Food is necessary for offering energy to our bodies, but sometimes we buy too much of it at the store. When your food starts to go bad, there are many other ways you can still make use of it instead of throwing it away.

Before throwing away old bananas, you can use the peels (皮) to shine up metals and leathers. Press the peel against the surface, move it backwards and forwards and then polish clean it with an old cloth. Banana meat is also good for reducing wrinkles. Put a bit on those trouble spots, let it sit for a while, and then wash it off, and your wrinkles will go away. Lemons are great for lightening skin and hair. If you have trouble with some skin diseases, like red spots on your face, put a bit of fresh lemon juice on them and leave it overnight. You’ll notice a difference in the morning. Apples will help ripen (使成熟) tomatoes quickly when they are placed together in a paper bag, and orange peels are great fire starters for your next backyard campfire party.

If your dog or cat brings home fleas, using salt is a great way to get rid of them around the house. Just pour salt into the vacuum cleaner (真空吸尘器). Let it sit, then vacuum up the fleas. The salt can kill the fleas. Be sure to throw away the vacuum bag or empty the vacuum bin immediately, or some of the fleas can climb out

Beer is a great hair lightener. If you are out of lemons, try dipping your hair in beer before going outside. Just don’t forget to wash it out afterwards. Milk is great for removing dirty marks, especially if it is some type of ink.

As you can see, there are many other uses for everyday foods around the house. So next time, before throwing food away thinking it is of no use, stop for a moment and think about all their uses talked about here.

We are naturally drawn to friends and colleagues with familiar voices, scientists have found. People prefer those who have a similar accent, intonation and tone of voice to themselves, they discovered.

Previous research has focused on how a male or female voice sounds. Men with deeper voices and women with slightly higher voices were thought to sound more attractive.

But the new study, published by a linguist in Canada, suggests there is a more complex mechanism(机制)at play. Dr. Molly Babel, from the University of British Columbia in Canada, said, “The voice is an amazingly flexible tool that we use to construct our identity. Very few things in our voices are changeless, so we felt that our preference had to be about more than a person’ s shape and size.”

She recorded 30 volunteers, voices and asked each to rate the others attractiveness on a scale of one to nine. Each participant was from Western America, with similar accents. The people we assessed were all in the same dialect group, but they showed different degrees.

“We seem to like people whose voices are like our voices, and we like people who fit within what we know,” Dr. Babel said. She also found that breathy voices in women — typified by the famous American actress Marilyn Monroe — were seen as more attractive.

The breathy tone, caused by younger and thinner vocal cords(声带), implied youthfulness and health. A creaky voice, suggesting a person has a cold or is tired, was seen as unattractive. The participant preferred men who spoke with a shorter average word length and deeper voices.

In a groundbreaking achievement, a rhino has successfully undergone embryo (胚胎) transfer, marking the first successful use of a method that holds promise for saving the nearly extinct northern white rhino subspecies.

The experiment, conducted with the less endangered southern white rhino subspecies, involved creating an embryo in a lab using eggs and sperm (精子) collected from other rhinos. This embryo was then transferred into a southern white rhino alternative mother in Kenya. Despite the unfortunate death of the alternative mother due to an infection in November 2023, researchers praised the successful embryo transfer and pregnancy (怀孕) as a proof of concept. They are now ready to proceed to the next stage of the project: transferring northern white rhinoembryos.

Professor Thomas Hildebrandt expressed optimism about the findings, highlighting the significance of the successful embryo transfer in demonstrating that frozen and defrosted embryos produced in a lab can survive. This development offers hope for the revival of the northern white rhino population.

However, challenges facing rhino conservation remain significant. While the southern white rhino subspecies and the black rhino species have shown signs of recovery from population declines due to illegal hunting for their horns (牛角), the northern white rhino subspecies is on the edge of extinction. With only two known members left in the world, Najin and her daughter Fatu, both unable to reproduce naturally, and the recent death of the last male white rhino, Sudan, in 2018, urgent action is needed to prevent the extinction of this subspecies. Dr. Jo Shaw, CEO of Save the Rhino International, emphasized the importance of addressing the primary threats facing rhinos worldwide: illegal hunting for their horns and habitat loss due to development. She stressed the need to provide rhinos with the space and security they need to succeed in their natural environment.

While the successful embryo transfer representsa significant advancement in rhino conservation efforts, organized action is required to address the main challenges facing rhino populations worldwide.