When a leafy plant is under attack, it doesn't sit quietly. Back in 1953, two scientists, Jack Schultz and Ian Baldwin, reported that young maple trees getting bitten by insects send out a particular smell that neighboring plants can get. These chemicals come from the injured parts of the plant and seem to be an alarm. What the plants pump through the air is a mixture of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds, VOCs for short.

    Scientists have found that all kinds of plants give out VOCs when being attacked. It's a plant's way of crying out. But is anyone listening? Apparently. Because we can watch the neighbours react.

    Some plants pump out smelly chemicals to keep insects away. But others do double duty. They pump out perfumes designed to attract different insects who are natural enemies to the attackers. Once they arrive, the tables are turned. The attacker who was lunching now becomes lunch.

    In study after study, it appears that these chemical conversations help the neighbors. The damage is usually more serious on the first plant, but the neighbors, relatively speaking, stay safer because they heard the alarm and knew what to do.

    Does this mean that plants talk to each other? Scientists don't know. Maybe the first plant just made a cry of pain or was sending a message to its own branches, and so, in effect, was talking to itself. Perhaps the neighbors just happened to "overhear" the cry. So information was exchanged, but it wasn't a true, intentional back and forth.

    Charles Darwin, over 150 years ago, imagined a world far busier, noisier and more intimate(亲密的) than the world we can see and hear. Our senses are weak. There's a whole lot going on.

Group exercise is one of the most effective ways to improve physical fitness and sustain(保持)a healthy lifestyle.Group exercise is challenging,yet fun and empowering!Of course everyone knows that exercise is good for the body.However,studies have shown that when exercise is performed in groups,it’s not only great for improving physical health but for psychological health.It’s an opportunity to be social,release endorphins(内啡肽),and improve your strength.Additionally,group exercise creates a community feel and the shared common goal motivates participants to work hard.The instrumental support of taking on a fitness journey with others proves more effective than going to the gym alone.

Another beneficial aspect of group exercise is the informational support participants receive from the instructor.Many people fear the gym because they feel lost and don’t want to embarrass themselves.If you feel you can relate,then group training is an even better option for you.It’s a great opportunity to learn more about fitness through the clear instruction and supervision(监管)of a fitness instructor.If you’re tired of wandering around the gym wasting time and becoming bored,you can attend an upbeat group fitness class that’ll keep your workout on track.Don’t let fitness frighten you!

If you’re serious about wanting to live a healthy lifestyle,it’s extremely important to surround yourself with people who’ll provide you with the proper emotional support.I wouldn’t scold anyone for deciding to party on weekends and in turn I wouldn’t expect anyone to give offence to me for focusing on my health.Surround yourself with people who uplift,encourage and understand you!Make fitness even more fun by trying something new or any group fitness class,with a friend.Plan to go for a jog together.Then try a fun healthy restaurant or fresh juice bar!Fitness can be both fun and social!

Surrounding yourself with people who’ll provide you with respect support can be very beneficial while working towards reaching health and fitness goals.First,decide to do it for yourself and work towards staying positive.Then make sure the people you surround yourself with are supportive.Don’t let negativity ruin your motivation.

Your house may have an effect on your figure. Experts say the way you design your home could play a role in whether you pack on the pounds or keep them off. You can make your environment work for you instead of against you. Here are some ways to turn your home into part of your diet plan.

Open the curtains and turn up the lights. Dark environments are more likely to encourage overeating, for people are often less self-conscious(难为情) when they are in poorly lit places – and so more likely to eat lots of food. If your home doesn't have enough window light, get more lamps and flood the place with brightness.

Mind the colors. Research suggests warm colors fuel our appetites. In one study, people who ate meals in a blue room consumed 33 percent less than those in a yellow or red room. Warm colors like yellow make food appear more appetizing, while cold colors make us less hungry. So when it's time to repaint, go blue.

Don't forget the clock – or the radio. People who eat slowly tend to consume about 70 fewer calories per meal than those who rush through their meals. Begin keeping track of the time, and try to make dinner last at least 30 minutes. And while you're at it, actually sit down to eat. If you need some help slowing down, turn on relaxing music. It makes you less likely to rush through a meal.

Downsize the dishes. Big serving bowls and plants can easily make us fat. We eat about 22 percent more when using a 12-inch plate instead of a 10-inch plate. When we choose a large spoon over a smaller one, total intake(摄入) jumps by 14 percent. And we'll pour about 30 percent more liquid into a short, wide glass than a tall, skinny glass.

That people often experience trouble sleeping in a different bed in unfamiliar surroundings is a phenomenon known as the First-night, effect. If a person stays in the same room the following night they tend to sleep more soundly. Yuka Sasaki and her colleagues at Brown University set out to investigate the origins of this effect.

Dr. Sasaki knew the first-night effect probably has something to do with how humans evolved.

