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SurvivingHurricane Sandy(飓风桑迪)

Natalie Doan, 14, hasalways felt lucky to live in Rockaway, New York. Living just a few blocks fromthe beach, Natalie can see the ocean and hear the wave from her house. “It'sthe ocean that makes Rockaway so special,” she says.

On October 29, 2012,that ocean turned fierce. That night, Hurricane Sandy attacked the East Coast,and Rockaway was hit especially hard. Fortunately, Natalie's family escaped toBrooklyn shortly before the city's bridge closed.

When they returned to Rockaway the next day, they found their neighborhood in ruins. Many of Natalie's friends had lost their homes and were living far away. All around her, peoplewere suffering, especially the elderly. Natalie's school was so damaged that she had to temporarily attend a school in Brooklyn.

      In the following few days, the men and women helping Rock away recover inspired Natalie. Volunteers came with carloads of donated clothing and toys. Neighbors devoted their spare time to helping othersrebuild. Teenagers climbed dozens of flights of stairs to deliver water and food to elderly people trapped in powerless high-rise buildings.

      “ My mom tells me that I can’t control what happens to me,” Natalie says. “butI can always choose how I deal with it.”

Natalie's choice was to help.

      She created a website page matching survivors in need with donors who wanted to help. Natalie posted introduction about a boy named Patrick, who lost his baseball card collecting when his house burned down. Within days, Patrick's collection was replaced.

      In the coming months,her website page helped lots of kids: Christopher, who received a new basketball; Charlie, who got a new keyboard. Natalie also worked with other organizations to bring much-need supplies to Rock away. Herefforts made her a famous person. Last April, she was invited to the WhiteHouse and honored as a Hurricane Sandy Champion of Change.

      Today, the scars(创痕)of destruction are still seen in Rockaway, but hope is in the air. The streets are clear, and many homes have been rebuilt. “I can’timagine living anywhere but Rockaway,” Natalie declares. “My neighborhood willbe back, even stronger than before.”

    As children begin to head back to school, there are several things that you can do to make sure that your child stays healthy and performs at their peak potential during the school year.

    1). Make sure your child is up to date on their immunizations(免疫). The summer is a good time to schedule visits to the doctor's as your child is not in school, and the visit won't require that your child miss school days.

    2).Encourage proper nutrition. America faces childhood obesity(肥胖). This means that the percentage of overweight children is increasing each year, and this will place your child at risk of developing a variety of diseases when they are middle age or even young adults. You can start helping your child to become healthier by offering fruits and vegetables at home instead of calorie heavy potato chips and candy.

    3). Get your child involved in sports activities. Activities in high school such as track and cross-country are important for socialization for your child, as well as helping to improve their health. You can get your child interested in wholesome activities by discussing with them how you enjoyed similar activities in high school.

    4). Have the birds and the bees conversation with your child. Many children become sexually active in junior school and senior high school, and the sooner you discuss sex with your child the sooner they will be prepared. Tell your child that there is always the possibility of infecting a sexual disease when two people have sex; and discuss with your child the use of condoms. The sooner you start having this embarrassing situation the better.

    5). Know your child's friends. You can do this by inviting your child to bring their friends over to your house for a pizza night, or by chatting with them when they stop by your house. If you find your child's friend has a bad reputation, then you could consider introducing your child to a different network of people, such as through the girl/boy scouts. Forbidding your child from seeing a certain person may only lead them to rebel and become closer to that person.

    6). Discuss with your child the seriousness of drug use and abuse. Your child may not realize that using drugs can have serious consequences. Your child may get the false impression that drug use is his right. Explain to a child that saying no to drugs is their right, and that anybody offering them drugs is not their friend.

    7). Help your child to avoid a life long smoking addiction by discussing with them the consequences of smoking. The sad fact is that most smokers became addicted when they were in their teenage years, and are unable to quit for long periods of time and often die many years earlier due to their smoking habit which increases the risk of lung cancer, heart disease, and a variety of medical conditions. Even if you are a smoker yourself, you can discuss with your child about how damaging smoking can be on a person's health.

    8). Impress upon your child the importance of traffic rules. Tell them that it is OK to wear a seat belt in anyone's car, because it may save their life one day. If your child rides a bicycle or a skateboard, then discuss with them the importance of always wearing a helmet. As you child becomes qualified for driver's permit, you should discuss with them the importance of prevention from drinking and driving.

