5 . A company in San Francisco, California, has found a way to turn used plastic bottles into women's shoes. Every day, millions of Americans drink water and other liquids from plastic bottles. More than 60 million of them are thrown away each day. Many of the plastic bottles end up in landfills or are burned with other waste products.

A San Francisco-based company called Rothy's, however, turns this plastic waste into environmentally friendly shoes. Roth Martin is the company's co-founder. He explains how they turn plastic into soft material for women's feet. They take plastic, clean it, and break it down into small pieces. Then they press them through a device that makes soft fibers. Those fibers are then bonded together. This is done by a 3-D machine. It is designed to reduce waste while people are making the shoes. The knitted stuff and the inner part of the shoe are then attached to the shoe's outer part called the sole（鞋底）. This outer sole is also made from environmentally friendly material: responsibly sourced no-carbon rubber.

Rothy's shoes are sold online. They are flat shoes, with either a rounded or pointed toe. They come in different colors and designs. They cost either $ 125 or $ 145 per pair, depending on the design. After American actress Gwyneth Paltrow discovered them, the demand for the shoes grew. Martin says there is no shortage of material to fill that demand. “We're not going to run out of water bottles any time soon, so we have a limitless supply of material, and I think that is a good sign for our future.” When the environmentally friendly shoes wear out, customers can return them at no cost to a company that uses the recycled material to make other products.

For now, the shoes are only available to be shipped in the United States. However, the company says it will add international shops in the near future.

6 . Scientists are urging that deep sea metal mining should be stopped temporarily. They warn in a report that it can cause severe damaging effects on Pacific Ocean areas.

The recently-released report examined more than 250 published studies on deep-sea mining. The research was examined by the Deep Sea Mining Campaign — a collection of not-for profit organizations. The report centers on mining activities related to small metallic particles(金属颗粒)，called nodules, found on the seabed. The material can contain different metals. Increasing demand for these metals has led to a rise in deep-sea mining operations. The metals are commonly used in battery manufacturing and other technology products.

However, the scientists warn that mining for these nodules will cause irreversible(不可逆的) damage to an ocean already under pressure. The operations will affect areas across the South Pacific, including the nations of Kiribati, the Cook Islands, Nauru, Tonga and Papua New Guinea.

The report notes that a moratorium is the only responsible way to move forward until certain conditions surrounding deep-sea mining can be met. The scientists are calling for additional study to fully understand the environmental, social and economic risks.

Andrew Chin is the report's lead researcher. He says in a statement that nodule mining will likely result in the loss of sea life and cause damage to deep seabeds for thousands of years. He adds that the operations can put people at risk who depend on the ocean and its continued health.

A company planning to be one of the first to carry out mining operations in the area is Canada's DeepGreen, which aims to begin by 2024. It seeks to mine metallic nodules to be used in power systems for electric vehicles. DeepGreen Chief Executive Officer Gerard Barron defended the company's plans in reaction to the report. He said deep-sea mining offered the best alternative to surface mining, which has long history of pollution and destroying forests and wildlife.

7 . The kakapo is the world’s heaviest and only flightless parrot. Now, some scientists are using advanced technology to rescue the endangered kakapos. If successful, the techniques used may help save other bird species as well.

The few remaining kakapos live on three small islands, where their progress can be monitored through a smart device. Once found in large numbers across New Zealand, the cute bird, which can weigh up to 11 pounds (5 kilograms), is now heading to extinction. While cruel predators (捕食者) such as foxes, cats, and snakes are largely to blame, the kakapo’s strange habits of laying eggs don’t help either. For starters, the parrots, which can live up to 100 years, do not start laying eggs until the age of five.

Scientists have set up individual feeding stations for all the birds to keep track of how much they eat. Given the difficulties to increasing the population, it is not surprising that only 114 adult parrots remain. Though the number is low, it is a great improvement over the 51 kakapos that remained on Earth in 1995. The increase of its population results from the government’s decision to remove the 51 birds to three small predator-free islands off the coast of New Zealand, and the efforts of a team led by Andrew Digby, a kakapo scientist for the New Zealand Department of Conservation.

A four-day-old kakapo chick will receive a health check. Young chicks in nests are examined and weighed every night, to ensure they are healthy.

