1 . A good vegan milk (纯素奶) needs to look like milk and taste like milk, whether it contains fat or not. Vegan milk is only one example in the growing types of plant-based alternatives (替代品) to animal products, such as meat, cheese, eggs and fish. Burger King and McDonald’s sell vegan pies. Last year the world’s largest producer of canned tuna, Thai Union, began to sell a plant-based product. Growing sales show the growing taste for this type of food, which means alternative proteins have come a long way since 1980s.

Producing techniques have been improved, resulting in better products and lower prices of them, which meet the needs of a growing number of people. Some vegetarians say no to meat, but yes to fish. Some people are trying to cut fat for health reasons. Fitness lovers want to develop muscular mass and strength without building up fat. Concerns about animal rights and greenhouse gas from raising livestock (家畜) are driving the environmentalists to limit their intake of animal-based proteins. As is reported, producing a gram of beef gives off 25 times the amount of greenhouse gas as producing a gram of tofu.

However, plant-based proteins are a tough sell in giant markets like India, where diets are already plant-rich, or Nigeria, where meat-eating is a sign of being rich. That limits their global popularity. What’s more, animal products, including milk and meat, are better for children’s bone development, though lab-grown meat and dairy are becoming more nutritious.

All this suggests that alternative proteins have far to go to replace the animal kind. Plant-based foods may no longer be only a side dish in diets, but their makers’ place as the main dish is another matter.

3 . People who cross the street while looking at their phones may be fined in the city of Xiamen, Fujian province, as traffic police officers are enforcing (施行) a local regulation that was put into effect on August 1st.

A pedestrian who was crossing the street on Tuesday while looking at their phone was given a warning, becoming the city’s first to receive a reprimand (训斥) for the behavior.

The Traffic Safety Regulation on Zebra Lines in Xiamen Special Economic Zone, made into a law on Tuesday, states pedestrians should not browse their electronic devices or engage in other activities that may end anger traffic safety while using crossing lanes. Those who violate this rule and delay or stop the progress of the normal passage of vehicles are supposed to be given a warning or a fine of 50 yuan($7).

The regulation was made in response to motions by legislators (立法委员) to the Xiamen people’s congress. “Through putting uncivilized behavior right via legal means, we hope to create a better environment for drivers and pedestrians to better understand and interact with each other,” said Wu Tao, an official at the local congress.

Su Guoqiang, a deputy to the congress among those who raised the motion, said more than 20 percent of traffic accidents in Xiamen happened on crosswalks. “We hope to use the punishment of the ‘small’ act of browsing phones as something to prevent people from doing such a thing,” he told China Central Television.

Peng Chong, a traffic police officer in Xiamen, told CCTV for the time being they will mostly educate and warn violators and make everyone involved in traffic aware of the rules.

4 . Am I the only one, or do other parents also wish there could be a period between high school and college when our kids could think what they want to be when they grow up? You know, that’s the time when they could be exposed to a variety of professions.

So why do teens need to take a sabbatical(休假) after high school? As a teenager with limited knowledge and experience, it’s really hard to decide what career path he/she wants to follow as an adult. After the period, they could be certain about it.

Some kids know what they want to do from an early age and they follow that track in college and end up in that field as adults. And that’s fantastic for them. But they’re the minority, because I found a statistic from an article that confirms that 80% of college-bound students have to choose a major. But they are also expected to pick out schools and apply to and start degree programs without clearly knowing where they want to end up. And that is shocking.

That’s why I’ve often thought it makes more sense to design a sabbatical, a time when high school graduates can go to sample a handful of careers before they head off to college. The time can give them a chance to examine different fields before they commit to one discipline for the next four years of their life and beyond.

What I’m talking about is different from the gap year, which is designed to let our kids take a step back between high school and college, so they can maturely consider the benefits of higher education. It’s a different kind of option altogether. I’m suggesting something more like a series of internships (实习期), for lack of a better word, in their potential fields of study, so they can really see first-hand what a career in education or law or nursing is like from the inside and not just from a lecture hall.

5 . Many of us are lonelier than ever. We can go shopping and avoid speaking to a single person. Automated voice son phones and machines suck the contact and relational element out of day-to-day life, so much so that experts say that we are experiencing a loneliness disease.

According to Dr. Lalitaa, loneliness is the feeling we get when our need for rewarding social contact and relationships is not met. But loneliness is not always the same as being alone. Loneliness is a state of mind linked to wanting human contact but feeling alone. People can be alone and not feel lonely, or they can have contact with people and still experience feelings of loneliness.

Loneliness is a universal human emotion that is both complex and unique to each individual. There are many contributing factors to loneliness, such as illness, relationships breaking down, moving country, changing jobs or not being understood by co-workers, retiring, starting university, etc.