    9). Be cautious about signs of depression in childhood. A surprisingly large number of children may become depressed, and a small number of teenagers and children commit suicide(自杀) each year. Realize that any signs of unusual depressed mood, angry outbursts, suicidal comments, feelings of hopelessness, and loss of enjoyment of activities with friends may be signs of depression.

    Inside the pleasingly fragrant café, So All May Eat(SAME) in downtown Denver, the spirit of generosity is instantly noticeable: A donation box stands in place of a cash register. Customers here pay only what they can afford, no questions asked.

    A risky business plan, perhaps, but SAME Café has done one unchangeable thing in the Mile High City for six years: Open only at midday, the restaurant provides poor local people with healthy, delicious lunches six days a week. Those unable to pay for their meals can instead volunteer as waiters and waitresses, and dishwashers, or look after the buildings and equipment for the cafe.

     “It's based on trust, and it's working all right” , says co-owner Brad Birky , who started the café in 2006. With his wife Libby. Previously volunteering at soup kitchens, the Birkys were dissatisfied with the often unhealthy meals they served there.

     “We wanted to offer quality food in a restaurant where everyone felt comfortable ,regardless of their circumstances,” Birky says. SAME's special lunch menu changes daily and most food materials are natural and grown by local farmers.

    The café now averages 65 to 70 customers (and eight volunteers) a day. And the spirit of generosity behind the project appears to be spreading. In early 2007,one volunteer who had cleared snow for his meals during the long winter said goodbye to the Birkys,” He said he was going to New Orleans to help with the hurricane cleanup,” says Birky.

    Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest thinkers in the world, began his career as an artist. Very little is known about Leonardo's early life. He was born in 1452 in the town of Vinci. As a boy, Leonardo showed a great interest in drawing, sculpting and observing nature.

    However, because Leonardo was born to parents who were not married to each other, he was barred from some studies and professions. He trained as an artist after moving to Florence with his father in the 1460s. It was an exciting time to be in Florence, one of the cultural capitals of Europe. Leonardo trained with one of the city's very successful artists, Andrea del Verrocchio. He was a painter, sculptor and gold worker. Verrocchio told his students that they needed to understand the body's bones and muscles when drawing people.

    Leonardo took the teacher's advice very seriously. He spent several periods of his life studying the human body by taking apart and examining dead bodies. While training as an artist, Leonardo also learned about and improved on relatively new painting methods at the time. One was the use of perspective(透视) to show depth. A method called “sfumato” helped to create a cloudy effect to suggest distance. “Chiaroscuro” is a method using light and shade as a painterly effect.

    Leonardo's first known portrait now hangs in the National Gallery in Washington, D. C. He made this painting of a young woman named Ginevra de' Benci around 1474. The woman has a pale face with dark hair. In the distance, Leonardo painted the Italian countryside.

    He soon received attention for his extraordinary artistic skills. Around 1475 he was asked to draw an angel in Verrocchio's painting “Baptism of Christ.” One story says that when Verrocchio saw Leonardo's addition to the painting, he was so amazed by his student's skill that he said he would never paint again.

    If a diver surfaces too quickly, he may suffer the bends. Nitrogen (氮) dissolved (溶解) in his blood is suddenly liberated by the reduction of pressure. The consequence, if the bubbles (气泡) accumulate in a joint, is sharp pain and a bent body—thus the name. If the bubbles form in his lungs or his brain, the consequence can be death.

    Other air-breathing animals also suffer this decompression (减压) sickness if they surface too fast: whales, for example. And so, long ago, did ichthyosaurs. That these ancient sea animals got the bends can be seen from their bones. If bubbles of nitrogen form inside the bone they can cut off its blood supply. This kills the cells in the bone, and consequently weakens it, sometimes to the point of collapse. Fossil (化石) bones that have caved in on themselves are thus a sign that the animal once had the bends.

