1 . New research links outdoor air pollution — even at levels considered safe — to an increased risk of diabetes (糖尿病) globally, according to a study from the VA St. Louis Health Care System. The findings raise the possibility that reducing pollution may lead to a drop in diabetes cases in heavily polluted countries such as India and less polluted ones such as the United States.

Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases, affecting more than 500 million people worldwide. The main drivers of diabetes include eating an unhealthy diet, having a sedentary lifestyle and obesity, but the new research indicates the extent to which outdoor air pollution plays a role.

“Our research shows a significant link between air pollution and diabetes globally,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. “We found an increased risk, even at low levels of air pollution currently considered safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). This is important because many industry lobbying (游说) groups argue that current levels are too stringent and should be relaxed. Evidence shows that current levels are still not sufficiently safe and need to be tightened.”

While growing evidence has suggested a link between air pollution and diabetes, researchers have not attempted to quantify that burden until now. “Over the past two decades, there have been bits of research about diabetes and pollution,” said Al-Aly. “We wanted to thread together the pieces for a broader, more solid understanding.”

The researchers also found that the overall risk of pollution-related diabetes tilted (倾斜) more toward lower-income countries such as India that lack the resources for environmental mitigation systems and clean-air policies. For instance, poverty-stricken countries facing a higher diabetes-pollution risk include Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea and Guyana, while richer countries such as France, Finland and Iceland experience a lower risk. The US experiences a medium risk of pollution-related diabetes.

The international community     1    (astonish) by Japan’s action to discharge nuclear-contaminated water from Fukushima plant into the Pacific on August 24, 2023. This move occurred despite the widespread protests and complaints from     2    (nation) across the Asia-Pacific.

Japan’s action is seen as     3     display of extreme self-interest and irresponsibility, with the potential to do immeasurable harm to the ocean ecosystem. The consequences are far-reaching, extending to safety risks in our food chain, the appearance of new illnesses, and an increased likelihood of cancer cases among humans.     4    (eventual), such a course of action will change the fate of our planet,     5    (cast) a shadow of uncertainty over its future.

The radioactive water is discharged into the Pacific resulting from the Fukushima nuclear leakage     6    (cause) by submarine earthquake in 2011. Japan’s 2011 nuclear leak disaster ranks among the     7    (bad) nuclear incidents in history, resulting     8     vital leakage of radioactive substances (放射性物质).

On August 24, the Tokyo Electric Power Company,     9     is responsible for the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, started the water discharge process through remote operation from the plant’s monitoring room. As planned, about 460 tons of such water will be released daily for 17 days, with a gradual increase planned after that. The timeline provided by the Japanese government and TEPCO indicates that this oceanic discharge process is expected     10    (last) at least 30 years.

4 . The essence (本质) of fast fashion is to make clothes inexpensively and quickly, to get new trends and styles into stores and online as soon as possible, and it comes at a high social and environmental cost. Keeping production costs low means they can make their clothes cheap, using cheap labour in unsafe working conditions, and in countries with bad environmental regulations.

Throw-away culture is deeply rooted in our society; three in five of our clothing pieces are thrown out within a year. Fast fashion brands keep the consumers hungry and feeling like they need more by attracting them with newness and convincing the consumers that they need what they’re selling. This only results in increasing textile waste as people no longer want but throw it away.

Criticisms of the fast fashion industry include its negative environmental impact: water pollution, the use of toxic (有毒的) chemicals and increasing levels of textile waste. Textile dyeing is the second largest polluter of clean water globally, after agriculture. Fast fashion companies rely on their products being made cheaply and quickly, so they avoid talking when it comes to being aware of their impact on the environment. Greenpeace’s recent Detox Campaign showed that many brands use toxic and dangerous chemicals in their supply chains, and many of the chemicals are either banned or strictly controlled in lots of countries.

In conclusion, the fast fashion industry has a bad effect on our environment through fast fashion brands’ ecological practices and only continues to make the problem last for a long time in the future through extreme consumerist culture. In order for change to happen, the common people need to open their eyes and take measures to prevent the fast fashion from growing.

5 . The tradition of giving gifts didn’t start with the modern holidays we celebrate. Many ancient cultures celebrated holidays with the exchange of gifts. People who love to give gifts often can’t wait until it’s time for the recipients to open their gifts. If you’ve ever been given a gift, you know that part of the fun is the curiosity that builds as you wonder what the gift is.

The wish to hide the identity of a gift until just the right moment led people to wrap gifts long, long ago. Historians believed wrapping gifts in paper probably started not long after paper was invented thousands of years ago.

Wrapping paper like what we use today, though, is a much more recent invention. More than 100 years ago, gifts were usually wrapped in heavy brown paper. Before that, cloth was often used. The technology to mass-produce wrapping paper didn’t come along until the early 1900s. The first American gift wrap company— Hy-Sill Manufacturing Inc. — was founded by Eli Hyman and Morris Silverman in 1903. It wasn’t as easy to wrap presents back then as it is today, though, because adhesive tape (胶带) wasn’t invented until 1930.

Over the years, wrapping paper has developed into what we see in stores each holiday season. But scientists say that the United States alone produces an extra 5 million tons of waste over the holidays, most of which is from wrapping paper and shopping bags. To cut down on this waste, some people carefully unwrap presents, so that the wrapping paper can be reused. Others have started to use reusable gift bags instead of wrapping paper.

6 . 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.