2 . We may think we're a culture that gets rid of our worn technology at the first sight of something shiny and new, but a new study shows that we keep using our old devices(装置) well after they go out of style. That’s bad news for the environment — and our wallets — as these outdated devices consume much more energy than the newer ones that do the same things.

To figure out how much power these devices are using, Callie Babbitt and her colleagues at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York tracked the environmental costs for each product throughout its life — from when its minerals are mined to when we stop using the device. This method provided a readout for how home energy use has evolved since the early 1990s. Devices were grouped by generation — Desktop computers, basic mobile phones, and box-set TVs defined 1992. Digital cameras arrived on the scene in 1997. And MP3 players, smart phones, and LCD TVs entered homes in 2002, before tablets and e-readers showed up in 2007.

As we accumulated more devices, however, we didn't throw out our old ones. "The living-room television is replaced and gets planted in the kids' room, and suddenly one day, you have a TV in every room of the house," said one researcher. The average number of electronic devices rose from four per household in 1992 to 13 in 2007. We're not just keeping these old devices — we continue to use them. According to the analysis of Babbitt's team, old desktop monitors and box TVs with cathode ray tubes are the worst devices with their energy consumption and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions（排放）more than doubling during the 1992 to 2007 window.

So what's the solution（解决方案）? The team's data only went up to 2007, but the researchers also explored what would happen if consumers replaced old products with new electronics that serve more than one function, such as a tablet for word processing and TV viewing. They found that more on-demand entertainment viewing on tablets instead of TVs and desktop computers could cut energy consumption by 44%.

4 . Eradajere Oleita thinks she may have a partial solution for two of their country’s persistent problems: garbage and poverty. It’s called the Chip Bag Project. As a student and_________she is asking local snack lovers a_________: Rather than throw empty chip bags_________into the trash,_________them! Then she can turn them into sleeping bags for the homeless.

Chip_________drop off their empty bags at two_________: a print shop and a clothing store, where Oleita and her volunteer helpers collect them. After they sanitize (清洁) the chip bags in soapy hot water, they slice them open,_________them flat, and iron them together. They_________fillings to line the insides.

It takes about four hours to_________a sleeping bag, and each takes around 150 to 300 chip bags, depending on whether they’re single-serve or family__________. The__________is a sleeping bag that is “waterproof, lightweight, and easy to carry around,” Oleita told theNews.

Since its start in 2020, the Chip Bag Project has__________more than 800, 000 chip bags and,__________last December, created 110 sleeping bags.

Sure, it would be__________to raise the money to buy new sleeping bags. But the project is only half the__________for Oleita whose family moved to the United States from Nigeria a decade ago with the hope of attaining a better life — and her fellow volunteers. “We are dedicated to making an impact not only__________but environmentally,” she says.

And, of course, there’s the symbolism of recycling bags that would__________land in the trash and using them to help the homeless. It’s a powerful__________that environmental__________and poverty often go hand in hand. As Oleita toldlocalnews. com,“I think it’s time to show__________between all of these issues.”

5 . The vaccine (疫苗) news continues to seem very encouraging. Britain started its mass vaccination effort and the U.S. isn’t far behind.

But there is still one dark cloud hanging over the vaccines that many people don’t yet understand.

The vaccines will be much less effective at preventing death and illness in 2021 if they are introduced into a population where the coronavirus is still severe—as is now the case in the U.S.

A vaccine is like a fire hose (消防龙头). A vaccine that’s 95 percent effective, as Moderna’s and Pfizer’s versions appear to be, is a powerful fire hose. But the size of a fire is still a bigger determinant of how much destruction occurs.

At the current level of infection in the U.S. (about 200,000 confirmed new infections per day), a vaccine that is 95 percent effective—distributed at the expected pace—would still leave a terrible toll (伤亡人数) in the six months after it was introduced. Almost 10 million or so Americans would catch the virus, and more than 160,000 would die.

This is far worse than the toll in a different situation where the vaccine was only 50 percent effective but the U.S. had reduced the infection rate to its level in early September (about 35,000 new daily cases). In that case, the death toll in the next six months would be kept to about 60,000.

It’s worth pausing for a moment on this comparison. If the U.S. had maintained its infection rate from September and Moderna and Pfizer had announced this fall that their vaccines were only 50 percent effective, a lot of people would have panicked.

But the reality we have is actually worse.

How could this be? No vaccine can get rid of a pandemic immediately, just as .no fire hose can put out a forest fire. While the vaccine is being distributed, the virus continues to do damage.

There is one positive way to look at this: Measures that reduce the virus’s spread—like mask-wearing, social distancing and rapid-result testing—can still have great consequences. They can save more than 100,000 lives in coming months.

6 . If you wear glasses, chances are you are smarter. Research published in the famous British journal Nature Communications has found that people who displayed higher levels of intelligence were almost 30 percent more likely to wear glasses.

The scientists studied the genes of thousands of people between the ages of 16 and 102.The study showed intelligence can be connected to physical characteristics. One characteristic was eyesight. In out of 10 people who were more intelligent, there was a higher chance they needed glasses. Scientists also said being smarter has other benefits. It is connected to better health.

It is important to remember these are connections which are not proven causes. Scientists call this correlation. Just because something is connected to something else does not mean one of those things caused the other. And it’s worth noting that what constitutes intelligence is subjective and can be difficult, if not impossible, to measure.