The puzzle was what benefit would be gained from it when performance might be affected the following day. She also knew from previous work conducted on birds and dolphins that these animals put half of their brains to sleep at a time so that they can rest while remaining alert enough to avoid predators (捕食者). This led her to wonder if people might be doing the same thing. To take a closer look, her team studied 35 healthy people as they slept in the unfamiliar environment of the university’s Department of Psychological Sciences. The participants each slept in the department for two nights and were carefully monitored with techniques that looked at the activity of their brains. Dr. Sasaki found, as expected, the participants slept less well on their first night than they did on their second, taking more than twice as long to fall asleep and sleeping less overall. During deep sleep, the participants’ brains behaved in a similar manner seen in birds and dolphins. On the first night only, the left hemispheres (半球) of their brains did not sleep nearly as deeply as their right hemispheres did.

Curious if the left hemispheres were indeed remaining awake to process information detected in the surrounding environment, Dr. Sasaki re-ran the experiment while presenting the sleeping participants with a mix of regularly timed beeps (蜂鸣声) of the same tone and irregular beeps of a different tone during the night. She worked out that, if the left hemisphere was staying alert to keep guard in a strange environment, then it would react to the irregular beeps by stirring people from sleep and would ignore the regularly timed ones. This is precisely what she found.

I am so grateful for the 21-Day Eco challenge hosted by Kindspring. Taking care of our sweet Mother Earth has always been __(1)____ to me in my life and I have taken __(2)____  in my everyday life to recycle, reuse, think about ways to protect our Mother Earth, etc. However, this __(3)____  awoke me even more.

Our Scholars Together community has taken on more than we have before __(4)____  recycling ,using our own china cups and metal water bottles when we go out ,not buying things in __(5)____  containers and having green lunches more consistently, not__(6)____  ,but the biggest change we made was setting a goal of Zero Waste.

We set up more boxes and bins for paper that we could __(7)____  again, recycled every sheet of use-on-both-side paper, plastics, cans ,etc. We also __(8)____  all of our food we cooked or bought ,instead of throwing some away. We really __(9)____  it a challenge. Each day we all saw how little __(10)____ could be in our dustbins. I realized that I had been throwing paper away that could be used on the other __(11)____ or could be recycled, and now I am looking everywhere for __(12)____  that can be used more __(13)____  until recycling time.

The videos offered by Kindspring have been so__(14)____  and useful to us all that I don’t want the Eco challenge to __(15)____ . We will continue to do our part and __(16)____  the news to our family and friends. Next week we are trying some __(17)____  in our local sandwich and sub shops where the kids like to go to see that we can bring our own __(18)____  in, rather than having them put in bags. It is cool to see how the __(19)____  spreads. Thank you Kindspring for __(20)____  the community with daily support and great researched videos and information.

A

Going green seems to be fad(时尚)for a lot of people these days. Whether that is good or bad, we can’t really say, but for the tow of us, going green is not a fad but a lifestyle.
    On April22, 2011, we decided to go green every single day for an entire year. This meant doing 365 different green things, and it also meant challenging ourselves to go green beyond easy things. Rather than recycle and reduce our energy, we had to think of 365 different green things to do and this was no easy task.
    With the idea of going green every single day for a year, Our Green Year started. My life and I decided to educate people about how they could go green in their lives and hoped we could show people all the green things that could be done to help the environment. We wanted to push the message that every little bit helps.
    Over the course of Our Green Year, we completely changed our lifestyle. We now shop at organic(有机的)stores. We consume less meat, choosing green food. We have greatly reduced our buying we don’t need. We have given away half of what we owned through websites. Our home is kept clean by vinegar and lemon juice, with no chemical cleaners. We make our own butter, enjoying the smell of home-made fresh bread. In our home office anyone caught doing something ungreen might be punished.
    Our minds have been changed by Our Green Year. We are grateful for the chance to have been able to go green and educate others. We believe that we do have the power to change things and help our planet.

When a leafy plant is under attack, it doesn’t sit quietly. Back in 1983, two scientists, Jack Schultz and Ian Baldwin, reported that young maple trees getting bitten by insects send out a particular smell that neighboring plants can get. These chemicals come from the injured parts of the plant and seem to be an alarm. What the plants pump through the air is a mixture of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds, VOCs for short.

   Scientists have found that all kinds of plants give out VOCs when being attacked .It’s a plant’s way of crying out. But is anyone listening? Apparently. Because we can watch the neighbours react.

   Some plants pump out smelly chemicals to keep insects away. But others do double duty. They pump out perfumes designed to attract different insects who are natural enemies to the attackers. Once they arrive, the tables are turned. The attacker who was lunching now becomes lunch.

   In study after study, it appears that these chemical conversations help the neighbors .The damage is usually more serious on the first plant, but the neighbors, relatively speaking, stay safer because they heard the alarm and knew what to do.

Does this mean that plants talk to each other? Scientists don’t know. Maybe the first plant just made a cry of pain or was sending a message to its own branches, and so, in effect, was talking to itself. Perhaps the neighbors just happened to “overhear” the cry. So information was exchanged, but it wasn’t a true, intentional back and forth.

