Travelling around the world with children is difficult enough, while attempting it without using motorized transport is even more of challenge．Even so, Dario Schworer a 42-year-old climatologist and mountain guide, and his 33-year-old wife Sabine are on a journey to do just that．

    The Swiss couple want to travel across the world's oceans and climb the highest mountain on every continent to promote Earth-friendly ways of life．

    "We are collecting good examples of dealing with climate change and living in harmony with nature and we want to spread such ideas．" Schworer said．"We want to help people affected by global warming and to inspire children for the future．"

    Recently after having spent three months teaching children in the Everest region, the couple want to show it is possible to travel through the world's climate zones using just human-power and forces of nature．

    In the 47 countries they have visited they have collected 22 tons of trash, taught people in Ecuador how the sun's rays can be used to clean water and inspired a person in Chile to build a house on water with recycled plastic bottles as a foundation．They have also collected trash in the mountains of Nepal with school children．

    So far they have communicated with 45,000 children from South America, Australia and Asia, giving presentations about the importance of recycling and using alternative energy like solar and wind power．

    When they began their adventure in 2003 they had no children of their own．But since then two has become five: daughter Sabine is now five years old, Andri was born in Chile and baby Neo was born in Australia．

    Initially the couple thought they would complete their travels in four years, but now, they believe it could take seven more．

    "Since our belief is the need to respect nature, we travel only when conditions are good," Schworer said．

C

Plastic-Eating Worms

    Humans produce more than 300 million tons of plastic every year. Almost half of that winds up in landfills(垃圾填埋场), and up to 12 million tons pollute the oceans. So far there is no effective way to get rid of it, but a new study suggests an answer may lie in the stomachs of some hungry worms.

    Researchers in Spain and England recently found that the worms of the greater wax moth can break down polyethylene, which accounts for 40% of plastics. The team left 100 wax worms on a commercial polyethylene shopping bag for 12 hours, and the worms consumed and broke down about 92 milligrams, or almost 3% of it. To confirm that the worms' chewing alone was not responsible for the polyethylene breakdown, the researchers made some worms into paste(糊状物) and applied it to plastic films. 14 hours later the films had lost 13% of their mass — apparently broken down by enzymes (酶) from the worms' stomachs. Their findings were published in Current Biology in 2017.

    Federica Bertocchini, co-author of the study, says the worms' ability to break down their everyday food — beeswax — also allows them to break down plastic. ＂Wax is a complex mixture, but the basic bond in polyethylene, the carbon-carbon bond, is there as well, ＂she explains, ＂The wax worm evolved a method or system to break this bond. ＂

    Jennifer DeBruyn, a microbiologist at the University of Tennessee, who was not involved in the study, says it is not surprising that such worms can break down polyethylene. But compared with previous studies, she finds the speed of breaking down in this one exciting. The next step, DeBruyn says, will be to identify the cause of the breakdown. Is it an enzyme produced by the worm itself or by its gut microbes(肠道微生物)?

    Bertocchini agrees and hopes her team's findings might one day help employ the enzyme to break down plastics in landfills. But she expects using the chemical in some kind of industrial process — not simply ＂millions of worms thrown on top of the plastic.＂

    The China National Opera (CNO) will give a concert to celebrate its 50th birthday.

    Different generations of CNO vocalists, like Li Guangxi, Yao Hong and Ma Mei, will present the concert which will feature both songs from famous Chinese operas like "The White-haired Girl" and "The Hundredth Bride", as well as, arias of such Western opera classics as" Madame Butterfly", " La Traviata" and "Rigoletto".

    Time/ date: 7:30 p.m., September 7th, 8th

    Location: Tianqiao Theatre

    Tel: 6551-4787, 8315-6170

    Tickets: 60-500 yuan (U.S. $7.2- 60.2)

    Folk music

    A concert will be held to feature some recently composed traditional Chinese music works. The concert, given by the Folk Orchestra of the China Opera and Ballet Theatre, will include such pieces as "Memory of Childhood", "Memorial Ceremony for God" and "Wine Song".

    Time/date: 7:30 p.m., September 13th

    Location: Concert hall at the National Library of China

    Tel: 6848 -5462, 6841-9220

    Tickets: 30-200 yuan (U.S. $3.6-24.1)

    Moon music

    A concert of traditional Chinese music will be given on the eve of the Moon Festival which falls on September 21st this year. The concert will feature a number of famous pieces centred on the theme of the moon, such as "Moonlight", "Spring night on a Moonlit River" and "Lofty Mountain and Flowing River."

