Polar Bear Cubs Taking Their First Steps It's March and light returns to the High Arctic, sweeping away four months of darkness. 现在是三月，光线重返北极高纬度地区，扫除了四个月的黑暗。 A polar bear stirs. She has been in her den the whole winter. Her emergence marks the beginning of spring. After months of confinement underground, she toboggans down the slope, perhaps to clean her fur, perhaps for sheer joy. 一只北极熊动起来了。她整个冬天都在洞穴里。她的出现标志着春天的开始。在地下禁闭了几个月后，她滑下斜坡，也许是为了清洁她的皮毛，也许是为了纯粹的快乐。 Her cubs gaze out of their bright new world for the very first time. The female calls them, but this steep slope is not the easiest place to take your first steps. 她的幼崽第一次凝视着他们明亮的新世界。母熊在呼唤它们快点出来，但在这个陡坡上迈出第一步并不容易。 But they are hungry and eager to reach their mother, whose delayed feeding them on this special day. Now she lures them with the promise of milk, the only food the cubs have known since they were born deaf and blind beneath the snow some two months ago. 但它们很饿，急切想去找它们的妈妈，因为母亲在这个特殊的日子耽误了给它们喂食。现在，她用乳汁的承诺来诱导它们，幼崽在雪下出生时看不见也听不见，这是两个月以来它们所知道的唯一食物。 Their mother has not eaten for five months and has lost half her body weight. Now she converts the last of her fat reserves into milk for her cubs. 他们的母亲已经五个月没吃东西了，体重减轻了一半。现在，她把最后的脂肪储备转化为幼崽的乳汁。 The spring sun brings warmth, but also a problem for the mother. It starts to melt the sea ice. That is where she hunts for the seals she needs to feed her cubs and she must get there before the ice breaks up. 春天的阳光带来了温暖，但也给母亲带来了难题。海冰开始融化。那是母亲寻找海豹的地方，她需要喂养她的孩子，她必须在冰层破裂之前到达那里。 For now, though, it's still minus 30 degrees and the cubs must have the shelter of the den. 但是现在，气温仍然是零下30度，幼崽们必须在洞穴里躲避。 词汇表 sweep away 清除，一扫而空 stir 动，活动，醒来 den 兽穴，窝，书房 confinement 限制，禁闭，监禁 toboggan 乘橇滑下，急剧下降；平底雪橇 cub 幼崽，小伙子 steep slope 陡坡 lure 诱惑，引诱 convert 转变，转换 fat reserve 脂肪储备 seal 海豹 视频见公众号【琐简英语】，回复“1”，可进入【打卡交流群】

Four new emperor penguin groups found by satellite Emperor penguins live in extreme conditions, coming together during the height of the Antarctic winter to breed in distinct groupings. 帝企鹅生活在极端的气候条件下，它们在南极严冬时期聚集在一起，在各自不同的小群落中繁殖。 These colonies tend to be separated from each other by an average of about 150 miles. Scientists have been using satellites to search the gaps in this spacing for birds they didn't know about, and they found four previously unrecognised nesting sites. 这些帝企鹅群彼此之间的距离平均约为150英里。科学家们一直在使用卫星在这个间隔中寻找仍未被发现的帝企鹅，而他们这次发现了四个以前未被识别的筑巢地。 Emperors will only breed on floating sea ice, which is already becoming highly variable and is expected to diminish greatly this century as global temperatures warm. 帝企鹅只在浮冰上繁殖，而浮冰量现在时多时少，随着全球气温变暖，预计浮冰面积将会在本世纪大幅减少。 词汇表 extreme conditions 极端气候条件，极端环境 the height of 高峰，极致 breed 繁殖 groupings 分组，群 colonies （动物的）群 spacing 间距 previously unrecognised 以前未被发现的 nesting sites 筑巢地 floating 浮动的，漂浮的 diminish 减少 ✔更多内容见公众号【琐简英语】，回复“1”，可进入【打卡交流群】

Bartleby: A Firm for All Seasons Companies run to their own annual rhythms Seasonality is a big part of business. For some industries, seasonal patterns are a defining feature. Agriculture is one obvious example; tourism another. Western toymakers notch up a huge proportion of their annual sales in the run-up to Christmas. Construction is harder during cold weather, which is why that industry employs fewer people in the winter. 季节性是商业的重要组成部分。对于某些行业来说，季节性模式是一个决定性特征。农业是一个明显的例子，旅游业是另一个例子。在圣诞节前夕，西方玩具制造商的年销售额占了很大的比例。在寒冷的天气里施工更加困难，这就是为什么这个行业在冬天雇佣更少的人。 Firms that are less obviously tied to the seasons can still be deeply affected by them, as a recent review by Ian Hohm of the University of British Columbia and his co-authors makes clear. An analysis of social-media posts on Twitter, now X, found that dieting-related tweets peak in the spring, as the season of body dysmorphia (ie, summer) approaches. Condom sales and online searches for pornography in America tend to rise in the summer and around Christmas. 正如不列颠哥伦比亚大学的伊恩•霍姆及其合著者最近发表的一篇评论所阐明的那样，与季节关系不那么明显的公司仍然可能深受季节的影响。一项对 推特 (现在的 X)上社交媒体帖子的分析发现，随着易产生身体畸形恐惧季节（即夏季）的临近，与节食有关的推文在春季达到高峰。在美国，避孕套的销量和色情网站的搜索量在夏季和圣诞节前后往往会上升。 Even when overall demand does not vary greatly between the seasons, preferences change. Beef-eaters buy diced meat and roasts in the slow-cooking winter season and plump for steaks during the summer grilling months. Starbucks is among those firms that make seasonality a marketing event. The pumpkin-spiced latte is a reliable sign that autumn is on its way, along with falling leaves and glum faces at condom manufacturers. Seasonality also leaves a less obvious imprint inside organisations. Just as there are daily and weekly patterns of activity, from slumps in concentration during the late afternoons to the ebb and flow of hybrid workers coming to the office, so annual cycles leave their mark. One is occurring this week, with