Skateboarding is an action sport which includes riding and performing tricks using a skateboard, as well as an activity for fun, an art form, an entertainment industry job, and a method of transportation. In 2016, it was announced that skateboarding will be represented at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.

    There are various theories about the origins of Skateboarding, but it is generally held that the sport began in the 1940s on the west coast of the USA when metal wheels were attached to a narrow wooden board. In the 1950s, plastic replaced metal as the material of choice for the wheels, and the first "Roller Surfboard" become commercially available, which in turn developed into the skateboard that we know today. The sport was a big hit with the younger generation and grew in global popularity in the 1980s and 1990s. Since the late 1990s, skateboarding has become an important part of street culture.

    However, skateboarding has raised heated discussions in areas where the activity, although legal (合法的), has damaged stone works, steps, benches, and parks. Certain cities oppose the building of skate parks in their neighborhoods, for fear of increased crime (犯罪) and drugs in the area. The disagreement between the old image of skateboarding and a newer one is quite obvious: magazines such as Thrasher describe skateboarding as dirty, and still firmly tied to punk (朋克), while other publications, Transworld Skateboarding as an example, paint a more different and controlled picture of skateboarding. As more professional skaters use hip hop, or hard rock music in their videos, many urban youths, hip-hop fans and hard rock fans are also drawn to skateboarding, weakening the sport's punk image. Besides, group spirit influences the members of this community. In presentations of skateboarding, the evidence of crime is absent, and no attempt is made to tie extreme sports to any kind of illegal activity.

    The good news is that efforts have been made to improve recognition of the cultural heritage as well as positive effects of skateboarding in cities. By raising £790,000, the Long Live Southbank initiative managed to stop the destruction of a forty years old spot in London due to urban planning, a rescuing operation whose effect extends beyond skateboarding. The presence of skateboarders on this public space keeps the area under nearly constant watch and drives homeless people away, increasing the feeling of safety in the area. The activity attracts artists such as photographers and film makers, as well as a significant number of tourists, which in turn drives economic activity in the neighborhood.

    Full House was an American television show from the 1980s to the 1990s. It was among the most popular TV shows of its time. The show followed a single father who asks his friends to help him raise his three young girls. The last episode (集）of Full House aired in May 1995.

    But on Friday, the No 1 trending topic on Twitter in the U.S. was Fuller House. The new show is the long-awaited sequel (续集）series that follows the now-adult characters from Full House. The streaming service Netflix released 13 episodes of the new series at midnight Friday.

    Fuller House trended throughout the night and into Friday morning on Twitter and Facebook. The actors on the show were among :he :op 10 U.S. Google searches, as well Longtime fans of Full House admitted that they stayed up all night to watch the entire season.

    Excited fans tweeted about having waited more than 20 years for the sequel. But some viewers were not impressed with Fuller House. And television critic Hank Steuver of The Washington Post called the show, “a retread' He says the show is not some golden treasure* of family-friendly programming.

    Although most of the main characters from the original Full House have returned for Fuller House, the show's youngest character, Michelle Tanner, refused. Michelle was played by twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. The Olsens are now active in the fashion world. One episode of Fuller House even joked about their absence. One of her sisters on the show asks where Michelle is. Her father, Danny Tanner, responds: “Oh, she's busy in New York running her fashion empire.”

    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.

    Three important changes that will affect people's everyday life in the future.

    The cashless society

    Cash and bank notes will disappear almost completely. They will be replaced by smart cards with microchip (微芯片) "loaded" with some money. When we pay for goods, we will put our smart cards into a payment terminal (终端) and money will be transferred (转) from our cards to the retailer's (零售商的) card. When all the money is used up, we will be able to "reload" it by inserting it into a telephone, dialing our bank account and putting money to the card from the account. If we want to transfer money from our cards to a bank account, we will use the same method. Smart cards will be able to hold several different currencies at the same time. So if we go abroad, we will be able to use our smart cards in the same way.

