【推荐3】Mammals like us nurse their young with milk. Yet some other animals, including tsetse flies and pigeons, also produce a type of milk to feed their babies. But the newly discovered nursing in Toxeus magnus (大蚁蛛)could be the closest to mammal moms'.

Researcher Zhanqi Chen, who studies spider behavior at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Menglunzhen, found that for the first week or so after her baby comes out of the egg, a spider mom will leave milk droplets around the nest for her young to drink. Then nursing turns more mammalian. The little ones press themselves against their mom's body. Researchers say a gentle finger push on the underside of her stomach will squeeze (挤出)a tiny drop of white milk out of her skin. It comes out much like water from sweat glands (汗腺) and babies drink the milk by taking it up with the tongue.

Baby spiders live on nothing else for the first 20 days of their lives, the researchers report. In the lab, mothers occasionally hunted fruit flies provided by researchers. However, they never brought any of these flies back to the nest to feed their young.

After this period, baby spiders start to feed themselves. But their moms continue nursing them for nearly three weeks more, the team found. With that combined diet, 76 percent of youngsters in lab nests lived long into adulthood. Without mom's milk, they died in about 10 days.

Toxeus magnus spiders enjoy living alone. However, in order to offer extended (延长的) care to their babies, Toxeus magnus mothers end up sharing a nest with their young for an unusually long time. According to a study, only about 120 among the nearly 48,000 known spider species are known to stand being with others for more than three weeks. And only about 30 of those live lifelong social lives. So an example of spiders sharing a nest for such a long time is "a big deal".

【推荐1】Placing large-scale renewable energy equipment is difficult and often met with criticism, especially in areas where landscape of the area is considered a cultural heritage(遗产) or is a tourist spot which brings in good income. Therefore, the human interaction is kept at a minimal rate to avoid damaging the environment.

Changes in biodiversity due to equipment of solar energy and wind power is thought to be more damaging than overall reduction in greenhouse gasses. This is one of the reasons why acquiring land for renewable energy equipment is so difficult, since traditional uses of land such as agriculture are preferred more than placing power plants. However, recent research shows that installing such renewable equipment actually promotes biodiversity.

Now a comprehensive research has been carried out on ‘The Effects of Solar Farms on Local Biodiversity‘ in UK by ecological consultants who proved these theories. The consultants studied 11 similar solar farms located around England and Wales along with their neighboring control farms to compare. Plants (crops), invertebrate(无脊椎动物), bird and bat surveys were carried out on both the farms. One test before solar arrays were set up on the land and then after.

The results of the study exceptionally proved that solar farms had significantly higher biodiversity than the control farms. The solar farm had by far the most positive effect on biodiversity when the farmland was replanted with a mixture of different seeds after the solar farm was constructed. This minimized use of agricultural chemicals and promoted marginal habitat space for other species.

The report further went on to say that reduction in greenhouse gas emissions was just one of the positive effects.

The other one was that the increase in wildlife and biodiversity inside the solar farms actually extended to areas surrounding the solar farm as well. Construction has always come with a downside of damage to the local ecosystems, but since building solar farms actually benefit the wildlife, there couldn’t be better news to hear! A good reason of improved biodiversity would be the fact that farm is shifted from monoculture farming to a variety of crops. The limited use of pesticides and herbicides contributes to safer practices. Moreover, the presence of solar equipment provides shade for birds to make their nests (be kind to animals).

【推荐2】The human personality is a rather complex and bewildering thing to study. In order to gain a better understanding of the subject, people have attempted to find increasingly reliable ways to measure and classify personalities.     1    

Personality tests pose a series of questions or ambiguous images that are meant to help assess the test taker’s personality. Once completed, the collected answers will indicate what “type” of personality the test taker has.

    2     They’re used to assess theories, evaluate the effectiveness of therapies, diagnose psychological problems, examine personality changes, and even screen job candidates. Personality testing has become a multibillion-dollar industry, and it is used by individuals, schools corporations, and even government agencies around the globe.

The majority of the tests that are used by experts today are based on the “Big Five” personality model. This theory suggests that the human personality can be measured across five broad dimensions: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to change.     3     Some even break these dimensions further into smaller “subtraits” or divide the traits differently.   