the World Economic Forum’s annual shindig in Davos. Public holidays aside, in no other week in the working year are so many CEOs of large organisations reliably away. The corporate world is briefly without a government, a concentrated version of Belgium in the early 2010s. This may well be Davos’s real contribution to improving the state of the world: with so many bosses stuck on a mountain for a few days, productive employees can get on with some work and lazy ones can relax. School holidays offer an obvious form of seasonality, although in that case people throughout the organisation are off. Mass absences make it hard to schedule meetings in Brazil in the period between Christmas and the start of Carnival; it is a similar story in August in Europe. These patterns of clustered absences show up inside organisations in big ways and small. Second-fiddle employees are more likely to get their chance to run the show; fewer big initiatives are likely to be launched when the holidays are in full swing. Employees without children are resentful that they are covering for colleagues on holiday; colleagues on holiday are resentful that they have children. There is some evidence that people feel more creative after returning from holiday – but you need to schedule that brainstorming session quickly. A paper from 2010 by Jana Kühnel of Goethe University and Sabine Sonnentag of Universität Mannheim reckoned that the benefits of a break fade within a month. Set-piece events mark the corporate calendar, too. Some are public: annual general meetings and shareholder letters, say. Others are internal. At many companies the annual budgeting process involves a gathering organisational effort, in which more and more people spend more and more time arguing about numbers that are certain to be wrong. It is almost a season in itself. A pre-pandemic estimate from APQC, a benchmarking organisation, reckoned that the median firm spends around 30 days on this effort; at plenty of firms, it takes an awful lot longer. Pay decisions are seasonal events, too. The time when employees find out their salary rises and bonuses sets off ripples of disappointment and happiness in all workplaces. In some, they are more like tsunamis. The bonus round on Wall Street, when bankers find out what they will get for their work the previous year, is under way now and is predated by months of internal wrangling and gossip. The actual date on which bonuses are paid matters, too – once the money is safely deposited in the bank, people are more likely to move jobs. There are other forms of corporate seasonality. The office Christmas party signals another wind-down in activity. Some firms shorten the workweek during the summer months. Yearly calendars are punctuated by sales conferences and leadership retreats. There is not much research on the impact of seasonality within firms. That they have their own annual rhythms is indisputable. 字数限制，完整翻译见公众号【琐简英语】，回复“1”，可进入【打卡交流群】

What your scent says about you Have you ever wondered what your unique body odour says about you? Turns out, quite a lot! From your health to your genetics, we can learn a lot from taking a whiff of your odour. Your scent is a complex mix of information, and we humans are pretty good at reading it. So, what secrets are revealed from our scent, and why do we mostly choose to ignore them? 你有没有想过你独特的体味能说明什么？事实证明，有很多！从你的健康到你的基因，我们可以从你的体味中了解到很多信息。你的气味是一个复杂的信息混合体，而我们人类很擅长解读它。那么，我们的气味透露了哪些秘密，为什么我们大多选择忽视它们呢？ Researchers believe scent production is mostly determined by our genes. In a study published in Chem Senses by Craig Roberts and colleagues, participants had to match T-shirts that smelt the same after sniffing them. They matched the T-shirts of identical twins, meaning their scent was very similar, and those sniffing had quite an accurate sense of smell. Agnieszka Sorokowska, an expert in human olfaction, says this means "we might be able to detect genetic information about other people by smelling them." 研究人员认为，气味的产生主要取决于我们的基因。克雷格 · 罗伯茨及其同事发表在《化学感官》杂志上的一项研究表明，参与者必须在闻过 T 恤后，将闻起来一模一样的 T 恤匹配起来。他们找到了同卵双胞胎的 T 恤衫，这意味着他们的气味非常相似，而且嗅觉相当准确。人类嗅觉专家 阿格涅什卡·索罗科夫斯卡说，这意味着“我们可以通过嗅觉来检测其他人的遗传信息。” But it's not all about your genes. In another twin study called 'The Discrimination of Human Odour by the Dog', a dog could distinguish the odour of identical twins living apart. So, your environment can change how you smell, but it might take a dog’s sensitive nose to detect it. Even your health can change how you smell. In a study called 'The Scent of Disease', the BO of someone with diabetes was associated with rotten apples, while those with scurvy had sweat described as 'putrid'. Odour research has also helped to train dogs to detect illnesses such as cancer by scent alone. 