. He _________ the hole and hazards（障碍）. Then he points in the direction, while Jeremy places his chin on his dad’s shoulder to get a _________ of the correct position.

They played together and won the World Blind Golf Championship. Besides, Jeremy has been collecting money and raising _________ of LHON with sponsored bike rides, half-marathons and even sky dives. “That’s the greater __________ of my doing anything,” he told CNN.

5 . Making My Own Bicycle

It was a Saturday morning. James and I were at the Bamboo Bicycle Club, ready for our bamboo bicycle building course.

The first step was setting up the structure for holding the frame (骨架) in place. After that we were told to _______ the bamboo to be of use, which was a delicate job. There were several things to _______. Of course, finding pieces that were the color we wanted was just as important.

The rest of the afternoon was spent _______ each piece of the frame into the structure. Bamboo is fairly flexible, and this particular _______ meant that some adjustments were really necessary. One problem lining up the two chains causes _______ made our frame useless. Luckily, however, after some careful _______, we confirmed that it was alright. There was just enough space to fit a wheel.

On Sunday morning we returned to the workshop to complete the final _______. We began to tightly wrap each joint on the frame, to keep it _______ with natural fibers kept in special glue. All that was left now was for it to dry. In a few hours we would be official members of the Bamboo Bicycle Club.

Finally we finished our job. I couldn’t wait to _______ our bicycle to find out what it was really like to ride a bamboo bicycle. It felt just as ________ as any bicycle, but softer and more relaxed. Now, every time I get on our bicycle, I can’t help smiling. It reminds me of when James and I built it and makes me proud of myself.

7 . What role might arts play in response to climate change and related economic and ecological crises?

It’s often said that a novel, a painting, a song or a motion picture changed how a lot of people thought or felt about the world. Anthropologists (人类学家) and historians rightly argue that major changes in society have sprung up not from the arts, but from-our relationship to our environment. Nevertheless, artists’ efforts help shape the terms by which society adapts to such changes and their consequences. Think of how Beethoven marked the beginnings of modern democracy and the nascent (初期的) Industrial Revolution. Or how Hollywood writers and directors inspired massive support for the U.S. war effort during the early 1940s.

We have stepped into a century in which the societal systems have been built since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Our food system，transport system，energy system，financial system，and possibly our political and governance systems were designed during an era in which fossil fuels met the great quantity of our fast-growing energy demand. But fossil fuels are exhaustible resources, and their reduction will drive evermore desperate methods of extraction (提炼), create evermore environmental risk and require evermore capital-even as alternative energy sources they are also costly. Further, burning fossil fuels changes our planet’s climate. So, at the same time our economy will need to be redesigned to run on entirely different energy sources, and the natural world will be shifting around us in unprecedented (空前的) ways, with more frequent disastrous storms，floods，droughts etc.

Everything will be up for negotiation, redesign and change. And artists have the opportunity and duty to translate the resulting tumultuous (动荡的) human experience into words, images，and music that help people not just to understand these events mentally, but also to come to grips with them willingly. The economic and environmental shifts described above are currently being detailed in ever-greater specificity in hundreds of reports released yearly by climate and energy experts. What’s missing in their carefully worded journal articles is the human dimensions of imagination, joy or sorrow, inspiration, and passion. Art can help us cope with the possible effects of our collective challenges. It can help prepare society for a possibly painful future. It can give voice to suffering and loss, helping people deal with life’s unavoidable stress. And it can also offer beauty, which can be especially important in hard times.

Meaningful art can and must express the chaos we encounter and help us process it mentally and emotionally. To achieve this, artists need to dig deeper, observe more closely and help their audiences connect abstract explanations and forecasts with actual experiences.