 Charles Darwin, over 150 years ago, imagined a world far busier, noisier and more intimate  (亲密的)   than  the  world  we  can  see and hear. Our senses are weak. There’s a whole lot going on.

Do you know electricity can change the way we taste food? Proving this fact is a revolutionary electric fork designed by Japanese researchers that can make any dish taste salty.

According to Hiromi Nakamura, a Post Doc Research Fellow at Tokyo’s Meiji University, the technology can be very useful for people on special diets. Patients with high blood pressure, for instance, can easily go on a low-salt diet and still enjoy delicious food. And with the fork, there’s absolutely no risk of over-salting their food. Luckily, the voltage(电压) is so small that there is no risk of danger either.

The idea of adding electricity to food was first exposed as an experiment at the Computer Human Interaction Conference in Austin, Texas, in 2012. Nakamura and her team connected a wire to a 9-volt battery and passed it through a straw placed in a cup of sweet lemonade. Volunteers reported that the charged lemonade tasted ‘blander’, because the electricity created the taste of salt.

Nakamura has improved the technology to be able to transfer an electric charge to food through forks and chopsticks. “The metallic part of the fork is one electrode（电极）, and the handle is the other,” Nakamura explained. “When you take a piece of food with the fork and put it in your mouth, you connect the circuit. When you remove the fork from your mouth, you disconnect the circuit. So it actually works as a switch.”

Simon Klose, host of food program Munchies, who recently visited Nakamura to try out the fork himself, called this form of ‘food hacking’ one of the greatest eating experiences he’d ever had.

“When I first heard of electric food, it sounded scary,” he said. He later continued to use a charged fork to eat pieces of fried chicken, and found that the saltiness considerably increased as the electricity was connected.

Nakamura has been eating ‘electric’ food for the past three to four years in an attempt to understand it better. “For me, ‘food hacking’ is about strengthening or weakening real food,” she said. “It may seem like we’re cooking but we’re actually working on the human senses.”

Bundle up ! Jack Forest has paid another visit to the Midwest. For the second time this week, a major winter storm has left people from Oklahoma to the Great Lakes struggling to stay safe and warm. Heavy, wet snow has shut down major highways, delayed flights and left hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners without power.

The storm began in Texas on Sunday and rapidly traveled north. A gust of 75 mile per hour winds pushed the storm up towards Oklahoma, bringing fifteen inches of snow to parts of Oklahoma. It then moved east and hovered (盘旋) over Chicago, Illinois, dropping four inches of wet snow on top of the city and its suburbs. Airlines canceled nearly 500 flights at Chicago’s O’ Hare and Midway airports. Taking into account the safety of their students in the storm, many schools in the affected states either delayed opening or did not open at all.

In Kansas City, Missouri, up to ten inches of snow had fallen before midday on Tuesday. The city’s mayor, Sly James, declared a state of emergency. Most government and office buildings were shut down. Some hospitals were forced to close urgent-care clinics. The Missouri Department of Transportation has told people to stay off all roads and major highways.

While heavy snowfall is not usual for this part of the country at this time of year, it is the amount of moisture (湿气) in the snow that makes conditions extra treacherous. When snow is especially damp, it weighs down trees and brings down power lines. Roofs can cave in under the pressure and roads can become very icy. The strained power lines have cut off electricity to more than 100,000 homes and business in the Midwest.

As snow falls and the temperature continues to drop, people are preparing the best they can to stay dry and safe. The wintry mix of sleet (雨夹雪) , rain and snow is making travel difficult for even snowplows and repair vehicles. “It’s snowing, blowing, drifting, everything,” said Robert Branscecum, a trucker from Illinois. “ I am not leaving anytime soon.”

Sports can help you keep fit and get in touch with nature. However, whether you are on the mountains, in the waves, or on the grassland, you should be aware that your sport of choice might have great influence on the environment.

   Some sports are resource-hungry. Golf, as you may know, eats up not only large areas of countryside, but also tons of water. Besides, all sorts of chemicals and huge amounts of energy are used to keep its courses in good condition. This causes major environmental effects. For example, in the dry regions of Portugal and Spain, golf is often held responsible for serious water shortage in some local areas.

   There are many environment-friendly sports. Power walking is one of them that you could take up today. You donˈt need any special equipment except a good pair of shoes; and you donˈt have to worry about resources and your purse. Simple and free, power walking can also keep you fit. If you walk regularly, it will be good for your heart and bones. Experts say that 20 minutes of power walking daily can make you feel less anxious, sleep well and have better weight control.

Whatever sport you take up, you can make it greener by using environment-friendly equipment and buying products made from recycled materials. But the final goal should be "green gyms". They are better replacements for traditional health clubs and modern sports centers. Members of green gyms play sports outdoors, in the countryside or other open spaces. There is no special requirement for you to start your membership. And best of all, itˈs free.