2 . In 2022, campaign group Fashion Revolution Chelsea dye a garden for its Chelsea Flower Show presentation. An ancient craft, natural dyeing is a practice whose time has come again, with hand tie-dyed fashion also making a comeback in recent years.

The revival has been encouraged by Covid lockdowns, “which allowed people to explore the craft at home, says natural-dyeing enthusiast and teacher Susan Dye. It’s unlikely, though, that the practice would have caught on in quite the same way if not for a continually growing discomfort about fashion’s heavy footprint. From carbon emissions to animal cruelty, fashion is under considerable inspection. “Put it this way, 97% of dyes used in the industry are petrochemically (石油化学产品) based,” says sustainable fashion consultant Jackie Andrews, who helped advise the UN Ethical Fashion Initiative. We’ve got net zero targets which mean we’re going to have to remove all those petrochemicals from the manufacturing cycle.

Fashion is a huge polluter. According to the UN Environment Program, the industry is responsible for up to one-fifth of all industrial water pollution—due to the fact that most clothes today are produced in poorer countries where regulation is weak and enforcement weaker. Waste water is dumped directly into rivers and streams, poisoning the land as well as the water sources of people and animals who rely on them.

It’s easy to see why someone who cares about people, planet and animals, as well as clothes, might turn to natural plant dyeing. From the beauty of the raw materials—often wild plants-to the property of only bonding with natural fiber like cotton and linen (亚麻布) from the minor footprint of recycling old clothing that has grayed or faded over time to the vibrant and long-lasting dyeing results, plant dyeing feels like a quiet act of rebellion. This is why, while beginners start with simply changing their clothes’ color, new worlds open. Many of today’s natural dyers grow their own dye plants, run local community workshops, and advocate for change in industrialized fashion systems and beyond.

3 . You never really know how you’ll react to an emergency situation until it happens to you. Many people _________ when things go wrong, but others instinctively know how to take charge. Thankfully for a group of students in Topsham, Maine, brothers Connor and Seamus fell into the _________ category. Connor and Seamus were riding the bus to school one morning when Connor saw the _________ Arthur suffer a medical emergency and fall onto the floor heavily. The bus went _________, heading to the ditch(渠) on the right. Connor who learnt how to drive knew _________ what he had to do.

“I rose and pressed on the brake and told my younger brother to call 911,” he said, recalling his thoughts in the moment. “I need to _________ this bus before it goes into the ditch.”

The teenager held the _________ while jamming his foot onto the brake. Meanwhile, Seamus dialed 911 immediately and then began to direct the other _________ to get off the bus quickly. All the while, he kept _________ and even paused to give a crying student a(n) __________.

While Seamus handled the other kids, Connor and another student had just started giving Arthur CPR when the police arrived on the scene. Using a defibrillator(除颤器), they __________ to get the victim’s heart beating again.

The brothers are being __________ for their action. The police say they kept the situation under control and prevented anyone else getting __________. “But for them, maybe we would have __________ the best chance,” said Gomez, a policeman. “Thank them for __________ and being heroes.”

4 . Do you sometimes ignore your mom while chatting with friends? If you’re a teen, that’s fairly common. And a new study may explain why so many adolescents tune out their moms’ voices.

Science has shown that young children’s brains are well adapted to their mothers’ voices. But as children grow into teenagers, everything is changing. The latest research shows that teenagers’ brains are now more adapted to the voices of strangers than their own mothers. This is what Daniel Abrams explains, who is a neuroscientist at Stanford University School of Medicine in California.

Abrams and his colleagues already knew that younger kids’ brains respond more strongly to their moms’ voices than to a stranger’s. “In adolescence, we show the exact opposite of that,” Abrams says. For teens, these brain regions respond more to unfamiliar voices than to their moms’. This shift in what voice arouses interest most seems to happen between ages 13 and 14. That’s when teenagers are in the midst of puberty (青春期), a roughly decade-long transition to adulthood.

These areas in the adolescents’ brains don’t stop responding to their moms, Abrams says. It’s just that unfamiliar voices become more rewarding and worthy of attention. Here’s why: As kids grow up, they expand their social connections way beyond their family. So their brains need to begin paying more attention to that broader world.

“As we mature, our survival depends less and less on maternal (母亲的) support,” says Leslie Seltzer, a biological anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was part of the team that carried out that 2011 study. Instead, she says, “We rely more and more on our peers — friends and others closer to our own age.”

Abrams said that although teenagers and their parents sometimes feel frustrated with missing information, it doesn’t matter. “This is the way the brain connects, and there is good reason.”

5 . A promotion (促销活动) offering 98 yuan domestic plane tickets is being advertised by Chinese online travel platform LY.COM. While such a low price sounds amazing, there is just one catch: the purchaser is not told where the flight is heading, nor when it will take off.

The promotion has become a trending topic on Chinese social media as some people have been attempting to book them ahead of the upcoming May Day holiday. Labeled as a “destination blind box” on the site, tickets are purchased through a rather simple booking procedure, in which passengers provide their travel information, select a departure airport and then pay their 98 yuan. If the randomly chosen date and destination are unsuitable, users may ask for a refund, but once they “lock in” their tickets，there is no going back.

“Destination blind box” is now a hot topic on China’s online platforms. “I believe young people are a big target demographic (特定年龄段人口) for this promotion, because they not only enjoy the thrill of the unknown, but also like to show off their lives through these types of commercial activities. Like this one for instance, it doesn’t matter if they finally go or not. Booking a ticket and posting about it on social media can still suggest that one has adventurous and life-loving qualities,” said Fan, a marketing expert who has worked with civil aviation clients.

Many people not only shared the screenshots of tickets they drew, some even came up with a tutorial to teach the booking procedure under the free cancelling policy. However, some others claimed it is too rare to draw a ticket that is ideal. “If it wants to be a profitable activity, the release of the tickets must have been planned ahead and is not as random as it seems. It will not have popular airlines. The marketing campaign may also be aimed at the fast sale of some tickets from less popular airlines that were originally not that expensive. If they sell a large quantity of tickets, the company may still earn a profit even though the price is 98 yuan,” an expert in tourism suggested.