We cannot underestimate the impact loneliness can have on our physical and mental wellbeing. According to research, loneliness has comparable health risks to smoking 15cigarettes a day, and people who feel lonely are more likely to die earlier and suffer from heart attacks. Dr. Lalitaa says, “People often say to me, ‘It’s too late to meet new people as an adult.’ Having human connect ion can look different for each person, but this can become a block, stopping them going out, trying new things and connecting with new people. Remember, it is never too late to make good, meaningful connections.”

However, don’t put pressure on yourself. A meaningful relationship takes time. It is not just created overnight. Also, take some time to sit with yourself and venture (冒险) into some of the things that you like doing. “The first thing I would say is not to deny or distance the feeling. Acknowledge it and then you can choose to focus on ways to help yourself,” says Dr.Lalitaa.

7 . Artificial intelligence (AI) tools designed to operate at human levels have greatly expanded in popularity over the past year. These include OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s AI-powered search engine Bing. Such tools, also known as chatbots or generative AI, are computer-powered systems. They are designed to interact smoothly with humans and perform high-level writing and creative work.

In recent months, these tools have demonstrated an ability to produce high-quality work. This has led some technology experts to warn that generative AI systems could end up replacing workers in many industries.

This year, researchers at Harvard Business School and other organizations carried out an experiment. It aimed to test how well AI tools could help workers perform their usual duties or tasks. It involved more than 700 business advisors, called consultants, from Massachusetts-based Boston Consulting Group.

Harvard Business School recently published the results from the experiment in a working paper. The main findings suggest that AI tools like ChatGPT can greatly improve worker performance. For example, researchers found that, on average, workers who used OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT 4 tool completed 12 percent more tasks than non-ChatGPT users. Tasks carried out with help from the AI technology were completed 25 percent faster. And the team found the quality of work performed by consultants using ChatGPT 4 increased by about 40 percent.

However, the paper also noted areas where the performance of consultants using ChatGPT 4 dropped. The researchers said this was especially true with tasks the AI tool was not good at completing. “Of tasks the AI was good at, the experiment showed it significantly improved human performance,” the paper said. “But for tasks ChatGPT 4 was not right for, humans relied too much on the AI and were more likely to make mistakes.”

The team suggests one of the biggest barriers to companies effectively using AI is not knowing which tasks can be completed best with the technology. Finding this out will require businesses to carry out thoughtful research and training efforts in order to find the right mix of AI and human-level work.

8 . A major emergency can create hundreds of thousands of refugees (难民) overnight. The most immediate way in which organizations like UNHCR and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) can help these refugees is by setting up refugee camps. Refugee camps are designed to be temporary, but they often remain in place for decades. In some parts of the world, children have grown up and had children of their own without ever leaving their camp.

Critics argue that they force refugees to be entirely dependent on donations. One journalist who visited the Nyadeou camp in the south of the Republic of Guinea A (Africa) in 2001, described how normally peaceful people were reduced to fighting with each other when the food truck arrived.

Refugees camps can easily become dirty, overcrowded and are overrun with disease or crime. In many camps, drug dealers hide themselves among the majority of innocent refugees.

One alternative for refugees is to settle in a town or village, making them become part of the local population. This is known as the “self-settlement”. Several aid agencies argue that the self-settlement is a better option in many cases than refugee camps. They say that self-settled refugees can start to rebuild their lives straight away, and are freer and safer than refugees in camps. Oxfam, the ICRC and many other international aid agencies support programs in which refugees are helped to self-settle.

Representatives of UNHCR argue that refugee camps are the best way of saving the greatest possible numbers of lives. They point out that it is much easier to help people if they are all gathered in one place. This is certainly true of emergency relief, for example the distribution of food, water, shelters and medical supplies. It is also true that long-term aid programs, such as family tracing, orphan support and, perhaps most importantly, education, can all be carried out much more easily when refugees are all living together in one place.

Whether it is watching television or using computers, teens experience serious physical and mental health     1     (consequence) after just two hours of screen use, according to University of Queensland-led research.

UQ researcher Asad Khan said the     2     (globe) study of more than 400, 000 teens is the first     3     (provide) evidence that teens are more likely to report physical and psychological complaints, if they exceed (超过) two hours of screen time.

“Psychological complaints from teens included feeling low, nervousness and sleeping difficulty, and physical complaints included headaches, backaches and     4     on, ” Khan said.

Key study findings showed teen boys who watched more than two hours of television per day, compared with those     5     watch less than two hours per day,     6     (be) 67 percent more likely to report high physical and psychological complaints while girls were at     7     (slight) higher risk at 71 percent.

High computer use for entertainment purposes was also reported to result       8     high physical and psychological complaints, with 84 percent higher risk in boys and 108 percent in girls.

“Our findings support existing public health recommendations of     9     (limit) screen use to a maximum of two hours per day for teens’ health,” Khan said.

The research     10     (conduct) in collaboration (合作) with Queen’s University of Ottawa, Canada.