When the first platypus specimen was sent back to England from Australia in the late 18th century, the scientists who examined it thought that someone was playing a trick on them. The zoologist George Shaw wrote in the first scientific description of the platypus that he thought the specimen was a mix of a few different species.
The Amsterdam company Respyre has developed concrete and plaster that support the growth of moss. These materials can be used for new construction, as well as on existing buildings. The moss then acts as a respiration system for the city. It takes in water and CO2 from the air and releases oxygen.
Moss has other benefits, too. Watch this short video to find out more.
Travelling can be a lot of fun. I have lived abroad for over two years in Asia and Europe. I take trips for different reasons. One of them is food.
When I lived in Vietnam, I decided to go visit Taiwan for a week. I knew the food would be great since I had watched food shows about Taiwanese food. However, I did not realize just how amazing it would be. I tried stinky tofu, different Taiwanese soups and Dan-Dan, a spicy dry ramen dish. I sometimes ate two breakfasts or two lunches because I wanted to try everything at the markets, so I was never hungry. At the end of my week in Taiwan, I had gained five kilos (10 pounds)!
I decided to move to Taiwan six months later, but I became a lot more careful about weight gain.
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abroad /uh-BRAWD/ [adverb]—in or to a foreign country or countries
The city of Lowell, Massachusetts, was famous for its textile mills during the Industrial Revolution. In the 1830s, around 8,000 women worked at the mills. The working conditions were terrible. The air inside the mills was full of dust. Women worked 13 or 14 hours a day for very low pay.
In 1834, the mill owners decided to pay the women even less. The women were angry and joined together to fight the owners. They went on strike (refused to go to work) until they got their wages back. But the owners wouldn’t agree, and the women had to go back to work.
Atlas Obscura, a publication about travel and culture, notes that a pub has always been more than just a place that sells beer for the British. The pub has brought communities together for centuries, and the tavern tradition of spending the evening with your peers continues to this day. Few know, however, that pubs became popular following the plague known as the Black Death of the 14th century.
The Black Death killed nearly half of England's population after it reached the British Isles in 1348. By the 1370s, it had caused a critical labor shortage. Eventually, this proved a boon for the peasantry of England, who could demand higher wages for their work and achieve higher standards of living. As a result, households selling or giving away leftover ale were replaced by more commercialized, permanent establishments set up by the best brewers and offering better food.
Onomatopeia is a fancy way to describe words that sound like what they mean. For instance, in English, bees "buzz" and cats "meow". Words for animal sounds are almost always built on how the animals actually sound to listeners. But that can be different in different languages. Since each language has its own set of sounds to work with, they hear animals based on those sounds.
For example, a rooster's crow is translated as:
This video shows people from all over the world saying animal sounds in their language. How would you write the sounds the animals make in your language?
The Conversation, a publication that promotes academic debate, posits that not only do many people across advanced economies have no idea that the world is becoming a much better place, but they actually think the opposite. This is no wonder, when the news focuses on reporting catastrophes, terrorist attacks, wars and famines. These subjects simply make for more exciting coverage than stories about how more than 300,000 people a day get access to electricity and clean water for the first time.
The Conversation states that globalization has helped lift hundreds of millions of people above the global poverty line.
Take a look at the three graphs below and discuss their meaning with your teacher.
Indonesia has over 17,000 islands. If you ever go there, you will see how different some of the major islands are. For example, Bali is the only island where most of the people are Hindu. It attracts a very large number of tourists. It is known around the world as a great place for a holiday.
However, Sulawesi, an island to the north of Bali, has very few tourists. Here, most people are Christian. There is very little made for tourists on the island. Makassar, the main city, has only one hotel. You will also have to take public transportation to get around.
Most Indonesians live on Java and are Muslim. It’s the only island with a train network. That's a good thing because you have to cross large distances to visit World Heritage sites such as the Borobudur temple and Mount Bromo.
War in Ukraine has created a major global energy crisis. It has affected many countries worldwide. In fact, many people believe Russia is using the gas supply to control Europe.
Recently, Russia closed down a turbine on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which cut down the amount of natural gas they send to Europe. Nord Stream 1 pipeline stretches from Russia to Germany, and it can send up to 170 cubic metres of gas per day. This pipeline is owned by Nord Stream AG. Its major shareholder is the Russian energy company Gazprom.
Last July, Gazprom shut down Nord Stream 1 due to maintenance work. After reopening it, they diminished the amount supplied to 20m cubic metres. The German government says Gazprom has no valid reasons to limit their supply.
National Geographic answers the question: what is forest bathing? The term emerged in Japan in the 1980s as a physiological and psychological exercise called shinrin-yoku. It can mean “forest bathing” or “taking in the forest atmosphere”. The purpose was to offer an ecological antidote to tech-boom burnout and to inspire residents to reconnect with the country’s forests.
