2 . A new project in the Caribbean is setting out to save coral reefs(珊瑚礁)- and the world. The Ocean-Shot Project, spearheaded by climate scientist Dr. Deborah Brosnan, launched in 2021 to develop a “massive, first-of-its-kind” coral reef restoration initiative in the Caribbean country Antigua and Barbuda.

“We lose more coral reefs in a day that we can restore in a decade,”Brosnan said. “Our progress towards protecting coral reefs——which ultimately protect us——is too slow. So Ocean- Shot Project is about literally rebuilding the reefs, the architecture of the reefs, for the future. ”

What sets this project apart from other coral reef restoration projects is its focus——the architecture of the reef itself. While many initiatives prioritize saving the corals, Ocean-Shot Project tacks on the additional focus of developing the base for those corals to grow and thrive.

“Coral secretes(分泌) calcium carbonate, creating a sort-of concrete around itself that becomes the structure for the reef. But that process can take hundreds and thousands of years,”Brosnan said. And with coral bleaching(白化) events only predicted to become more intense in the coming decades as global and ocean temperatures warm, this can be a problem for reefs that need to be able to recover.

“What we’re doing is we’re saying, ‘let’s learn from the corals, let’s learn from nature,’”Brosnan said. “And let’s make this happen quickly.”

To make that happen, her team is creating reef structures in a lab and then planting them in the ocean, a process that Brosnan likened to“gardening”. The team is also planting“resilient corals”among the structures that have already survived several bleaching events. Previously, her team deployed their first set of these structures, called modules, into the ocean around Antigua and Barbuda. And it’s already seeing significant success.

“We saw a whole ecosystem start to recognize these reefs as home and just move right on in. So what it told us is that if we provide the living structure, the ecosystem will respond in return,”Brosnan said.

3 . Using first-of-their-kind observations from the James Webb Space Telescope. a University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led team looked more than 13 billion years into the past to discover a unique, minuscule galaxy cluster (星系团) that generated new stars at an extremely high rate for its size. The galaxy is one of the smallest ever discovered at this distance —around 500 million years after the Big Bang — and could help astronomers learn more about galaxies that were present shortly after the universe came into existence.

The James Webb Space Telescope can observe a wide enough field to image an entire galaxy cluster at once. The researchers were able to find and study this new, tiny galaxy because of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing (引力透镜), where mass, such as that in a galaxy or galaxy cluster, bends and magnifies (放大) light. A galaxy cluster lens caused this small background galaxy to appear 20 times brighter than it would if the cluster were not magnifying its light.

The researchers then measured how far away the galaxy was, in addition to some of its physical and chemical properties. Studying galaxies that were present when the universe was this much younger can help scientists get closer to answering a huge question in astronomy about how the universe became reionized (再电离的).

“The galaxies that existed when the universe was in its primary stage are very different from what we see in the nearby universe now,” explained Hayley Williams, first author on the paper and a PhD student at the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics. “This discovery can help us learn more about the characteristics of those first galaxies, how they differ from nearby galaxies, and how the earlier galaxies formed.”

“The James Webb Space Telesco pe can collect about 10 times as much light as the Hubble Space Telescope and is much more sensitive at redder, longer wavelengths. This allows scientists to access an entirely new window of data,” the researchers said.

China’s forest area     1     (increase) by 22 million hectares over the past decade, according to a report     2     (publish) by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration on Sunday. The growth has significantly improved the country’s ecological environment while     3    (contribute) a quarter of the world’s new forests during the period. The country’s forest coverage rate now stands higher jumping from 8.6 percent in 1949 to 24.02 percent now.

Key projects have been promoted in the country’s move toward large-scale land afforestation     4    Three-North Shelterbelt Forest is one of them. Three-North Shelterbelt Forest,     5     was launched in 1978, develops extensive shelterbelts in the northern part of China     6     (decrease) the effect of sandstorms and soil erosion. It     7    (cover) a combined area of 4.07 million square kilometers, accounting     8     42.4 percent of the country’s land area. It’s also home to the world’s     9    (large) artificial plantation. From a wasteland to a sea of forests, the miraculous     10    (transform) reflects the country’s efforts for improving the environment.

5 . Imagine if your houseplant was thirsty and it could tell you so. Chances are, it can—you just can’t hear it. According to the findings from researchers in Israel, tomato and tobacco plants stressed from lack of water or having their stems (茎) cut make sounds comparable in volume to normal human conversation.

