【推荐2】The State of California is depending on its forests to help cut down planet-warming CO₂. But that climate-change strategy may be risky, as new research from the University of California, Irvine(UCI)reports that trees in California’s mountains and open spaces are dying from wildfires and other pressures — and fewer new trees are filling the blank.

“The forests are not keeping up with these large fires,” said study co-author James Randerson, the Ralph J. and Carol M. Cicerone Professor of Earth system science at UCI. Acrossthe whole state, tree cover area has dropped 6.7% since 1985. “These are big changes in lessthan forty years,” he said. It’s the first time that researchers have been able to measure tree population fall in California, and find out the reasons(wildfires and woodcutting).

For the study, the UCI-led team used satellite data from the USGS and NASA’s Landsat mission to study plant changes between 1985 and 2021. They found that one of the most obvious falls in tree cover was in southern California, where 14% of the tree population in local mountain had disappeared, maybe everlastingly.

“The ability. of forests to recover(恢复)from fire appears to be dwindling in the south,” said Jonathan Wang, a researcher in Randerson’s research group, who led the study coming out in AGU Advances. “At the same time, the state’s coverage of bushes and grasses is rising, which could mean more everlasting ecosystem shifts(生态系统转化).”

“The speed and scale of fall in tree cover is different across the state. Tree cover in the Sierra Nevada, for example, stayed relatively unchanged until around 2010, then began dropping suddenly. Fortunately, in the north, there’s plenty of recovery after fire,” said Wang, perhaps because of the area’s higher rainfall and cooler temperatures. “This threat(威胁) to California’s climate solutions isn’t going away anytime soon,” Wang said. “We might be entering a new age of bigger fire and vulnerable(易受损的) forests.”

【推荐3】What do Gladys, Ruby and Logan all have in common? Well, they are all names of storms.     1     Here’s everything you need to know.

Why are storms named?

    2     It’s simply to make people more aware when severe weather is on the way, with the idea being you’ll hear the name and you’ll know serious wind, rain or snow is coming. That way, people are better placed to keep themselves and their property safe.

    3    

A name is given when a storm is expected to cause medium or high impacts, or in weather-speak (气候语言), has the potential to cause an amber or red warning.     4     So scientists believe that naming storms helps raise awareness of the impacts of severe weather and ensures clarity (清晰) for the public when they need it most.

How are the names chosen?

The Met Office asks the public to suggest possible names and a new list is published every year. The lists are alphabetical (按字母顺序排列的), with names alternating between male and female. Bad news is if your name begins with Q, U, X, Y or Z, you’re never going to get a storm named after you.     5     In the US, hurricanes are often given clear and simple names, alphabetically as well.

【推荐1】The song of the Florida grasshopper sparrow is unusual and surprisingly insect-like. But it almost fell silent forever. In 2012, Joel Sartore, the founder of National Geographic Explorer and Photo Ark received a call from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service: The songbird, an important ecological link in Florida’s dry grassland, was on the edge of extinction. With only a few dozen males showing up in counts, it was among North America’s most endangered bird species.

Sartore flew to Florida to photograph the bird and work with conservationists to raise awareness of the species’ difficult situation. The story appeared in outlets, such as newspapers, magazines and even the Internet, helping boost government funding for a breeding program. Thanks to these steps, there are now as many as 180 adults in the wild and researchers are working hard to bring the species back from the brink of extinction.

Like other examples of species survival, the push to save the sparrow is “a remarkable story of belief and cooperation,” says Sartore. It also shows what it takes to protect an endangered species: research, narratives, partnerships, resources and time. This journey shows the society’s mission to illustrate and protect the wonder of the world. Over the past 136 years, we’ve developed a unique Explorer-led model, combining science, exploration, education, and storytelling to drive impact. We support Explorer in more than 140 countries, including Sartore and others whose work appears in this issue: biologist André Green II, photographer Lynsey Addario and education advocate Ara Kusuma.

Sartore has been creating an “ark” of animal photos for 17 years. Portraits of more than 15, 000 species invite audiences to connect and care. With the society’s support, the images have appeared on landmarks and U. S. postage stamps, prompting on—the—ground conservation efforts such as an initiative of National Geographic Explorer and Photo Ark.

As Sartore says, “The sounds of birds are the sounds of a healthy planet. When we save a bird or another species, we’re actually saving ourselves.”

【推荐3】After spending years competing as a marathon mountain runner and cross-country skier, Gudrun Pflueger devoted herself to tracking wolves as a field biologist in Canada’s backcountry.