Essentially, the personality tests we use today fall into two categories: self-report inventories and projective tests. The first category typically involves having the test subject read a number of multiple-choice questions or statements and then rating how well the described qualities or characteristics apply to them. The biggest advantage of self-report inventories is that they are standardized and use established norms(准则).     4    

The second category involves presenting the test subject with ambiguous scenes, objects, or scenarios(设想) and then asking them to give their interpretations of the test items. These descriptions are then used to assess the individual’s unconscious fears, desires, and challenges. This type of personality test is usually used in psychotherapy settings, where it allows therapists to gather a great deal of information about their clients in a relatively short amount of time.     5     Different people may provide different interpretations of the responses given.

【推荐3】The Importance of Inventions

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but invention drives the economy. The great importance of invention is that it solves problems and changes the world.    1    And it goes beyond culture. The modern era is arguably the greatest time in the history of the world for innovation, but none of it would have happened without the invention of electricity supplied on demand. With that one advancement, in came the fastest-changing period in human history-and the greatest population growth, too.

    2    Even things like the toilet and modern plumbing made it possible to improve hygiene and reduce exposure to human waste, which in turn made cities cleaner and more desirable to live in. The modern bathroom also helped reduce the spread of disease, which in turn helped extend the average life expectancy.    3    

People eat better, and more safely, because of innovations we now take for granted like the refrigerator, the oven and running tap water. Daily life at work has transformed because heavy- lifting jobs can be done by forklifts. In fact, technology is reaching a new height.    4    More people than ever before need to sit for work, with office jobs and the like changing our fitness level and lowering the risk of injury during a workday.

Even entertainment has changed because no longer do people have to make their own fun by playing games.    5    How people communicate, work, eat, travel, shop-it’s all subject to innovation and invention. Advances don’t always improve life, though, as many people are learning through the constant-access struggles of smartphones and ever-present noise pollution in cities.

【推荐2】On Feb. 19, the same day Harper Lee passed away, the world lost another literary giant. He was 84-year-old Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, whose masterpiece The Name of the Rose won him international fame when it was published in 1980. The novel sold more than 10 million copies in about 30 languages and was made into a movie in 1986 starring British actor Sean Connery.

A USA Today obituary (讣告) thus describes: “Eco was an author of books ranging from novels to scholarly books to essay collections; Eco was enthusiastic about the obscure as well as ordinary daily life; As a scholar, critic and novelist, he also did research on the mysterious theory of semiotics-the study of signs and symbols in language and the technical languages of the Internet.

The Name of the Rose can be seen as a much more complicated version of US writer Dan Brown’s popular novel The Da Vinci Code. The book is set in a 14th century Italian Monastery (修道院) where monks are being murdered one by one in terrible manners. Two monks who travel to the monastery try to solve the murders. The book’s mystery develops around a complex-designed library and a lost Aristotle’s book on comedy.

Although the novel is full of Latin phrases and devotes many pages to analysis of Christian beliefs and ancient philosophy, it’s a fascinating detective thriller.

Eco also wrote some harsh literary criticism. He once wrote that “books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told”.

【推荐3】Exams are brain-burning. The silence of the hall; the beating of the clock; the watchful eye of the teacher; the proud expression of the person sitting at the neighbouring desk who has finished 15 minutes early. It therefore seems hardly surprising that those who feel anxious about taking tests do worse than those who do not. But different from the existing point of view, the recent study published in Psychological Science by Maria Theobald suggests it is the pressure of revision that affects your exam performance (表现).

To test this idea, Dr Theobald worked with 309 German medical students who were preparing for their final exam, the most important that they take. During the 100 days before the real exam, these students used an online digital-learning app which presented them with old exam questions and recorded their performance. And 40 days before the real exam, they also took a mock (模拟) exam. Their levels of anxiety were also be recorded and assessed (评定), every day for 40 days before the real exam and also on the day of that exam.

What Dr Theobald found was not what she expected. Anxiety on the day of the test did not predict exam performance at all. What did predict it was the level of knowledge a student showed in the mock exam and the earlier practices. Those who performed well in these also did well in the real test, no matter how anxious they were on the day.

It turned out that what really affected students were high levels of anxiety during the weeks before the exam took place. The greater a student’s anxiety in the days before the exam, the lower his or her knowledge gain was during that period. To reduce this anxiety. she gives some advice for students to consider as they revise. First, they can raise their belief in their own abilities by reminding themselves of just how much they know. Second, they can diminish the importance of the test by reminding themselves that, while it is important, it is not a life or death situation. It really isn’t.