1 . About 12% of the total global energy demand comes from heating and cooling homes and businesses. A new study suggests that using underground water to maintain comfortable temperatures could reduce consumption of natural gas and electricity in this section by 40% in the US. The approach is called ATES, short for aquifer thermal energy storage (含水层热能储存).

“We need storage to absorb energy from the sun and wind. It’s crucial to creating affordable, reliable, and deeply environmental-friendly electricity systems. Most people are interested in batteries and other kinds of electrical storage. But we were wondering whether there was any opportunity to use geothermal (地热的) energy storage,” said first author A.T.D Perera. “With ATES, energy can be stored for a long period of time, without adding an additional burden to the grid (输电网).”

ATES is a pleasantly simple concept that takes advantage of the heat-absorbing property of water and the natural geological features of the planet. You simply pull existing underground water up and heat it at the surface in the summer with environmental heat or energy. Then you send it back down. It stays fairly hot because the Earth is a good insulator (绝热体).

“Unlike above-ground tank-based water or ice storage systems, ATES will not need space. It’s also more efficient and can support larger communities in cooling or heating than traditional geothermal heat pump systems that rely on heat moving with the underground soil,” added co-author Hong Tianzhen.

A major beneft of ATES is that it will become more efficient as weather becomes more extreme in the coming years due to climate change. The hotter summers and severer winters could increase the amount of free thermal energy that can be stored with ATES. “It’s very much a realistic thing to do and this work is really about showing its value,” said Perera. “This technology is ready to go, so to speak. We just need to do it.”

3 . Lightning (闪电) is a beautiful and inspiring phenomenon, but it can be deadly. Over the past 30 years, lightning has killed an average of 67 people per year in the United States alone.     1     . Follow these steps to safety the next time there’s fire in the sky.

Find shelter immediately

If you find yourself caught in a lightning storm, never stand under a tree, and avoid being close to power lines as they’re both excellent conductors (导体) of electricity and could potentially cause death, if not serious injury.     2     . It’s the key to minimizing danger.

Watch out for dangers

Windows provide a direct path for the lightning to travel. Keep windows closed, stay away from them and try to stay within inner rooms of the structure.     3     Using a landline phone is the main cause of lightning-related injuries. Lightning can travel into the home from through any material that conducts electricity. This includes landlines, electrical wiring, and plumbing.

    4    

Being near water is extremely dangerous during a lightning storm, so move away from the body of water. If you are fishing, swimming or on a boat, get out of the water immediately and hurry back to the bank.

Stay inside

Stay inside at least 30 minutes after the last strike. Don’t go out just because the rain is starting to let up. There is still a significant risk of lightning strikes from a departing storm.     5     .

Lightning is dangerous but you can minimize your risk. The advice is simple: increase the awareness of avoiding danger and master proper knowledge to protect yourself from a thunderstorm.

4 . Amy Fang has recently been asked a lot about how her handbag matches her vest (马甲). A few months ago, they belonged to the same grey jacket that she bought five years ago. “I’ve been telling people around me that if you have clothes that carry emotional value and you don’t want to get rid of them, you can have them upcycled (升级改造),” says Fang.

Fashion’s waste problem places a huge burden on the environment, awareness of which partly drives upcycle actions. The fashion industry contributes 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Upcycling, or making unwanted materials into new products, is an important solution that goes hand in hand with recycling and reuse.

In China’s big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, the trend is beginning to make an impact. Retopia, a sustainable lifestyle platform backed by student designer incubator Labelhood Youtopia, hosted a pop-up in a shopping centre in Shanghai to sell secondhand or upcycled clothes—70% of over 1,000 items were sold, according to the platform.

Haiyan Zhong, co-founder of Another Aura, which helped Fang find a new life for her old jacket, explains how her startup fits into the wider sustainability fashion context in China. “One part of it is to use natural, organic or biodegradable materials in making the clothes,” she says. “The other part is how to deal with the clothes and the materials they’re made from in their afterlife.”

Customers like Fang can help to influence the next generation. She is happy to see how her upcycle mindset rubs off on her 16-year-old daughter. “My daughter was very impressed with the final products from Another Aura. I hope she can be conscious of her purchases as well and adopt the same habit in the future.”

This story took place about seven years ago.But images of that week are still clear in my mind.During that week, we had to face up to a     1     (power) hurricane (飓风).The fact that I was still little seemed to increase    2    (it) force. And I could hear the noise of the wind blowing on the windows,     3     were shaking. Outside, everything was flying or moving.

In fact, the hurricane did not cross the island only once, but three times,     4    (cause) more and more damage at each crossing.During the entire week following that event, we were not able     5    (go) out of the house. All able    6    (road)were cut off, and we did not have running water.

Under those conditions,     7     hardest part was having no contact    8     the rest of my family living around the island. The fear of losing my close friends and relatives was    9    (certain) hard to stand. We stayed like that for one unpleasant week before everything    10    (fix). For me, those seven days were a real nightmare (噩梦).

10 . Glacier National Park in Montana shares boundaries with Canada, an American Indian reservation, and a national forest. Along the North Fork of the Flathead River, the park also covers about 17, 000 acres of private lands that are currently used for ranching(牧场)and agriculture. This land is an important part of the habitat and migratory area in which several endangered species live. These private lands are essentially the only ones available for development in the region.

With encouragement from the park, local landowners initiated a land use planning effort to guide the future of the North Fork. The park is a partner in an inter local agreement that calls for resource-managing agencies to work together and with the more than 400 private owners in the area. A draft plan has been prepared, with objective of maintaining traditional economic uses but limiting new development that would damage park resources. Voluntary action by landowners, in cooperation with the park and the county, is helping to restrict small productions, maintain wildlife habitats, and minimize any harmful impact on the environment.

The willingness of local landowners to participate in this protection effort may have been stimulated by concerns that Congress would impose a legislative solution. Nevertheless, many local residents want to save the existing character of the area. Meetings between park officials and landowners have led to a dramatically improved understanding of all concerns.