Forget genes though. Plenty of proof shows wearing glasses makes people think you are more intelligent, even if you do not need glasses. A number of studies have found people who wear glasses are seen as smarter, hard-working and honest. Many lawyers use this idea to help win their cases. Lawyer Harvey Solves explained this. Glasses soften their appearance. He said Sometimes there has been a huge amount of proof showing that people he was defending broke the law. He had them wear glasses and they weren’t found guilty.

Glasses are also used to show someone is intelligent in movies and on TV. Ideas about people who wear glasses have begun to shift. People who do not need glasses sometimes wear them for fashion only. They want to look worldly or cool. But not everyone is impressed by this idea, though. GQ magazine said people who wear glasses for fashion are trying too hard to look smart and hip (时髦的). However, that hasn’t stopped many celebrities from happily wearing glasses even if they do not need them. Justin Bieber is just one high-profile fan of fashion glasses.

7 . Making beers on the moon might seem like a pipe dream to many, but for a group of students from the University of California at San Diego, there is a chance to take their research beyond Earth’s surface.

The Lab2Moon competition, held by TeamIndus, is offering students the chance to secure a spot on the TeamIndus rocket this year.

Taking craft beer to the next level, the students want to test whether it’s possible for yeast(酵母) to work and create beer on the moon. However, they believe the experiment is not just a creative concept for astronauts, it’s also important for the development of drugs and yeast-containing food, like bread.

“The idea started out with a few laughs among a group of friends,” said Neeki Ashari, a fifth-year bioengineering students at UC San Diego. “We all appreciate the craft beer. When we heard that there was an opportunity to design an experiment that would go up on India’s moonlander, w e thought we could combine our hobby with the competition by focusing on the practicality of yeast in outer space.”

The preparation work for the beer — up to the stage of adding yeast — will all be done on Earth, and rather than separating the fermentation ( 发酵) and carbonation stage of making beer, the team plans to combine them.

This removes the need to release CO2 accumulated in the process, which may result in cleanliness and safety issues out in space.

If selected, Team Original Gravity will be the first to make beer in outer space, and the fermentation will take place in a container no bigger than a soda can.

All teams competing for the place will showcase their ideas in Bangalore, India, in March.

Sadly, you won’t be enjoying moon beer in your local craft beer bar anytime soon, as no samples will be brought back. However, this small experiment could provide important data on just how practical it is for us to make and create our own resources on other planets and moons by learning how consumables (消耗品) behave in different environments.

8 . A robot created by Washington State University (WSU) scientists could help elderly people with dementia (痴呆) and other limitations live independently in their own homes.

The Robot Activity Support System, or RAS, uses sensors installed in a WSU smart home to determine where its residents are, what they are doing and when they need assistance with daily activities. It navigates (定位) through rooms and around obstacles to find people on its own, provides video instructions on how to do simple tasks and can even lead its owner to objects like their medication or a snack in the kitchen.

“RAS combines the convenience of a mobile robot with the activity detection technology of a WSU smart home to provide assistance in the moment, as the need for help is detected,” said Bryan Minor, a postdoctoral researcher in the WSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Currently, an estimated 50 percent of adults over the age of 85 need assistance with every day activities such as preparing meals and taking medication and the annual cost for this assistance in the US is nearly $2 trillion. With the number of adults over 85 expected to triple by 2050, researchers hope that technologies like RAS and the WSU smart home will relieve some of the financial strain on the healthcare system by making it easier for older adults to live alone.

RAS is the first robot researchers have tried to incorporate into their smart home environment. They recently published a study in the journal Cognitive Systems Research that demonstrates how RAS could make life easier for older adults struggling to live independently.

“While we are still in an early stage of development, our initial results with RAS have been promising,” Minor said. “The next step in the research will be to test RAS’ performance with a group of older adults to get a better idea of what prompts, video reminders and other preferences they have regarding the robot.”

10 . Facial expressions carry meaning that is determined by situations and relationships. For example, in American culture (文化) the smile is in general an expression of pleasure. Yet it also has other uses. A woman’s smile at a police officer does not carry the same meaning as the smile she gives to a young child. A smile may show love or politeness. It can also hide true feelings. It often causes confusion (困惑) across cultures. For example, many people in Russia consider smiling at strangers in public to be unusual and even improper. Yet many Americans smile freely at strangers in public places (although this is less common in big cities).Some Russians believe that Americans smile in the wrong places; some Americans believe that Russians don’t smile enough. In Southeast Asian cultures, a smile is frequently used to cover painful feelings. Vietnamese people may tell a sad story but end the story with a smile.

Our faces show emotions (情感), but we should not attempt to "read" people from another culture as we would "read" someone from our own culture. The fact that members of one culture do not express their emotions as openly as do members of another does not mean that they do not experience emotions.

Rather, there are cultural differences in the amount of facial expressions permitted. For example, in public and in formal situations many Japanese do not show their emotions as freely as Americans do. When with friends, Japanese and Americans seem to show their emotions similarly.

It is difficult to generalize about Americans and facial expressiveness because of personal and cultural differences in the United States. People from certain cultural backgrounds in the United States seem to be more facially expressive than others. The key is to try not to judge people whose ways of showing emotion are different. If we judge according to our own cultural habits, we may make the mistake of "reading" the other person incorrectly.