Want to help fight global warming? Take off your tie，says the Italian health ministry.

It has urged employers to let their staff dress casually at work in the summer so that the air conditioning can be turned down.
    "Taking your tie off immediately lowers the body temperature by 2 or 3 degrees centigrade," the ministry said in a statement. "Allowing a more sensible use of air conditioning brings about electricity savings and protects the environment"
    It called on all public and private offices to let employees wear no tie during heat waves like the one that has brought Africa-like temperatures to many parts of Italy this week.
    The move echoes (回应）a similar action from Italy’s biggest oil group, ENI, which told its staff earlier this month they need not wear a tie at work.
    The tie makers, however, were left hot under the collar.
    "Italy confirms that it is a strange country," Flavio Cima said angrily in a letter to financial daily IL SOLE 24 ORE under the headline："I，tie maker, am responsible for global warning." "We can now happily continue with our lifestyle, using cars, consuming fuel, heating and cooling our homes at leisure. On one condition：we should not wear a tie while we do so," he wrote. "I should have listened to my friends and become an oil producer instead."
    Italy is one of the European Union’s worst performers on the pollution front and is among the EU countries expected to exceed (超出)their greenhouse gas emission (排放）targets.

        Fear is emotion like others such as happiness, anger, hurt and sadness. We need emotions to process the information we receive and decide how to respond. Being afraid of fast cars, for example, is something that might protect us from harm. Being afraid of the consequence of a choice may prevent us getting into trouble.

        Fears in young children commonly centre on certain animals like snakes or big dogs. Fears are caused often because of experiences or ideas expressed by others, and at times, the media. Many normal fears during the early years, like men with beards. Or large dogs, disappear with age. Those relating to personal failure and ridicule(嘲笑)remain through adulthood and may need special help to overcome.

       Children’s fears are often trivial, but that doesn’t mean they should be ignored. They need to be recognized and accepted as real for children. Only when we help children understand their fears can they grow normally in their ability to deal with them.

       Research shows that as a child grows up, the centre of his fears changes a lot. Things like divorce, a teacher who “shouted at me”, people with guns, bullies, big boys, or “making fun of me” top the list of childhood fears.

        We cannot always prevent these experiences from happening, but it’s essential that children be allowed to freely express their emotions without judgement. Sympathy and a caring listener will help ease the pain of these fears. Read books and stories to your child about children who have experienced similar fears. This helps children talk about their fears and find ways to cope. With all emotions, fears become less of a problem for children as they gain self-confidence and they find that fear is normal and can be dealt with.

We all have an idea about the common types of environmental problems. However, light pollution may be a new term to many of us. But, the fact is, it does affect mankind, other living forms and the environment as a whole. 

What is light pollution? It presents all forms of misused man-made light. The obvious cause of light pollution is the use of outdoor lighting products improperly. It can be office lighting, car headlights, station lights, streetlights and many more.

Light pollution is harmful to both animals and plants. Upon studies, it is found that obvious effects  are observed in the behaviour of nocturnal animals. Needless to mention , bright light at night makes it difficult for these animals to hunt, wander and perform their regular activities. Light pollution is directly or indirectly responsible for causing several diseases. Its effects are related to disturbance in the physical rhythm. It contributes to risks of developing cancerous cells. So, it’s nothing less than a threat to human health.

You have already seen the negative effects of light pollution on animals and human health. Apart from this, the actual cost of misused light is about millions of dollars every year. It also leads to the release of greenhouse gases and global warming. After all，fuels are used for producing electricity.

While outdoor lighting and using man-made lighting products are part of our modern lifestyle, some simple ways will surely help in reducing light pollution. For example，while installing outdoor lighting, make sure that they are pointed downwards . Also， use only the required lighting equipment for both home and offices. Believe it or not, many people living in the urban areas cannot view clear sky and stars at night. Let’s contribute our part in reducing the pollution.

Scientists have long had it in their mind: to make a robot lizard (蜥蜴). They began with finding out why a lizard can hang on a wall. They noticed the lizard’s toes were unique: It has suckers (吸盘), which enable it to hang on walls. They, therefore, made a robot with suckers on its hands and feet.

The robot could hang on the wall but fell off when crawling. So, they went on researching. 6 years ago, scientists discovered that suckers only were not enough. It is the bristles (刚毛) on each foot that adds friction (摩擦) and static adsorption (静电吸附力) that makes a lizard move on the smooth wall easily without falling down.

Then scientists made great efforts to fix thick bristles to the robot’s hands and feet. However, the effect was not satisfactory. The robot still couldn’t attach itself firmly to the wall.