    Bruce Rothschild of the University of Kansas knew all this when he began a study of ichthyosaur bones to find out how widespread the problem was in the past. What he particularly wanted to investigate was how ichthyosaurs adapted to the problem of decompression over the 150 million years. To this end, he and his colleagues traveled the world's natural-history museums, looking at hundreds of ichthyosaurs from the Triassic period and from the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

    When he started, he assumed that signs of the bends would be rarer in younger fossils, reflecting their gradual evolution of measures to deal with decompression. Instead, he was astonished to discover the opposite. More than 15% of Jurassic and Cretaceous ichthyosaurs had suffered the bends before they died, but not a single Triassic specimen (标本) showed evidence of that sort of injury.

    If ichthyosaurs did evolve an anti-decompression means, they clearly did so quickly—and, most strangely, they lost it afterwards. But that is not what Dr Rothschild thinks happened. He suspects it was evolution in other animals that caused the change.

    Whales that suffer the bends often do so because they have surfaced to escape a predator (捕食动物) such as a large shark. One of the features of Jurassic oceans was an abundance of large sharks and crocodiles, both of which were fond of ichthyosaur lunches. Triassic oceans, by contrast, were mercifully shark- and crocodile-free. In the Triassic, then, ichthyosaurs were top of the food chain. In the Jurassic and Cretaceous, they were prey (猎物) as well as predator—and often had to make a speedy exit as a result.

Authors (作者)

    Alexandru Micu: Author

    ZME Science author profile | e-mail: alex@zmescience.com

    Main focus: technology, biology

    Curiosity (好奇心) is what drives Alex forward-his interest in learning more about the planet being matched only by his ability to discuss things with a light heart. Alex tries to make others more interested in special science and technology. He does things in his own way.

    Dragos Mitrica: Author

    ZME Science author profile | e-mail: dragos@zmescience.com

    Main focus: wheather

    Dragos loves nature, and does everything he can to understand it. This interest led him to many unexpected places in his life, and now, he mainly studies and understands how ancient (古代的) weather changed, and what this means for the future.

    Henry Conrad: Author

    ZME Science author profile | e-mail: henrykconrad@gmail.com

    Main focus: technology

    Henry Conrad is a game developer from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Whenever he's not working or reading the latest tech news, he enjoys writing about the latest inventions and technology, which benefits (有益) him a lot. It helps him find rich writing materials (材料).

    Mihai Andrei: Editor-in-chief

    ZME Science author profile | e-mail: andrei@zmescience.com

    Main focus: geophysics, environment

    Andrei has put a lot of sweat and tears into ZME Science ever since he was a student. He is always looking for the most interesting subjects, presenting them in a way that everybody can understand. He believes that education is the key towards a better future and he tries to persuade people to become better persons of the planet. His background is in Geology and Geophysics, but now, he focuses more on environmental studies.

    Rome, Paris and New York are the world's top fashion cities, all of which have produced some of the top trends, from fashionable skirts to the hottest new shoes. But have you ever wondered about the negative ideas that they have enforced?

    In April 2016, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in Britain banned an ad from Gucci that featured models dancing around and having fun, because they were all extremely skinny. Banning ads due to the models' extreme figures isn't new. The ASA banned an ad in 2015 for the same reason. In France, it has been ruled that models are to provide a doctor's note providing that they are at a healthy weight.

    So what is the healthy weight for models? Twenty years ago, the average fashion model weighed 8% less than the average woman. Today, they weigh 23% less.

    People may think that being at an unhealthy weight will help them gain the benefits that the models do. This provides a standard of beauty, and therefore people who want to achieve those things may attempt to obtain them through unhealthy ways. People may think that they are overweight, due to the images of models¹ thin figures. They see something wrong with their bodies, whether they are overweight or not. This is a key factor in a lowered body image, low self-esteem, depression and possibly even eating disorders.

    I'm not blaming the fashion industry by any means. It's not their fault that many people look up to the models and expect to live a life like theirs. I am glad that the ASA is raising its voices when discussing the growing issue of body images in the fashion industry. By banning photos and videos, speaking out against them and pushing for doctor's notes from the models, it's pushing for the ideas that the traditional fashion industry's body image demands should be changed and something more needs to be questioned.

    I remember my childhood summers fondly, as many of us do. Those golden days in which I would leave the house after a still sleepy, leisurely breakfast and come home only for lunch in the middle of a day spent entirely outdoors. We did not live in town and, thus, playmates were limited to siblings (兄弟姐妹) and the cousins who lived down the road.

