1 . As cities balloon with growth, access to nature for people living in urban areas is becoming harder to find. If you’re lucky, there might be a pocket park near where you live, but it’s unusual to find places in a city that are relatively wild.

Past research has found health and wellness benefits of nature for humans, but a new study shows that wildness in urban areas is extremely important for human well-being.

The research team focused on a large urban park. They surveyed several hundred park-goers, asking them to submit a written summary online of a meaningful interaction they had with nature in the park. The researchers then examined these submissions, coding (编码) experiences into different categories. For example, one participant’s experience of “We sat and listened to the waves at the beach for a while” was assigned the categories “sitting at beach” and “listening to waves.”

Across the 320 submissions, a pattern of categories the researchers call a “nature language” began to emerge. After the coding of all submissions, half a dozen categories were noted most often as important to visitors. These include encountering wildlife, walking along the edge of water, and following an established trail.

Naming each nature experience creates a usable language, which helps people recognize and take part in the activities that are most satisfying and meaningful to them. For example, the experience of walking along the edge of water might be satisfying for a young professional on a weekend hike in the park. Back downtown during a workday, they can enjoy a more domestic form of this interaction by walking along a fountain on their lunch break.

“We’re trying to generate a language that helps bring the human-nature interactions back into our daily lives. And for that to happen, we also need to protect nature so that we can interact with it,” said Peter Kahn, a senior author of the study.

2 . Indoor plants might look as if they just sit around not doing much, but in many ways they are the unsung heroes of the home.     1    , but studies have shown that they can promote people’s wellbeing by improving their mood (心情), reducing stress and helping their memory. What’s more, indoor plants are easy to look after and are not very expensive.

What are indoor plants?

Indoor plants, also known as houseplants or pot plants, are plants that like to grow indoors. Many of these species (物种) are not ideally suited to growing outside in the UK, especially in the winter.     2    .

Why are indoor plants good for you?

Will Spoelstra, who works at the Royal Botanic Gardens, says, “    3    . I find during the winter months, plants around the house can really lift your mood.” Several studies have backed this up and found that indoor plants can improve creativity, focus and memory. There is also research showing that pot plants can clean the air around them by removing harmful gases, such as carbon dioxide. They also remove some harmful chemicals from paints or cooking.     4    .

Which plants can you grow?

Aloe vera, peace lilies and spider plants are some of the species that are easy to grow indoors. You can buy plants from supermarkets, garden centres or online. Younger plants are often cheaper than fully grown ones, and you get to care for them as they mature — which is part of the joy of owning plants. “    5    ,” Spoelstra says. “It can bring a new interest and focus into people’s lives and help to make the link between home and nature.”

5 . Like most of his classmates, Zhang Yixuan is facing academic pressure as he is preparing to attend the national college entrance examination, or gaokao, next year. However, compared with playing smartphones and games, Zhang Yixuan prefers spending his summer vacation walking in wild nature, meeting little creatures like crabs. His bedroom is packed with dozens of “living treasures” that he has collected from the outdoors, including insects, fish, and crabs.

It is the microscope that his father bought him that makes the bedroom look more like a mini-biology lab than anything else and it’s a place where Zhang can devote himself to identifying or observing crabs day and night. With the help of the microscope, Zhang buries. Himself in studying the natural world. Sometimes he spends hours simply examining the leg of a crab. It was his deep interest in nature that led Zhang into a new world of discovery.

Last year, a group of crabs caught Zhang’s attention since they looked unusual compared with the commonly seen ones in Rongxian county, where he lives. He decided to take seven of them home. After much observation and lots of researches by reading related articles and documents, Zhang speculated that it must be a new species. And it proved to be true by experts.

The hardworking and gifted teenager is very grateful to his parents for their understanding and support. His father Zhang Lefei, who was born in a rural area, loved catching fish and crabs himself at an early age. So he and his wife would take their son out into nature to explore as much as possible and would allow him to observe crabs quietly without any disturbs.

They say interest is the best teacher. And so are parents, it seems.

Scientists are racing to study the volcano in Tonga that    1     (erupt) just before sundown on January 15,2022.

“Everything so far about this eruption is really strange,” said Janine Krippner,    2     scientist working on Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program. “The sound of the explosion, the tsunami(海啸) waves that followed eruption and the huge energy of this explosion,    3    equaled to five to six million tons of TNT, were unlike any seen in recent     4    (year).”

The tsunami waves that followed the eruption    5     (be)even stranger. Tsunami waves usually start from the center of the eruption. Yet this time, waves appeared in other places far earlier than would be expected of a classic tsunami.     6    addition, as tsunami waves travel further, they usually become    7    (weak).While the waves that hit the islands in Tonga were damaging, they weren’t high enough to account for the surprisingly larger waves across the ocean.

Monitoring underwater volcanoes is a complex task. GPS — which is frequently used     8    (track) changes in the surface-doesn’t work on the seafloor. The situation in Tonga shows how well the Tonga Geological Services(TGS)has been applied to    9    (deal) with the latest eruption. “They don’t have a huge amount of money. They don’t have a number of staff, either.” Janine Krippner added. “But     10    (actual) they have done a really nice job to reduce the possible.