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.

With its incredibly long neck, giraffe looks like no other animal on Earth. But how did this mammal come to get its famously huge neck? Well, scientists have been asking themselves this question for centuries.

The most commonly believed answer is that the massive neck – which measures on average 180 centimeters and weighs about 270 kilograms – evolved to allow the animal to reach the leaves of tall trees. British scientist Charles Darwin was one of the first people to propose this idea in the 1800s.

Yet, there are other theories.

According to a paper published in September in the Journal of Arid Environments, the giraffe’s neck evolved to increase its surface-area-to-volume ratio (表面积—体积比). Because the animal’s neck increases its body’s surface area, it makes it easier for it to keep cool, the paper’s authors wrote.

This phenomenon can be seen everywhere in nature. For example, this is why elephants have such large ears.

Meanwhile, some believe that competition is the answer.

A 1996 study by two South African zoologists argued that the male giraffes with the biggest necks are the ones who “win” access to females to reproduce, as they are better at fighting, meaning that their long necks are passed down through the generations.

So, it seems like there’s still no definite answer to the question.

Shoppers could soon use their mobile phones to check how ripe fruit and vegetables are with an “X－ray vision” camera.

    The HyperCam, based on hyper spectral (高光谱的)imaging, can assess ripeness with 94 percent accuracy and could also be used to check for rotting produce in the fridge at home. Scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle managed to create a portable hyper spectral imaging camera that would cost $ 800 (£520).

     Hyper spectral imaging uses a broader range of the electromagnetic spectrum(电磁波)than an ordinary camera. The researchers are now working on a version of the technology that shoppers could download on to a mobile phone for about $ 50. The technology is already used in satellite imaging, building safety inspection, but is a highly costly process.

    Professor Shwetak Patel, of the University of Washington, said: “It’s not there yet but you can probably imagine putting it in a mobile phone. With this kind of camera you could go to the grocery store and know what produce to pick by looking underneath the skin and seeing if there’s anything wrong inside. It’s like having a food safety app in your pocket.”

    Neel Joshi, a Microsoft researcher, said: “Existing systems are costly and hard to use so we decided to create an inexpensive hyper spectral camera and explore these uses ourselves. After building the camera we just started pointing it at everyday objects, really anything we could find in our homes and offices, and we were amazed at all the hidden information it revealed.”

    Other potential uses for the technology include analyzing blood vessels and identifying individual people by the unique texture (纹理) of their skin.

    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.

The year 2114 will be an eventful one for art. In May of that year in Berlin, the philosopher-artist Jonathon Keats’ “century cameras” – cameras with a 100-year-long exposure (曝光）time – will be brought back from hiding places around the city to have their results developed and exhibited. Six months after that, the Future Library in Oslo, Norway, will open its doors for the first time, presenting 100 books printed on the wood of trees planted in the distant past of 2014.

As Katie Paterson, the creator of the Future Library, puts it: “Future Library is an artwork for future generations.” These projects, more than a century in the making, are part of a new wave of “slow art” intended to push viewers and participants to think beyond their own lifetimes. They aim to challenge today’s short-term thinking and the brief attention spans of modern consumers, forcing people into considering works more deliberately. In their way, too, they are fighting against modern culture – not just regarding money, but also the way in which artistic worth is measured by attention.

In a similar fashion, every April on Slow Art Day, visitors are encouraged to stare at five works of art for 10 minutes at a time – a tough task for the average museum visitor, who typically spends less than 30 seconds on each piece of art.

Like the Future Library, the century cameras are very much a project for cities, since it’s in cities that time runs fastest and the pace of life is fastest. “Since I started living in a city, I’ve somehow been quite disconnected,” Anne Beate Hovind, the Future Library project manager, who described how working on the library drew her back to the pace of life she knew when she was growing up on a farm in her youth, told The Atlantic magazine.

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.