As children, Anaa Jibicho and Lamah Bility lived in the same St. Paul, Minn., neighborhood and quickly found out they had a similar past. For both of their families, there was much less safe drinking water than needed, and they suffered because of the global water crisis (危机). When Jibicho was 2 years old, he, too, became ill from contaminated (受污染的) drinking water. While Jibicho was struggling in Ethiopia, Bility, now 24, was in Liberia. He walked every day for three hours to gather water. When Jibicho was 7 and Bility was 11, their families moved to the United States.

As they started settling into their new lives, the water crisis in their home countries appeared in their minds. Millions of Africans, as well as countless others around the world, lack access to safe drinking water, mainly because of poor infrastructure (基础设施).

That’s why “it’s important for us to tell our stories,” Jibicho said. “People typically see numbers and they don’t really know what that means. Those numbers are real people.”

In summer 2020, they launched a water bottle company called Didomi, which means “to give” in Greek. The company uses 50 percent of its money from selling its products to fund projects aimed at improving access to clean water in African nations. They say that they have provided nearly 50,000 people with access to safe drinking water for 10 years.

The company’s commitment to fighting against the water crisis recently caught the attention of the George Washington University (GWU), which plans to distribute (分发) Didomi bottles to all students, staffers, and faculty members this year.

Didomi is on track to broaden its reach, particularly through its partnership with GWU. Jibicho and Bility said the partnership will provide nearly 30,000 people with clean water for 10 years. When the university agreed to distribute Didomi water bottles, “we were just in disbelief,” said Jibicho, a student at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.

Researchers were surprised to find green snow caused by blooming algae（藻）in the Antarctic Peninsula is expanding as temperatures increase.

Green snow alga is type of tiny organism（微生物）that can't be seen without a microscope. But when the organisms grow all together, they turn the snow bright green, which can even be spotted from space.

The algae are provided with more "habitable" environments to grow as warming temperatures create more wet snow.

Patches of green snow algae can be identified along the Antarctic: coastline, mostly in warmer areas, where average temperatures are slightly above 0℃ during the Southern Hemisphere's summer months of November to February. Researchers have found I, 679 separate growths of green algae on the snow surface, which cover an area of 1.9 square kilometers.

"The Antarctic Peninsula is the part of the region that is being affected by the most rapid warning , " said the researchers. This February abnormal temperatures hitting around 20℃ were recorded.

Researchers believe the organisms will expand as global temperatures rise.

However, while more algae will grow as snow melts faster, the distribution of the organisms is inseparable（分不开的）from bird populations, whose excrement（粪便）contains the substances that speed up the growth of the algae. "As the number of birds, especially penguins, is affected by warming temperatures, the snow algae could lose sources of nutrients to grow, " said Dr. Andrew Gray, the lead researcher of the study.

"An increase in the blooms could also lead to further melting of snow, " he continued. "A green snow algal bloom will reflect about 45% of light hitting it while fresh snow about 80%, so it will increase the rate at which snow melts in a localized area. "

According to the researchers, almost two-thirds of the algal blooms were found growing on small, low-lying islands. Besides, as the Antarctic Peninsula gets warmer, these islands could end up losing both their summer snow cover and algae, though most of the organisms lie in areas where they can spread to higher ground when snow melts.

Antarctica is the highest, driest, and coldest place on Earth. It is also the remotest, a fact which demystifies its unspoiled environment. It is difficult for people to get there, and not a comfortable place for people to stay once they arrive. 【小题1】

【小题2】 .They never melt. Even though Antarctica receives more sunlight than the equator, the temperatures are lower because the ice sheet reflects the heat back into space. Thus, the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth was in Antarctica in July, 1983. Soviet scientists shivered (瑟瑟发抖) through temperatures that fell to minus 89.2 degrees Celsius.

Once completely inaccessible, 【小题3】 gold, uranium and oil are just some of the valuable resources which lie beneath the continent’s icy covering.

For centuries, Europeans wondered about the existence of a South-pole continent, but no one actually knew for certain Antarctica was there until 1820 when European explorers “discover” it. Since then, men have gone to Antarctica in search of adventure, testing their abilities. 【小题4】

【小题5】 Damage to the environment occurs as people come looking for resources beneath the ice, or carelessly leave their garbage behind. Currently, countries are working to ensure that the damage to Antarctica’s environment is minimized, and that the last wilderness on Earth will remain an unspoiled place.