In 1985,a little Italian plumber(水管工）became the face of video games,and changed the way we play them. "Super Mario Bros" saw the main characters in the game, Mario and Luigi, jump around the Mushroom Kingdom, collect coins and rush to save a princess from a bad turtle. The content was different from the simple gameplay of Snake or Pac-Man,where the aim was to eat and stay alive.

Mario originated as a carpenter in the 1981 game "Donkey Kong",which was advanced for its time. with retro(复旧的）sound effects as Mario moved on challenging platforms. "At the time,video games were usually created by computer engineers, as opposed to today's artists,"said Shigeru Miyamoto,game designer and producer of the "Super Mario Bros" and "Donkey Kong". As to why he picked a 26-year-old Italian-American plumber from New York as the main character,Miyamoto said,"We wanted him to be someone who might live near you, and not a superhero."

The game's popularity really took off in 1985 when "Super Mario Bros" was released."People had never seen a game like Super Mario Bros."said Frank Cifaldi,co-director of the Video Game History Foundation,"Super Mario Bros,despite having the same limitations as its peers(同辈），manages to convey a hard and long adventure in a large world."Super Mario Bros changed the way we play video games-from merely aiming for a high score to playing a game to experience an adventure and see it through to its ending, he said.

＂For all the critics that may say video games are full of violence and killings, the moustached Mario remains the most globally identifiable face of the video game industry," added Miyamoto.

Prices for collectible baseball cards seem to be rocketing. A Mike Trout card was sold for $3.9 million in 2016. A 1952 Mickey Mantle card jumped to $5.2 million on January 15. 2021. Even a Spencer Torkelson card is worth thousands right now. Spencer Torkelson may become an All-Star one day. But he is just a 21-year-old who has just joined the Detroit Tigers recently.

A baseball card is a mass-produced picture of a professional (职业的) baseball player, not an original work of art. Spencer Torkelson is not Oscar-Claude Monet, although we don’t know yet what a guy with a bat in his hands could do in the future.

Then, what makes a baseball card worth thousands, sometimes millions of dollars? John List, the University of Chicago economist, told me. “The sports card market is doing well because it’s part nostalgic (怀旧), part art and part potential profit (利润). That combination is what’s magical.”

I am a sports fan, and certainly had baseball cards as a kid. Friends still send me an occasional card, as a gift, which I treasure. But I think the true charm of baseball cards is when they are cheap. Children should be able to trade them, put them in their pockets or under their pillows with you worrying they’re damaging some future windfall.

But professional baseball card traders typically don’t even open the packs to see what players are in them and keep them stored for future sale. Eventually, they put the cards almost out of reach for children, who used to be the market for baseball cards.

Can the multi-million-dollar cards stand for what we value? I don’t think so. We have learned again and again that the most truly valuable players among us are those who treat the sick, keep communities safe, teach children. I’d like to see prices paid to those kinds of all-stars go up, too.

Singapore uses about 430 million gallons of water every day — a number it expects could double in the next four decades. That kind of consumption is piling pressure on the Asian city state to address growing concerns about global water shortage. So it’s building new technology to prepare itself for a future where obtaining clean water will be even more difficult.

Rapid urbanization and rising global temperatures are making access to natural water sources increasingly hard to come by. Today, a quarter of the world lives in areas of high water stress. Singapore is home to more than five million people and is covered in fountains, landscape pools and other water features (水景设计). But it has no natural water sources of its own, instead relying heavily on recycled water and imports from its neighbors.

Snyder’s research facility is one of several places developing solutions for Singapore’s water dependency. The hope is to create projects that could be used across the city. One development: a small, black sponge (海绵) called carbon fiber aerogel can clean waste water on a mass scale. The material is being further developed for commercial use by Singapore-based startup EcoWorth Technology. According to CEO Andre Stoltz, the company will first enter Singapore’s waste water market before eventually developing this material for use on a global scale.

Another company, WateRoam, is already taking innovation from Singapore to the rest of the region. Founded in 2014, WateRoam says it has developed a lightweight, portable filtration (过滤) device that they say has already provided clean drinking water to more than 75,000 people across Southeast Asia.

The water filtration device is no bigger than a bicycle pump, yet it can provide clean water to villages of 100 people for up to two years, according to the company.

“We’ve been very blessed to have access to clean drinking water,” Pong said. “It’s a privilege that we should be able to bring forth to the rest of the region, and advocate that clean water is an essential aspect for life on earth.”