但这并不全是基因的问题。在另一项名为“狗对人类气味的辨别”的双胞胎研究中，狗可以分辨出分开生活的同卵双胞胎的气味。所以，你的环境可以改变你的嗅觉，但这可能需要狗灵敏的鼻子才能察觉到。甚至你的健康状况也会改变你的气味。在一项名为“疾病的气味”的研究中，糖尿病患者的BO与腐烂的苹果有关，而坏血病患者的汗水被描述为“腐烂的”。气味研究还帮助训练狗狗仅凭气味就能发现癌症等疾病。 Do humans use any of this information? King Louis XIV of France was known to douse his palace in fragrance, perhaps to mask the stench of poor personal hygiene. This trend continues today – many of us cover our natural body odour with sweet or floral-smelling perfumes, and in the process, we may be losing the opportunity to learn more about each other and the world. Maybe it's time to drop the deodorants and pleasant aroma of your favourite perfume and let your natural scent waft around, sending the signals that your body wants to emit. 人类是否利用了这些信息呢？众所周知，法国国王路易十四会在他的宫殿中弥漫芬芳，也许是为了掩盖个人卫生不良的恶臭。这种趋势今天仍在继续——我们中的许多人用甜美或花香的香水掩盖我们的自然体味，在这个过程中，我们可能会失去更多了解彼此和世界的机会。也许是时候放下你最喜欢的香水的除臭剂和怡人的香气，让你的自然香味飘散，发出你身体想要发出的信号了。 词汇表 body odour (BO) 体味，体臭 take a whiff 闻一闻 scent 气味 sniff 闻，嗅 sense of smell 嗅觉 olfaction 嗅觉 distinguish 分辨 putrid 腐烂的，腐坏的 douse 向…泼洒（液体） fragrance 香水 stench 恶臭 personal hygiene 个人卫生 perfume 香水 deodorant 除臭剂，香体露 aroma 香味 waft （在空气中）飘荡 emit 发出，散发 ✔更多内容见公众号【琐简英语】，回复“1”，可进入【打卡交流群】

Uk general election 2024: Political parties and what they're saying about children Let's start with the Conservative Party. This is their symbol. The party's leader is Rishi Sunak, who's also the current Prime Minister. So what's in their plan? They say they will spend more on Britain's armed forces. They also want to introduce a national service. 18-Year-olds would have to join the military for a year or volunteer one weekend every month in the community. 让我们从保守党开始。这是他们的标志。该党领袖是里希·苏纳克，他也是现任首相。那么他们的计划是什么呢？他们说，他们将在英国武装部队上投入更多资金。他们还想引入一项全国性服务。18岁的人必须参军一年，或者每个月有一个周末在社区做志愿者。 Next up, Labour. This is their symbol and this is their leader, Keir Starmer. Labour say they will change the way private schools pay tax and use the money to pay for 6,500 new teachers in state schools in England. They also want to reduce the age people can vote from 18 to 16 years old. 接下来是工党。这是他们的标志，这是他们的领袖基尔·斯塔默。工党表示，他们将改变私立学校的纳税方式，并用这笔钱为英格兰公立学校支付6500名新教师的费用。他们还希望将可以投票的年龄从18岁降至16岁。 The Liberal Democrats, also known as the Lib Dems, they look a bit like this. And this is their leader. It's Ed Davey, who's been doing quite a bit of this during the election campaign. The Lib Dems have promised to spend more money on each pupil in England and give the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds. 自由民主党，又称Lib Dems，他们看起来有点像这样。这是他们的领袖这是埃德·戴维，他在竞选期间做了相当多的事情。自由民主党承诺在英格兰的每个学生身上投入更多的钱，并将投票权交给16岁和17岁的学生。 Plaid Cymru, which means the Party of Wales in the Welsh language, are next. This is their logo and this is their leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth. Plaid Cymru wants to change the way the Welsh Government gets money to spend on public services and are promising free school meals for all at secondary school in Wales. 下一个是 Plaid Cymru，威尔士语的意思是威尔士党。这是他们的标志，这是他们的领导人 Rhun ap Iorwerth。Plaid Cymru 希望改变威尔士政府获取公共服务资金的方式，并承诺为威尔士所有中学的学生提供免费校餐。 The SNP, that's the Scottish National Party, look a bit like this. And this is John Swinney. He's their leader. He's also the first minister of Scotland. So what's their plan? They say they want to deliver Scottish independence. They also want an independent Scotland to rejoin a club of countries called the European Union, which the UK left in 2020. SNP，即苏格兰民族党，看起来有点像这样。这是约翰·斯温尼。他是他们的领袖。他也是苏格兰的首席大臣。那么他们的计划是什么?他们说他们希望实现苏格兰独立。他们还希望独立后的苏格兰重新加入欧盟，英国在2020年退出了欧盟。 Reform UK look like this, and this is their leader, Nigel Farage. They have promised to freeze what they describe as non-essential immigration. They say that if they win, it will cost less for parents to send their children to private schools, and this will take pressure off state schools. 英国改革党是这样的，这是他们的领导人奈杰尔·法拉奇。他们承诺冻结他们所说的非必要移民。他们说，如果他们获胜，家长送孩子上私立学校的花费就会减少，这将减轻公立学校的压力。 Last up, it's the Green Party of England and Wales. This is their logo. They have two leaders, Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay. They say they will increase money for schools in England and say they will tackle climate change by getting to net zero by 2040. 最后，是英格兰和威尔士的绿党。这是他们的标志。他们有两位领导人，卡拉·丹尼尔和阿德里安·拉姆齐。他们表示，他们将为英格兰的学校增加资金，并表示他们将通过在2040年之前实现净零排放来应对气候变化。 ✔更多内容见公众号【琐简英语】，回复“1”，可进入【打卡交流群】

