There have been claims that warming on Mars(火星) and Pluto(冥王星) is proof that the recent warming on Earth is caused by an increase in solar activity, and not by greenhouse gases. But we can say with certainty that, even if Mars, Pluto or any other planet has warmed in recent years, it is not due to changes in solar activity.

The Sun’s energy output has not increased since direct measurements began in 1978. If increased solar output really was responsible, we should be seeing warming on all the planets and their moons, not just Mars and Pluto.

    Our solar system has eight planets, three dwarf planets and quite a few moons with at least a thin atmosphere, and thus a climate of sorts. Their climates will be affected by local factors such as orbital variations, changes in reflectance and even volcanic eruptions, so it would not be surprising if several planets and moons turn out to be warming at any one time.

    One theory is that winds have recently swept some areas of Mars clean of dust, darkening the surface, warming the Red Planet and leading to further increases in windiness --- a positive feedback effect.

Observations of the thickness of Pluto’s atmosphere in 2002 suggested the dwarf planet was warming even as its orbit took it further from the Sun. The finding confused astronomers at the time, and the cause had yet to be determined.

It has since been suggested that this is due to a greenhouse effect: As it gets closer to the Sun, Pluto may warm enough for some of the methane ice on its surface to turn into a gas. This would cause further warming, which would continue for a while even after Pluto’s orbit starts to take it away from the Sun.

El Nifio, a Spanish term for “the Christ child”, was named by South American fisherman who noticed that the global weather pattern, which happens every two to seven years, reduced the amount of fishes caught around Christmas. El Nifio sees warm water, collected over several years in the western Pacific, flow back eastwards when winds that normally blow westwards weaken, or sometimes the other way round.

The weather effects both good and bad, are felt in many places. Rich countries gain more from powerful Nifio, on balance, than they lose. A study found that a strong Nifio in 1997-98 helped American’s economy grow by 15 billion, partly because of better agricultural harvest, farmers in the Midwest gained from extra rain. The total rise in agricultural incomes in rich countries is greater than the fall in poor ones.

But in Indonesia extremely dry forests are in flames. A multi-year drought in south-east Brazil is becoming worse. Though heavy rains brought about by El Nino may relieve the drought in California, they are likely to cause surface flooding and other disasters.

The most recent powerful Nino, in 1997-98, killed around 21,000 people and caused damage worth $36 billion around the globe. But such Ninos come with months of warning, and so much is known about how they happen that governments can prepare. According to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), however, just 12% of disaster-relief funding in the past two decades has gone on reducing risks in advance, rather than recovery and rebuilding afterwards. This is despite evidence that a dollar spent on risk-reduction saves at least two on reconstruction.

Simple improvements to infrastructure(基础设施）can reduce the spread of disease. Better sewers(下水道）make it less likely that heavy rain is followed by an outbreak of the disease of bad stomach. Stronger bridges mean villages are less likely to be left without food and medicine after floods. According to a paper in 2011 by Mr Hsiang and co-authors, civil conflict is related to El Nino’s harmful effects—and the poorer the country, the stronger the link. Though the relationship may not be causal, helping divided communities to prepare for disasters would at least reduce the risk that those disasters are followed by killing and wounding people. Since the poorest are least likely to make up for their losses from disasters linked to El Nino, reducing their losses needs to be the priority.

Welcome to Holker Hall & Garden

Visitor Information

How to Get to Holker

By car: Follow brown signs on A590 from J36, M6. Approximate travel times: Windermere-20 minutes, Kendal-25 minutes, Lancaster-45 minutes, Manchester-l hour 30 minutes.

By rail:The Nearest station is Cark-in-Cartmel with trains to Carnforth, Lancaster and Preston for connections to major cities & airports.

Opening times

Sunday-Friday (closed on Saturday) 11:00 am-4:00 pm, 30 March-2nd November.

Admission Charges

Hall & Gardens   Gardens

Adults:               £12.00        £8.00

Groups:                   £9.00          £5.5

Special Events

Producers: Market 13th April

Join us to taste a variety of fresh local food and drinks. Meet the producers and get some excellent recipe ideas.

Holker Garden Festival 30th May

The event celebrates its 22nd anniversary with a great show of the very best of gardening, making it one of the most popular events in gardening.

National Garden Day 28th August

Holker once again opens its gardens in aid of the disadvantaged. For just a small donation you can take a tour with our garden guide.

Winter Market 8th November

This is an event for all the family! Wander among a variety of shops selling gifts while enjoying a live music show and nice street entertainment.

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Vancouver is located in the southwest corner of Canada in the province of British Columbia. Vancouver is the largest city in the province and the third largest in Canada. It covers an area of 113 sq km. It is surrounded by water on three sides and overlooked by the Coast Range. Its climate is one of the mildest in Canada. Temperatures average 3°C in January and 18°C in July. Vancouver's most rainfall occurs in winter.