    Our backyard became the playground in which our imaginations would run wild—turning those few acres into magical forests, the creek (小溪) into a violent river and our trusty dog, Rex, into the many roles of horse, monster and any other creature that we children did not want to play. By the end of the three months of summer break we were sunburned from our hours in the sun, full of the memories of a thousand magical moments and bonded to our siblings in a way that winter's forced hibernation (冬眠) never seemed to connect us.

    Today, I live on the same acreage that I did as a child. My children have the blessing of having the same grassy patches to scratch their bare feet as they run through it, the same creek to stomp(跺脚)through, and not the same dog—but their very own energetic pup to imagine away the days with.

    However, this is not the same world as it was twenty, thirty years ago. There are screens everywhere in the house to demand attention—televisions with hundreds of channels, computers with access to a thousand entertaining sites, tablets stocked with apps. There is also no longer the expectation of a stretch of an unscheduled three months. Their school friends tell competitive stories of carefully planned vacations, spending time traveling to all of the local attractions—various parks, the zoo, the science center, all of the festivals which come breezing through town. On the very first day of school they will be asked to list their favorite activities of the summer and no longer are these lists filled with things like finding wood to make a bridge over a creek or a day spent in imaginative play with their siblings. The lists are now full of trips, overscheduled days and “camps” that no longer offer a stay in nature.

    Our children have become used to being entertained every minute. In our house, we have limits on electronics and kick the kids outside on a nice day. Even as we try as parents to set limits and get our children out in nature, the new cry of childhood seems to be “I'm bored,” which is not really just meaning “I'm bored,” “but “Please find something to entertain me, as I no longer can entertain myself even for a short period of time.” Our children no longer know how to sit in silence, entertain themselves while even waiting for a few minutes and have lost the awe of nature as they have become addicted to screen time.

    We have made a choice in this household to do what is no longer expected of children in many households—we will ensure that there are days of “boredom.” We refuse to spend our days scheduling our children's every hour. There will be many days with no plans at all, when they will be sent outside with only the grass and the trees and their own imaginations to entertain them.

    The screens will be turned off and our children will find that times of quiet can be just as or even more entertaining. They will bond with their brother and sister, making memories that they will replay in their minds well into adulthood. Even though sunscreen will be religiously applied, they will leave summer with sunburned and scratches coming from climbing trees, stomping through creeks and chasing the dog in the field.

    This summer I will be giving my children the greatest gift of all—boredom. For inside boredom is the gift of getting to know your own mind, of finding comfort and joy in nature and in the realization that the greatest gifts are experience, not things.

    We all need to eat. So, meals could be a chance to stop what we're doing and spend time with the people in our lives. A recent study from a team of South Korea suggests that eating together has many good effects on children and teenagers while frequently eating alone may lead to poor eating habits and poor food choices. People who eat alone more than twice a week have a greater risk of developing high blood pressure.

    There are benefits of family dinners on children and teenagers.

    In 2014, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) looked at data from nearly three-quarters of the world's countries. Among its findings is the fact that students who share a main meal with their families are less likely to hate school. Children who eat a main meal with their families are also less likely to take drugs (毒品).

    In the report, titled “The Importance of Family Dinners (VIII),'' researchers say that teens who have frequent family dinners are more likely to say their parents know a lot about what's going on in their lives.

    Another study from the University of Montreal finds that children who eat with their families experience long-term physical and mental health benefits. These children are physically in better shape and drink fewer sugary soft drinks. These children also seem to have better social skills and are less violent.

    One of the researchers, Pagani, involved in this study is a professor at the university. She says that mealtimes with parents possibly provide young children with firsthand social events, which helps them have better communication skills.

    In 2016, designer Liz Ciokajlo received a task from the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) in New York: revisit the Moon Boot, a fluffy-looking snowshoe inspired by the footwear used by the Apollo astronauts.

    Launched in 1972 at the height of the lunar missions, the Moon Boot is an icon of the 20th Century's “plastic age” and the museum administrators wanted a new take on it.

    Ciokajlo set out to reimagine it. She knew only a biomaterial would work in a “post-plastic age”, but the designer also wanted a new destination to inspire it. Our generation's space travel obsession is not the Moon, she thought, but the red planet Mars. And Mars allows you to really think outside of the box.

