HandEnergy is an ingenious apple-sized device that charges your phone anytime, anywhere. But what really makes this thing special is the fact that it uses your own personal energy to do it.

    In a time where power-banks and solar-power devices have become mainstream, a device that lets you charge gadgets on the go doesn't sound very special. But while power-banks have to be charged the old fashioned way, and solar panels need the sun to store energy.

    Hand Energy just needs a hand. To get this little guy to produce energy, which it then stores in built-in batteries, all you have to do is hold it in your hand and rotate your wrists.

    To use Hand Energy, users start by winding a starter ring. This transmits a signal to activate the rotor, at which point they can start rotating their wrists to keep the rotor spinning. It might sound hard to believe, but the rotor inside Hand Energy spins at an average speed of 5,000 rotations per minute, transmitting mechanical power to create an electric current, and charging the built-in batteries. To charge a device, all you have to do is hook it up to HandEnergy using a USB cable.

    Hand Energy was successfully crowd funded on Kickstarter, raising over $71,000 in one month, and will be available for the masses in May 2017, at a price of 99 euros. One thing is for sure – it beats paying thousands of dollars on a solar-powered gadget-charging coat.

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    As cultural symbols go, the American car is quite young. The Model T Ford was built at the Piquette Plant in Michigan a century ago, with the first rolling off the assembly line（装配线） on September 27, 1908. Only eleven cars were produced the next month. But eventually Henry Ford would build fifteen million of them.

    Modern America was born on the road, behind a wheel. The car shaped some of the most lasting aspects of American culture: the roadside diner, the billboard, the motel, even the hamburger. For most of the last century, the car represented what it meant to be American—going forward at high speed to find new worlds. The road novel, the road movie, these are the most typical American ideas, born of abundant petrol, cheap cars and a never-ending interstate highway system, the largest public works project in history.

    In 1928 Herbert Hoover imagined an America with "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." Since then, this society has moved onward, never looking back, as the car transformed America from a farm-based society into an industrial power.

    The cars that drove the American Dream have helped to create a global ecological disaster. In America the demand for oil has grown by 22 percent since 1990.

    The problems of excessive（过度的）energy consumption, climate change and population growth have been described in a book by the American writer Thomas L. Friedman. He fears the worst, but hopes for the best.

    Friedman points out that the green economy（经济）is a chance to keep American strength. "The ability to design, build and export green technologies for producing clean water, clean air and healthy and abundant food is going to be the currency of power in the new century."

    According to a new US study, couples who expect their children to help care for them in old age should hope they have daughters because they are likely to be twice as attentive overall.

    The research by Angelina Grigoryeva, a sociologist at Princeton University, found that, while women provide as much care for their elderly parents as they can manage, men do as little as they can get away with and often leave it to female family members.

    Using data from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study, a study which has been tracking a cross-section of over-50s for the last decade, she calculated that women provide an average of 12.3 hours a month of care for elderly parents while men offer only 5.6 hours.

    “Whereas the amount of elderly parent care daughters provide is associated with limitations they face, such as employment or childcare, sons' caregiving is associated only with the presence or absence of other helpers, such as sisters or a parent's spouse(配偶),” she explained.

    “Sons reduce their relative caregiving efforts when they have a sister, while daughters increase theirs when they have a brother.”

    “This suggests that sons pass on parent caregiving responsibilities to their sisters.”

    In the UK, the 2011 census(人口普查) showed that there are now around 6.5 million people with caring responsibilities – a figure which has risen by a tenth in a decade.

    But many are doing so at the risk of their own health. The census showed that those who provide 50 hours or more of care a week while trying to hold down a full- time job are three times more likely to be struggling with ill health than their working counterparts(相对应的人) who are not careers.

    We're often reminded of the importance of preserving the planet as we see it for future generations—and children at St Oswald's Primary School in Chester certainly agree.

