1 . In July 2021, astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) planted pepper seeds as part of an experiment to test which plants could be successfully grown in space. The peppers were harvested four months later, and the team celebrated with a party and taste test.

For astronauts living mostly off prepackaged foods for months at a time on the ISS, fresh and flavourful produce is welcomed. With long missions to the Moon and Mars in focus, NASA is working to find sustainable ways for astronauts to enjoy fresh foods, which will add key nutrients to their diets and improve their state of mind.

Astronauts have grown radishes, zinnias and a variety of lettuces on board the ISS before, but this is the first time they grew peppers, which posed a new challenge, reports Elizabeth Howell for Space. com.

Biologists at the Kennedy Space Centre spent two years picking the perfect pepper. They wanted to try peppers because they’re a great source of vitamins and nutrients, and they can be eaten raw or cooked. Plus, peppers are fairly low maintenance to grow.

In June, a carrier delivered supplies to the ISS along with a package of 48 pepper seeds. Astronauts on board planted the seeds in a microwave oven-sized growing container. The conditions in it—such as lighting, watering and air circulation—were controlled by a crew based at the Kennedy Space Centre. On board, the astronauts collected data and offered feedback on the flavour of the peppers.

“This is important because the food astronauts eat needs to be as good as the rest of their equipment,” LaShelle Spencer, a plant scientist at NASA, said over the summer. “To successfully send people to Mars and bring them back to Earth, we will not only require the most nutritious foods, but the best tasting ones as well.”

2 . Borrowing Policies

The Henry G. Bennett Memorial Library provides materials and services to meet the information needs of graduate and undergraduate students, face-to-face and online learners as well as teachers and community members.

Borrowing for Students

General Collection: 21 days (fall and spring); 14 days (summer)

Curriculum Collection: 7 days (fall and spring); 7 days (summer)

Borrowing for Teachers

General Collection: 90 days (fall and spring); 90 days (summer)

Curriculum Collection: 90 days (fall and spring); 90 days (summer)

OK-Share Card

Any teachers or students of any OK-Share institution may use the collections of any OK- Share library on site. Upon completion of the OK-Share card application at their home library, teachers or students will be given an OK-Share card.

Services

OK-Share card borrowers are allowed two books in their possession at one time. Electronic tools may not be available to the OK-Share card borrowers.

Inform the library you use immediately if your card is lost or stolen. A $5. 00 charge for a second OK-Share card must be paid to the lending library.

Books should be returned to the library where the library materials were borrowed. Materials returned by mail should be sent by first-class, insured mail. Materials sent by post office must be insured for at least $ 100.

Billing

The library is not responsible for informing borrowers that materials are overdue. OK- Share card borrowers are billed for fines for materials returned late.

4 . Doing less sitting and more moving is tied to living longer, according to a new study.

Replacing 30 minutes per day of sedentary (久坐不动的) time with 30 minutes of physical activity at a light intensity (强度) was associated with a 17％ lower risk of early death in a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology on Monday.

The study also found that replacing 30 minutes of sedentary time with 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous (剧烈的)exercise was associated with a 35％ lower risk of early death. “If you replace 30 minutes of sitting time with 30 minutes of light-intensity physical activity-so something just like a casual walk down the hall-that still can lower your risk,”said Keith Diaz, a professor at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.“Obviously, it doesn’t lower your risk as much as exercise, or as much as moderate to vigorous physical activity, but it still can lower risk, and to us, that was somewhat of a new finding,” Keith Diaz said.“Any movement for any length of time is going to give you health benefit, and this is really changing what we know about physical activity.”

The study included national data on 7,999 people aged 45 and older who wore activity monitors to track their sedentary time between 2009 and 2013. The researchers used that data to analyze the benefits that could be caused if sedentary time in the data was replaced with physical activity.

The researchers found that replacing sitting time with exercise and movement was associated with a benefit, but replacing long periods of sitting with shorter periods of sitting was not. “In our previous work, we found that if you take a break every 30 minutes, it will lower your risk from sitting,” Diaz said, and the new study also show that in the data.“We went deeper into the data to try to understand why people who took a movement every 30 minutes had a lower risk of death. It’s because they just had more opportunity to move,” he said.

5 . It’s hard to find Alice Munro in the media. Even after she won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Canadian writer just appeared for a quick interview and then dropped out of sight. On Dec 29, she still didn’t seek the spotlight (聚光灯) when she was named one of the five Women of the Year by the Financial Times.

In Munro’s eyes, ordinary lives always hide larger dramas. So she records what we casually think of as the everyday actions of normal people. She often focuses on life in her hometown, a small village in Ontario which she is most familiar with. She writes about the ordinary things in the village. Above all, she talks about girls and women who have seemingly ordinary lives but struggle against daily misfortune.

She has a special talent for uncovering the extraordinary in the ordinary. These are ordinary people, ordinary stories, but she has the magic. Her clear and accurate language, depth of detail and the logic of her storytelling have made her stories inviting.

Runaway, one of Munro’s representative works, is a good example of her writingstyle. One of the stories centres on the life of an ordinary woman Carla, who lives in a small Canadian town with her husband Clark. The story slowly forms a picture of Carla, trapped in a bad marriage, her unhappiness building into desperation until she decided to flee. The story of Carla is a story of the power and betrayals (背叛) of love

Since she published her first collection of short stories in 1968, Munro has won many awards, with the Nobel Prize being her biggest honour. On Oct 10, 2013, the Nobel Prize Committee named Munro the “Master of the contemporary (当代的) short story”.

6 . There’s so much to see and do in the coolest little capital. Here’s our list of the top 5 must dos when you visit Wellington.

Enjoy 360° views from the top of Mount Victoria

Get a full view of the city and a great photo at the Mount Victoria Lookout. Watch the ships sailing in and planes taking off from Wellington Airport.

Ride the historic Wellington Cable Car

The Cable Car is a Wellington mark. It runs from Lambton Quay up to Kelburn. At its top, there’s a lookout, the Cable Car Museum, and Space Place at Carter Observatory.

Check out our world-famous movie-making magic

Get into the imagination and the skills of artists behind some of the world’s most wonderful movies at the

Wata Cave mini-museum, where you can find yourself in the world of the movie—The Lord of the Rings.

Have a close touch at Wellington Zoo

Do you want to hand-feed a giraffe, play with a group of meerkats (灰沼狸) or touch a cheetah’s (猎豹) fur?

All are possible at Wellington Zoo, the best little zoo in the world.

Discover our stories at Te Papa

The national museum of New Zealand, Te Papa, is fascinating and fun for any age. The exhibits (展览品) tell stories about each side of New Zealand in new and exciting ways. By the way, you can enter the Te Papa museum for free.

There was a fruit truck sell fruits in the parking lot of Walmart yesterday. My mom took a big box and it has 6 mini baskets of strawberries in it.

She knew we could not finish them all before they went badly. So today she asked my dad give some to our neighbors. He initially resisted and he did eventually go to three of our neighbors and gave each one a basket. On returning back to home, he told me which he said to them, which surprised me! “Hi, my family and I are going around spreading loves to the neighborhood by giving out baskets of strawberries. Would you like any?”

We gratefully accepted. That was an sweet interaction.