2 . The will to live more sustainably is certainly growing in the UK, even if many are still unsure about how to put that into action.

Most have become well acquainted with recycling paper, cardboard, metal and glass, thanks in large part to council-provided recycling bins for each household. But when it comes to more difficult to recycle items, many households are all at sea. It is the case that the UK is rapidly becoming one of the worst offenders for e-waste in the world. Although it takes a little more conscious waste management, there are ways that you can recycle these more tricky household items and reduce your environmental impact.

E-waste like phones and laptops contains precious metals, like gold, nickel and copper, which leak toxins into the ground when they decompose (分解). Recycling the metals in electronics is vital then to lessen the tech industry’s environmental and social impact. For mobile phones, your retailer might already have a recycling initiative set up. O2 and Virgin Media offer customers money in exchange for their old devices, depending on their condition. As for old clothes, lots of shops, like M&, now offer clothes donation banks in-store, while councils are getting in on the act with on-street clothes recycling points. You can also sell your clothes or donate them to charity—second hand apps like Depop have already ensured that the resale market in Britain grew at an impressive speed. Mattresses (床垫) are especially difficult to get rid of when they reach their end of life, and many of us are resorting to landfill. Many of the materials in mattresses, such as box springs, are not biodegradable (可生物降解的), so it is better to save them from landfill by reusing them. Companies like Collect Your Old Bed pick up your old mattress and bed parts and take them to be dismantled and recycled.

Individual acts alone can’t fix social ills. But each of us can do our part to put more energy into the search for solutions.

4 . Scientists have studied cats’ social relationships—both with other cats and humans—but it can be difficult to tell whether two cats are playing or fighting, says cat behavior researcher Noema Gajdoš-Kmecová.

To assess and classify interactions, Gajdoš-Kmecová and colleagues watched about 100 videos of different cats interacting in pairs. After viewing about one-third of the videos, Gajdoš-Kmecová identified six types of behaviors, including wrestling and staying still. She then watched all of the videos and noted how often each cat displayed one of the specific behaviors, and for how long. By running statistical analyses on the behaviors, she found three types of interactions between the cat pairs: playful, aggressive and intermediate. To confirm the outcome, other members of the team also watched the videos and classified each interaction between cats.

Some clear connections appeared. Quietly wrestling, for example, suggested playtime, while chasing and vocalizations(发声), like growling, hissing or gurgling, implied aggressive encounters.

Intermediate interactions had elements of both playful and aggressive encounters, but especially included prolonged activity of one cat toward the other, such as pouncing(突袭) on or grooming(梳毛) its fellow cat. These in-between encounters could suggest that one cat wants to keep playing while the other doesn’t, with the more playful cat gently pushing to see if its partner wants to continue, the authors say.

This work provides an understanding of cat interactions for the first time, Gajdoš-Kmecová says, but it’s just the start. In the future, she plans to study more subtle behaviors, like ear twitches and tail swishes. Gajdoš-Kmecová also stresses that one potentially controversial encounter doesn't necessarily signal a terrible cat relationship.

Near the ancient water town of Wuzhen, the scenic villages of Maming and Haihua provide the perfect destinations for travelers seeking a taste of real rural life.

    1     (locate) at a 30-minute drive from the ancient water town of Wuzhen, Maming village is the exact opposite of Wuzhen. There are hardly any crowds here. The old houses are not as well maintained. There     2     (be) no bright colorful lights along the walkways. Time seems to stand still in the village,     3     (make) it a perfect day-trip destination for travelers     4     want a real experience of rural life.

Most people in Tongxiang city in East China’s Zhejiang province are still sleeping on the bed at 3 am,     5     Tu Yuanqing and his father Tu Bingfa are already up, arranging cups, boiling water and preparing tea     6     (leaf). The doors to their tea house in Maming village open just half an hour later. By 4 am, the space is filled     7     activities as elderly local people, most of them aged 60 and above, chat     8     (active) with one another while sipping cups of tea and smoking cigarettes.

This tea party for the elderly ends at 8 am, the time the villagers begin     9     (they) day in the fields. But there is no official closing time for the tea house-—the Tu family lives in     10     same building.

6 . Recently I’d decided to get some guinea pigs (天竺鼠) as a way of getting rid of the wild grass in my little farm. My friend Sharon had heard I was on the ______ and gave me one. “His name is Tim Tam,” Sharon said, but I thought this name didn’t seem to suit him, so I ______ it to Basil.

Guinea pigs are ______ pets who need company, so Sharon bought me another, who I named Squirtle after the Pokemon character. Before long, ______ more guinea pigs were given to me. The five ______ so well and had plenty of room to explore the farm together.

“What happened to them getting rid of the wild grass?” Sharon ______ .

Truth was, these pets had won me over so ______ with their attractiveness and gentle nature that I’d forgotten about the ______ of having them. Growing up, I’d had different ______ in my childhood, but guinea pigs were special. Curious by nature, they were both ______ and relaxed. Each time I ______ them, I was greeted by their whistles of excitement. I felt very lucky for their ______ .

