1 . The world is lucky when our most brilliant minds choose to work for the common good. Young Ryan Honary is among one of the brilliant minds.

Shocked by the deaths in the 2018 Camp Fire, California’s frightening wildfire, Honary turned his attention to how to decrease future disasters. In 2019, Honary won a $10,000 prize in the Ignite Innovation Student Challenge for his early wildfire detection (检测) network, which provides app technology for firefighters. He was only in fifth grade at the time.

Turning 14 years old and going into the eighth grade this year, Honary is busy working in SensoRy AI, the company he set up. With the help of his father and a team of experts, the company has received a lot of attention.

Honary started creating websites when he was in third grade. He learned Python and JavaScript in a local after-school program. At the same time, he was interested in animals and the environment. He became worried as he saw how much the environment was under pressure.

When wildfires started ruining the air quality, destroying homes and killing some people, Honary thought about how AI can be used to solve environmental problems such as wildfires. In order to get data to train the machine learning models on his fire detectors, he collected real-world data from Google Earth about the Camp Fire of 2018 in California. Once a fire is detected by a fire detector, the information can be sent to the app he created. Also, machine learning can be used to predict where the fires are going.

Honary is hoping to attract more people from his generation to his company. He believes the environment is going to be a big responsibility for all of us.

3 . France has changed the rules in its grocery stores and marketplaces. Starting on January 1, 2022, most fresh fruits and vegetables can no longer be packaged for salern plastic.

Under the new law, more than 30 types of fruits and vegetables must now be sold in materials that can be recycled. Potatoes, tomatoes, apples and carrots are some of the items included in the list. Plastic will still be allowed for packs that are over 1.5 kilograms. Smaller items such as raspberries and cherry tomatoes can still be sold in plastic for now, but the country plans to ban (禁止) all single-use plastic packaging for whole fruits and vegetables by 2026.

This ban on plastic packaging is part of a broader effort by France to control plastic waste across a range of sectors. Other efforts include preventing restaurants from including plastic toys in children’s meals, newspapers and magazines from being delivered in plastic, and tea bags being sold in plastic packages. Furthermore, public locations must provide water refill stations to disincentivize the use of single-use water bottles.

It’s believed that 37% of fresh fruits and vegetables are wrapped in plastic in France. The government says the new ban will stop one billion pieces of plastic from being used each year.

Not everyone is happy with the change. François Roch, president of the French fruit sellers’ federation, told Reuters, “Selling loose produce is complicated (复杂的) as many customers touch the fruit and people do not want their fruit to be touched by other customers.”

The ban will likely require a change in habits Shoppers will probably have to take their own reusable bags to fill and weigh. It will be interesting to see how France deals with the complications that come with selling loose produce, and whether other countries follow suit, once a precedent (先例) has been set.

5 . Healthcare professionals in four Canadian provinces can now prescribe (开处方) their patients passes to National Parks thanks to a new program, PaRX, which stresses the health benefits of spending time in nature in helping to manage physical and mental health.

PaRx was founded by the B. C. Parks Foundation in November 2020 and was officially supported by Parks Canada last month. Health professionals who register (注册) with the program can offer their patients a Parks Canada Discovery Pass, making it the country’s “first national nature prescription program”. The Parks Discovery Pass typically costs about $57 per adult per year.

“We’re really asking doctors to prioritize patients who live close to Parks Canada sites so they’ll have more access and can make it part of their everyday lives, and also those for whom the cost of a pass might be a barrier to nature access,” said Melissa Lem, president-elect of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

Studies have shown that spending time in nature has a range of health benefits—from lowering blood pressure and improving heart health to reducing stress and anxiety. PaRx recommends that patients spend at least two hours per week in the great outdoors, and at least 20 minutes each time, to get the most benefit.

The program is currently available in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. It will eventually spread to every province.

PaRx also has benefits outside of the national parks, with many gardens offering free admission to visitors who show their prescriptions.

“There’s almost no medical condition that nature doesn’t make better. Rediscovering nature and then realizing how important it is to us has really shown that nature-health connection,” Lem said.

6 . Among thousands of emperor penguins in Atka Bay, a yellow robot named ECHO quickly moves over the Antarctic environment and patiently observes the birds. The autonomous, remote-controlled robot is about three feet long and stands at eye level with the adult penguins. It monitors Southern Ocean ecosystems in real-time, year-round with small impact on wildlife.

ECHO was designed by the Marine Animal Remote Sensing Lab at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Scientists hope to use the robot as part of a 30-year project looking at the impact of climate change on the region. Since emperor penguins are among the top predators (捕食性动物) in the region, studying their populations can show the health of the Antarctic environment.

Scientists must physically catch penguins and put chips on their hacks to track them. But to gather data on the chips, scientists have to get close enough to the devices to scan (扫描) them, and sometimes, penguins are hard to locate, or the weather may be too terrible for humans to go out in the field.

ECHO removes these issues by acting as a mobile observatory that can monitor thousands of penguins each year. The robot can easily approach the penguins and scan the chips without introducing a harmful human footprint or affecting the birds. The robot is equipped with LIDAR, or light detection and ranging, and a 360-degree camera that can monitor penguins on large areas and uses an antenna (天线) to read each penguin’s chip.

While ECHO has only been tested for a year, researchers say the penguins do not seem to be afraid of it and don’t mind it when it comes near. When penguins gather in large groups during the wintertime, ECHO can steal in and scan penguins as they brave the elements. By tracking their behaviors over time, researchers can observe how penguins adapt and follow where they go to search for food. In turn, these data points can also determine the true size of protected areas of the sea.

7 . The Art of Recycling

Recycling is not new. Many civilizations have reused objects. However, recycling is more important today because there is more pollution and fewer natural resources.     1     Others use these recycled materials to make art!

    2     Artists use old tires, pieces of metal, cloth, etc. These materials might come from yard sales or swap meets(旧物交换会). In addition, businesses might give used materials to artists.

    3       For example, artists in New York City made a sculpture that looked like a giant white cloud. The sculpture, called “Head in the Clouds”, was more than 40 feet long and 15 feet high! People walked into the cloud sculpture and danced to live music.     4     That’s the number of water bottles that are thrown into the trash every hour in New York City! The artists wanted to show how many water bottles ended up in the garbage.

Many art projects are shown at outdoor art and music festivals. Many cities even have festivals specifically for recycled art.

Museums also exhibit recycled art. A museum in Texas allowed visitors to add to the art on display. The project was called the “Recycle Reef (珊瑚礁).” The background looked like an ocean reef, and people added to the “reef” with the recycled materials provided.       5    

Have you made something using paper towel tubes or water bottles? If so, you’ve made recycled art.

Scientists have exposed that around two-fifths of the world’s plants are at risk of extinction. A top botanist, Professor Alexandre Antonelli, said, “We are living in    1    age of extinction.”

It's a very    2     (worry) picture of risk and urgent need for action. We’re losing the race against time as species are disappearing faster    3    we can find and name them. Many of them could hold important clues for solving some of the most pressing    4     (challenge) of medicine and even perhaps of the emerging and current pandemics we are seeing today.”

There    5     (be) positive signs in the past few years. More than 4, 000 species of plants and fungi (菌类)     6     (discover) in 2019, among which are potential future foods that could be a lifeline to millions of people on Earth suffering from    7     (poor) and food insecurity. Professor Antonelli stressed    8     (firm) the importance of protecting these and all plant life on Earth. He said, “We would not be able    9     (survive) without plants and fungi — all life depends on them. Every time we lose a species, we lose an opportunity     10    humankind.” Leading scientists will demand that the world leaders act against biodiversity loss.