1 . The summer holidays have just begun, but it is a busy morning at Cadoxton Primary School, in Barry, an industrial town in Wales. It runs a summer programme for hard-up (拮据的) children, providing meals and activities over the holidays with the aim of helping kids to spend the time more meaningfully. As young people run laughing and screaming into the school cafeteria for breakfast, their parents hung out, some visibly relieved. Just three days into the six-week school holidays one mother says her nine-year-old daughter has already asked five times to go bowling. “Without the school’s help,” she says, “it would be a long and expensive six weeks.”

In the popular imagination, school summer holidays conjure up (使……呈现于脑际) a picture of carefree youthful exploration. But many parents rely on the term-time services that schools give their kids, such as tutors and meals. If the holidays approach, they can suddenly find their schedules and budgets stretched. Researchers also say that the long break often sets back children’s learning, and that children from poorer backgrounds are desperately affected due to their shortage of money.

Many poor children fall behind their wealthier peers over the holidays. “Summer is the most unequal time of the year,” says Matthew Boulay of the National Summer Learning Association. “Well-off parents can fill the gap left by school and consolidate (使巩固) their children’s unfamiliar knowledge well, keeping their children stimulated with summer camps, trips abroad or private tutors. Poorer families, apparently, find this harder, since their income is relatively low and demand for sponsored activities offered by governments,” he adds.

Holidays can be a financial stress, which is absolutely true. In countries where some children receive free school meals, summer means bigger grocery bills for hard-up families. Households where both parents work have to pay for extra childcare, too. The Family and Childcare Trust, a charity, says that in Britain, where childcare costs are the highest in the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. Parents will spend an average of 33 per child per week on childcare this summer, mainly because of the sharp shortage of governmental funding sponsor.

2 . After working an extra shift, Dr. Jessica Gold returned home feeling burned out and submitted herself to the urge to watch TV and sleep most of the day. As Generation Z would say, she was “bed rotting”. The phrase describes staying in bed all day, just like “rotting” (腐烂) there, according to Gold, a professor at Washington University. It is similar to having a lazy day, but it is more of an immobile term with less activity. She said, “It is OK as long as you understand why you are doing it and turn to other activities as well.

“Lying in bed for more than a day is concerning and could lead to different mental health issues, ”Gold added, “The urge to rot in bed all day, especially if it happens more seriously, is likely about something more than just catching up on sleep or needing a day to do nothing, but avoiding the feelings, stress or pain of being awake. This sort of behavior has been linked to symptoms (症状) of depression and anxiety.”

Bed rotting could be affecting more than just your mental health — it could also have a negative impact on your sleep. “Bed rotting is exactly the opposite of what we want people to do,” said Baron, associate professor of family and preventive medicine. “As a general guideline, if you are not asleep within 30 minutes during the night, you should get out of bed, ” said she.

Bed rotting after a long day is normal, but if it is affecting your work, social life or other important activities, then you should turn to professionals, Gold suggested, because they can help you get to the root cause and get you to learn to do something that you may think of as hobbies.

Recharging activities can energize us and better prepare us for the unavoidable stress we face daily. “Some options include hanging out with a friend, seeing a film or exercising, said Rego, a psychologist from New York, “If you don’t want to leave the house, try activities like reading a book or journaling instead of just lying down.

3 . Want to know what is coming soon to a cinema near you? Probably not a 1.5-hour-long movie, as in the old days. On October 20th comes Killers of the Flower Moon. At nearly three and a half hours, its length is nearly double that of the average film last year. Even movie fans struggle to concentrate for that long and some viewers even nod off. Afterwards there is a mad dash for the toilets. When does watching a film become such a slog?

The Economist analyzed over 100,000 feature films released internationally since the 1930s, the start of Hollywood’s golden age, using data from IMDb, a movie database. The average length of productions rose by around 24%, from one hour and 21 minutes in the 1930s to one hour and 47 minutes in 2022. For the ten most-popular titles, the average length grew to around two and a half hours in 2022, nearly 50% higher than in the 1930s.