And her research and encounters with the Canadian coastal wolves led to the 2010 Smithsonian Channel documentary (纪录片) A Woman Among Wolves.

Less than a month after filming along British Columbia's islands, Pflueger, then 33, was diagnosed with a brain tumor (瘤) and told she might have only 18 months to live.

Surgeons removed a golf ball-size tumor, and Pflueger, now promoting her Smithsonian Channel follow-up, Running With Wolves, credits wolves with helping inspire her recovery.

“I really believe the encounter with the wolves in the wilderness was a powerful medicine. They gave me strength,” says Pflueger, now 37, whose life-threatening encounter with a coastal wolf pack was highlighted in the earlier film.

“Most people see them as bad, as killing machines. But they are part of nature. They have some of the same characteristics as we do—determination, courage, a strong will to live.

Running With Wolves was filmed over parts of 2011-2012, while Pflueger was regaining her physical strength. It tracks her inspirational but hard return to Canada's coast.

“It’s rare for filmmakers to go back, but people can relate to this story on all sorts of levels,” says Smithsonian Channel’s chief programmer, David Royle. “Gudrun was a world-class athlete who is fun and energetic. She’s enthusiastic about a species that's been misrepresented. And you come away feeling inspired by her courage and bravery recovering from cancer.”

“We want to draw attention to women scientists. They’re underrepresented at the top level,” he says. “We also wanted to challenge stereotypes (成见) that women scientists are unimportant.”

【推荐2】A relationship between the amount of adult speech children are exposed to and the concentration of myelin, a substance in the brain, has been found, researchers say.

“I think the take-home message is, absolutely talking to your kids. It’s literally shaping the structure of the brain,” says the lead author, Prof. John P. Spencer of the University of East Anglia.

The team find, for the 30-month-olds, larger amounts of adult speech are associated with higher quantities of myelin in language-related pathways in the brain; however, for the 6-month-olds, it goes the opposite way.

While the latter (后者) is unexpected, Spencer points out one possible factor: the brain’s stage of development.

“When babies are six months old, they experience massive growth of new nerve cells,” he says. “So the input comes in and may help extend the period of brain growth.” “While at 30 months, the brain starts to cut back some of the cell growth, and form specific connections. That’s where myelin comes in. So now the input starts to help structure the myelin,” he adds.

The researchers conclude adult speech is significant for both age groups and that the more adult speech children go through, the more sensitive they will be to language. The next step for them is to figure out whether the 6-month-old babies showing that negative connection will surely turn into 30-month-old kids who show positive relationship.

Dr. Saloni Krishnan, Reader in cognitive neuroscience (认知神经科学) at Royal Holloway, University of London, who is not involved in the work, however, notes individual differences in language ability are linked to genetics. “Children who are exposed to more language at home and have higher myelination will also have inherited genes (经遗传获得的基因) from parents who are more excellent in languages,” she said. “No final conclusion could be made before this potential genetic effect are tested. And yet there being currently no standard around the amount of input children should receive, caregivers should not necessarily feel pressure to talk more to their children.”

【推荐3】American scientists claim in a new study that humans need to create very Earth-like conditions to survive for long periods in space.

The study centered on issues such as dealing with gravity (重力) and oxygen in space, collecting water, developing agriculture and removing waste in space.

Life in space would require a natural ecosystem to sustain humans and their necessary equipment. Without these kinds of systems, the task will fail. One of the biggest problems for humans in space will be issues related to gravity. Humans experience lower levels of gravity in space. A lack of gravity can change the fluid (液体) pressure in living things. This can lead to health problems for humans living in space.

There is just no other place in space where there is 1G of gravity; that just doesn’t exist anywhere else in our solar system. That’s one of the first problems we must solve. IG is another term for what scientists call “normal gravity”, or the gravity that exists on the Earth’s surface. It can be measured as the rate of speed at which an object travels when falling to the ground.

Oxygen is another important consideration. The scientists say space agencies would need to build high-technology main and backup oxygen systems to support long-term human life in space. But what if they fail?

One suggestion from the study is to arrange living things to produce oxygen. Think of the hundreds of thousands of species of plants that make oxygen. That kind of system would be needed to support long-term missions in space and on planets.

The other main requirement would be a huge amount of energy from the sun, the study suggests. The scientists noted that as astronauts travel farther from the sun, they will be able to collect less and less solar energy. But they do need a lot of energy. Otherwise, powering the ecological system will be like trying to run your car on a cellphone battery.