Special Bridges Help Animals Cross the Road

— Reported by Sheila Carrick

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.

Most people know this joke. But recently, some people have been much more worried about how the grizzly bear(灰熊) and mountain lion can cross the road.

“Millions of animals die each year on US roads,” the Federal Highway Administration reports. In fact，only about 80 ocelots, an endangered wild cat, exist in the US today. The main reason? Road kill.

“Ecopassages (生态通道)” may help animals cross the road without being hit by cars. They are paths both over and under roads. “These ecopassages can be extremely useful, so that wildlife can avoid road accidents,” said Jodi Hilty of the Wildlife Protection Society.

But do animals actually use the ecopassages? The answer is yes. Paul Beier of Northern Arizona University found foot marks left by mountain lions on an ecopassage that went under a highway. This showed that the lions used the passage.

Builders of ecopassages try to make them look like a natural part of an area by planting trees on and around them. Animals seem to be catching on. Animals as different as salamanders(火蜥蜴) and grizzly bears are using the bridges and underpasses.

The next time you visit a park or drive through an area with a lot of wildlife, look around. You might see an animal overpass!

British scientists say they have developed a new material called Armourgel that could help protect older adults from breaking bones when they fall. Scientists say it is soft enough to be put in normal everyday clothing.

As people get older, many of them develop the disease osteoporosis（骨质疏松症）．It makes their bones so weak that even a minor fall can cause a bone to break．In some cases, older adults can die from breaking bones or from problems resulting from them．

Armourgel is a combination of two new man-made materials．These materials quickly take in or absorb energy when they hit something, this protects whatever is behind the material．

"Itˈs soft and flowable so it moves with the musculature of the body but when you impact it it momentarily goes rigid,"（僵硬的）said Daniel Plant, the leading researcher, and his team  have joined the material with a substance whose cells collapse when they are hit．

Daniel Plant says, it is the combination of these materials that makes Armourgel special．The new product is said to be much thinner than other protective materials currently being sold．

However, “Bone protectors, no matter how good, are not the best solution．"The key is to prevent the bones from losing their mineral content, staying healthy．And then even if you fall, you wonˈt break your bone," said Gambert．

C

The World Health Organization says there has been a sharp increase in the number of over­weight children in developing countries. In African countries, the WHO says the number of over­weight or obese children is twice as high as it was 20 years ago. Around the world, about 43 million children under the age of five were over­weight in 2013.

Overweight or obese children are more likely to become overweight and obese adults. The condition can generate serious health problems like heart diseases.

Francesco Branca is the director of the WHO Department of Nutrition for Health and Development. He says urban lifestyle makes people eat processed food more often, which has a high sugar, fat and salt content. He also says people are gaining weight because of their lack of activities. They travel in cars or other vehicles more than on foot.

The WHO experts say to lower obesity rates is especially complex in countries that also deal with high rates of infectious (感染性的) diseases.

The WHO has some basic solutions for individuals and countries. The organization says you should lower your intake of fat, sugar, salt and processed food and eat more fruits, vegetables and increase physical activity. The WHO says these actions are especially important for children.

And WHO expert Branea says mothers should breastfeed their babies for at least the first six months of life, if possible. More importantly, governments should consider providing vitamins for children and educational campaigns about problems linked to obesity would also help. In his view, government policies should deal with how food is marketed to children and food producers must balance quality and taste with the dangers of sugar fat and salt.“Reducing the number of over­weight children will not be easy. The goal is difficult to meet even in wealthy countries.”he adds.

Even if trees cannot walk, they are still on the move.

In parts of the Arctic, entire forests are moving northward. Across the Arctic, temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else in the world. As that happens, the tree line that marks where forests stop and the treeless tundra(冻土地带) starts has been shifting northward. Trees growing along the tree line must protect themselves from the cold wind. To do this, plants tend to grow horizontal(水平的) branches low to the ground. The energy it takes for trees to grow this way means they don't have enough energy to make seeds.