    Nine-year-old Isobel Kelleher from the school's Hummingbirds class thinks adults need to take note. “Sometimes they can be busy and I don't think they think they can make a difference，but if everyone does a little bit it all adds up，” she tells HuffPost UK.“ We started looking at plastic pollution in our oceans and the things like plastic bags and broken down pieces of plastic that are polluting them.” she says.“ Fish can eat the plastic and they can die，or we might even eat the fish ourselves.”

    Mr Timms，Isobel's teacher，has been spearheading a new project at the school which lets children loose creatively to raise awareness of the need to be more environmentally friendly. The entire Hummingbirds class，which is made up of 9 and 10-year-old pupils，has been busy writing poems and creating online video adverts to warn adults about the serious situation of our oceans and wildlife.

    Mr Timms thinks children have an important role to play in teaching us how to take care of the things around us. We sometimes overlook how much we can really learn from children.” he says.“ It has been really hard to believe having parents come in saying that their children have been asking them to stop using plastic，and to recycle more，and even stopping them using plastic straws.”

    Mr Timms is proud of his Hummingbirds class.“ The message that they would like to send to the world is simple stopping this isn't someone else's job，and it won't be OK if we just leave it.”

    A new Magic Bench designed by Disney Research lets you interact (互动) with lovely animated (动画的) character—and no special glasses or earphones are required. Instead, the complete environment-the seat, the sitter and the cartoon characters-is mirrored on a screen opposite the bench making it possible for others to watch the scene unfold.

    How does the illusion work? A camera and sensor catch images and gather depth information about physical objects the bench and the person. And then computer translates them into the 3D animations. Meanwhile sensors of touch built into the bench deliver shaking that is happening at the same time and speed to animated actions on the screen, creating the illusion that the animated figures are occupying real-world space next to the user.

    "Our goal for this project was: hear a character coming, see them enter the space, and feel them sit next to you," said Moshe Mahler, principal digital artist at Disney Research. Unlike the traditional mobile technology, one of whose limitations is that only a single user can see its illusion, the Magic Bench allows groups of people to gather in a single environment and collectively participate in an augmented—reality (扩充实境) experience, all at the same time.

    In a video show, a small cartoon donkey runs into view and kicks the bench, causing sharp sound and making the seated person jump in surprise. Another test shows two people on the bench, reacting as they feel an animated rabbit skip up beside them and jump up and down. When a user passes his hand over the rabbit, a shadow moves across its head, as though it were occupying the same physical space as the person next to it.

The outbreak of locusts, an insect that mainly lives in Africa and Asia, is the worst experienced by Kenya in 70 years. The crowds are some three times the size of New York City, eating their way through thousands of acres of crops and animal grassland and destroying livelihoods in the process.

"These hungry things are alarming," says Keith Cressman, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's senior locust forecasting officer. "A crowd the size of Manhattan can, in a single day, eat the same amount of food as everyone in New York and California combined."

Desert locusts are infamous for their ability to breed(繁育)rapidly in large numbers every three months. And with some help from the wind, they can travel as much as 80 miles a day. Most years, the insects stay in African deserts. However, under the right environmental conditions, they can multiply quickly, spread as much as 400 times every six months and cause extensive destruction if left unchecked.

"The insect has the ability to take advantage of good conditions." Cressman says.

The "good conditions" the scientist is referring to began in mid-2018 when a rainstorm from the Indian Ocean struck a remote area of the Arabian Peninsula known as the "Empty Quarter". Normally, it would dry out within a short period, killing most of the locust population, which depends on green plants for food. However, in late 2018, a second rainstorm struck the same region. The huge sandy area got wet, which is exactly what desert locusts need to lay their eggs and breed. The extra food supply caused the population to explode for the second time in six months.

Luckily, the locusts, experts say, are easy to control with chemicals. Kenya badly needs equipment and a steady supply of chemicals to effectively wipe out the massive insects. Hopefully, leaders worldwide will recognize the tough situation and contribute generously to control the locust outbreak.