Make life as easy as possible with devices and gear designed to simplify your travels — whether that means charging on the go, neat organizers or lightweight storage for no-trouble quick trips.
LARQ Bottle Filter (过滤器)
This innovative drinking bottle with a low-pressure sucker is designed to filter water on the go, wiping out pollutants such as chlorine (氯) for a refreshing taste. The filter will work on up to 151 litres of water before needing to be replaced — the equivalent (等同) of around 300 single-use plastic bottles. Available in 500ml (£58) and 740ml (£68) sizes.
Stubble & Co Adventure Bag
This 42-litre backpack has an easy-access clamshell (翻盖) design that opens to reveal zipped parts of various sizes, including a waterproof pocket for shoes. It also features a laptop sleeve, water bottle pocket and hidden parts for valuables. Available in black, olive, blue and orange. £195.
Shokz OpenFit
Shokz's lightweight earphones sit on top of the ear canal, meaning they're comfortable enough to wear for long periods. The 28-hour battery life ensures you won't need to charge them on an overnight trip, though it's easy enough to do so by plugging in the small, accompanying case. The Shokz App allows you to customize the controls, too. £179.
July Carry On Pro
For those who prefer not to carry luggage on their backs, this smart roller is the perfect overnighter. It has two separate internal parts, a waterproof polycarbonate (聚碳酸酯) hard shell and a zipped front part in which to store a laptop. The integrated, removable power bank allows travelers to charge devices on the go. £275.
Adding to the achievements of a remarkable year, Taylor Swift has been named Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2023.
Already a superstar before 2023, Swift's career has reached new heights thanks to the beginning of her Eras Tour that brought her 3.5-hour performance to 66 shows in 23 cities across North America, Argentina and Brazil. Promoted by her tour, Swift has been named the most-streamed female artist in the history of Spotify and Apple Music. According to Billboard, the tour made about $900 million (about 6.4 billion yuan) in 2023. In addition, the tour's movie Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour became the biggest concert movie of all time, taking more than $250 million globally.
As she was declared (宣布) a billionaire by Bloomberg in November, a hidden "Taylor Swift economy" also promoted sales for business owners across the US. From soaps to a cruise inspired by her different "eras", interest in Swift-related products went way up.
Apart from her financial contributions, Swift made a significant cultural impact by taking back control of her music. In 2019, her old record label, Big Machine, sold the master tapes of her first six albums (专辑) to Scooter Braun. The sale meant that she didn't have the rights to the albums. In response to this, Swift began re-recording her first six albums, tagging (加标签于) them "Taylor's Version". This move stressed her belief that artists deserve to own their work. "It's all in how you deal with loss," she told Time. "I respond to extreme pain by resisting."
Heading into 2024, Swift will start the Eras Tour again in Japan and Australia. As USA Today noted, "Her current top has been a long time coming, but it may also be just beginning."
Jorg Muller, an ecologist at the University of Würzburg, with his colleagues, proposes a way to measure the biodiversity—listen to the jungle by AI, in a paper published in Nature Communications.
The rainforests are very important and always alive with the sounds of animals, which is useful to ecologists. When it comes to measuring the biodiversity of a piece of land, listening out for animal caller is more effective than uncovering the bushes looking for tracks and paw prints. The latter analysis method is time-consuming, and it requires an expert pair of ears. Muller's idea was to apply the principle of smartphone apps which can identify the sounds of birds, bats and mammals to conservation work.
The researchers took recordings from across 43 sites in the rainforests. Some sites were relatively primitive, old-growth forests. Others were areas that had just been cleared for pasture(牧场) recently. And some other original forests had been cleared but then abandoned, allowing themselves to regrow. The various calls were identified by an expert,and then used to construct a list of the species present. As expected, the longer the land had been free from agricultural activity, the greater biodiversity it hosted. Then it was the computer's turn. "We found that the AI tools could identify the sounds as well as the experts," says Dr. Muller.
Of course, not everything in a rainforest makes a noise. Dr. Muller and his colleagues used light traps to catch night-flying insects, and DNA analysis to identify them. They found that the diversity of noisy animals was a reliable representative for the diversity of the quieter ones, too.