How learning to read changes lives Are you a big reader, Phil? Sure, I enjoy reading – and it's also a great way to pass the time on my daily commute to work. But reading isn't just a nice thing to do – it's an essential skill, something you need for everyday activities, whether that's finding out the news by reading a newspaper or buying groceries by reading the labels. And that's why I was shocked by a recent UN report estimating that around the world over 700 million adults are illiterate, which means they can't read or write. Wow! That's a huge number of people excluded from doing basic day-to-day things. So, what can be done to get more adults reading and writing? In this programme, we'll be hearing about projects in two very different countries trying to do just that. And, as usual, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well. But first I have a question for you, Phil. I mentioned a recent UN report on the high numbers of people unable to read and write, but illiteracy is not a new problem. Since 1967, the UN has been highlighting the importance of literacy, being able to read and write, with a day of celebration called International Literacy Day. But when does it take place? Is it: a) the 8th of March? b) the 8th of June? or, c) the 8th of September? I think International Literacy Day is on the 8th of September. OK, Phil, we'll find out if that's correct at the end of the programme. The biggest reason people grow up illiterate is not going to school, and that's especially true for people living in the coastal towns of Bangladesh. Because these towns flood regularly, families are always on the move, making it hard for children to get an education. The Friendship Project teaches reading and writing to groups of Bangladeshi women and girls. They also teach numeracy which means the ability to do basic maths like counting and adding up. Here one student, Rashida, explains the impact it's had on her to BBC World Service programme, People Fixing The World: My parents never sent me to school and I've suffered from not being able to read and write. My children were embarrassed that I was illiterate. I couldn't even do basic accounting. Until now, I've had to use my fingerprint as a signature as I was illiterate, but now I can sign my name because I can read and write thealphabet, and I'll also be able to keep an account of my expenses. No one can cheat me anymore. Before the Friendship Project, Rashida couldn't write her signature – her name written in her own handwriting. Instead, she had to use her fingerprint. Now, Rashida has learned the alphabet and also some basic maths, so she knows how much money she's spent, and how much she has left. This means no-one can cheat her, can trick or swindle her into taking her money. The Friendship Project is free, and so far over 11,000 adults have completed it. But it's not just developing countries that struggle with literacy. Our second project takes place much closer to home – the north of England, where charity Readeasy, matches adult learners with trained volunteers for one-to-one lessons. In the UK, one in six adults struggle with reading and writing, including Peter. Peter had hearing problems as a child, fell behind at school, and never learned to read. Here he is, talking with BBC World Service programme, People Fixing The World: Everyone takes for granted that you just open a letter and you read it. Before I met my wife, I used to have to knock on the neighbour's door: "Could you read this for me?" Can you imagine the embarrassment? I've tried college – twice. Nothing worked so as far as I'm concerned, I'm thick, I'm stupid, I'm just one of those people – it's never gonna work for me. And that was my life. Many of us take it for granted that everyone can read and write. If you take something for granted, you assume it's true without checking. Peter had to ask his neighbours to read his letters, something he found very embarrassing. He thought he was thick – stupid and unintelligent. Now, Peter says learning with Readeasy has changed his life. He's literate and is reading his way through the Harry Potter books. And he always celebrates International Literacy Day. Which reminds me of your question, Beth – when does the UN's International Literacy Day take place? I said it was on the 8th of September. And that was… the correct answer! OK, let's recap the vocabulary we've learned from this programme, starting with illiterate meaning unable to read and write. Numeracy is the ability to understand basic maths, count, and add up. Your signature is your name written in your own handwriting style. It shows that something has been written or agreed by you. To cheat someone means to trick or deceive them in order to get their money or valuables. If you take something for granted, you assume that it's true without checking up. And finally, the adjective thick is an informal word for stupid. ✔更多内容见公众号【琐简英语】，回复“1”，可进入【打卡交流群】