    The task led her to an amazing biomaterial that had already attracted the attention of engineers innovating m building materials and of top space agencies like NASA and ESA. Her final design, a tall, female, rough-looking boot, can be made on board a spaceship with almost only human sweat and a few fungus spores (真菌孢子), ideal for a seven-month trip to Mars with limited check-in luggage.

    This magic biomaterial is mycelium (菌丝体), the vegetative part of the fungus It looks like amass of white thread-like structures, each called hyphae. Collectively, these threads are called mycelium and are the largest part of the fungus.

    Mycelium has amazing properties. It is a great recycler, as it feeds off a substrate to create more material, and has the potential of almost limitless growth in the right conditions. It can endure more pressure than conventional concrete without breaking. It is a known insulator and fire-retardant and could even provide radiation protection on space missions.

    On Earth it's currently used to create ceiling panels, leather, packaging materials and building materials, but in outer space it stands out for its architectural potential, says artist and engineer Maurizio Montalti, who has teamed up with Ciokajlo.

    For her revisited boot, Ciokajlo wanted to use the human body as the source for some of the building materials and decided to employ sweat. Reusing sweat is not entirely new in space exploration but a novelty approach for footwear. She thinks it might make astronauts feel closer to home during the long journey to Mars.

    The design is still hypothetical, because the real boot submitted for Moma and currently in display at the London Design Museum did use mycelium but not human sweat, as their deadline was too tight, but the science checks out.

    When I was eight, I got my first pair of glasses. Far from being made fun of at school, the only struggle I got was endless requests to try on my new glasses. Hearing about what happened at school, my father once looked at me and asked whether I had pretended to be the blindness just to look like Harry Potter?

    With my strange hair and glasses, I did nothing to avoid it, either. The Harry Potter books were the great pop cultural event of my generation, who began reading again. My school librarian, both confused and annoyed by us Potter fans, dealt with fights over the schools few old copies by setting a new rule: Harry Potter could be borrowed for only three days, instead of the whole week of borrowing period every other title was allowed.

    In the 20 years since the first book arrived on shelves, publishers and parents have been asking what has made J.K. Rowling's books so loved. It is better to look at the influence they have had on their readers. Yes, the books were about a boy taking on a dark and powerful enemy in the magical world, but they were also about love defeating hate, determination and choosing" between what is easy and what is right". Rowling's entire magical characters were all people we want to be.

    I grew up with Harry and together we became children with our own opinions, teens easy to get angry and young adults thinking of everything as normal. When the final book came out in 2007.I read it for 12 hours without a break and cried as I finished it. I felt something sad: the end of Harry's story signaled the end of my childhood. I was suddenly aimless. Meanwhile, my now Potter-mad father walked impatiently nearby, waiting for the proper moment to take the book away from his daughter.

    Harry Potter did shape my generation. As a girl who grew up mostly in peacetime, many of the ideas I found in these books were ones we had never come across before. The magical world's terrible treatment of non-human beings was the first description of slavery I knew. The treatment of Harry's teacher Remus Lupin, who hides his condition at work, is a metaphor(比喻) for the shame surrounding those who suffer from AIDS. And all settings like this may have real-world reflections .A study found that teenage Harry Potter readers showed more tolerance (包容) towards those who were suffering. Is it possible that Jeremy Corbyn's popularity among the young had anything to do with their literary education? Is it possible that Harry Potter, in the 20 years he has been with us, has inspired a generation to be more empathetic （感同身受）， welcoming and socially open－minded than those before it? We will see, if not, at least my glasses are still cool.

    Pacific Science Center Guide

    Visit Pacific Science Center's Store

    Don't forget to stop by Pacific Science Center's Store while you are here to pick up a wonderful science activity or souvenir to remember your visit. The store is located(位于) upstairs in Building 3 right next to the Laser Dome.

    Hungry

    Our exhibits will feed your mind, but what about your body? Our café offers a complete menu of lunch and snack options, in addition to seasonal specials. The café is located upstairs in Building 1 and is open daily until one hour before Pacific Science Center closes.

    Rental Information

    Lockers are available to store any belongings during your visit. The lockers are located in Building 1 near the Information Desk and in Building 3. Pushchairs and wheelchairs are available to rent at the Information Desk and Denny Way entrance. ID required.