Besides measuring the biodiversity, the results are also expected to be applied to outside ecology departments. Under pressure from their customers, firms like L'Oreal, a make-up company, and Shell, an oil firm, have been spending money on forest restoration projects around the world. Dr. Muller hopes that an automated approach to checking on the results could help monitor such efforts, and give a standard way to measure whether they are working as well as their sponsors say.
Pick up any packaged processed food, and there's a decent chance that one of its listed ingredients will be "natural flavor". The ingredient sounds good, particularly in contrast to "artificial flavor". But what exactly does natural flavor mean? It refers to extracts (提取物) got from natural sources like plants, meat or seafood. When consumers see "natural flavor" on a label, they are unlikely to assume that someone is squeezing the juice from oranges into their bottle. They know even though natural flavor must come from natural sources, it needn't all come from the plant or meat. For example, orange flavor might contain not only orange extract, but also extracts from bark and grass. Nor is the common belief true that ingredients extracted from nature are necessarily safer than something artificially made.
So if flavors like orange are needed, why not just use oranges? The answer comes down to "availability, cost and sustainability", according to flavor chemist Gary Reineccius of the University of Minnesota. "If you're going to use all your grapes on grape soda," Reineccius says, "you don't have any grapes for wine making; the products are going to be exorbitant; besides, what do you do with the by-products you create after you've squeezed all the juice out of the grape?"
Actually, while chemists make natural flavors by extracting chemicals from natural ingredients, artificial flavors are made by creating the same chemicals artificially. The reason why companies bother to use natural flavors rather than artificial flavors is simple: marketing. "Many of these products have health titles," says Platkin, professor from Hunter College. "Consumers may be talked to believe products with natural flavors are healthier, though they're nutritionally no different from those with artificial flavors. Natural flavors may involve more forest clear-cutting and carbon emissions from transport than flavors created in the lab."
Platkin suggests getting more transparent labeling on packaging that describes exactly what the natural or artificial flavors are, so consumers are not misled into buying one product over another because of "natural flavors". Reineccius also offers some simple guidance: "Don't buy anything because it says ‘natural flavors'. Buy it because you like it."
Challenges are part of life and something we can all expect to encounter at one point or another during our lifetime. We handle challenges differently;some of us choose to face them head-on, while others flee in uncertainty.The following are simple methods and strategies we can all employ to overcome challenges more effectively.
Nike couldn't have said it any better with their slogan, "Just do it! "Some challenges require us to do just that. Grab the bull by its horns and have the courage to conquer it, no matter how unsure we might feel. Some challenges are urgent and require immediate attention, leaving us with no option but to go ahead full-steam.
Educate ourselves. The reason why some issues prove challenging for us is that we aren't familiar with them.The internet, books, forums, etc. , offer platforms where we can research and learn about our challenges to find strategies against them. Knowledge is definitely powerful and essential in conquering anything.
Be persistent. This is what is required to accomplish anything, especially when it comes to overcoming challenges. No matter how difficult our challenges might be, we must be willing to push through and try again and again until we achieve victory over them..
Ask for help. There are times when we can't go it alone and need others to help us conquer whatever challenges we face.Networking with like-minded individuals who can offer us support, suggestions, and solutions is useful in helping us overcome challenges.
A. Meet them head-on.
B. Adapt a different strategy.
C. It is said that two heads are better than one.
D. If we give up, we allow the challenges to conquer us instead.
E. Therefore, our knowledge and ability to conquer them is limited.
F. Whatever our positions, we all wish to conquer them and move on.
G. Some challenges can be overwhelming, making us question our ability to overcome them.
Although many over-processed foods can satisfy the desire for sweet, fatty, salty foods, research suggests these items are particularly bad for the heart and brain, with mood and cognition taking a hit.
The most recent research looking at the 1 of over-processed food found the most far-reaching results. Researchers 2 direct links between higher consumption of over-processed foods and a greater risk of many health issues.
These results are 3 earlier studies. Diets high in these foods were linked to greater risk of depression and anxiety, according to an analysis published in the journal Nutrients. In one of these studies, risk rose from 4 just 33 percent of calories from over-processed food. A separate study found that taking in just 20 percent of calories from these foods was linked to a 28 percent faster rate of cognitive 5 compared with people who ate less processed food.
