Every year, young, talented, and ambitious nature conservationists from all over the world shoot their shot for the Future For Nature (FFN) Award, an honorable international award.
The Future For Nature aims to:
·Reward and fund individuals for their outstanding efforts in the protection of species of wild animals and plants.
·Stimulate award winners to sustain their dedicated work.
·Help winners to raise their profile, extend their professional network and strengthen their funding basis.
Benefits
·The winners each receive 50,000 euros and may make their own decision to spend the money in the service of nature conservation.
·FFN offers the winners a platform and brings their stories to the attention of conservationists, financiers and a wide audience, allowing them to increase their impact and gain more access to funds.
·FFN is building a growing family of winners, dedicated people who form a community of people with the same interest. FFN offers them the opportunity to meet each other and continue to learn with each other in order to continue their fight for nature as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Qualifications
The candidate：
·Must be born on or after the 31st May 1988 and before the 31st May 2005.
·Is able to explain his/her conservation work in fluent English (written and spoken).
·Has achieved substantial and long-term benefits to the conservation status of one or more animal or plant species.
·Must be determined to continue his/her conservation work, as the award aims to stimulate the winner's future work. It is not an "end of career" prize.
Additional Remarks
For the 2023 Future For Nature Award, we are again searching for natural leaders, who have proven that they can make a difference in species' survival.
From all applications, 6 to 10 nominees (被提名者) will be selected. These applicants will be asked to provide additional information, which will be used to select the final awardees. Ultimately, three inspiring wildlife heroes are selected as the winners.
Application Process: Apply online through the Apply Now link.
Application Deadline: May 1st, 2023.
The sign on the librarian's desk read: "Readers Wanted for Project Read Aloud." Sherene stared at it as the librarian stamped the book that she had selected for her weekly reading fare with a return by date.
"What is Project Read Aloud?" Sherene asked.
"Here's the brochure about it. There's a form inside to fill out if you want to become a reader. There is no pay, by the way," the librarian said with a smile.
Sherene walked home. She loved living within walking distance of her town's public library. She loved to sit in one of the overstuffed reading chairs in the reading room with the smell of books all around her and lose herself in a book. She had moved away after high school and had recently moved back. The library and fond memories of her childhood had drawn her back to this small town.
Once home, she sat down to read the brochure, which said, "Project Read Aloud seeks to provide the opportunity of hearing stories read aloud in a comfortable setting." That is a fine goal, she thought.
Sherene filled out the form. She loved reading aloud. When she was a child, she read aloud to her teddy bear. Later, when she grew up and became a teacher, she read aloud to her students many times throughout the day. Since her retirement, she read aloud only to herself and Boots, her cat. It would feel so good to have a human audience once again to share stories with.
A couple of days later, Sherene sat in the now empty small theatre in the library, preparing the first story she was going to read. Soon, the audience began to wander in and find their seats. The theatre was half full in half an hour. Sherene stepped to the edge of the stage and introduced herself. She explained the origin of the story, opened the book and began to read. She wove the tale masterfully creating voices for the characters, pausing for emphasis, and taking the listeners into another world.
When Sherene read the last words of the story, there was a momentary silence as it all sank into the listeners and then a burst of enthusiastic applause. At that moment, understanding did grow in the town through the sharing of stories.
Many people have participated into lots of virtual meetings these years. Some research shows this adjustment might not impact workplace productivity to any great degree. A new study, though, suggests otherwise.
In the study, 602 participants were randomly paired and asked to come up with creative uses for a product. They were also randomly selected to work together either in person or virtually. The pairs were then ranked by assessing their total number of ideas, as well as those concepts' degree of novelty, and asked to submit their best idea. Among the groups, virtual pairs came up with significantly fewer ideas, suggesting that something about face-to-face interaction generates more creative ideas. The findings could stiffen employers' resolve to urge or require their employees to come back to the office.
"We ran this experiment based on feedback from companies that it was harder to innovate with remote workers," said lead researcher Melanie Brucks. "Unlike other forms of virtual communication, like phone calls or e-mail, videoconferencing copies the in-person experience quite well, so I was surprised when we found meaningful differences between in-person and video interaction for idea generation."