    Interactive telephones

    Human telephones will be replaced by talking computers. These computers will recognize speech, ask us what information we need, find the information and change it to speech. If we want to book a flight or pay a bill by phone, we will ask a talking computer to do it. Of course, this won't happen until all the technology is in place, but when it is we will soon get used to using computers in this way.

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    Traffic congestion (拥挤) in cities will be reduced because drivers will use electronic maps to find the quickest way to their destinations and avoid traffic jams. Because people have to pay to drive in cities, they will stop using their cars and use public transport instead. Speed control systems will be built into cars. These systems will control the speed of the car according to the traffic and weather conditions and prevent accidents.

    Record fires sweeping across the Amazon this month have been catching global headlines as scientists and environmental groups are worried that they will worsen climate change and threaten biodiversity(生物多样性).

    As the largest rainforest in the world, the Amazon is often called "the lungs of the world". It is also home to about 3 million species of plants and animals, and 1 million local people. The vast lands of rainforest play an important role in the world's ecosystem because they take in heat instead of it being reflected back into the atmosphere. They also store carbon dioxide (二氧化碳)and produce oxygen, making sure that less carbon is given off, mitigating the effects of climate change.

    "Any forest destroyed is a threat to biodiversity and the people who use that biodiversity," Thomas Lovejoy, an ecologist at George Mason University told National Geographic. "The shocking threat is that a lot of carbon goes into the atmosphere," he stressed. "Facing the global climate change, we cannot afford more damage to a major source of oxygen and biodiversity. The Amazon must be protected," U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.

    Data from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) show that the number of forest fires in Brazil quickly increased by 82 percent from January to August this year from a year ago. A total of 71,497 forest fires were recorded in the country in the first eight months of 2019, up from 39,194 in the same period in 2018, INPE said. "It's reported that the forest areas in the Brazilian Amazon have decreased something between 20 and 30 percent compared to the last 12 months," Carlos Nobre, a researcher at the University of Sao Paulo, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

    Brazil owns about 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest, whose drop could have severe results for global climate and rainfall. The size of the area ruined by fires has yet to be determined, but the emergency has transcended(超出）Brazil's borders, reaching Peruvian, Paraguayan and Bolivian areas.

The Netherlands is the only country in the world with more bicycles than residents. By 2022, the Netherlands has had a total of about 23 million bicycles, with an ownership rate of 1.35 bikes per person. One study published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reports that in the Netherlands cycling prevents about 6,500 early deaths each year, and that Dutch people have 1.5 years longer life expectancy (预期寿命) due to cycling. 

"The time spent cycling was about 74 minutes per week for Dutch adults aged 20 to 90 years old. The time was fairly stable over adulthood and reached its apex in the early days of retirement, in one's 60s. The death rate reduction, which was a direct result of the average time spent cycling for a certain age group, was therefore also the highest among the seniors who just retired," said Jeremy Smith, an expert from NIH.

What is it that makes cycling so beneficial? Obviously, cycling is a form of exercise. It is a great form of cardio (有氧的) exercise, which gets your heart pumping and helps strengthen the heart muscles. Doing cardio exercise may also help lower your blood pressure. 

Furthermore, solid evidence proves the link between cycling and better thinking skills. Even younger adults claim that a bike ride helps shift their thinking to a higher level — and research backs them up. In one small study, young men are required to cycle for 30 minutes every day for 3 weeks. They also completed a series of cognitive (认知的) tests before and afterward. After cycling, they scored higher on memory, reasoning and planning, and they were able to finish the tests more rapidly than before.

Besides all the benefits mentioned above, cycling, as many Dutch put it, is a way of life. In their simplest form, bikes are tools for travelling. But they're so much more. They are cognitive improvement, environmental protection, satisfaction and an expression of freedom. They bring people of the same passion together and connect them to a greater journey of life.