Scientists got puzzled: How on earth can the lizard crawl on an extremely smooth wall or even on a ceiling without dropping off?

An accidental finding inspired them. One day a scientist happened to see an animal attack a lizard and bite off its tail. The lizard broke away from the animal’s teeth and threw itself on a wall to escape, only to fall off heavily on the ground. The scientist wondered: Is it the tail that plays an important role in its travelling on the wall? He caught some lizards for an experiment. The result proved his assumption: A tailless lizard has no trouble walking on an ordinary wall but can’t on a smooth one. A further study showed the lizard’s tail can prevent it falling over backward and, what’s more, that the tail acts as an additional leg while one of the lizard’s legs leaves the wall, which is always the case while it is walking on the wall.

Thus, Tailbot, a super tailed robot, is born.

The world is full of natural navigational (导航的) wonders. For example, pigeons can fly back home from thousands of miles away, and elephants can remember a watering hole that they once visited years ago.

Are humans any different? Apparently not. When we’re not using our phones to track our locations, we also have our own GPS systems in our brains, according to the 2014 winners of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Norwegian scientist couple Edvard and May-Britt Moser won the prize jointly along with British-US scientist John O’Keefe. Their discoveries show us how the brain knows where we are and navigates from one place to another. They also help to explain why people with Alzheimer’s (a disease which is associated with memory loss) can’t recognize their surroundings.

It was all the way back in the 1970s when O’Keefe discovered that a specific set of cells in mice was always active when they entered a particular room. The cells, which O’Keefe called “place cells”, are located in a part of the brain called the hippocampus (海马体) and help form a map in the brain.

In 2005 the Mosers followed up the research and discovered what they call “grid cells”. They found that the brain creates a two-dimensional (二维的) grid of the world and the points on the grid are connected with people, places, and other sights, smells, and experiences.

You could say that the place cells mark Point A and Point B in the brain, and the grid cells help the brain get from Point A to Point B.

However, the research by the three Nobel Prize winners is still in its early stages. It’s unclear whether human brains are set up in the same way, according to Joshua Sanes, who is in charge of Harvard University’s Center for Brain Research.

Green Festival: A Party With a Purpose

For the past four years, the Green Festival in Washington, D.C., has brought together people from around the country who are interested in the environmental movement. The groups call the festival "a party with a purpose". The Green Festival is to create an economy in which natural resources are used in a way that does not destroy the environment.   

Throughout the two-day event, over one thousand people volunteered to help the festival run smoothly. Four hundred businesses and organizations showed their products and projects. About three thousand visitors came to the party. They could find everything from naturally made organic food to clothing made from bamboo plants.

There were over one hundred fifty speakers and discussion groups. For example, you could learn how to be an environmentally friendly traveler. You could also watch several movies about political and environmental issues. Then you could listen to some live music performances. After sitting for too long, visitors could take a yoga exercise class. There was even an area for children. Younger visitors could enjoy fun games and lessons on subjects like protecting the rainforest and creating chocolate sweets.

Green building was one of the important subjects at the festival. Many companies and organizations aim to create environmentally safe buildings. They design structures with reduced energy use, fewer chemicals and more recycled materials.

Spending a day at the Green Festival showed people many solutions for improving the health of our planet. People have extensive green choices, from the things people buy to the ways people eat, think, and live. The Green Festival connects a wide community of people who care deeply about, and are working to improve, our shared environment.

      No one can believe that the over 6,300-kilometer Great Wall might disappear some day. Believe it or not, the Great Wall is being destroyed by people. Less than 20 percent of the Great Wall built in the Ming Dynasty, is still perfect, but about 80 percent is in danger. The Great Wall can be called “great” mostly because of its amazing length. But we should realise that the length was made up of one brick at a time. If we do nothing to save the Great Wall, it will become a series of separate wasteland rather than a historic site.

         The Great Wall is actually a series of walls built and rebuilt by different dynasties over the past 2,000 years. It began in the rule of China’s first emperor, Qin Shihuang of the Qin Dynasty (221BC—206BC), and lasted into the Ming Dynasty. The parts built before the Ming Dynasty have nearly disappeared. People are familiar with sections such as Badaling in Beijing and Jiayuguan Pass in Gansu, because they have been open to tourists for many years. But those sections far away from the public eyes have been almost forgotten.

           Few local people knew the 3-meter-high walls made of earth and stones beside them are part of the Great Wall. The lack of knowledge is considered as one of the main reasons behind human.