Why the Sun Is Incredible The Sun is just one of hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy. In a way, there's nothing very special about it. It's a fairly ordinary star – not particularly large or bright by stellar standards. But it's very special to us. 太阳只是银河系数千亿颗恒星中的一颗。从某种意义上说，它并没有什么特别之处。它是一颗相当普通的恒星--按照恒星的标准，它并不是特别大，也不是特别亮。但它对我们来说却非常特别。 The Sun makes life on Earth possible. Cultures across the world, and throughout the ages, worshipped the Sun. In some ways, modern life has cut us off from the Sun. In the developed world, we spend 90% of our time indoors – and yet the Sun is still a powerful force underpinning our lives. The Sun affects our perception of beauty. When people talk of the "golden hour", that time just before the Sun sets, it's a real thing. 太阳使地球上的生命成为可能。古往今来，世界各地的文化都敬拜太阳。在某些方面，现代生活使我们与太阳隔绝。在发达国家，我们 90% 的时间都在室内度过，但太阳仍然是支撑我们生活的强大力量。太阳影响着我们对美的感知。当人们谈论“黄金时段”时，即太阳落山之前的时间，这是真实的。 The Sun isn't actually yellow or orange or even red; it's all the colours mixed together. When the Sun rises or sets in the sky, the shortwave colours – green, blue and violet – are scattered, leaving only the yellow and the red part of the spectrum, giving that amazing glow. When the sun is high in the sky, its blue waves bounce around – which is why the sky looks blue. And when you see a rainbow, that's the light from the Sun separated into all its magnificent colours. 太阳实际上不是黄色或橙色，甚至不是红色;而是所有颜色的混合。当太阳在天空中升起或落下时，短波颜色（绿色、蓝色和紫色）会散射，只留下光谱的黄色和红色部分，从而发出惊人的光芒。当太阳高悬于天空时，它的蓝波四处反射--这就是为什么天空看起来是蓝色的。而当你看到彩虹时，那是太阳的光被分离成了各种绚丽的色彩。 Although we talk of the Sun rising in the east and setting in the west, that's not quite true. It just seems that way to us. The Sun stays in the same place. It's the Earth that rotates on its axis. This movement of the Sun is deeply embedded in our biology. When sunlight enters the eye, it sends signals to a master clock in our brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. This internal clock regulates everything, from when we sleep to how we digest a meal. Messing with this finely-tuned machine, when we work night shifts or fly across the world, can make us feel pretty rough. Even the bluish light from a mobile phone late at night is enough to disrupt and confuse our internal body clock. 虽然我们说太阳从东方升起，在西方落下，但这并不完全正确。在我们看来是这样的。太阳停留在原地。是地球绕着它的轴旋转。太阳的这种运动深深植根于我们的生物学中。当阳光进入眼睛时，它会向我们大脑中被称为视交叉上核的主时钟发送信号。这个生物钟调节着一切，从我们何时睡觉到我们如何消化一顿饭。当我们值夜班或在世界各地飞行时，摆弄这台微调过的机器会让我们感到很难受。即使是深夜手机发出的蓝光也足以扰乱和混淆我们体内的生物钟。 Being out of step with the Sun affects our mood and our ability to think clearly. And there's evidence that this kind of disruption can lead to higher rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and even cancer. We're living out of step with the Sun and some scientists say this could be causing a public health crisis. When the Sun is shining, studies have shown that we tip more generously and are more likely to splash out on luxury goods. And crime may go down, too. One study in the US found that when the clocks go forward for Daylight Savings Time, the number of robberies, rapes and murders went down around 50%. 与太阳轨迹脱节会影响我们的情绪和清晰思考的能力。有证据表明，这种干扰会导致肥胖、心脏病、糖尿病甚至癌症的发病率升高。我们的生活与太阳脱节，一些科学家说，这可能会导致公共健康危机。研究表明，当阳光明媚时，我们会更慷慨地给小费，更有可能在奢侈品上花钱。犯罪率也可能下降。美国的一项研究发现，当夏令时提前时，抢劫、强奸和谋杀的数量下降了约50%。 The Sun is a hell of a force to be reckoned with. Every hour, enough sunlight falls on the Earth to power the world for a year – a year. Deep in its core, at around 15 million degrees Celsius, the Sun is constantly fusing hydrogen together to make helium. These nuclear reactions release vast amounts of energy in the form of sunlight. If only we could work out how to harness this. But we are getting there. It's estimated that by 2022, 30% of our energy could come from renewables, with solar growing faster than anything else. 太阳是一股不可忽视的力量。每小时，落在地球上的阳光足够全世界使用一年--一年。太阳的核心深处，在大约 1500 万摄氏度的高温下，不断地将氢聚变成氦。这些核反应以太阳光的形式释放出大量能量。要是我们能研究出如何利用这些能量就好了。但我们正在努力。据估计，到 2022 年，我们 30% 的能源将来自可再生能源，其中太阳能的增长速度将超过其他任何能源。 The Sun is vast, dynamic and sometimes violent. Viewed up close, the Sun's surface looks like a raging sea of fire, with huge eruptions rising hundreds of thousands of kilometres into space. There are even earthquakes on the Sun – called sunquakes. And what happens on the Sun can impact us. The Sun sporadically blasts huge clouds of charged particles towards the Earth, potentially wreaking havoc on the technology that we all rely on. But 97% of people have never heard of solar storms. In 1859, a gigantic solar storm hit the Earth, creating auroras that covered the entire planet, knocking out the telegraph network and sending sparks flying from electrical equipment. The solar storm of 1859 is still the largest on record. But if a similar storm were to hit the Earth today, the consequences for our way of life could be devastating, knocking out electricity grids, satellite navigation and communications for days, weeks, or even months. No wonder people used to worship the sun. ✔更多内容见公众号【琐简英语】，回复“1”，可进入【打卡交流群】