One driver of this trend is that studios want to squeeze the most out of their costly intellectual property (知识产权), but they are competing with streaming platforms for eyeballs. The hope is that a spectacular, drawn-out “event” movie will draw audiences away from the small screen and into cinemas. This approach has often paid off: Avengers: Endgame Marvel’s three-hour superhero masterpieces, was the highest-grossing (票房最高的) film in 2019. Last year long movies series made up most of the highest-grossing films in America.

Another explanation for longer films has to do with directors’ growing influence. Who would dare tell the likes of Mr. Nolan to cut out his masterpieces? Moreover, streaming platforms, which do not have to worry as much about the length because viewers can pause whenever they like, may attract big names by promising them sufficient fund and creative freedom. Netflix funded and released three-hour The Irishman in 2019, a film that would have benefited from a decisive editor, Irish or otherwise.

Chinese coffee giant Luckin Coffee hit 10,000 stores in China in June, surpassing (超过) Starbucks     1     the largest coffee chain brand in the country following rapid nationwide     2     (expand) this year.

Founded in 2017, Luckin Coffee burst onto the Chinese coffee scene to challenge Starbucks through     3     (afford) coffee options and mobile ordering. It is very common to buy a drink from Luckin for $ 2 or less after heavy discounts. Meanwhile, a cup of coffee from Starbucks     4     (price) at $ 4.1 or more.

In the quarter ended June 30, Luckin Coffee opened 1,485 new stores,     5       (average) 16.5 new stores daily. China is traditionally a tea-drinking market,     6     over the last few years, coffee sales have been increasing     7     (steady), especially in urban areas and among younger     8     (professional). China’s overall coffee sales will rise at     9     rate of 8.7% annually from 2022 to 2027, according to GlobalData.

The Chinese coffee chain expanded to Singapore in its first international attempt and has opened 14 stores in the city-state so far.     10     (make) things even more impressive, all the coffee is specially crafted by an international team of World Barista Championship winners, so you won’t find a bad cup of Joe.

5 . Farming is destroying the planet, but there could be a much more environmentally friendly way to feed ourselves: using renewable energy to turn carbon dioxide into food. “This is becoming a reality,” says Pasi Vainikka at Solar Foods, a company that is building the first commercial-scale factory that will be able to make food directly from CO2.

There can be no doubt that immediate attention to find greener ways to grow food is required. Conventional agriculture, including organic farming, causes damage to the environment in many ways. It requires a lot of land, leading to habitat loss and deforestation. It is also the source of a third of all greenhouse gas emissions and releases other pollutants. It isn’t very efficient, either. Crops typically transform less than 1 percent of light energy into usable biomass (生物量).

Instead, Solar Foods plans to avoid photosynthesis (光合作用) altogether, and grow bacteria that use hydrogen as their source of energy. At the factory, renewable electricity will be used to split water to produce hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen will be added to large containers, where the bacteria grow, along with CO2 and ammonia (氨气). The end result will be a yellow powder called Solein.

Solein is made of bacterial cells and is up to 70 percent protein. It can be used as an ingredient in all kinds of foods. “We are aiming at replacing animal-sourced proteins, which we think have the highest environmental impact,” says Vainikka.

Compared with plant crops, Solein will use 100 times less water per kilogram of protein produced, 20 times less land and emit a fifth as much CO2, according to Solar Foods. There are other benefits, too: factories could be situated anywhere in the world and production won’t be affected by weather conditions.

“With Solar Foods and other companies scaling up their systems, this is truly beginning a new era of agriculture,” says Dorian Leger at Connectomix Bio in Germany. “I think these trends are exciting and will help bend the carbon curve as well as lead to improved global food supply security.”

8 . If you feel lonely, you’re actually in good company: Nearly 1 in 4 adults across the world have reported feeling very or fairly lonely. A new survey, taken across 142 countries, found 24% of people age 15 and older self-reported feeling very or fairly lonely in response to the question, “How lonely do you feel?” Loneliness has emerged as a silent epidemic, affecting individuals of all ages and backgrounds.