But as Earth's climate has been warming, trees no longer have to just grow horizontally. Many can instead grow up toward the sky. This takes less energy. And with all the leftover energy, these trees have started producing more seeds. This happens especially in places where the white spruce(白云杉) grows.

White spruce, which is a North American tree, is quite able to produce a lot of seeds, which can move long distances in the wind. When wind-blown seeds end up on the tundra beyond the tree line, they eventually can sprout(发芽) new trees. This explains how a forest can move. Of course, the process would work only if the tundra were warm enough. But in recent years, the whole planet has been warming.

New trees will provide shelters for some snow, keeping the sun’s rays from making the white surface disappear. Instead, the trees absorb the sun's heat. This warms the surrounding air. The extra warmth encourages even more trees to produce seeds. That further boosts a forest's ability to expand. In addition, more trees will trap more snow, preventing much of it from being blown away. Snow can trap heat in the soil below, which encourages trees to grow. The recent rise of temperatures has helped more trees grow past the tree line. People worry about impacts on the animals that depend on frozen conditions for food and shelter.

B

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Scientists have learned a lot about the kinds of food people need. They say that there are several kinds of food that people should eat every day. They are: (1) green and yellow vegetables of all kinds. (2) citrus(柑桔) fruits and tomatoes; (3) potatoes and other fruits and vegetables; (4) meat of all kinds, fish and eggs; (5) milk and foods made from milk; (6) bread or cereal(谷类), rice is also in this kind of food; (7) butter, or something like butter.

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People in different countries and different places of the world eat different kinds of things. Foods are cooked and eaten in many different kinds of ways. People in different countries eat at different times of the day. In some places people eat once or twice a day; in other countries people eat three or four times a day. Scientists say that none of the differences is really important. It doesn’t matter whether foods are eaten raw(生的) or cooked, canned or frozen. It doesn’t matter if a person eats dinner at 4 o’clock in the afternoon or at eleven o’clock at night. The important thing is what you eat every day.

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There are two problems, then, in feeding the large number of people on earth. The first is to find some ways to feed the world’s population so that no one is hungry.

The second is to make sure that people everywhere have the right kinds of food to make them grow to be strong and healthy.

A British dog-lover has invented a high-tech way of feeding his pet by Twitter( 推特，流行社交网络). Computer expert Nat Morris ,30, has designed a system to give his pet a “tweet treat” by sending him a Twitter message.

His dog Toby gets some delicious dog biscuits from a computer-controlled food machine whenever Nat sends a message to “@ feedtoby”.

Nat often works away from home and isn’t always able to feed Toby by hand. But his new invention allows Nat to feed his dog from anywhere in the world.

Nat said .,” Toby absolutely loves it. At first he didn’t know what was going on . Now he sits underneath the machine, wagging his tail and waiting for the food to drop.”

Nat fills the food machine with small pieces of dog biscuits, but not too many in case  four-year- old Toby gets too many messages. And Nat  has even equipped(装备，配备) his house with an online  camera so he can see Toby enjoying he food at his home.

But one problem is that friends and family have been so amazed with the “tweet treat”machine that they have started sending tweets to Toby too. So Nat has had to limit feeding time to make sure Toby doesn’t turn into Tubby.

“People have been sending him tweets at all hours of the day, so I had to limit it to between 9a.m. and 9 p.m.. I’m thinking of doing an updated one which can measure his weight before he is fed ,just to make sure he’s not putting on too much puppy fat,” explained Nat.

 How Nat’s Twitter Feeder works:

When a message is sent to @ feedtoby, it is received by a mini –computer that is linked to the feeding machine.

  When the mini-computer receives the message, a bell rings and Toby comes running over and sits in front of the feeding machine. Next , the machine’s motorpulls open a trap door which releases a serving of  food.

The doggy biscuits then drop into Toby’s food bowl. Finally a digital camera takes a photo of him and sends  it back to Nat on Twitter –so  he knows  Toby has been  fed.