England's hedges would go around Earth ten times The researchers say if you joined up all the hedgerows in England, they would stretch almost ten times around the Earth. Their map, which is based on laser scanning hedges from the air rather than scaling up information from field surveys, gives a more complete picture of the quality and quantity of hedgerows across the country. 研究人员们说，如果你把英格兰所有的树篱连起来，得到的长度可以绕地球近十圈。研究人员使用的地图是基于从空中对树篱进行激光扫描绘制而成的，不是靠扩大实地调查得到的信息制成的，因此更全面地反映了英格兰各地树篱的质量及数量。 The South West boasts the most hedges, led by Cornwall. Excluding big urban areas such as London and Merseyside, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire are the counties with the least. 英格兰西南部拥有的树篱数量最多，其中康沃尔郡排在首位。除去伦敦、默西塞德等大城市地区，萨里郡、汉普郡和伯克郡拥有的树篱数量最少。 The scientists hope their new data will help restore a vital habitat for wildlife that also stores large amounts of carbon. Thousands of miles of hedgerows have been lost since the 1950s to intensive farming and development. And the government has set ambitious new targets to reverse this decline. 科学家们希望新数据将有助于使树篱恢复生机，它不仅是野生动物的重要栖息地，还能吸收并储存大量的碳。自20世纪50年代以来，由于集约型农业和土地开发，数千英里的树篱已经消失不见。为了扭转树篱数量减少的趋势，英国政府已定下一系列重大的生态保护新目标。 词汇表 joined up 连起来，连接 hedgerows （尤指田间或路边的）树篱 laser scanning 激光扫描 scaling up （按比例）扩大 field surveys 野外调查，实地考察 boasts 拥有（值得自豪的事物） counties 郡 restore 修复，使恢复 reverse 扭转 ✔更多内容见公众号【琐简英语】，回复“1”，可进入【打卡交流群】

Is time travel possible? If you could time travel, would you visit the past or the future? You could find your ancestors, descendants, or experience life when dinosaurs roamed your back garden. It sounds otherworldly, but scientists have looked into whether time travel is actually possible. 如果你能进行时间旅行，你会去过去还是未来？你可以找到自己的祖先和后代，或者体验恐龙在你家后花园漫步时的生活。这听起来很不可思议，但科学家们已经研究过时间旅行是否真的可能。 Albert Einstein's theory of relativity revolutionised understanding of space, time, mass and gravity. The key element of this theory is that time and space are linked together, and time doesn't flow at a constant rate, meaning it speeds up or slows down, depending on where you are. For example, when you travel at high speeds, time decreases, which means, according to NASA, astronauts in space age more slowly than those on Earth! So, if you wanted to travel to the future, you would need to move close to the speed of light. Then, while centuries pass on Earth, you'd experience a relatively short amount of time and could hypothetically return home, where it would be the future! 阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦的相对论彻底改变了人们对空间、时间、质量和引力的理解。这个理论的关键要素是时间和空间是联系在一起的，时间不会以恒定的速度流动，这意味着它会加速或减速，这取决于你在哪里。例如，当你高速旅行时，时间会减少，这意味着，根据美国国家航空航天局的说法，太空中的宇航员比地球上的宇航员衰老得慢！因此，如果你想穿越到未来，你需要以接近光速的速度移动。这样，虽然地球上的时间已经过去了几个世纪，但你所经历的时间却相对较短，假设你可以返回家园，那里就是未来！ Travelling backwards in time seems much more difficult. Theoretically, one way of going back is via a wormhole. That means, if space and time can be folded like paper, we could create a tunnel – a shortcut between points in time. The problem is that there is no evidence that wormholes exist. "It's been shown mathematically that they can exist, but whether they exist physically is something else," says Emma Osborne, anastrophysicist at the University of York. Also, theories show that wormholes would be so small that a person definitely couldn't fit through one, and they would have such an intense gravitational field that they would collapse very quickly. 时光倒流似乎要困难得多。从理论上讲，回到过去的一种方法是通过虫洞。也就是说，如果空间和时间可以像纸一样折叠起来，我们就可以创造出一条隧道--一条时间点之间的捷径。问题是，没有证据表明虫洞存在。约克大学的天体物理学家艾玛·奥斯本说：“数学上已经证明它们可以存在，但物理上是否存在却是另一回事。另外，理论显示，虫洞会非常小，一个人肯定穿不过去，而且虫洞的引力场非常强，会很快坍塌。 For now, it seems we'll have to be content with science fiction and using telescopes to look back in time rather than travelling through it. 现在看来，我们只能满足于科幻小说，用望远镜回望过去，而不是穿越时空。 词汇表 ancestor 祖先 descendant 后代 otherworldly 超脱尘俗的，非现实世界的 theory of relativity 相对论 mass 质量 gravity 重力，引力 flow （时间）流动，流逝 speed up 加速 slow down 减速 age 变老 the speed of light 光速 century 一百年，世纪 wormhole 蠕虫洞 shortcut 捷径，近路 astrophysicist 天体物理学家 gravitational field 引力场 collapse 崩塌，坍塌 science fiction 科幻小说 telescope 望远镜 ✔更多内容见公众号【琐简英语】，回复“1”，可进入【打卡交流群】

