1 . The earth is warming. The past years are the warmest on record. Greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for 1.1°C of average warming since 1900. What we’re experiencing is different from the global average. We experience extreme weather — historic droughts, serious heatwaves, violent storms and catastrophic (灾难性的) floods.

We won’t feel the impact of our efforts for decades. But we must know our future today so we can act now. To develop the best strategies for adaptation, we need climate models to predict the climate in different regions over decades. Unlike predicting the weather, climate models are multi-decade simulations (模拟) modeling the physics chemistry and biology of the atmosphere, waters, ice, land and human activities.

Greater resolution is needed to model changes in the global climate. Scientists estimate that these resolutions will demand billions of times more computing power than what’s currently available. It would take decades to achieve that through the ordinary course of computing advances.

For the first time, we have the technology to do that. We can achieve million-x speedups by combining three technologies: GPU-accelerated computing; breakthroughs in physics-informed neural (神经的) networks and AI supercomputers, along with vast quantities of data to learn from.

With these techniques, we may have within our grasp the billion-x leap needed to do ultra-high-resolution (超高分辨率) climate modeling. And with more accurate predictions people and nations will act with more urgency.

NVIDIA this week announced plans to build the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer used to predict climate change Named Earth-2, the system would create a digital twin of the Earth. The system would be the climate change to Cambridge-1 the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer for healthcare research.

3 . African penguins stand only 50 cm tall. Like people, each penguin has its own voice. They live along the southern coast of Africa. Like all the other penguins, they hunt fish in the ocean and lay eggs on land. But they are smaller than their well-known cousins in Antarctica (南极洲) and larger than little penguins in Australia and blue penguins in New Zealand. But the African penguins have a problem—they are endangered.

The African penguins used to nest (筑巢) underground in the bird poop (粪便), which came from the penguins and other seabirds. Over hundreds of years, it had built up to form a thick layer as deep as 3 meters.

However, in the 1860s, people began collecting the poop to use it on farms. Now there’s no more poop to make nests. The penguins have to lay their eggs in the open. As a result, the penguins often get too hot. When the parents leave the eggs to cool themselves down in the water, other animals can easily find the eggs and eat them.

To solve the problem, the scientists set up an artificial nest project in 2016. They came up with criteria for the nest. It had to protect penguin eggs from being eaten. It couldn’t flood in the rain. And it needed to keep penguin families cool. The scientists built 15 kinds of nests to find the perfect one. Finally two of them stood out. Both of them could let air flow through. The scientists plan to build more than 2,500 nests for the African penguins in the future. They hope the new nests can help increase the number of the endangered birds.

4 . Lucy Hughes, a 24-year-old English inventor, has used skin and scales (皮和鳞) from fish to create a new kind of plastic. Her invention won the James Dyson Award (奖) last year.

James Dyson is an English inventor, famous for his many practical designs. In 2004 he created the James Dyson Award, and he said that the award was about more than just rewarding. He wanted to encourage students to try to deal with problems in the real world with their inventions.

Lucy Hughes recently graduated from Sussex University in England, where she studied how to design products. As a designer, Hughes was very clear about how wasteful many products are. She decided to make something out of waste instead. Hughes spent some time studying the fishing business, and the things that were thrown away. After some tests, Hughes decided that the fish skin and scales seemed like the most likely parts for her product.

Hughes called her finished product “MarinaTex”. MarinaTex feels like plastic, but it’s stronger than common plastic that is the same thickness. MarinaTex is also cheap to make since it’s made from fish waste. It doesn’t use much energy to make MarinaTex. Most importantly, MarinaTex doesn’t take hundreds of years to break down. On its own, MarinaTex breaks down in four to six weeks.

“MarinaTex solves two problems: the ubiquity (普遍存在) of single-use plastic and fish waste,” James Dyson said. “With the further development of MarinaTex, I believe there will be less single-use plastic waste. As for the fish skin and scales, they are usually removed during processing and end up being burned or buried. MarinaTex is a great chance to make use of the fish waste.”

Hughes is looking forward to moving ahead with her idea. She wants to try to make her products even better.

6 . We often try to save every drop of water in gardening. Yet this summer, over half of the world is experiencing “abnormally dry” weather, which means millions of people are living under drought conditions.     1     Here are suggestions for how to keep your garden healthy during periods of dry weather.

Choosing water-saving plants

If you are gardening under water restrictions, decide which plants need water least. Older trees, especially fruit, nut, and even evergreens, can suffer during drought, while newly planted trees require regular watering until their roots become established.     2     They can usually get by with less water than crops like corn, which have shallow roots.

