The next time you see birds flying in a V,consider this:A new study says they design the flapping of their wings accurately to help them on their way.

That’s what scientists concluded after tracking a group of large black birds—each equipped with a tiny GPS device—that had been trained to follow a small aircraft.One expert in animal flight said just gathering the data,which included every wing flap,was a remarkable accomplishment.

Scientists have long theorized that many birds adopt a V formation for aerodynamic(空气动力的)reasons.When a bird flies,it leaves a wake.The idea is that another bird can get a uplifting from the air in that wake by flying behind the first bird and off to the side.When a group of birds use this trick,they form a V.

It’s been difficult to study this in the wild,but researchers from the University of London’s Royal Veterinary College and elsewhere met that challenge by partnering with a conservation program that is trying to reintroduce the endangered wading bird in Europe.

For about a decade,the program has hand-reared ibises(人工繁殖的朱鹭) from zoos and taught them their migration route by leading the way with a piloted craft.Normally,the leader of a V-formation would be a parent bird.With the program’s help,the researchers tracked 14 young ibises as they migrated between Austria and Italy.

An analysis of a seven-minute period showed that when the ibises flew in a V,they positioned themselves in just the right places to use the updraft in another bird’s wake,which lets them conserve their energy.

They also appeared to time the flapping of their wings to take full advantage of that updraft,by making a wingtip follow the same path through the air as the wingtip of the bird up ahead.It’s like one car following another on a roller coaster.

And when one bird flew directly behind another instead,it appeared to adjust its flapping to reduce the effects of the wake’s downdraft.So birds can either sense or predict the wake left by their flock mates and adjust their flapping accordingly,a remarkable ability,the researchers said.

For thousands of years, man has enjoyed the taste of apples. Apples, which are about 85 percent water, grow almost everywhere in the world, both the hottest and coldest areas. Among the leading countries in apple production areChina,Franceand the United States.

There are various kinds of apples, but a very few make up the majority of those grown for sale. The three most common kinds grown in the United States are Delicious, Golden Deli­cious, and McIntosh.

Apples are different in colour, size and taste. The colour of the skin may be red, green, or yellow. They have various sizes, with Delicious apples being among the largest. The taste may be sweet or tart (酸的). Generally, sweet apples are eaten fresh while tart apples are used to make applesauce(苹果酱).

Apple trees may grow as tall as twelve meters. They do best in areas that have very cold winters. Although no fruit is produced during the winter, this cold period is good for the tree.

      Getting electricity has always been a problem for the 173 people living in Nuevo Saposoa, a small village in Peru, South America. However, things went from bad to worse in March 2015 after heavy rains damaged the only power cables in the area. The villagers were forced to use oil lamps, which are not only expensive but also dangerous because of the harmful gases they produce.

       Luckily, researchers at the University of Technology (UT) in Lima, Peru heard about their problem and found a wonderful solution. They made a lamp that can be powered by plants and soil, both of which can be easily found in the Amazonian rainforest where the village lies. The lamp takes energy from a plant growing in a wooden box and uses it to light up an LED light bulb.

       While that may sound amazing and even impossible, the science behind the ides is quite simple. As plants create their food (using the sun’s energy, water and chemicals from the soil), they also produce waste which they return to the soil. Tiny animals in the soil eat this waste and they produce electrons – the building blocks of electrical energy. The UT team put special sticks inside the soil to capture the energy and keep it in the lamp’s batteries for later use. The researchers say a single charge can power a 50-watt Led light for two hours ------ enough time for local villagers to get their evening work done.

        The university gave ten Plant Lamps to the villagers of Nuevo Saposoa in October 2015. So far, they have been a huge success! Elmer Ramirez, the UT professor who invented the lamp, believes the Plant Lamp could help improve the lives of many people, especially small rainforest communities, 42% of whom have no electricity.

A new ingredient developed by scientists in Scotland could mean that ice-cream lovers can enjoy their treats longer before they melt. The scientists estimate that the slow-melting product could become available in three to five years. The development could also allow products to be made with lower levels of fat and fewer calories.

Research teams at the Universities of Edinburgh and Dundee have discovered that the protein, known as BsIA, works by combining together the air, fat and water in ice cream. It is also said to prevent gritty ice crystals from forming - ensuring a fine, smooth taste.

Prof Cait MacPhee, of the University of Edinburghˈs school of physics and astronomy, who led the project, said: “Itˈs not completely non-melting because you do want your ice cream to be cold. It will melt eventually but hopefully by keeping it stable for longer BsIA will stop it from dripping.”

The team developed a method of producing the protein——which occurs naturally in some foods as friendly bacteria. Prof MacPhee said it works by keeping oil and water mixed together, stops air from escaping and coats the ice crystals in ice cream which stops them from melting so quickly.