US Elections｜ John Biden and Donald Trump The race for the White House is on. The US election is approaching and this time, it's a rematch. Adults in the United States will choose who they want to run their country in November. The current president Joe Biden, who's trying to stay in the job, or the guy who was president before him, Donald Trump. There are two main political parties in the US, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. 白宫争夺战一触即发。美国大选即将来临，这次是一场复赛。美国成年人将在 11 月选择他们希望谁来管理国家。是试图继续留任的现任总统乔·拜登，还是在他之前担任过总统的唐纳德·特朗普。美国有两大政党，民主党和共和党。 The Democrats' candidate is Joe Biden. He beat his Republican rival Donald Trump in the last election in 2020, becoming the 46th and current president of the United States. Joe Biden has a lot of political experience. He first became a senator more than 50 years ago in 1972, and was vice president of the United States for eight years before becoming president. 民主党的候选人是乔·拜登。在2020年的上一次选举中，他击败了共和党竞争对手唐纳德·特朗普，成为美国第46任也是现任总统。乔·拜登有很多政治经验。50多年前的1972年，他首次成为参议员，在成为总统之前，他曾担任美国副总统八年。 During his time in the job, he's had to deal with serious issues at home and around the world, including the cost of living crisis and conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. Mr Biden has faced questions over his age and suitability as president. At 81, he is the oldest person ever to have the job. Along with Donald Trump, who is 78, the pair are the oldest presidential candidates in US election history. 在他任职期间，他不得不处理国内和世界各地的严重问题，包括生活成本危机以及乌克兰和加沙的冲突。拜登面临着年龄和是否适合担任总统的质疑。81岁的他是有史以来担任该职位年龄最大的人。与78岁的唐纳德·特朗普一起，两人是美国大选历史上年龄最大的总统候选人。 Republican candidate Donald Trump is a politician, businessman, and former reality TV star. He was U.S. president between 2017 and 2021. His supporters point to his background in business and say his policies are good for the U.S. economy. But Mr Trump has faced a number of controversies throughout his time as president and in this presidential campaign. Earlier this year he was found guilty of trying to influence the 2016 election by paying a woman, who was not his wife, to stay quiet about their relationship. 共和党总统候选人唐纳德 · 特朗普是一位政治家、商人和前电视真人秀明星。他在2017年至2021年间担任美国总统。他的支持者指出他的商业背景，并说他的政策对美国经济有利。但是特朗普先生在他担任总统期间以及在这次总统竞选中都面临着许多争议。今年早些时候，他因试图影响2016年大选而被判有罪，因为他付钱给一个女人（不是他的妻子），让她隐瞒他们之间的关系。 ✔更多内容见公众号【琐简英语】，回复“1”，可进入【打卡交流群】

Culture Book review 文艺板块 书评 The enemy of the good The Perfection Trap. By Thomas Curran. 优秀之敌 完美的陷阱。作者：托马斯·柯伦 In Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Birth-Mark", a chemist called Aylmer marries a young woman, Georgiana, whose sole imperfection is a red blemish on her left cheek. He considers it a "fatal flaw"; she pleads with him to use his skills to remove it. Stumbling on his journal, however, Georgiana is astonished to find it is a catalogue of scientific mishaps. 在纳撒尼尔·霍桑的短篇小说《胎记》中，一位名叫艾尔默的化学家娶了一位名叫乔治亚娜的年轻女子为妻。她唯一的缺陷是左脸颊上的一个红色斑点。他认为这是一个“致命的缺陷”；她恳求他用他的化学技术把它去除。然而，乔治亚娜无意中发现了他的日记，惊讶地发现这是一本科学事故的目录。 Might his loathing of her birthmark stem from his professional disappointment? At length Aylmer concocts a potion that has the desired effect-and promptly kills her. Hawthorne's 180-year-old tale illustrates the perils of perfectionism. It is Thomas Curran's starting-point for a study of what he calls a "hidden epidemic". He thinks the obsessive pursuit of ever higher standards, rather than propelling achievement, is mainly a scourge. 他对她胎记的厌恶可能源于他对工作的失望吗？最后，艾尔默配制出了一种药水，达到了预期的（去斑）效果——但也迅速使她丧命。霍桑180年的故事说明了完美主义的危险。这是托马斯·柯伦研究他所谓的“隐性流行病”的起点。他认为，对更高标准的执着追求，与其说是成就的推动力，不如说是一种祸害。 A social psychologist at the London School of Economics, he describes himself as "a recovering perfectionist". Drawing on both academic research and his own experiences of "deficit thinking", he makes a vigorous case, albeit one occasionally marked by cliché (he sees his younger self as a "chin-stroking, cardigan-wearing intellectual"). 作为伦敦政治经济学院的社会心理学家，他（托马斯·柯伦）形容自己是“一个正在康复的完美主义者”。他利用学术研究和他自己的“赤字思维”经验，提出了一个有力的论据，尽管偶尔会带有陈词滥调的痕迹（他认为年轻的自己是一个“摸着下巴，穿着开衫的知识分子”）。 Mr Curran distinguishes between three sorts of perfectionism. The first, which looks inward, is the relentless self-scolding of the workaholic or punctilious student. A second version, directed towards others, is commonly found in bosses who have unrealistic expectations of their staff and decry their supposed failings (he cites Steve Jobs as an example). The third and most troublesome kind is the form imputed to society: "an all-encompassing belief that everybody, at all times, expects us to be perfect". Its victims tend to feel lonely; often they harm themselves and harbour thoughts of suicide. 柯伦将完美主义分为三种类型。第一种是向内看，是工作狂或一丝不苟的学生无休止的自我责备。第二种是针对他人的，通常出现在那些对员工抱有不切实际的期望，或谴责他们所谓的失败的老板身上（他以史蒂夫•乔布斯为例）。第三种，也是最麻烦的一种，是归咎于社会的形式:“一种无所不包的信念，认为每个人在任何时候都希望我们完美”。它的受害者往往感到孤独;他们经常伤害自己，并怀有自杀的念头。 Having noted the ways in which this pathology inflames vulnerabilities and erodes resilience, Mr Curran suggests some causes. These include a lack of job security, neurotic supervision by helicopter parents and the gaudy blandishments of advertising, which fuel consumption and anxiety. "The very fabric of this economy", he claims, "is woven from our discontent." Inevitably he blames social media, which inundate users with images of finely sculpted bodies, flawless outfits, ambrosial holidays and exquisite weddings. 