    A number of established traditional Chinese music performers like Zhou Yaokun and Fan Weiqing, will play solos as well as collaborate with the folk music orchestra.

    Time / date: 7:30 p.m., September 21st

    Location: Grand Theatre of the Cultural Palace of Nationalities

    Tel: 6606-8888, 6606-9999

    Tickets: 40-240 yuan (U.S. $4.8-27)

    You can tell a lot about a country by what's on its television sets. Britain's TV screens are completely steeped in class, and have long been so.

    From laughing at poor people in reality shows to laughing at posh people in Downton Abbey, this is how Britain likes to unwind in the evening: by laughing at other classes, and laughing at people for laughing about class.

    Like it or loathe it, many see the class system as a quite essential element of British life, together with our obsession for tea and cake and talking about the weather.

    Whether you are a lord, a lady, or just the king of your own middle class kingdom, everyone in the UK fits into the class system. How the class system works is a hard question even for a British person to answer.

    There are four main groups in the British class system: lower, working, middle and upper class. Although recently the BBC has tried to confuse everyone even more by adding three more categories.

    The British are very aware of class; it is often said that we have an in-built 'class radar'; we pick up on subtle social clues which indicate which class a person comes from. Class is not just about your job, where you live and how much you earn. It's about who you are.

    Some colors people see late at night could cause signs of clinical (临床的) depression. That was the finding of a study that builds on earlier study findings. They show that individuals who live or work in low levels of light overnight can develop clinical depression. Doctors use the word "clinical depression" to describe severe form of depression. Signs may include loss of interest or pleasure in most activities, low energy levels and thoughts of death or suicide.

    In the new study American investigators designed an experiment that exposed hamsters (仓鼠) to different colors. The researchers chose hamsters because they are nocturnal which means they sleep during the day and are active at night.

    The animals were divided into four groups. One group of hamsters was kept in the dark during their night-time period. Another group was placed in front of a blue light a third group slept in front of a white light while a fourth was put in front of a red light.

    After four weeks the researchers noted how much sugary water the hamsters drank. They found that the most depressed animals drank the least amount of water.

    Randy Nelson heads the Department of Neuroscience at Ohio State University. He says animals that slept in blue and white light appeared to be the most depressed. "What we saw is that these animals didn't show any sleep uneasiness at all but they did mess up biological clock genes and they did show depressive sign while if they were in the dim (微弱) red light they did not."

    He notes that photosensitive (感光) cells in the eyes have little to do with eyesight. He says these cells send signals to the area of the brain that controls what has been called the natural sleep-wake cycle.

    He says there's a lot of blue in white light. This explains why the blue light and white light hamsters appear to be more depressed than the hamsters seeing red light or darkness.

THE 2024 OXFORD POETRY PRIZE

Oxford Poetry hosts the annual Oxford Poetry Prize, awarded for a single poem in the English language. The 2024 Prize opens on I May 2024. The guest judge is Rachel Long. The winner of the Oxford Poetry Prize receives £1,000, the runner-up £200, and third place £100. All cash prizes will be paid out in full no later than 90 days after the public announcement of the judge's decision. The winning poets are also offered publication in Oxford Poetry.

About the 2024 guest judge

Rachel Long's debut collection, My Darling from the Lions(Picador, 2020/Tin House, 2021), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Costa Book Award, The Rathbones Folio Prize, and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. The US edition featured in the New York Times Book Review and was named one of the 100 must-read books of 2021 by TIME.

Submission guidelines

*Each poem must consist of no more than 50 lines. Blank lines, titles, subtitles, and dedications (献词) are not counted as lines.

*The Competition is open to writers living anywhere in the world.

*Poems submitted to the Oxford Poetry Prize must not have been previously published elsewhere, whether in print or online(including but not limited to blogs, websites, and social media).

Terms and conditions.

*The competition is open to anyone age 18 or over on the date of their submission. Submission of a poem to the Oxford Poetry Prize constitutes the entrant's (参赛者的) acceptance of these terms and conditions. Entries that do not obey these terms and conditions will be disqualified from the competition.

*Entries are welcome from 1 May 2024. The deadline for submitting entries is midnight UTC (国际协调时间) on 31 August 2024. Works received after that date will not be considered.