Watering effectively

Most plants require an average of 2 to 4 centimeters of water each week under normal conditions. That need could increase, however, during periods of extreme heat, when the soil dries out more quickly.     3     Divide it over two or three times per week with less water. Remember deeper, less-frequent watering instead of daily sprinkle helps get the roots really wet. Also avoid watering midday when moisture is likely to disappear before reaching roots.

    4    

Consider using recycled household water, also called gray water, to water plants. Unsalted water left over from boiling eggs or vegetables provides extra nutrients. Dish and bath water that is not too oily will not harm plants.    5    

7 . Hoping to live on the moon one day? Your chances just got a tiny bit better. Researchers found that lunar pits and caves reach stable temperatures, making them potentially suitable for human life.

Planetary scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles have been doing the research. Although much of the moon’s surface temperatures ranges from as high as 260 degrees during the day to as low as 280 degrees below zero at night, the moon has pits and caves where temperatures stay at roughly 63 degrees Fahrenheit, making human habitation a possibility, according to their new research.

For perspective, a day or night on the moon equals a little over two weeks on the earth—making long-term research and habitation difficult with such extremely hot and cold temperatures. Researchers say these stable spots could transform the future of lunar exploration and long-term habitation. The shadowed areas of these pits could also offer protection from harmful elements, such as solar radiation, universal rays and micrometeorites (微小陨石).

About 16 of the over 200 discovered pits most likely come from collapsed lava tubes—tunnels that form from cooled lava or crust, according to Tyler Horvath, a UCLA doctoral student and head of the research. The researchers think overhangs inside of these lunar pits, which were initially discovered in 2009, could be the reason for the stable temperature.

The research team also includes UCLA professor of planetary science David Paige and Paul Hayne at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Humans evolved living in caves, and to caves we might return when we live on the moon,” said Paige in a UCLA press release.

There are still plenty of other challenges to establishing any sort of long-term human residence on the moon—including growing food and providing enough oxygen. The researchers made clear that NASA has no immediate plans to establish a base camp or habitations there.

8 . Earth is a big place, but size isn’t everything. The planet’s richest ecosystems are in rapid decline, forcing us to acknowledge countless creatures worldwide are running out of room.

85% of all species on the IUCN Red List are endangered due to many forms of habitat loss, from complete deforestation to less obvious effects of pollution and climate change. Every species needs a certain amount of habitat to find food, shelter and mates, but for a growing number of animals, the space where their ancestors found those things is now overrun by humans. As habitats decline, animals also grow more vulnerable to secondary dangers like disease or conflict with people.

According to many scientists and conservationists, the best strategy to avoid a dramatic loss of biodiversity is to set aside half of Earth’s surface area for wildlife. That might sound like a big sacrifice at first, but upon closer inspection, it’s still an incredibly sweet deal for us: One species gets half the planet, and all other species must share the other half. This idea has been around for years, confirmed in programmes like the WILD Foundation’s “Nature Needs Half” campaign, but it has gained more different opinions recently. And it may now have one of its most forceful arguments yet, thanks to a 2016 book by well-known biologist E. O. Wilson titled Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life.

Half-Earth, therefore, isn’t so different from today’s Earth. We’re already doing many of the right things, as Wilson recently told the University of California-Berkeley’s Breakthroughs magazine. We still have a few big biodiversity zones left, and others that could still recover. We just need to protect as many wilderness areas as we can, fill in gaps wherever possible and do no further harm. “I’m sure we can go from 10% to 50% coverage, land and sea,” Wilson says. “It could be large reserves that still exist, like in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia, in the taiga, the major wilderness areas of Congo, in Papua New Guinea, the Amazon—these can be made inviolate reserves; they can be pieced together.”

9 . Trapping used to be a way to make a good living. That has certainly changed over the past several years. The demand for furs is nearly gone. Environmentalists think trapping is wrong.     1    

Martin started trapping when he was nine. He makes a pretty good living by trapping animals like rabbits, foxes, etc. He traps enough animals to make up for low fur prices. “    2     I can make up for low fur prices by bringing in more than the average trapper,” he said. Farmers also hire Martin to trap annoying animals. He receives two dollars for each gopher he traps. The Department of Natural Resources has also contracted with Martin. About twelve times a year, he traps beavers that have destroyed private land.

    3     For example, his home is filled with animal skins. It’s also not easy. for him to take a day off. State law requires that traps be checked every day. “It can be very hard work,” Martin said.     4     “Then, I spend the rest of the evening skinning animals and preparing for the next day. I really don’t get a day off during trapping season.”

As a full-time trapper, Martin worries about the views people have of his profession. He thinks that most anti-trapping groups don’t understand that trapping animals helps in the long run. “    5     They don’t understand the animals’ environment,” he said. “There are areas where I can’t trap right . now. Most of the animals in those areas are sick with disease because of the lack of food and overpopulation. I’d like to show anyone who is against trapping some of the terrible things I’ve seen.”