The sound is kind of a snap (咔嚓声) and pop. While the frequency of the plant outcry is too high for our ears, they can likely be heard by insects, other animals and other plants.

The team started with healthy and stressed tomato and tobacco plants—the stressed ones were either unwatered for several days or had their stems cut. They recorded the group in an acoustic chamber (隔音箱) and then in a noisier greenhouse. They also used a machine-learning algorithm (算法) to distinguish between happy plants, thirsty plants, and cut plants.

The team found that stressed plants make more sounds than unstressed plants, with a stressed plant making 30 to 50 clicks per hour at seemingly random intervals. Unstressed plants were much less active.

“Water-stressed plants began making noises, and the frequency of sounds peaked after five days with no water before decreasing again as the plants dried up completely. The types of sound differed with the cause of stress,” according to a press release for the research. “The machine-learning algorithm could accurately distinguish between lack of water and stress from cutting and could also tell whether the sounds came from tomato or tobacco plants.”

The researchers explain that it’s unclear whether the sounds result from an effort to communicate—yet they note that the sounds have ecological and evolutionary meaning. “It’s possible that other organisms could have evolved to hear and respond to these sounds,” says Hadany. “For example, an insect that intends to lay eggs on a plant or an animal that intends to eat a plant could use the sounds to help guide their decision.”

6 . When hurricanes left a path of destruction in Puerto Rico, Pennsylvania College of Technology student Natascha G. Santaella felt a variety of painful emotions.

“I spent around six days stressing and having a very hard time with me having all the luxuries I currently do and my family not having any,” the Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, resident said. Santaella said that her hometown is without power and water, and people there are scared of what is to come.

To reduce her stress, Santaella, who is studying for an associate degree in baking and pastry arts, immersed (沉浸) herself in what she knows best: baking. “It started out as just baking bread and shipping it to the island to then be dispersed to the people, but I found that was very expensive for me to do alone, so I spoke with Chef Charles Niedermyer, our instructor of baking and pastry arts about a sale of baked goods in the college’s Bush Campus Center.”

“Natascha is a bright, energetic young lady with a big heart,” Niedermyer said. “I was not surprised to find her in my office, looking for ways to help the people of Puerto Rico.”

To prepare, Santaella had multiple meetings with Niedermyer, spent hours finalizing recipes, designed signage (标志) and decorations, and got friends to staff the sale table with her. And then there was the baking: Santaella and two friends in the baking and pastry arts major spent six hours baking 90 loaves of bread, 24 dozen dinner rolls and 30 cheesecakes in a variety of flavors.

During the six-hour sale, Santaella and her friends raised more than $1,000 for United for Puerto Rico, an initiative designed to provide aid and support to those affected in Puerto Rico by the passage of Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria.

“I hope to mainly increase awareness of what has happened, and to show people that there are Puerto Rican students at this school,” Santaella said. “I hope that others had the great experience I had with all my teachers and how understanding they were with me.”

10 . When peanuts are dropped into a glass of beer, they sink to the bottom before floating up and “dancing” in the glass. Scientists investigated this process in a study involving the alcoholic drink beer. The research helped them understand mineral extraction (提炼) or magma (岩浆) in the layer of Earth called the crust.

Brazilian researcher Luiz Pereira told the media that he first had the idea when passing through Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires to learn Spanish. It was common for barkeepers to take a few peanuts and drop them into beers. Because the peanuts are denser (密度大的) than the beer, they first sink to the bottom of the glass. Then each peanut becomes what is called a “nucleation site”. Hundreds of tiny bubbles (气泡) of CO₂ form on their surface. The bubbles act as floatation devices that carry the peanuts upward. The bubbles prefer to form on the peanuts rather than on the glass. When the bubbles reach the surface, they burst. The peanuts sink again before newly formed bubbles send the peanuts up again. Like a dance movement, the peanuts continue sinking and floating until the CO₂ runs out, or someone drinks the beer.

In the experiments, the team of researchers examined how peanuts acted in the “beer-gas-peanut system”. They found the larger the “contact angle” between the curve of an individual bubble and the surface of the peanut, the more likely it will grow. But it cannot grow too much—less than 1.3 millimeters across is best.

Pereira said he hoped that by deeply researching this simple system, we could understand a system that would be useful for industry or explaining natural processes. For example, the floatation process is similar to the one used to separate iron from ore. Air is added into a mixture in which a mineral, such as iron, will rise because bubbles attach themselves more easily to it, while other minerals sink to the bottom. The same process can also explain why volcano scientists find that the mineral magnetite rises to higher layers in Earth’s crust than expected.