3 . Most of us know what it’s like to get presents. Whether it’s for a birthday or other celebration, it’s hard to beat the excitement of opening a carefully wrapped box to find something that’s both unexpected and suits you perfectly. Now, imagine if you could get the same feeling when you go shopping for yourself. That’s the feeling that mystery boxes hope to reach.

Mystery boxes are not a new idea—they were a feature of department stores in Japan in the early 20th Century. They contain different products sold at a lower price than their combined value. The key thing is that customers don’t know what’s in the box before they buy. All kinds of mystery boxes are available: fashion boxes, food boxes, beauty boxes, even loot boxes, which are virtual items for video games.

The pleasant surprise is not the only attraction of mystery boxes. They also allow people to try things that they otherwise wouldn’t. Seasonal vegetable subscription(订购)boxes might lead people to learn to cook new meals. They can also potentially offer great savings—as the recommended selling price of the contents is often far higher than the purchase price. For sellers and suppliers, the benefits are clear- it allows them to sell unwanted things for a profit. British fashion mystery box businessman Mario Maher highlights how mystery boxes can help reduce the amount of waste in the fashion industry. People might discover product ranges that would otherwise be thrown away.

There is an obvious disadvantage to mystery boxes -when you buy them, you don’t know what you’ll get! It may be that the goods inside are not to your taste, but there is also the potential for cheats to use the unpredictability of mystery boxes to send items that have a much lower value than the price of the box.

So, are mystery boxes a fun way of reducing waste and making shopping more exciting, or more an opportunity for disappointment, or worse—tricks?

4 . Nuclear energy is one of the cleanest power on earth. It is cleaner than any energy source except wind. But that doesn’t necessarily mean nuclear is the long-term solution for the world because nuclear material is perhaps the most poisonous matter on earth. In addition, uranium, the element most commonly used in nuclear reactors, is not in limitless supply. But the biggest problem is nuclear waste.

How can we deal with nuclear waste? The answer is simple—put them somewhere where they can stay, undisturbed, isolated, forever. Finland is building just that. This region is largely lacking in natural disasters. It really doesn’t encounter any natural phenomenon that could damage a nuclear waste storage site, especially if it’s 1, 500 feet underground. Beneath an island on the Finnish Baltic Sea coast, the country is digging. They’ re building the very first permanent nuclear waste storage facility in the world in the stable bedrock 1,500 feet below.

Currently they’ re just finishing their dig down, then very soon they’ll start filling the facility with nuclear waste. They’ll dig long tunnels with small holes in which they’ll place nuclear waste then backfill the tunnels with clay to be left forever.

With this system, there’s near zero risk of nuclear material leaking out into the groundwater and, once it’s filled in the year 2120, it can just be left, forever. Because the material will be so far down and so difficult to get to, no human management will be necessary once completed.

No security, no maintenance, nothing which means it should be truly secure, but before leaving it, Finland needs to fight against one thing—human nature. As curious beings, it’s hard to fight a person’s urge of discovery. If someone finds a mysterious structure from thousands of years ago, it’d just be natural to want to open it up, and that’s a problem for nuclear waste sites.

We essentially did just that with the pyramids in Egypt. These structures were built as the final, permanent resting places and we opened them up because we were curious. Opening the nuclear storage facilities would release radiation into a future civilization, so we have to tell them to leave the sites alone, but that’s easier said than done.

Chinese products shine among Hangzhou Asian Games participants

Chinese products won the admiration of many foreign participants at the 19h Asian Games, which     1     (conclude) in Hangzhou, the capital of east China’s Zhejiang Province, on Oct. 8th.

Oksana Chusovitina,     2     48-year-old Uzbek gymnast, expressed her admiration for the training     3     (facility) and comfortable accommodations. She even inquired about where     4     (purchase) the same mattress she used in the Asian Games Village. To her delight, the mattress manufacturer gifted her one after hearing about her interest. In     5     (add) to the athletes, former NBA player Shaquille O’Neal, who came to Hangzhou to watch the Games, bought a pair of stylish sunglasses at the market. Some international athletes also visited the Wulin Night Market,     6     they bought items like handmade silver jewelry, Chinese-style hairpins     7     (feature) plum blossom patterns. Among the items was a distinctive local mask recognized     8     a traditional cultural item.

Moreover, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) continues to draw international visitors. An athlete from the UAE bought wormwood heating compress packs,     9     another packed an entire suitcase with Chinese patent medicines for his family. He explained that his mother is a TCM lover and that such medicines are     10     (fair) hard to come by overseas.

The sheepskin raft (羊皮筏), the oldest means of transportation along the Yellow River, has a history of nearly 2,000 years. The airbag of the raft is made of     1     whole sheepskin and goes through many processes including heating to remove hair, soaking in salty oil, sewing, drying     2     blowing. Then the airbags     3     (fasten) to a wooden stand, enabling its use for transporting people and goods across the water.

It is said that the largest sheepskin raft in old times     4     (consist) of more than 600 sheepskin airbags, with an impressive length of 22 meters and a     5     (wide) of 7 meters. It was capable of carrying around 30 tons of goods and drifting over 200 kilometers in one day.

In the early 20th century, before the 1950s,     6     railways were not yet in operation and road traffic was     7    (convenient), the sheepskin raft served as the most important means of transportation for residents     8     (live) along the Yellow River.

However, with the rapid development of society, the sheepskin raft has largely played its historical role     9     transporting people and goods. Nowadays, it can only be found along the banks of the Yellow River in some cities in Gansu province. It has become a tool for people     10     (do) some sightseeing on the Yellow River.