She told BBC Radio 5 Live: “This is a natural protein already in the food chain. Itˈs already used to ferment(使发酵) some foods so its a natural product rather than being a ˈFrankensteinˈ food. By using this protein weˈre replacing some of the fat molecules(分子) that are currently used to stabilise these oil and water mixtures so it can reduce the fat content, but it shouldnˈt taste any different.”

She said it also had the prospect of reducing the sugar content and could be used in other foods such as chocolate mousse and mayonnaise to help reduce the calories. The researchers believe using the ingredient could benefit manufacturers too as it can be processed without impacting on performance and can be produced from sustainable raw materials.

   Many people think that listening is a passive business. It is just the opposite. Listening well is an active exercise of our attention and hard work. It is because they do not realize this, or because they are not willing to do the work, that most people do not listen well.

      Listening well also requires total concentration upon someone else. An essential part of listening well is the rule known as ‘bracketing’. Bracketing includes the temporary giving up or setting aside of your own prejudices and desires, to experience as far as possible someone else’s world from the inside, stepping into his or her shoes. Moreover, since listening well involves bracketing, it also involves a temporary acceptance of the other person. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will seem quite willing to open up the inner part of his or her mind to the listener. True communication is under way. The energy required for listening well is so great that it can be accomplished only by the will to extend oneself for mutual growth.

      Most of the time we lack this energy. Even though we may feel in our business dealings or social relationships that we are listening well, what we are usually doing is listening selectively. Often we have a prepared list in mind and wonder, as we listen, how we can achieve certain desired results to get the conversation over as quickly as possible or redirected in ways more satisfactory to us. Many of us are far more interested in talking than in listening, or we simply refuse to listen to what we don’t want to hear.

      It wasn’t until toward the end of my doctor career that I have found the knowledge that one is being truly listened to is frequently therapeutic(有疗效的) . In about a quarter of the patients I saw, surprising improvement was shown during the first few months of psychotherapy(心理疗法), before any of the roots of problems had been uncovered or explained. There are several reasons for this phenomenon, but chief among them, I believe, was the patient’s sense that he or she was being truly listened to, often for the first time in years, and for some, perhaps for the first time ever.

Like people, plants experience stress. And also, like people, the response to that stress can determine success.

Bad environmental conditions, such as drought, flood, heat and other stresses, affect yields（产量）more than crop pests and diseases. We are trying to find a way to equip plants with the ability to tolerate environmental stress and maintain high production, said Stephen Howell, a professor of genetics and cell biology.

Plant cells produce proteins（蛋白质）and ship them to different parts of the cell. Under normal conditions, these proteins are folded into their normal, healthy structures as they are produced. When a plant is under stress, its cells produce poorly folded or unfolded proteins. Then a built-in system senses this and “sets off an alarm in the cell,” said Howell.

In response to the alarm, another protein (IRE1) starts working and creates a different process which activates (激活) the stress response genes whose products bring about defensive measures that help the plant survive.

“As it turns out, responses that are activated under stress conditions actually inhibit the growth of plants,” said Howell. “This allows them to preserve their energy to survive the stress conditions.”

For plants in the wild, this response is a help for survival, he said. In production of agriculture crops, however, this response reduces production.

“You don’t want crop plants to stop growing,” Howell said. “You want them to continue to grow and produce even though they are under stress.”

With the new understanding of this stress response, the next step may be to silence the alarm system, said Howell. “What may be important is to disable some of these stress responses. That may make the plant more productive under stress conditions.”

The 2012 London Olympics had enough problems to worry about. But one more has just been added - a communications blackout caused by solar storms.

   After a period of calm within the Sun, scientists have detected the signs of a flesh cycle of sunspots that could peak in 2012, just in time for the arrival of the Olympic torch in London.

   Now scientists believe that this peak could result in vast solar explosions that could throw billions of tons of charged matter towards the Earth, causing strong solar storms that could jam the telecommunications satellites and interact links sending five Olympic broadcast from London.

   "The Sun's activity has a strong influence on the Earth. The Olympics could be in the middle of the next solar maximum which could affect the functions of communications satellites," said Professor Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire. 

   At the peak of the cycle, violent outbursts called coronal mass ejections (日冕物质抛射) occur in the Sun's atmosphere, throwing out great quantities of electrically-charged matter. " A coronal mass ejection can carry a billion tons of solar material into space at over a million   kilometres per hour. Such events can expose astronauts to a deadly amount, can disable satellites, cause power failures on Earth and disturb communications," Professor Harrison added. The risk is greatest during a solar maximum when there is the greatest number of sunspots.

   Next week in America, NASA is scheduled to launch a satellite for monitoring solar activity called the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which will take images of the Sun that are 10 times clearer than the most advanced televisions available.