       Archaeological evidence shows that coastal Indians had settled the Vancouver area by 500 BC. British naval captain George Vancouver explored the area in 1792. Vancouver was founded as a sawmill settlement called Granville in the 1870s. The city was united in 1886 and renamed after Captain Vancouver.

       As the main western terminus of Canada's transcontinental highway and rail routes, Vancouver is the primary city of western Canada, as well as one of the nation's largest industrial centres.

       The Port of Vancouver is Canada’s largest and most various port, trading more than $43 billion in goods with more than 90 trading economies annually. Port activities generate 69,200 jobs in total with $4 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) and $8.9 billion in economic output.

       Vancouver is a major tourist place. In addition to the city's scenic location, visitors enjoy beautiful gardens and world-famous Stanley Park, one of more than 180 city parks, and a combination of natural forest and parklands near the city centre.

Larger brain size linked to longer life in deer

The size of a female animals’ brain may determine whether they live longer and have more healthy offspring (后代), according to new research led by the University of Cambridge.

The study, published in the Royal Society Open Science journal, shows that female red deer with larger brains live longer and have more surviving offspring than those with smaller brains. Brain size is passed down through the generations. This is the first extensive study of individual differences in brain size in wild mammals and draws on data comparing seven generations of deer.

Across species of mammals, brain size varies widely. This is thought to be a consequence of specific differences in the benefits and costs of a larger brain. Mammals with larger brains may, for example, have greater cognitive abilities that enable them to adapt better to environmental changes or they may have longer lifespans (寿命) . But there may also be disadvantages: for instance, larger brains require more energy, so individuals that possess them may show reduced fertility (繁殖力). 

The researchers, based at the University of Cambridge’s Zoology Department and Edinburgh University’s Institute of Evolutionary Biology, wanted to test if they could find more direct genetic or non-genetic evidence of the costs and benefits of large brain size by comparing the longevity (长寿) and survival of individuals of the same species with different sized brains. Using the skulls of 1,314 wild red deer whose life histories and breeding success had been monitored in the course of a long-term study on the Isle of Rum, they found that females with larger endocranial volumes (脑腔容量) lived longer and produced more surviving offspring in the course of their lives.

Lead author Dr Corina Logan, a Gates Cambridge Scholar, says, “The reasons for the association between brain size and longevity are not known, but other studies have suggested that larger brains are a consequence of the longer-lived species having longer developmental periods in which the brain can grow. These hypotheses (假设) were generated from cross-species correlations; however, testing such hypotheses requires investigations at the within-species level, which is what we did.”

Dr Logan adds, “We found that some of the cross-species predictions about brain size held for femalered deer, and that none of the predictions were supported in male red deer. This indicates that each sex likely experiences its own set of trade-offs (权衡，协调) with regard to brain size.” The study also showed that females’ relative endocranial volume is smaller than that of males, despite evidence of selection for larger brains in females.

Professor Tim Clutton-Brock, who set up the Rum Red Deer study with Fiona Guinness in 1972 and initiated the work on brain size, points out, “The reason that this kind of study has not been conducted before is that it requires long term records of a large number of individuals across multiple generations and data of this kind are still rare in wild animals.”

Washington Sightseeing Guide

   White House-Public tours of the White House have been offered since Thomas Jefferson

was president, but you can't just drop in. Visits to the White House are in high demand, and

you must make your request through your member of Congress（国会）up to six months, and

no fewer than 21 days, before your visit. Be sure to check the White House tour-info Web site

to make sure about the personal identification you'll need. And before the day of your visit,

call 202-456-7041 to confirm the tour schedule.

   Lincoln's Cottage-Lincoln's Cottage, the hilltop home where President Lincoln lived during part of the Civil War, is simply furnished but features lighting effects and actors' recordings that reveal Lincoln's thoughts on slavery and the war. "In the library you can actually see the ghost lines of where the library shelves would have been," says cottage director Erin Carlson Mast. "We haven't re-created the bookshelves because that was such an amazing moment of discovery for us that we wanted to preserve that so people can have that moment of discovery themselves. "

   Library of Congress-The Library of Congress is housed in three buildings: the Thomas Jefferson Building, James Madison Memorial Building and the John Adams Building. Although trying to see all of it in one day is possible, it's probably best to do a little thinking ahead and figure out which areas you'd really like to explore (i. e. when your feet start to hurt, you won't feel so bad about not catching everything). The most popular visitor destination is the Thomas Jefferson Building, but there are things worth seeing-murals(壁画) , sculptures, performances-elsewhere in the complex.