China is a land of bicycles. At least it was back in 1992 when I traveled the country. Back then everyone seemed to be riding a bicycle. Millions of them, all black. Cars were rare. Yet since my arrival in Beijing last year, I've found the opposite is true. There are millions of cars. However, people still use their bicycles to get around. For many, it's the easiest and cheapest way to travel today. Bicycles also come in different colors — silver, green, red, blue, yellow, whatever you want.

    It's fun watching people biking. They rush quickly through crossroads, move skillfully through traffic, and ride even on sidewalks. Bicycles allow people the freedom to move about that cars just can't provide.

    Eager to be part of this aspect of Chinese culture, I decided to buy a bicycle. Great weather accompanied my great buy. I immediately jumped up on my bicycle seat and started home.

    My first ride home was orderly (守秩序的). To be safe, I stayed with a “pack” of bikers while cars on the streets came running swiftly out of nowhere at times. I didn't want to get hit. So I took the ride carefully.

    Crossing the streets was the biggest problem. It was a lot like crossing a major highway back in the United States. The streets here were wide, so crossing took time, skill and a little bit of luck.

    I finally made it home. The feeling on the bicycle was amazing. The air hitting my face and going through my hair was wonderful. I was sitting on top of the world as I passed by places and people. Biking made me feel alive.

    The medical world is gradually realizing that the quality of the environment in hospital may play an important role in helping patients to get better.

    As part of a nationwide effort in Britain to bring art out of the museums and into public places, some of the country's best artists have been called in to change older hospitals and to soften the hard edges of modern buildings. Of the 2500 national health service hospitals in Britain, almost 100 now have very valuable collections of present art in passages, waiting areas and treatment rooms.

    These recent movements first started by one artist, Peter Senior, who set up his studio at a Manchester hospital on northeastern England during the early 1970s. He felt the artist had lost his place in modern society, and that art should be enjoyed by a wider audience.

    A common hospital waiting room might have as many as 5,000 visitors each week. What a better place to hold regular exhibitions of art! Senior held the first exhibition of his own paintings in the outpatients waiting area of the Manchester Royal Hospital in 1975. Believed to be Britain's first hospital artist, Senior was so much in demand that he was soon joined by a team of six young art school graduates.

    The effect is striking. Now in the passages and waiting rooms the visitor experiences a full view of fresh colours, playful images and restful courtyards.

    The quality of the environment may reduce the need for expensive drugs when a patient is recovering from an illness. A study has shown that patients who had a view onto garden needed half the number of strong pain killers compared with patients who had no view at all or only a brick wall to look at.

    Carlos had been in New York for five months now, and he detested it. He would never forget the day when the plane landed. His parents had big smiles on their faces as they discussed the wonderful new life they would have in this great city. His older sister and brother looked in wonder and excitement at the buildings. Uncle Miguel and Aunt Esperanza thought of the good jobs they would get. Grandmother and Grandfather told him what a lucky boy he was to come to this wonderful city. But Carlos was lonely. The city looked big, cold, and dirty to him.

    They lived in an apartment in Manhattan. There were stores and cinemas close to their home. But Carlos didn't want these things. He loved his home in the country in Puerto Rico; he loved the green fields, the hot sun, and the lovely beaches.

    He didn't want to go to school because it made him think of his friends at home. And he didn't want to learn a new language that could never describe the world as beautifully as his own.

    He began to go down to the dock(码头), because this made him feel closer to Puerto Rico. He sat down and watched the ships. He would often find a man also sitting there looking at the sea. The man was Eric-a taxi driver who came there to escape from the noisy traffic.

    Eric noticed the young boy and felt his sadness. One day he said, “Yes, it's hard to leave your homeland. I remember when I left Norway 15 years ago. I know it's hard to start a new life in a new country, but let's face it. I did it and you can do it, too.”

    From then on the taxi driver and the young boy began to develop a deep friendship.