   The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory helped to make the high-tech cameras that will capture images of the solar flares (太阳耀斑) and explosions as they occur.

   Professor Richard Hold away, the lab's director, said that the SDO should be able to provide early warning of a solar flare or explosion big enough to affect satellite communications on Earth "If we have advance warning, we'll be able to reduce the damage. What you don't want is things switching off for a week with no idea of what's caused the problem," he said.

Like people, plants experience stress. And also, like people, the response to that stress can determine success.

Bad environmental conditions, such as drought, flood, heat and other stresses, affect yields（产量）more than crop pests and diseases. We are trying to find a way to equip plants with the ability to tolerate environmental stress and maintain high production, said Stephen Howell, a professor of genetics and cell biology.

Plant cells produce proteins（蛋白质）and ship them to different parts of the cell. Under normal conditions, these proteins are folded into their normal, healthy structures as they are produced. When a plant is under stress, its cells produce poorly folded or unfolded proteins. Then a built-in system senses this and “sets off an alarm in the cell,” said Howell.

In response to the alarm, another protein (IRE1) starts working and creates a different process which activates (激活) the stress response genes whose products bring about defensive measures that help the plant survive.

“As it turns out, responses that are activated under stress conditions actually inhibit the growth of plants,” said Howell. “This allows them to preserve their energy to survive the stress conditions.”

For plants in the wild, this response is a help for survival, he said. In production of agriculture crops, however, this response reduces production.

“You don’t want crop plants to stop growing,” Howell said. “You want them to continue to grow and produce even though they are under stress.”

With the new understanding of this stress response, the next step may be to silence the alarm system, said Howell. “What may be important is to disable some of these stress responses. That may make the plant more productive under stress conditions.”

B

Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Earth Day. Holidays like these and others could be celebrated every day of the year. While larger projects like helping to clean up local parks are important tasks to tackle, there are also a number of changes you can make in your own household all year long to live greener, according to Barry Kaplan, co-owner of Everything Natural in Clarks Summit. It is the little things that each person can do, he said, that will truly make a difference every day.

Everything Natural owner Barry Kaplan displays is one of the many Earth-friendly cleaning products available at the Clarks Summit store.

“Living as though Earth Day really mattered,” Kaplan said, “helps call attention to something we should be aware of every day. To live greener, or not as wasteful, can include simple life changes that are easy to do.” Kaplan said, “Even if you were to eat one vegetarian meal a week, it has a huge impact. I am not advocating vegetarians, but in our country, we eat more beef than any other country.” Kaplan also suggested that while eating less meat andusing products made locally will help the cause, there are many other alternatives.

“Home heating is the largest use of energy that exists. The amount of wood and paper thrown away is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years,” Kaplan said. If during the winter, everyone were to turn down their heat a degree or two, Kaplan said it would make a significant difference.

Households should recycle, Kaplan said. “Clarks Summit is a good community for recycling, but it could be better, if every household did.” Kaplan said using recycled paper towels could save millions of trees and landfill space. Also businesses should be more aware of their impact using office paper and the waste of printing emails. At the end of each of Kaplan’s emails it is featured:“Please consider the impact to theenvironment before printing this email.”

       If you want to help children develop language and speech skills, UCLA researchers say, listening to what they have to say is just as important as talking to them.

         The effect of a conversation between a child and an adult is about six times as great as the effect of adult speech input alone, the researchers found. “Adults speaking to children helps language develop, but what matters much more is the interaction，” said the study’ s lead author, Frederick Zimmerman, an associate professor in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. The researchers also found that TV viewing didn’t have much of an effect — positively or negatively — as long as it wasn’t displacing (取代) conversations between an adult and a child.

       The UCLA study included 275 families with children between 2 months and 48 months old. They represented a variety of incomes and education. The researchers found that, in an average day, children hear about 13,000 spoken words from adults and participated in about 400 adult-child conversations a day.

        Assessed(评定)separately, factors positively associated with language development included each additional 100 conversations a day and each 1,000 word increase in the number of words spoken by adults and heard by children. When looked at alone, TV was negatively associated with language development. But, when the three factors were analyzed together, the only one that stood out was conversation between adults and children.

       “The more a child speaks and interacts with an adult, the better idea a parent has about where the child is,” Zimmerman said. “Although it’s mostly done unconsciously (无意识地), parents will provide feedback and correct mistakes. They’ll alsotailortheir speech to the child. Parents can give a child words by talking to them about what they’re doing, such as, ‘I’m putting on your pajamas now’. But give your child the opportunity to talk, hopefully without the rest of the noise in the environment,” she added. “If parents can carve out (分拆) some conversation time — maybe at bath time or at dinner time — that’s a wonderfulthing.”