The Japanese quickly embraced this form of ecotherapy. In the 1990s, researchers began studying the physiological benefits of forest bathing, providing the science to support the idea that time spent surrounded by nature is good for us. The concept at the heart of shinrin-yoku is not new. Many cultures around the world have long recognized the importance of the natural world to human health.
We're all so busy these days that it's hard to make meals at home. Some of us get take-out for lunch and then get take-out again for dinner. But eating this way regularly is bad for your health, and your wallet! So how do we find time for home-cooked meals?
Make your freezer your friend!
People throw away more than 80 billion pairs of chopsticks every year. Most of them have only been used once, like the cheap wooden ones you get in restaurants. All of those chopsticks end up in landfills. In China, environmental activists have documented rates of over 100 acres of deforestation every day to keep up with demand.
One start-up has decided to tackle this problem by using discarded chopsticks as a construction material. ChopValue, based in Vancouver, Canada, collects about 350,000 used chopstics every week, just from the Vancouver area. They then use the chopsticks to make things for the home and office, like bookshelves, cutting boards, coasters, and even desks. Founder Felix Böck explains,
Do you have any regrets for things you did or didn't do? Listen to 70 people from 5 to 75 years old talk about their regrets. Do you share any of them?
People say a lot with their body language. When we're happy, we smile. When we're excited, we might dance a little, or raise our hands in the air. Body language is an important part of communication. How well do you communicate with your face and body? Let's find out!
With your partner (your teacher, if you're in a lesson), try to communicate these feelings with just your face and body. No words allowed! Choose one and see if you can get your partner to guess it. Then your partner will do the same. Keep trading places like that. You can choose the same ones your partner has already done, and see if you can express it well, too. Once you've done a few of the feelings, talk about the experience with your teacher/partner.
Feelings:
According to the Harvard Business Review (HBR), it is possible to be a business leader and still have a personal life with careful planning, but most people wouldn’t know this if they look at some of the most successful CEOs out there. Tesla CEO Elon Musk rarely sleeps or sees his kids and had a public meltdown, and Apple’s Tim Cook is on email before the sun rises.
These intense work styles are often celebrated as the only way to get to the top and be a super-productive leader. Surveys show that managers and executives describe the ideal worker as someone with no personal life or caregiving responsibilities.
The killing of the Japanese ex-prime minister, Shinzo Abe, shocked the whole world. Even though some of the people in Japan did not agree with his policies, the ex-prime minister’s murder is a sad event for the entire nation.
The murder is shocking because it happened in Japan, where deaths from guns are very rare. It is also uncommon to hear about politicians being killed in developed countries.
Please, have a look at the graphs below and discuss them with your teacher.
European football (soccer) has a history of racism. Recently, there has been a rise in racist comments from fans against players of color. Many football clubs are taking action against it. There are even projects involving computer- and A.I.-assisted technology to pinpoint racist fans.
But fans aren't just shouting abuse at matches; they're using social media as well. A 2021 study of online messages against the U.K's Premier League players found more than 3,000 abusive messages, 56% of which were racist.
So, how are social media platforms responding? Are they doing enough? The graph below shows what fans across Europe think.
For a long time, we believed that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens (modern humans) were two separate species. With the advent of DNA sequencing, however, it was discovered that Sapiens interbred with Neanderthals as they migrated from Africa 60,000 years ago. Another previously unknown hominid species, known as Denisovans, was also discovered at that time, and it interbred with Sapiens and Neanderthals, too.
Gene sequencing shows that non-African genomes today contain about 2% Neanderthal DNA, and people from Papua, New Guinea, and Australia are about 3% Denisovan. Studies on modern African DNA are taking longer because climate, geography and politics make locating skeletons much more difficult.
The war in Ukraine has had a vast impact on the whole world. In addition to the humanitarian catastrophe, it has also caused increased rates of inflation all over the globe.
This rise is mostly linked to increases in food, energy prices and disrupted supply chains. The impact is affecting the poorest countries the most.
Look at the graph below describing the projected inflation rates for several countries, and discuss it with your teacher.
Birdwatching is a popular pastime across the globe. Some people take it very seriously, buying expensive gear and traveling all over the world to see rare birds. Most people, though, just have a good pair of binoculars and stay closer to home.
But what if your home is a big city? What birds can you see in a city besides really common ones, like pigeons or crows, that are often pests and boring to watch?
I thought that way until I watched a film called, Birders: The Central Park Effect. The lake in the middle of Central Park is the only large body of water for miles on that migration route, so flocks of birds use it as a stopover. You can see birds there—in the middle of a huge, busy city—that you'd normally only see in the wild. And even in winter and summer, between migrations, there are lots of different species to see.