    Scientists have recreated a 1985 study of birds in Peru that shows climate change is pushing them from their natural environment. Thirty years ago, researchers studied over 400 kinds of birds living on a mountainside in Peru. In 2017, researchers looked again at the bird populations. They found that almost all had moved to higher places in the mountain. Almost all had decreased in size. And, the scientists say at least eight bird groups that started at the higher elevations (高地) had died out completely.

    The researchers say the birds might have moved up the mountain because of temperature changes. Or changes to food sources may have forced them to go higher. The findings were published in a science journal. The 1985 research has documented birds and other animals moving up in elevation (高地) in reaction to warming temperatures. Mark Urban, a biologist at a university, said this recent study was the first to prove that rising temperatures and moving to avoid them can lead to extinction.

    In 2016, Fitzpatrick, director and a co-writer of the study passed his notes, photos and other records to Benjamin Freeman. Freeman has been researching tropical birds for more than 10 years. He set out in August and September of 2017 to copy Fitzpatrick's study. His team used the same methods, searching the same places in the same time of year.

    Freeman's team wanted to see how things had changed for the bird groups since 1985. The average temperatures on the mountain had risen 0.42 degrees Celsius. His team placed 20 sound recording devices on the mountain to record the sounds of birds that might not easily be seen.

    Freeman said that the birds moved an average of 98 meters further up the mountain. He believes that temperature is the main cause of the birds' movement. Fitzpatrick noted that birds used to living in areas with little temperature change may be especially at risk because of climate change. He said, “We should expect that what's happening on this mountain top is happening more generally in the Andes, and other tropical mountain ranges.”

    Known for its historic stone paths and traffic-jammed streets, France forgoes（放弃）traditional bricks and pavement for shiny solar panels（嵌板）with its new roadway project. French officials announced plans to construct a 1,000-kilometer-long solar roadway, with each kilometer capable of providing enough cheap, renewable energy to power 5,000 homes.

    “The maximum effect of the program, if successful, could be to furnish 5 million people with electricity, or about 8 percent of the French population,” Segolence Royal, France's minister of ecology and energy, said at a conference, reports Global Construction Review.

The street — or “Wattway”—was made possible through the cooperation between the National Institute of Solar Energy and French civil engineering firm Colas. Tests for the road will begin in the spring. The entire project will take an estimated five years to complete, but builders won't have to destroy existing roads in the meantime. Only about a quarter of an inch thick, the solar panels can simply be glued on top of existing streets and are durable（耐用的）enough to bear heavy traffic and weather conditions.

    Despite the bad traffic Parisians associate with their journey to work every day, the average French roadway is packed for only 10 percent of the day, according to Colas' figures. That will leave the solar street with the majority of the day to gather energy from the sun, which makes the project quite promising. The panels collect solar power through a thin layer of polycrystalline silicon（多晶硅）and change it into electricity. Electrical connections can be put into existing traffic structures.

    France won't be the first country to roll out a solar road. A 70-meter solar bike path was set up in the Netherlands in 2014. Within six months, the path had created enough to power a house for an entire year.

    Nine years ago, a few days before Christmas, I was a director at a company in San Francisco, and I was called into a meeting that was already in progress. That meeting turned out to be my exit interview. I was 64 years old at the time. It wasn't completely unexpected. I signed a pile of papers and left the company.

    So, 40 plus years of employment was over. I had a good reputation and background. Retirement was not a choice for me. I wanted to do something. And then an idea came into my mind, born from my concern for our environment. I wanted to build my own business, designing and producing biodegradable(可生物降解的)packaging from waste. This is called clean technology, and it was really meaningful to me. It could help reduce billions of pounds of single-use plastic packaging wasted each year.

    Five years later, I'm delighted and proud to share with you that our income has doubled every year and we have no debt. Meanwhile, I have a wonderful partner, and we've won more than 20 awards for the work that we've done.

    And I am doing the most rewarding and meaningful work of my life right now. But what I really long for is to find other first-time entrepreneurs(企业家)who are my age. I want to connect with them.

    So I want to do something about that in a few years. I want us to start talking more about people who don't become entrepreneurs until they are seniors. And then connecting all of them across industries, regions and countries—building a community.