Scientists have always believed that snails are not able to find their way home. But Briton Ruth Brooks, a retired teacher, has found that it is not true.

    Brooks began an experiment on snails after she got mad with the snails in her garden.

    The snails had eaten her vegetables. She didn't want to kill them, so she took them to another place. But she found they always seemed to come back.

    Brooks did an experiment. She marked the snails in her garden with nail polish(指甲油).

    She placed the snails in the area around her home and made notes of their movements.

    She found that snails have a strong homing instinct (本能); the longest returning snail traveled back 90 meters. Brooks has been named Britain's best amateur (业余的) scientist after her work won the BBC Radio 4 project, So You Want To Be A Scientist.

    She said, "I've always wanted to know whether the snails that eat my plants just come back when I move them, and if they do, what is their homing distance?

    "I would say on the evidence (证据) that it would be safe to take your snails away beyond 100m or even further. If you put them somewhere nice with some food, you can be almost certain that they won't come back."

    It is reported that some developed countries have shipped broken parts of computers to China. Such a thing can be found almost every day although it is against international laws. Hong Kong officers once found 131, 000 kilograms of broken computers, TVs and phones sent from Japan.

    Things like these are called electronic waste or e-waste. Dealing with e-waste is not an easy job because dangerous poisons like mercury(汞)and lead(铅)can be found in e-waste. Every time an old computer breaks down, it needs to be dealt with safely. But at present, broken computer parts are usually buried. It may be hundreds of years before they are really gone in the earth.

    Many places in China are polluted by e-waste. Guiyu in Guangdong Province is one of them. This town is named as" the e-waste capital of the world”. It has to deal with 1. 5 million kilograms of e-waste each year, from which it makes 75 million yuan. But it comes at a cost. Many of the poisons in e-waste find their way into the environment. Plastic is burned outdoors and chemical water is poured into rivers. An environmental group has found the air, the earth and the rivers in Guiyu badly polluted.

    The Chinese government wants to develop, but in a way that doesn't do harm to the environment and people's life. China passed a new environmental protection law in 2015, the strictest one we have ever ha   D. Computer companies like Lenovo and Dell will be asked to take back their old computers. This is because the companies that make computers know how to deal with them safely. Hopefully, the problem with e-waste will be solved in the near future.

    "Without music, life would be a mistake, "famous German philosopher(哲学家)Friedrich Nietzsche said over a century ago. Music is a big part of our lives. But in recent years, some American schools have cut music classes to control budgets(预算).

    For example, Chicago public schools hurt arts education when it fired over 1, 000 teachers. Among them, 10 percent of the teachers taught art or music, according to The Washington Times. In fact, this is not just a problem in the US. In other countries, such as China and the UK, music classes are not thought to be as important as ones like science, math and history. That's partly because music is not seen as a very important life skill, and it isn't tested. Many students are busy with schoolwork, so parents and students choose to focus on subjects that are tested more often.

    However, learning music is beneficial(有益的)in many ways.

    When playing music, you need different abilities to work together. It is not as simple as it looks, according to Kenneth K. Guilmartin of Music Together, an early childhood music development program. For example, when playing the piano, people see music notes and decode(解码)them in their brains. They also use their fingers to make sounds. You need to deal with all these things at the same time.

    Music has a special connection with science as well. You can see that many scientists are good at playing music：Einstein played the violin and German physicist Max Planck was talented in playing the piano.

    Cars make our lives more convenient. But they can also be a problem. For example, fossil fuel(化石燃料) cars mainly cause air pollution.

    To improve the environment, many countries are developing electric vehicles(EVs，电动车). Among them, China is taking a leading role and has created the world's largest EV market.

    Last year, over 40 percent of the 753，000 EVs sold in the world were sold in China, more than twice as large as the number sold in the United States.

    "Filling up a fossil fuel car with gas(汽油) is more expensive than charging(充电) an electric car, " said Wu Hao, who bought an electric car this year.

    However, there are still some problems. It can be hard to find charging piles(充电桩) and the cars can't go far before needing to be recharged.

    Some of these problems are being solved. In 2014, China had 31，000 charging piles. Now China has the world's largest EV charging network, with more than 167，000 charging piles in total.

    Developing EVs is one of many efforts that China has made to cut down pressure on its environment after the government promised to stop increases in carbon dioxide emissions(二氧化碳排放量) by 2030.

    "As China goes, so will the world's car industry，" the Wall Street Journal said. China has taken a leading role in the world's electric vehicle industry.