As time went by, I’d been ______ more I eventually ended up with 37 guinea pigs! Realizing they needed extra ______ , I set about building small house with white fences (栅栏), clothes lines, and used metal cans for them to play with. I made everything on my own except for the deckchairs. ______ I knew it, I had an entire town for them!

Putting up a ______ which read Guinea Vale, home of the Guineas, I felt ______ of my work. Sharon was amused. “When you do something, you really go at it at full speed, don’t you?” she ______ .

Honestly speaking, welcoming these pets into my life has made me a lot ______, and it’s very meaningful to know that people around the world can ______ the joy, too.

7 . A meatball made of lab-grown mammoth(猛犸象) meat was shown at a science museum in the Netherlands on Tuesday. Vow, the startup company created it using genetic information from the mammoth that died long time ago. “This breakthrough could revolutionize the food industry,” company researchers said in Tuesday.

Have scientists successfully brought mammoths back to life? Of course not. How did they obtain the meatball? Firstly, it is necessary to have a complete genetic sequence(基因序列) of mammoth, and then extract the gene sequence of myoglobin(肌红蛋白), which gives meat the smell, the color and the taste. To have a complete genetic sequence of mammoth, researchers fill missing parts with elephant DNA from its closest living relative: the African elephant. After getting the complete genes, they are implanted(移植) into sheep stem cells. These replicate(复制) to grow 20 billion cells that are used to grow mammoth meat in the lab nutrients. It is through this method that scientists have produced 400 grams of mammoth meat, which is a feat in science and technology.

“The mammoth meat tastes similar to crocodile meat after baking, but no one dare to taste it because they are afraid that the ancient protein in mammoth meat will lead to human poisoning,” James Ryall, Vow’s Chief Scientific Officer explained. Though the meatball isn’t intended for human use, artificial meat has been in development for years. The world’s first lab-grown burger was eaten in 2013. The first cell-based chicken food products were approved in Singapore in December 2020.

In a 2022 report on the future of food safety, the Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO) of the United Nations noted there’s an increase in consumer demand for animal-based food products. “The development of animal production may contrast with long-term goals, resulting in problems in various environmental aspects, food safety and animal well- being,” according to the report. “New technology provides another choice: the production of land and water animals without requiring too much farming and killing.”

8 . Government agencies in many places are using sea creatures to protect coastal areas from storms and rising sea levels. The idea is that large groups of oysters(牡蛎), known as colonies, can help reduce the power of waves. Powerful waves can damage lands along the edge of ocean waters.

Dense Vaccaro’s home was destroyed 10 years ago in super storm Sandy, a big storm that affected the northeast coast of America. The beach she loved is also gone, claimed by rising seas that are damaging the shoreline. “People are losing their property. My home was totally destroyed.” Vaccaro said. Many people around the world have had similar experiences. Once beautiful beach communities are washed away, people living there are having problems dealing with the changes.

Oysters are central to a project that is taking place near Vaccaro’s rebuilt house. The project is being carried out by the American Littoral Society. It received $1 million from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. The group has been building steel wire containers, filling them with rocks and oyster shells and positioning them along the shoreline of Barnegat Bay. The oysters appear to be doing their job. One recent day, a strong east wind blew across the bay. But between the oysters and the shoreline, the water was much calmer, and waves went gently onto the shoreline instead of hitting it with force.

A few kilometers south, a group called ReClam the Bay is building an oyster reef to protect the shoreline of Mordecai Island. In New York, city government and federal agencies are building “living shorelines” along the south western end of Long Island. They use oysters, shells and native plants. A similar project in Delaware used 1,300 bags of oyster shells to extend shoreline protection near Lewes Canal Front Park. In Florida, volunteers and researchers established oyster colonies along parts of the Peace River in Punta Gorda.

Vaccaro said her New Jersey home may well depend on the success of many small oysters. “If we don’t do anything, we're not going to have any of these houses,” Vaccaro said.

9 . Remember the “hot duck” in the Central Park of New York? In 2018, a mandarin duck(鸳鸯)appeared in the park. This was extraordinary because the duck with colorful feathers is native to East Asia. The duck drew lots of birdwatchers to the park, and it even inspired at least one website to track it. However, their efforts were fruitless. Watching of the bird ended around March 2019, but the problem still existed: We had no good ways to predict where a bird would go next.

That is, until now. Using data from eBird, a large site, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Cornell University developed a tool that opens up new ways for research and promises to be useful for birdwatchers.

Called BirdFlow, the tool is an alternative to traditional bird-tracking methods that are very time-consuming and expensive. Usually, recording a bird’s movement requires researchers to catch the bird and attach a sensor(传感器)around its leg.

In contrast, by analyzing the data of the more than 200 million individually reported bird sightings that are collected by eBird, BirdFlow produces simulated(模拟的)routes for a bird, forecasting where it will go based on where it has been.

When the researchers tested BirdFlow’s predictions for 11 species of North American birds, they found that it performed better than other models without relying on GPS tracking data.

To Dan Sheldon, a computer science researcher of Massachusetts Amherst who led the study, the ability to predict a bird’s movement without tracking devices will open up doors for new research and be a major advance for scientists. For instance, scientists might one day use BirdFlow to track bird flu to predict regions where chicken farmers should be concerned for the chickens.