    Support Pacific Science Center

    Since 1962, Pacific Science Center has been inspiring a passion(热情) for discovery and lifelong learning in science, math and technology. Today, Pacific Science Center serves more than 1.3 million people a year and brings inquiry-based science education to classrooms and community events all over Washington State. It's an amazing accomplishment and one we cannot achieve without generous support from individuals, corporations, and other social organizations. Visit pacificsciencecenter.org to find various ways you can support Pacific Science Center.

    As people age, the body changes in all sorts of predictable ways. Brains can slow. Wounds take longer to recover. And sleep patterns(模式) shift, too. This can come as news to many, says Michael V. Vitiello, a psychologist at the University of Washington who is expert in sleep in aging.

The most noticeable—and often most annoying—changes are how sleep and wake-up times change and sleep gets lighter, often beginning in middle age. Gone are weekend sleep to 11 a.m. and the ability to sleep through a noisy garbage truck down the block.

But not every restless night can be ignored. Studies have found that poor sleep can create a particular threat to older adults—Falls, depression and anxiety, problems with memory, and increased suicide(自杀) risk are among the effects of sleep issues in this population group that researchers have found. But scientists are still unsure why those risk connections exist.

    What is clear is the connection between good sleep and psychological well-being in older adults. A 2010 study showed us that connection when it came to sleep quality, but sleep quantity didn't show the same effects. And that, experts say, may be the key to understanding sleep as you age. If you're sleeping less, but don't feel negative effects out of bed, the changes you notice may just be normal age-related.

    Over time, Vitiello says, sleep patterns simply change. "A lot of older adults recognize that they don't sleep the same as they did when they were 18, but they can still function and they're OK. And all is well with the universe."

Babies made from three people approved in UK

    Babies made from two women and one man have been approved by the UK's fertility regulator. The historic and controversial move is to prevent children from being born with deadly genetic diseases.

    Doctors in Newcastle—who developed the advanced form of In Vitro Fertilization or IVF (人工授精)—are expected to be the first to offer the procedure and have already appealed for donor eggs. The first such child could be born, at the earliest, by the end of 2017.

    Some families have lost multiple children to incurable mitochondrial (线粒体的) diseases, which can leave people with insufficient energy to keep their heart beating.

    The diseases are passed down from only the mother, so a technique using a donor egg as well as the mother's egg and father's sperm has been developed.

    The resulting child has a tiny amount of their DNA from the donor, but the procedure is legal and reviews say it is ethical (伦理的) and scientifically ready.

    "It is a decision of historic importance," said Sally Cheshire, chairwoman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). "I'm sure patients will be really pleased by what we've decided today."

    But some scientists have questioned the ethics of the technique, saying it could open the door to genetically-modified (转基因) 'designer' babies.

    The HFEA must approve every clinic and every patient before the procedure can take place. Three-person babies have been allowed only in cases where the risk of a child developing mitochondrial disease is very high.

    Prof Mary Herbert, from the Newcastle Fertility Centre, said, "It is enormously pleasing that our many years of research in this area can finally be applied to help families affected by these devastating diseases".

    "Now that we are moving forward towards clinical treatments, we will also need donors to donate eggs for use in treatment to prevent affected women transmitting disease to their children."

    Prof Sir Doug Turnbull, the director of the Welcome Centre for Mitochondrial Research at Newcastle University, said, "We are delighted by today's decision. We will also provide long-term follow up of any children born."

    NHS England has agreed to fund the treatment costs of the first trial of three-person IVF for those women who meet the HFEA criteria, as long as they agree to long-term follow up of their children after they are born.

    Next month, I'm traveling to a remote area of Central Africa and my aim is to know enough Lingala — one of the local languages — to have a conversation. I wasn't sure how I was going to manage this — until I discovered a way to learn all the vocabulary I'm going to need. Thanks to Memrise, the application I'm using. It feels just like a game.

    "People often stop learning things because they feel they're not making progress or because it all feels like too much hard work," says Ed Cooke, one of the people who created Memrise. "We're trying to create a form of learning experience that is fun and is something you'd want to do instead of watching TV."

    Memrise gives you a few new words to learn and these are "seeds" which you plant in your "greenhouse". When you learn the words, you "water your plants". When the application believes that you've really memorized a word, it moves the word to your "garden". And if you forget to log on, the application sends you emails, reminding you to "water your plants".