在注意到这种病态想法会加剧脆弱性、侵蚀韧性后，柯伦提出了一些原因。这些因素包括缺乏工作保障，过度保护孩子的父母神经质的监督，以及广告的花言巧语，这些都助长了消费和焦虑。他声称:“这个经济体的结构是由我们的不满编织而成的。”他不可避免地把责任推给了社交媒体，因为社交媒体充斥着各种各样的照片，比如完美的身材、完美的服装、美妙的假期和精致的婚礼。 A less familiar culprit is Don Hamachek, an American psychologist, who in the 1970s coined the term "normal perfectionism", thereby legitimising morbid self-criticism, says Mr Curran. He even reproaches Barack Obama for enjoining young people to learn from their mistakes. Instead, he says, failures should be "allowed to simply wash through us as a joyous reminder of what it means to be a fallible human". 柯伦说，一个不太为人所知的问题起因是美国心理学家唐•哈马切克，他在20世纪70年代创造了“正常完美主义”一词，从而使病态的自我批评正当化。他甚至指责奥巴马嘱咐年轻人从错误中吸取教训。相反，他说，应该“允许失败冲刷我们的心灵，让我们欣喜地意识到，作为一个容易犯错的人意味着什么”。 The author's greatest odium, though, is directed at meritocracy. In this he draws on the thinking of Michael Sandel, a philosopher at Harvard. Especially in "The Tyranny of Merit" (published in 2020), Professor Sandel has argued that using education as a giant sorting machine creates a toxic obsession with credentials, dividing society into winners and losers and depleting the common good. Like other critics of meritocracy, Mr Curran has a point-until you consider the alternatives. Daily life, in his view, now resembles an endless tribunal. Young people suffer most from the constant scrutiny of scores and rankings. Decrying a fixation on economic growth, he applauds countries, such as Bhutan and New Zealand, where decision-makers take account of citizens' happiness. Mr Curran's preferred fix is a universal basic income, which he says would "extinguish the fire of perfectionism". Whatever its economic merits, his argument errs in treating perfectionism as a purely cultural phenomenon. Might it not also be a disposition embedded in the psyche? Tellingly, his guidance-"Keep going. Do not yield"; "Keep practising that acceptance of fortune and fate"-is couched in the language of the perfectionist's round-the-clock report card. 由于字数限制，部分翻译见公众号【琐简英语】，回复“1”，可进入【打卡交流群】

How is the wet weather impacting farming? Hi Newsround, I'm Matthew. And I'm Betty. This is our farm. We're going to show you around. This is the orchard, this is where we keep our pregnant cows. This cow is Pickle and we're going to be moving her over the lane into another field to get some fresh grass. Come on! In you go Pickles! 嗨，Newsround，我是马修。我是贝蒂。这是我们的农场。我们将带你四处看看。这是果园，这是我们养怀孕奶牛的地方。这头牛叫泡菜，我们要把它从小路移到另一块地里去获取新鲜的草。来吧！泡菜来了! After really wet weather all of this just goes completely soggy and then when it dries up again it's all this this mush. If I put my foot in that that's really squishy mud. And you can get your foot stuck. Yeah, you can get your foot stuck really easily. This mud, it makes getting cows into fields rather difficult because they can't get their udders dirty. If they get their udders dirty, that means we can lead to infection. 在非常潮湿的天气后，所有这些都变得完全湿透，然后当它再次变干时，就变成了这种软块。如果我把脚放进去，那真是软绵绵的泥。你的脚会被卡住。是的，你很容易被卡住。这种泥巴让奶牛很难下地，因为它们不能弄脏自己的乳房。如果它们把乳房弄脏了，那就意味着我们会导致感染。 Between October last year and March this year, the UK had the second wettest winter on record. One of the main reasons for more rain is climate change. New research has found that human-made climate change has made downpours 20% wetter, and it's having a big impact on farming in the UK. 从去年 10 月到今年 3 月，英国经历了有记录以来第二个最潮湿的冬天。雨水增多的主要原因之一是气候变化。新的研究发现，人为的气候变化使降雨量增加了 20%，这对英国的农业产生了很大影响。 It's impacting the cows because it means that they would have less grass. It also means that we have to spend more money on feeding them and putting food out. And when they do get to go outside with wet grass, it's less nutritious. This is the wheat field. As you can see, it should be like this well if anything more than this and this is what it is now. Because of the wet weather, it's all gone. When it rains, the water suffocates the plants and drags all of the nutrients away. If we can't grow anything then we can't make money and we can't sell our crop onto someone else so that they can turn it into flour to make Bread, biscuits, crackers, anything that requires wheat flour. 这会影响奶牛，因为这意味着它们的草会更少。这也意味着我们必须花更多的钱来喂养它们和提供食物。当它们真的到外面去时，草是湿的，营养就不那么丰富了。这是麦田。正如你所看到的，它本应是这样的，如果有什么比这更好的话，但这是它现在的样子。由于潮湿的天气，养分都流失了。 下雨时，水会使植物窒息，并带走所有养分。如果我们什么都种不出来，就无法赚钱，也无法把我们的作物卖给别人，让他们把作物变成面粉，用来做面包、饼干、薄脆饼干等任何需要小麦粉的东西。 As Matthew says, if these crops are affected, it will impact the food we eat. The National Farming Union say this could lead to some foods becoming harder to get or more expensive to buy in the shops. 正如马修所说，如果这些作物受到影响，就会影响我们吃的食物。全国农业联盟说，这可能导致一些食品变得更难以获得或以更昂贵的商店售卖。 ✔更多内容见公众号【琐简英语】，回复“1”，可进入【打卡交流群】