3 . The effects of noise can reach organisms (生物体) without ears. Because of the way living things rely on each other, noise pollution may actually stop some forests from growing, a new study suggests. In a New Mexico woodland of pine trees, researchers found far fewer tree seedlings (小苗) in noisy sites than they did in quiet ones.

The study area is dotted with gas wells, some of which are quiet and some of which have compressors (压缩机) that create a constant noise. This allowed Jennifer Phillips, a behavioral ecologist at Texas A&M University-San Antonio and her colleagues to compare sites that were similar except for noise level. In areas that had been noisy for at least 15 years, the researchers found only about 13 pine seedlings, compared with 55 pine seedlings per hectare (公顷) in quiet areas.

The differences in plant growth were probably caused by changes in animal behavior, said Phillips. For example, noise might drive away certain pollinators (传粉昆虫) such as bees, bats and moths. In the case of pine trees, the problem was likely a lack of animals to disperse seeds. Pines depend on birds to carry their seeds away from the parent tree, and birds are known to avoid noise. The differences between the sites aren’t yet obvious to someone walking through them, said Sarah Termondt, a botanist (植物学家) with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who helped conduct the study. That’s probably because pines are slow-growing, with most of the mature trees in such woodlands being over a century old.

The study raises questions about the future of the area. “If the noise stays there long term, are we going to lose this important ecosystem of the pine which supports so much wildlife?” said Phillips. The study was published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.

4 . The world has a plastic problem—and it is increasing.    1    . But in the meantime, here are five things you can do to reduce plastic waste now.

1. Quit using plastic bags. Instead, take your own reusable shopping bag to the store. People use a trillion plastic bags worldwide every year. About 10 percent are used in the United States alone. That’s almost one bag per American per day.    2    .In 1993, Denmark was the first country to place a tax (税) on plastic bags. Today, other countries either make customers pay for plastic bags or have banned them completely.

2. Skip the straw. Today, around 8.3 billion plastic straws pollute the world’s beaches.    3    . In 2018, Seattle became the first major U.S. city to ban plastic straws, and many other cities are set to follow its example.

3. Don’t use plastic bottles. Buy a reusable bottle and fill it with any type of beverage you like.    4    Globally, however, people still buy nearly a million plastic bottles every minute.

4. Avoid plastic packaging. Buy bar soap instead of liquid soap in plastic containers. Don’t buy fruit or vegetables in plastic packaging. In the United Kingdom, leaders are calling for supermarkets to have plastic-free areas. They also want to tax plastic take-out containers.

5. Recycle. We can’t recycle all plastic items, but it is possible to recycle most bottles and milk or juice cartons. Today, Norway recycles 97 percent of its plastic bottle.    5    

6 . The amount of plastic pollution in the oceans is rapidly increasing. This is problematic, as at least 700 species of sea animals may mistake it for a tasty snack. While we know that some species seem to eat plastic because it looks like jellyfish or some other food source, less research has been carried out into what plastic smells like to marine animals.

But now, a study from the University of North Carolina has found that the coating of algae that naturally builds up on ocean plastics causes the rubbish to give off the scent of food.

The researchers took 15 loggerhead turtles, each around five months old, and placed them in a laboratory tank. They then piped in clean water, clean plastic, turtle food, and plastic that had been immersed in the marine environment for five weeks.

The turtles showed no reaction to the smell of clean water or clean plastic. But when they were exposed to the smell of ocean-soaked plastic 'or turtle food, they exhibited food-seeking behaviors like reaching their noses out of the water or showing increasing activities.

“This finding is the first demonstration that the smell of ocean plastics causes animals to eat them,” said Dr. Kenneth J Lohmann, who took part in the study. "It's common to find loggerhead turtles with their digestive systems fully or partially blocked because they've eaten plastic materials. There are also increasing reports of sea turtles that have become ill and stranded on the beach due to their ingestion of plastic."

According to the researchers, areas of the ocean with dense concentrations of plastic may trick turtles and other animals into thinking that there is an abundant food source. "Once these plastics are in the ocean, we don't have a good way to remove them or prevent them from smelling like food," said Lohmann.

Pollution is the price we pay for an overpopulated, over industrialized planet. When you come to think about it, there are only four ways you can deal with rubbish: dump it, burn it, turn it into something you can use again, attempt to produce less of it. We keep trying all four methods, but the quantity of rubbish we produce worldwide threatens to overwhelm us. Rubbish, however, is only part of the problem of polluting our planet. There is an even more hidden kind of pollution that particularly affects urban areas and invades our daily lives,and that is noise.

A recent survey of the effects of noise revealed a large number of sources of noise that we really dislike: Lawn mowers whining on a summer's day, late-night parties in apartment blocks, noisy neighbors, vehicles of all kinds, especially large container trucks thundering through quiet village, planes and helicopters flying overhead, large radios carried round in public places and played at maximum volume. To our surprise, dogs' barking incessantly in the night rated the highest form of noise pollution on a scale ranging from one to seven.

New technology has also made its own contribution to noise. A lot of people object to mobile phones, especially when they are used in public places like restaurants or on public transport. Loud conversations on mobile phones invade our thoughts or interrupt the pleasure of meeting friends for a quiet chat.

The noise pollution survey revealed an amusing old fashioned source of noise. It turned out to be snoring (打鼾)! Men were found to be the worst offenders. It was revealed that 20% of men in their mid-thirties snore. This figure rises to a staggering 60% of men in their sixties. Against these figures, it was found that only 5% of women snore regularly,                           while the rest are constantly woken or kept awake by their trumpeting partners.

Whatever the source of noise, one thing is certain: silence, it seems, has become a golden memory.

9 . You’ve heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.

At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source (来源) of plastic pollution, but they’ve recently come under fire because most people don’t need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that’s part of Von Wong’s artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.

In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate (说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload’s worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they’d been dumped (倾倒) from a truck all at once.

Von Wong hopes that his work will also help pressure big companies to reduce their plastic footprint.