3 . A team of researchers from several institutions in the UK and one in Estonia has created a type of buoy(浮标)that has proven to be effective at frightening seabirds, thus preventing them from getting caught in gillnets - a type of vertical fishing net that is made of a material that makes it nearly invisible underwater.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of seabirds die when they get caught in gillnets. Some estimates suggest that up to a half-million birds are caught in them each year. Over the years, researchers have created devices to prevent the birds from trying to catch fish near or in gillnets, but those didn’t work well.

To find a way that would work for all seabirds, the researchers first studied seabirds in a general sense, looking to find things that they would avoid. They noted that seabirds avoided eye contact with other creatures. Then the researchers came up with a simple idea - they put a small pole to a regular buoy and then attached a pair of googly eyes(金鱼眼) to the top of it. They made the eyes big enough so that even birds with poor eyesight, such as geese, would see them. Adding to the effectiveness of the device, waves made the eyes move back and forth. And the wind made the buoy spin very slowly, making sure that birds from every direction would get a good look at the eyes.

To test their idea, the researchers selected several sites near gillnets and counted how many birds approached and how many attempted to catch fish near the nets. They then set up their googly-eyed buoys and once again counted birds. Over the course of 62 days, they found the number of birds that tried to catch fish near the gillnets dropped by approximately 25% for a distance of up to 50 meters. They also found that the birds were less likely to fish near where the buoys had been for up to three weeks after they had been removed.

4 . What’s the first thing that pops into your mind when you think of wheat straw? Most people would probably just see it as a pile of waste in a farmer’s field. However, Wu Cui, an intangible cultural inheritor, can turn the straw left over from harvested wheat into beautiful and eye-catching functional artworks.

The earliest straw-weaving (草编的) products were discovered at Hemudu Cultural Ruins, a Neolithic cultural site located in eastern China’s Zhejiang province. The Book of Rites, one of the classical works of Confucianism, also records that there were already mats made of cattail grass and professional straw-weaving craftsmen during the Zhou Dynasty (c.11th century-256 BC).

Straw weaving is a method of manufacturing daily items or artworks. It was listed as a national intangible cultural heritage in 2008.

Wu explains the process of straw weaving: selection of materials is the first step of a complicated, time-consuming and labor-intensive process that can take weeks, or even months, to complete. You need to sketch (素描) the piece on paper, which requires drawing skills. Next comes weaving, shaping and preserving of the work. Even by finishing that process, it does not mean that you will always create a good piece of work, and the hardest part is to make it vivid.

In the past, woven straw items could be found almost in every household in the countryside, such as straw hats and straw shoes, because they were practical in everyday life. But due to the impact of industrialization, manufactured goods have replaced such products, which produce low profits, and there are only about 100 individuals engaging in the work across the country. “The world has changed, and craftsmen need to transcend practicality and seek the beauty and artistry of straw culture to help the craft survive and develop,” Wu says.

As far as she is concerned, straw weaving should respond to people’s needs and preferences, while still drawing inspiration from traditional culture. “Craftspeople should make a great effort to grasp the trends and opportunities of the times to create new and relevant products,” she says. When asked about her plans, Wu says she wants to dig deeper into local traditional culture and create cultural creative products by developing the straw-weaving technique.

5 . Advice for Cooking on a Tight Schedule

From my experience, there are three main reasons why people don’t cook more often: ability, money, and time.

    1    Money is a topic that I’ll talk about another day. So today I want to give you some advice about how to make the most of the time in the kitchen. Here are three tips for great cooking on a tight schedule:

Think ahead. I usually think cooking is a pain when I’m already hungry and there is nothing ready to eat. So think ahead of the coming week. When will you have time to cook? Do you have the right materials already?    2    

Make your time worth it. When you do find time to cook a meal, make the most of it and save yourself time later on. Are you making one loaf of bread?    3    It takes around the same amount of time to make more of something. So save yourself the effort for a future meal.

    4    This may surprise you, but one of the best ways to make cooking worth your time is experimentation. It gives you the chance to hit upon new ideas and recipes that can work well. The more you learn and the more you try, the more ability you have to take control of your food and your schedule.

Hopefully that gives you a good start.    5    And don’t let a busy schedule disappoint you and stop you from making some great changes in your life!

Last Sunday I participated in the exciting outdoor activity with my friends. We go hiking in the mountains nearby, and it was a pleasant experience. We got up early than usual to pack our backpacks with water, food and other necessary thing. When we got there, we started with our hike. The path was challenging, but the scenery was amazed. As we hiked, we chatted, laughed, and encouraging each other. We also had breaks and took photos. When they finally completed the hike, we were tired out but happy. I was extreme delighted to spend time with my friends in nature and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. It was an unforgettable walk indeed, I can’t wait to have another chance to hike with them.

8 . A walk around the workplace is also a trip back in time. The office is where colleagues meet, work and bond. But it is also a time capsule, a place where the traces of historic patterns of working are visible everywhere. The pandemic has heightened this sense of office as a dig site for corporate archaeologists.

The most obvious object is the landline phone (固定电话), a reminder of the days when mobility meant being able to stand up and keep talking. Long after people have junked them in their personal lives — less than 15% of Americans aged between 25 and 34 had one at home in the second half of 2021— landline phones survive in offices.

There might be good reasons for its persistence: they offer a more secure and stable connection than mobile phones, and no one worries that they are about to run out of battery. In practice, the habit of using them was definitely lost during the pandemic. Now they sit on desk after desk, rows of buttons unpressed, ring tones unheard. They witness those who are in low spirit.

Landline phones were already well on their way out before covid-19 struck. Whiteboard charts have suffered a swifter reverse. These objects signal a particular type of pain — people physically crowded together into a room while a manager sketches a graph with a marker pen and points meaningfully to the top-right-hand corner, giving requirements never to be satisfied. This manager is still making graphs but is now much more likely to use a PowerPoint. The crowd is still being tortured (使痛苦) but is now much more likely to be watching on the screen. The office still has whiteboards, but they are left in corners and the charts on them are slowly yellowing.

Real archaeologists need tools and time to do their painstaking work: brushes, shovels and picks. Corporate archaeology is easier; you just need eyes and a memory of how things used to be. But you also need to be quick as more and more work places are revamped for the post-pandemic era. Now its time to take a careful look around the office: you may see something that will soon seem outdated.

With World Poetry Day approach, a fascinating activity called “Poetry Night” was held by our school on last Friday, attracting lots of teachers and students.

Among various and joyful activity, the Hometown Poetry Contest goes off with a bang! Every participant asked to create a poem. The most amazed poem was chosen by the students present, but you can appreciate it in the newspaper. Another striking highlight was the following prize-giving ceremony that contestants read their poems to the audience. How a wonderful night!

Undoubted, it has proved to be a huge success, bringing the power and beauty of poetry to the whole school.