    The application uses two principles about learning. The first is that people memorize things better when they link them to a picture in their mind. Memrise translates words into your own language, but it also encourages you to use "mems". For example, I memorized motele, the Lingala word for "engine", using a mem I created — I imagined an old engine in a motel (汽车旅馆) room.

    The second principle is that we need to stop after studying words and then repeat them again later, leaving time between study sessions. Memrise helps you with this, because it's the kind of application you only use for five or ten minutes a day.

    I've learnt hundreds of Lingala words with Memrise. I know this won't make me a fluent speaker, but I hope I'll be able to do more than just smile when I meet people in Congo. Now, I need to go and water my Vocabulary!

    "Can I have a glass of hot water?" This is a very common question for Chinese customers in a restaurant. For many Chinese people, nothing is more common than drinking hot water every day. However, the simple habit is like a mystery to some from other countries.

    For many Westerners, the idea of drinking hot water is very strange. However, most Chinese people think the Americans' habit of drinking ice water is equally odd and even unhealthy. Some seniors would even carry a tea kettle when they travel, since their Chinese stomachs refuse to take the cold water from the tap. Drinking hot water is considered to be healthier among Chinese people. Traditional Chinese medicine explains drinking cold water leads to an imbalance in temperature. Chinese doctors are encouraging more people outside China to take on the habit of drinking hot water, especially for women.

    But in Western countries, drinking hot water isn't common. Westerners often take drinks with ice, not just on hot days but almost every day.

    There is a story online that a British man, who has been in Beijing for over five years, visited a local cafe when going back to England. He was waited on by a friendly waitress and in a British accent said, "Can I have a glass of hot water? Please?" The waitress' eyes widened. She was so confused. "To… to… to drink?" she doubted. Eventually, the man received the steaming liquid but felt cold stares from every corner of the cafe.

    Westerners are as curious about why Chinese people drink hot water as Chinese are about why Westerners drink cold water. This cultural difference is not a simple issue(问题), but related to history, culture, and science.

    As a matter of fact, many teenagers now rely on bottled water for daily drinking. With the younger generation growing up, will drinking hot water become a less popular life habit? Who knows!

Ever since Earth formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago, its climate has gone through a number of incredible changes.

All you have to do is look at images of the Jurassic Period(侏罗纪时期) to know that at one time, much of our planet was covered in extremely hot and humid jungle. Skip ahead a couple million years and you get to an ice age event, when global temperature experienced a huge drop. While many species were not able to deal with these changing climate patterns, others successfully adapted, and some are even still with us today. Now, as humanity pushes the planet closer to another extreme climate event, scientists are eager to find out how the world's species will react. The idea was highlighted in a study published on April 6 in the journal PNAS, which showed that between 1970 and 2010, open water species such as lobsters and fish had declined by about half in tropical marine zones across the globe because over the 40-year time period, sea temperatures in those regions had risen by roughly 0. 2℃. The lower numbers aren't a sign of all the sea creatures dying off though. In fact, the scientists found some of them outside of their traditional habitats, meaning that if a species can migrate to cooler waters and adapt in a new environment, they will.

However, those movements aren't always a good thing; species that can't move，such as coral, which is fixed to the seabed, rely on the fish and other sea creatures to contribute to the natural food chain and stay healthy. Additionally, when a non-native species moves into a new area, it threatens to disrupt the ecosystem that already exists there.

Depending on the species, it can take anywhere from one generation to thousands and thousands of years to properly adapt, so the changes that have occurred in just the last 40years are very troubling for scientists. As Sebastian Ferse, an ecologist at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, Germany，explained, "In geological history, this has occurred in the blink(眨眼)of an eye. To see such changes occurring so rapidly is something quite alarming. "

With climate change and overfishing threatening our oceans, it is becoming increasingly important for researchers to closely observe and check sea animals and plants. However, it's almost impossible to make it since human presence scares the animals. Now, thanks to the robot, SoFi, researchers may be able to solve the problem.

Built by MIT's laboratory, the snow-white remote-controlled robot simulates (模仿) fish, complete with a flexible tail that moves from side to side and two "fins".

When the robot is under the sea, a motor is pumping water into a pair of balloon-like rooms located in the robot's tail. These rooms operate like the key parts of engines. As one room expands, the tail bends to one side; when the motor pushes water to the other channel, the tail bends in the other direction. Thus the robot gains the ability to move to where it wants to go.