When random objects were placed in both the virtual and physical rooms, the virtual pairs of participants spent more time looking directly at each other rather than letting their look wander about the room and taking in the entire scene. Eyeing one's whole environment and noticing the random objects were associated with increased idea generation. On platforms, the screen occupies our interactions. Our look wavers less. "Looking away might come across as rude," said Brucks, "so we have to look at the screen because that is the defined context of the interaction, the same way we wouldn't walk to another room while talking to someone in person."
Like most educators, Brucks has primarily taught virtually in the past three years, and she did notice some benefits of the approach as well. Her students were more likely to take turns speaking and her shyer students spoke up more often, rid of the anxiety that comes from addressing a large classroom. Brucks found that one solution to improving virtual idea generation might be to simply turn off the camera, for her students felt "freer" and more creative when asked to do so. And this may be sound advice for the workplace.
Virtual teamwork can't replace face-to-face teamwork. Idea selection proficiency (能力) is only valuable if you have strong options to select from, and face-to-face teams are the best means to generate winning options. Perhaps the workplace will find a compromise—a sweet spot in the middle that balances working from both home and office.
Arguably, the biggest science development of the year to date has been the images of the very depths of the universe taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Those images beg a comparison between the external and internal universes that science is bent on observing and understanding.
Decades ago, astrophysicist Carl Sagan famously said, "The universe is also within is. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself." He was commenting then on the reality that our internal universe was as complex and as fantastic as the outer space.
There are many similarities between the progress we've made in understanding the universe and in piecing together life's inner workings. Like the technological developments that took us from Galileo's telescope to the Hubble to the JWST, life science tools have also improved rapidly. From early light microscopes to modern super-resolution ones, these developments have afforded researchers a deep look into biology's infinitesimal (无限小的) landscape. Learning that living things were composed of cells was, not a terribly long time ago, a revolutionary observation. Since then, scientists have been able to dive ever deeper into the components of life.
Going beyond merely observing the complicated makeup of organisms, life scientists can now discover the workings of molecules (分子). And that is where scanning the universe differs from peering into biology. Understanding the universe, especially from a functional standpoint, is not necessarily an immediate urgency. Understanding biology on that level is. Simply observing the amazing internal structure of cells is not enough. Biologists must also characterize how all those parts interact and change in different environments and when faced with various challenges. Being able to image a virus or bacterium is nice at the level of basic science. But knowing how viruses gain entry into cells and spread, infect, and disable can literally save lives. Through time, biology has risen to this mechanistic challenge. Not only can life science tools produce images of cell components, even more importantly, they can help predict the effects of drugs on receptors, of immune cells on foreign invaders (入侵者), and of genetic perturbations (基因干扰) on development and aging.
This is not to belittle the work of scientists researching into universe. They should rightly be praised for delivering views of impossibly distant, impossibly massive phenomena. My aim is to celebrate these accomplishments while at the same time recognizing that science's inward search for detail and insight is equally impressive and, in my view, more urgent. The output of both the outward and inward explorations should stimulate wonder in everyone. After all, it's all star-stuff.
With climate change continuing to worsen, our situation is beginning to feel increasingly serious. Is it right? Maybe not.
Techno-optimism is one of the greatest misconceptions when it comes to solutions to ensure our future. It can be defined as a belief that future technologies will solve all of our current problems. This definition reinforces (强化) the idea that there's no reason to panic or change our current energy-intensive lifestyle. All society needs to do is look to green technology to work its magic.
One of the best examples of this optimistic misconception is the electric car. Despite being highly regarded as an eco-friendly way to get around, electric cars are not the end for the future of transport. Batteries in electric cars use chemical elements which we could be seeing a shortage of by the midcentury. Techno-optimism has led many to believe that if everyone just switched to driving electric vehicles, we would be making incredible steps towards sustainability. However, the reality is that the amount of resources and energy needed to produce enough electric vehicles for everyone is not even remotely sustainable.
Investing in public transportation and moving away from individually owned vehicles. Producing fewer cars. Improving recycling practices of old batteries. The solutions we seek should not be rooted in new technology, but be about changing the way our society functions.
Techno-optimism puts too much emphasis on technology and not enough on what we can do right this minute. Unfortunately, people seem to like the picture that techno-optimism paints. It is important to understand that the problem begins when we see those technologies as a way to make our current lifestyles eco-friendly. Until we are ready to face the need for a less complex life, we cannot make true progress towards sustainability.