Once the birds lay eggs, the eggs are carefully moved from the nests and taken to a hatching (孵化) room to hatch. “We tend to be more successful at raising kakapo eggs than the kakapo,” says Digby. “We break less of them. ” Once the eggs hatch, each mother is given only one chick, while the rest of the newborns are hand-fed (人工喂养). This helps ensure they all receive enough food.

8 . The Mississippi is a romantic river whose relationship with man goes back beyond its discovery by the Spaniards in the 16th century. Indians used the river as a highway and as a source of food, and it was they who gave it its name —''misi'', meaning ''great'' and ''sipi'' meaning ''water''.

When the length of its great tributary (支流), the Missouri, is added to it, the Mississippi becomes the third longest river in the world. From the source of the Missouri to the tip of the delta (三角洲), it is 2,480 miles long. Its head waters have been compared to a healthy, thick-branched tree, healthy because its main branches, or tributaries, are navigable for most of their length.

The Indians paddled up and down the river in their canoes. The first streamer was launched in 1810. It had a single great paddle-wheel at the stern, and was known as a ''paddle-wheeler.'' Throughout the 19th century these unique ships were queens of the Mississippi. They have become part of American history and American literature. The noted writer, Mark Twain, immortalized (使不朽) the river in his greatest novel, Huckleberry Finn, and Oscar Hammerstein immortalized it in his song, Old Man River, which was made popular all over the world by the great black American singer and actor, Paul Robeson.

    1    （see）from outer space, Earth is a blue planet, due to the fact that the ocean covers over 70 percent of its surface. According to a new study published in the journal Science, the ocean plays a great role in     2    （slow）down global warming.     3    The New York Times reported, it is “    4    important buffer（缓冲物）”.

The oceans can absorb 93 percent of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases     5    humans release into the atmosphere. And the other 7 percent     6    （absorb)by the air, land and ice caps, according to the Guardian.

“If the ocean wasn’t absorbing as much heat, the surface of the land would heat up much     7     （fast） than it is right now,” said professor Malin L. Pinsky at Rutgers University in the US. “In fact, the ocean is saving us from rapid warming right now.”

However, the ocean itself, as Discover Magazine noted, is heating up 40 percent faster on average than the United Nations     8    （believe） five years ago. That means if the ocean temperatures increase     9    this speed, the high water temperatures “will kill off marine ecosystems, raise sea     10     (level) and make hurricanes more destructive （破坏性的）”, the Guardian reported.

10 . A new study recently found that elephants in central African forests can encourage the growth of slow-growing trees and increase the ability of the forest to store carbon.

“As a tree, there’s a trade-off you can’t have it all,” explained Fabio Berzaghi, who led the study. “You either invest in growing fast, or in building a lot of structure with carbon to be more resistant.” Elephants prefer to eat fast-growing trees in more open spaces. As they feed and walk, they cause damage to these species, knocking over trees or breaking off branches, which results in an ecosystem that favors large, slow-growing hardwood trees. “As the elephants thin the forest, they increase the number of slow-growing trees and the forest is capable of storing more carbon, ” said Stephen Blake, one of the paper’s authors.

Scientists collected field measurements in the Congo Basin and used a computer model to predict how elephants would affect forest structure, and carbon storage potential in the long term. The data confirmed that when elephants are present, the forest contains larger trees and higher abundances of species with high wood density. Conversely (相反地)，should forest elephants go extinct, leaving those slow-growing trees struggling to compete with fast-growing species, it would result in a 7 percent loss of above-ground biomass (生物总量). As a result, central African forests could lose up to three billion tons of carbon, potentially accelerating climate change.

The sad reality is that humans are doing their best to rid the planet of elephants. “This study comes at a time when forest elephants are threatened as never before,” said Iain Douglas Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants. “It is shocking that just as we are beginning to understand how elephants might have a key role in Africa in storing carbon, they are under real threat of extinction.” One limitation of the study, Mr. Berzaghi said, is that we do not know how much carbon has already been lost because of the elephants’ decline. But it does seem certain, he added, that putting a stop to illegal hunting and restoring forest elephant populations would bring climate benefits.