SoFi solves many of the issues that have affected the usefulness of previous robots—some types of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).

AUVs traditionally often have had to be tied to a boat because radio frequency communications do not work well underwater, so researchers use sound waves. The new technology can travel greater distances, allowing drivers, by using a controller, to pilot SoFi from up to 50 feet away. SoFi can move in the ocean, unaffected by ropes. Also limiting traditional AUVs' usefulness is the risk of hitting something, like hard stones. With the outside made of rubber and plastic that can keep its built-in electronics dry, SoFi can efficiently avoid hitting, so it is more likely to survive a potential crisis.

During test dives in Rainbow Reef, SoFi swam alongside the unsuspecting ocean life at depths of 50 feet for up to 40 minutes at a time, obtaining high-quality photos and videos. More importantly, it was able to do so without causing any disturbance.

Researchers say sometimes the fish would swim alongside the strange-looking robot in curiosity, while at other times they appeared to completely ignore its existence. "It's not perfect, but we're improving it. Our efforts will pay off," says Robert Katzschmann.

Thunderstorms often show up uninvited to Carnival（狂欢节）in Brazil. This year's attempt to influence the skies took place in San Pablo by a party's official sponsor, Skoal, a Brazilian beer brand. "The fun stops when it rains," says Pedro Ada my, Skoal's marketing director. So do beer sales.

An airplane painted with Skoal's logo sprayed (喷洒) water droplets into clouds to make rain fall before the clouds reached the city. According to its YouTube video that has been viewed 12 million times, it is a "mission worthy of science fiction".

Whether it's science or fiction is up for debate. The use of cloud-seeding to increase rainfall dates back to the 1940s. But the United States government stopped funding it in the 1980s due to a lack of "scientific proof of the effectiveness of intentional weather change", according to the National Research Council. A new paper based on experiments in Idaho found that seeding clouds with silver iodide increased snowfall on three occasions, but the authors say that more research is needed to find out if it can reliably promote precipitation (降水). Paulo Artaxo, a Brazilian physicist, says flatly that cloud-seeding is "useless".

Still, governments and firms in many countries use the technology. Sao Pablo's water company has signed million dollar contracts with ModClima to bring rain, most recently during a drought in 2014-15. Although cloud-seeding normally uses a chemical such as silver iodide to provide a surface around which water or ice droplets from, ModClima says it has invented an "experimental" method that uses water alone.

Carnival-goers cheered when the first two days were cloudy but dry. Many shared Skoal's video. But at around 5 pm on February 24th, the sky darkened and rain poured down. Celebrants at one block party left the Skoal stands and rushed to buy umbrellas and plastic rain capes.

In some parts of the world, COVID-19 is not the only plague that 2020 has brought. In parts of Asia and east Africa, swarms (成群) of locusts have ruined fields. The UN figures the swarms in India and Pakistan are the largest for a quarter of a century, and that the numbers in Kenya are the highest for 70 years. One swarm in northern Kenya was estimated to be 25 miles long and 37 miles wide.

Locusts are usually inoffensive, solitary creatures that live alone and do not stay far from the place that they were born. But under the right circumstances-namely heavy rain, and plant harvests-they can become "gregarious". When that happens, the insects gather in hungry swarms which can fly more than 100km in a day.

In a paper published in Nature, Xiaojiao Guo, of the Institute of Zoology in Beijing, and a group of other researchers, shed light on the factor that drives that transformation. They think they have identified the specific pheromone (信息素) that attracts the insects to each other, and thus causes them to swarm.

Dr Guo and her colleagues collected 35 chemicals collected from the bodies and faeces (排 泄物) of the most widespread locust. When tested, gregarious locusts were strongly attracted to just one, a chemical called 4-vinylanisole (4VA). That attraction was strong for immature and mature locusts alike, and for both males and females.

Dr Guo's results could be of more than academic interest. Humans have tried everything from insecticides to flame-throwers to deal with locust swarms. If a chemical could be developed that blocks the receptor (接收器), the insects might be made deaf to its call. If 4VA turns out to be a language that all locusts understand, then it may help humans persuade them to abandon their gregarious ways, and return to a solitary life.