Also 6 is a study tracking about half a million people living in England, Scotland, and Wales that found the risk of dementia (痴呆) went up by 25 percent for every 10 percent increase in over-processed food. While the exact cause-and-effect relationship is still unknown, the strongest evidence from prospective studies 7 the idea that eating high amounts of over-processed foods increases the risk of depression in the future.
It is common knowledge that eating too much salt or sugar is linked to high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes. What the public may not appreciate, 8 , is that all these conditions affect the brain by raising the risk for dementia. 9 such as certain artificial sweeteners may also disturb the production and release of brain chemicals, such as dopamine, which can negatively affect mental and emotional 10 .
Another problem with over-processed foods is that they might be addictive. Over-processed foods have more in common with a(n) 11 than foods by Mother Nature. Humans have evolved to respond to foods that are sweet fatty, and high in calories. For most of human existence this helped us 12 . But in nature, foods are 13 modestly high in sugar — like berries — or high in fat, like nuts. You don't find foods high in both sugar and fat. That's a distinctive 14 of over-processed foods. Add in salt, artificial flavorings and bright colors, and our brain simply 15 these foods.
Following the barbecue-induced travel craze to the city of Zibo in East China, Chinese social media has once again highlighted the next internet-famous city worthy of (explore).
This time it's Tianshui, a low-key city in China's Gansu province that (take) the spotlight recently. It has attracted considerable attention food enthusiasts and social media influencers online, (celebrate) the city's iconic dish of hot pot.
Known as Tianshui Malatang, which (literal) means spicy and hot, the local dish is popular for its large portion of skewered meat, vegetables, hand-made potato noodles in a pot of boiling broth (肉汤). Two food bloggers, with over 3 million followers in their account on the popular Chinese Weibo,(be) among the influencers praising the deliciousness of Tianshui Malatang. Their vlogs show eager food enthusiasts lining up on the streets, many of traveled from cities far away. Dong Liangyan, 29, from Daqing in Heilongjiang province,(locate) more than 2,000 km away from Tianshui, told Xinhua that she was absolutely delighted (enjoy) the local delicacy.
注意： 1. 写作词数应为80左右; 2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Dear Michael,
……
Yours,
Li Hua
It is a hot sunny Saturday morning on the farm. Maya, Duksie and Doobie are helping Mama K in her vegetable garden. The children work all morning.
Mama K always gives the children a treat for helping her. Sometimes it's cake or chocolate; sometimes it's apples, pears or oranges. Mama K has only one rule. "Share it fair!" The children know they must share the treats equally, so they all get the same amount.
Today Mama K has baked a round strawberry cake with pink icing (糖霜) and berries from her garden. The children wait on the grass for their treat. "Here you go!" smiles Mama K. "But remember the rule. Share it fair!"
Maya has the first turn to share the cake. She uses the knife to draw lines in the icing. The others watch her. She does not cut the cake yet. The others must first agree if her way is fair. "I think I will make two cuts down like this. Now we have three slices, all the same!" Maya shows them. There is one line on the left and the other on the right.
"No way!" says Duksie. "The one in the middle is much too big!" Doobie also shakes his head. Maya laughs and tells Duksie to try.
"Pass me the knife.I'll do it," says Duksie First she rubs out Maya's pattern in the icing, and then she makes one cut across and one down. "Look, I have made my three slices!" "That's not fair!" shout Maya and Doobie together,.
"Why don't you try, Doobie?" says Duksie. "I bet you can't do it!"
"I wish the cake was a square, and then it would be easy!" says Doobie thoughtfully. And then! A picture comes into Doobie's head. He sees the silver badge (标识) at the front of his father's big red Benz truck. "I've got it! I've got it! I know how to do it," shouts Doobie.
"How did you work it out?" Maya asks. Doobie smiles to himself. For now it's his secret. Later, he will tell his dad.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
First Doobie uses a knife to smooth Duksie's lines in the icing.
……
With Mama K's encouragement, Maya takes charge, expertly cutting along Doobie's lines to make three equal slices.