A. So where should we look for answers instead?
B. The modern world's simple solution is technology.
C. Moreover, they are more energy intensive to produce.
D. Is it a trap that many people have fallen into in recent years?
E. Unfortunately, this is an incredibly dangerous opinion to hold.
F. Despite any technology, we as a whole are not living sustainably.
G. Nevertheless, the truth is, we need a widespread change in our lifestyles.
Bernard, the 82-year-old retired police officer, was heartbroken when he 1 his precious medal. His house was broken into last December. The thief took away some jewelry, some cash and his treasured medal given for his 32 years of 2 with Liverpool Police Station. He believed the medal was gone forever.
Three months later, David, a young volunteer pulled the medal from a river in a "one-in-a-million" catch. The young man was in a litter clean-up programme in Liverpool. He had been using a large magnet (磁铁) to 3 metal rubbish out of the river for 30 minutes when he found a small blue metal box.
"I would have never found the medal if we hadn't 4 all the rubbish in the river first," said David. "At first, we found old bits of shopping carts and other metal items but about half an hour later, I pulled out the 5, and it's got 'Police Long Service Medal' written on it, It really was like finding a needle in a haystack (干草堆)."
6, the medal was carved with Bernard's name and the medal number, which David used to 7 the senior's phone number online. The retired police officer was 8 when he received a call saying the medal had been found in a river, still in its metal box. And when he was told it would be 9 to him by the young man who found it, his face lit up. David then planned a visit to meet Bernard and returned the medal to him.
"This was truly the best 10 for cleaning up that rubbish... It's amazing," David said.
The idea of writing a poem might feel frightening (initial)—do you need to follow a certain structure, does it need to have a rhyme, or do you need to have recited a dictionary to be a "proper" poet? The truth is: absolutely not. While there are "types" of poem that offer structure to serve a guide, the reality is that poetry doesn't have to follow a set of rules—it's much more about conveying a feeling, and that opens up a lot of creative (free) for us to explore.
On a particular sunny day, little Mykel was determined to learn to ride his bike without the help of training wheels. When the neighborhood kids (spot) Mykel shakily controlling his bike, they raced over (help). Some held the bike steady while others offered encouragement. Mykel was not alone as he tried to reach his goal of learning to ride his bike! Some things are (easy) said than done. However, with a little help from friends, things go better!
Renewable methods for (produce) electricity, such as wind turbines and solar panels, can only provide power on the days wind blows or the sun shines. Electric batteries (use) to store energy are expensive and can also be polluting. Finnish scientists came up with a simple solution that puts unwanted green electricity to work, heating 100 tons of sand to around 500℃. The sand stays hot for months; when energy (require), air can be pumped through it and heated up. The air in turn heats a system that supplies hot water to heat nearby houses.
We all like to think that we are rational (理性的) thinkers, but poor decisions and choices are evident all around us: staying in bad relationships or boring jobs, taking up smoking, eating too much junk food; the list goes on. So why can't we make better decisions? One reason appears to be what psychologists call "decision fatigue": the idea that we all have a limited store of energy for making decisions and practising self-control. For example, if you are ground down by everyday struggles, you have less mental energy for good decisions.
However, studies point to the fact that deciding things early in the day is likely to lead to better outcomes. Most of us will have had the experience of going to bed with a seemingly unsolvable problem, only to wake up with a flash of inspiration the next morning. So decisions made when we feel least tired are more likely to be the right ones.
Another worthwhile strategy is to pretend that you are advising an imaginary friend, rather than relating decisions to your own life. This creates a distance between you and the issues in question, and can help you to think logically rather than emotionally.
People often advise making lists of advantages and disadvantages, and then prioritizing the items in each list. This can certainly be helpful, but we need to be careful not to over-think every decision. We may overestimate the value of information, and sometimes it is better simply to go with our gut instinct (直觉).
Perhaps the most important thing we can do to minimize the possibility of regret is to make sure that our decisions are in line with our life values; in other words, to have a life vision and be true to it. Instead of asking ourselves questions such as "Which option is safer?" or "Which option is best financially?", it is far better to ask "How will I feel about this when I'm 70?".
▷Sometimes it is a good idea to go with our gut instinct to make decisions, because weighing advantages and disadvantages takes great efforts.
1）表示祝贺;
2）你的建议。
注意：
1）词数100左右;
2）开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
提示词：纪念日anniversary
Dear Jim,
……
Yours,
Li Hua