         The bricks on the Great Wall are carried off by countryside people to build their houses, sheep corrals and pigsties. Some were taken away to build roads. Bricks carved with people’s names are put away as remembrances. Rubbish is spread over the battlements. The brick can be sold for 15 yuan per tractor load. Those who destroyed and are destroying the Wall know its name, but are not clear about its cultural meaning. It will take a long time to let them know this. The local farmers not only carried off the body of the Wall but also dug out the entire base.

        It is necessary to protect the Great Wall. First of all, the officials should be aware of the importance of the Great Wall. Young Chinese should know more about the nation’s great civilization and learn to love it.

      D

  About l.3 billion years ago, two massive black holes hit each other and formed a new one. The energy set free by the collision created a ripple(波纹) in the space-time structure and spread outward in gravitational waves  (引力波)  .

  Then, on September 14, 2015, a group of scientists discovered the waves. On February 11, an announcement came from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIOO)  in the US that, for the very first time, a gravitational wave was directly observed and recorded.  "We discovered gravitational waves. We did it," David Reitze, the director of LIGO, said in the

press conference on February 11. "Itˈs exactly what Einsteinˈs theory of general relativity predicted:ˈ

  Einsteinˈs 1915 theory re-imagined the framework for the universe. According to Einstein, the framework for the universe-or the space-time structure-is not fixed, but changed by  matter and energy "in a way a heavy sleeper causes a mattress to sag (床垫下凹) , producing the  effect we call gravity", explains a New York Times article.

  "A disturbance in the universe could cause space-time to become larger, break into pieces and even move up and down, like a mattress shaking when that sleeper rolls over, producing  ripples of gravity: gravitational waves," explains the article.

  Compared with the other three forces in the universe (electromagnetism, the weak nuclear  force and the strong nuclear force), gravity is relatively weak, making gravitational waves hard to discover.

  The discovery by LIGO would open a new chapter in astronomy. "Everything else in  astronomy is like the eye," Szabolcs Marka, a Columbia University professor, told The New York  Times. "Finally, astronomy grew ears. We never had ears before."

The message what the “Eat up All on Your Plate” campaign tries to convey is not new. Our ancestors had poems about the importance of frugality (节俭) in the consumption of food. But it makes a lot of sense when many are yet to have the awareness that food waste borders on a crime.

The campaign has been started online and thousands of people have answered the call. Many restaurants have joined the program by announcing that customers are encouraged to order half a dish and take home what they canˈt finish.

However, it is estimated (估计) that 50 million tons of grain are wasted every year in China, enough to feed 200 million people for a year.

True, official banquets (宴席) paid with public money contribute much to such waste. But it is important that everyone thinks about how they can do their bit to reduce food waste. We need to develop the habit of never ordering or cooking more than we can eat and feeling guilty when we dump our leftovers.

Many people have a bad habit of entertaining guests with more than enough food, believing that they have not satisfied their guestsˈ appetites if there is no food left on the table. In fact, to be a good host they order more than their guests can possibly eat and their guests eat more than they want out of politeness.

Such a mentality needs to change. People need to be made aware that it is impolite to force guests to eat more than they are comfortable with and it is insensible and uncivilized to waste food. Even if one is wealthy, ordering more than one can eat is a bad way to show off oneˈs wealth.

D

     Imagine if you had no feeling in your hands. Imagine holding a baby’s hand without knowing if you are hurting it or not. This is the problem many amputees (someone who have lost all or part of an arm or leg) face. Recently a team of scientists has come up with a bionic arm: one that allows an amputee to feel as if he is using his natural arm.

       Now the biggest difficulty lies in connecting it to the nerves. We experience feeling because of our nerves, which send electrical signals to our brains. When the arm is cut off and fitted with a prosthetic arm (假臂), the peripheral (末梢的) nerves can no longer send a signal to the brain. The lack of signals makes amputees unable to feel objects that they pick up. The most important aspect of the bionic arm is its connectivity to the nerves on the end of the arm. Sensors (传感器) on the bionic arm detect and receive signals from any object it comes into contact with. Then, a computer program created by the scientists transforms the signal into an impulse (脉冲) that can be translated by nerves. Wires (金属丝) from the sensors are connected to the nerves in the patient, allowing the signal to be sent to the brain.

       Early tests of the bionic arm have been successful, but it is not yet ready for wider use. The team of scientists wants to continue improving the instrument. An important advancement would be to make it easy to carry; it now works with many wires outside, preventing amputees from using it outside of the lab. In addition, the scientists want to improve sensitivity and the feeling of finger movements. Being the first prosthetic instrument to connect to the nerves, the bionic arm still needs to undergo further tests. So only time will tell if it will be the next breakthrough in prosthetics.