The survey also found that the rates of loneliness were highest in young adults, with 27% of young adults age 19 to 29 reporting feeling very or fairly lonely. The lowest rates were found in older adults. Only 17% of people age 65 and older reported feeling lonely. Over half of adults age 45 and older reported not feeling lonely at all, while the majority of those younger than 45 answered that they felt at least a little lonely, if not very or fairly lonely. While there was little or no difference in the reported loneliness between men and women, some countries had substantial gaps in both directions, depending on the country’s cultural context. Overall, 79 out of the 142 countries had a higher self-reported rate of loneliness in women than men.

Rokach, who also teaches in the department of psychology at York University in Toronto, said that younger people who are in a transitional stage of becoming an adult experience more uncertainty in many areas of life, including “a tumultuous love life, uncertainty about a professional path, and in the process of separating from their parents.” Young adults are therefore more likely to experience more loneliness than older adults who have already accumulated “wisdom, friends, a family which may be supportive, and a community which cares for them,” he said.

While being alone could be refreshing and energizing, social media could defend against loneliness or help people not feel lonely anymore. “Social media is often a tool young adults use to connect with one another, but it can be more harmful if users are participating in passive scrolling,” said Dr. Olivia Remes, a mental health researcher at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. She described the behavior as only taking in the rosy posts of others and comparing it with one’s reality.

9 . Three out of five women say that their caring responsibilities are preventing them from applying for jobs or promotion, while only one in five men say the same, according to new research.

The poll of 5,444 people by Ipsos Mori and the charity Business in the Community (BITC) found that nearly half of the workforce are combining paid work and care. Almost three in 10 adults have left or considered leaving a job because of difficulties in balancing work and care. The latter was particularly true of women.

The majority of those with care responsibilities in the UK are parents looking after children under 18, but 36% of carers are responsible for an adult of working age or older. Those from a black,   Asian,   mixed race or other ethnically diverse background were significantly more likely to say they have caring responsibilities than those from a white background. As many as 50% of carers from an ethnic minority say their caring responsibilities are holding them back, compared to 39% of white carers.

BITC Gender Equality campaign director Charlotte Woodworth said the results showed the disconnect between what workers need from employers and what they experience. “There’s a lot of competing ideas about how we should try to improve the lot of women, how we should try and create a more levelled-up society. This report tells us very clearly how significantly workplace policies and workplace cultures are undermining those efforts,” she said.

The research shows nearly one in 10 carers are “sandwich carers”, meaning they have caring responsibilities for both a child and an adult.

The charity wants the government and employers to offer new fathers more paid time off to look after their children. The research found that even among women who identify as joint carers, 52% say they do “more than my fair share”, in comparison to 10% of men. One in three men admit they do “less than my fair share”, in comparison to 4% of women.

10 . As night falls on the streets of Shanghai, Mikiko Chen can often be found pacing up and down through the winding narrow streets of the city hunting for discarded items.

“I pick up all sorts of things, chairs, wine boxes, bowls and cups. . . it’s like treasure hunting for me, “she says. The 27-year-old digital marketer is among the first adopters of “stooping” in China, a practice that refers to picking up discarded furniture and other goods on the streets for re-use. She says the concept “stooping” was inspired by New Yorkers who often leave unwanted things on the “stoops” —or doorsteps—leading up to the entrances of buildings.

“The core concept of stooping for me is to make the best use of things,” Ms. Chen says. “It can help you to save money, but it’s not just about lowering consumption.” “It’s wasteful to throw away something that’s still usable; it’s better to share it with others who need it.”

Ms. Chen says she was among the first to use the hashtag (话题标签) #stooping on Xiaohongshu. “I initially started with posting items that people no longer used and wanted to throw away or exchange . . gradually I’m receiving hundreds of messages each day,” she says. Since then, the trend has become increasingly popular.

Ms. Chen says she is “very surprised” the concept has become a hit on social media, as older generations often stigmatize picking up things from the street or using second-hand goods. “People like my mum consider stooping as ‘rubbish picking’ and ‘scavenging’ (拾荒),” she says. “She thinks that people will look down on you for doing this.”

For Nan Zheng, an environmentalist and advocate, stooping is more than the physical act of picking up things from the streets. He created an app called “Grecycle” where people can give away or take unwanted items for free. “I think we can let more people know about the concept of stooping as an interesting and fun thing to do,” Mr. Nan says. “But then, gradually we can let people know this can also be about charity and helping others.”