【推荐1】The koala(考拉) is possibly one of the best known Australian animals, and is found in four states: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.

The word “koala” comes from an Australian word meaning “no drink”. Sometimes people call them “koala bears” but koala is not a bear. It belongs to a special group of Australian mammals, called marsupial(有袋类). Female marsupials have a pouch where the baby animals live after they are born.

Koalas have soft, thick, gray or brown fur on their backs. The fur on the stomach is white. The Koala in the south have thicker fur than those in the north because of the cold winters. However, the koalas in the northern part live in warm to hot weather most of the year, so they have thinner fur.A koala has a large nose and round ears. Koalas don’t have tails. Adult koalas weigh between 7kg and 14 kg.

Koalas spend nearly all their time in the trees. They sleep most of the day, but feed and move from tree to tree mainly at night.The reason koala sleep for much of the day is because their food, eucalyptus(桉树) leaves, are so hard that they need a lot of energy(能量;精力)to digest. Sleeping saves energy.

Each koala has a home made up of several trees that they visit regularly. They normally do not visit another koala’s home trees except that a male is looking for a female to mate with.

【推荐2】At first, muffled (听不太清的)conversations made researchers at a San Diego aquarium puzzled, but when a diver thought he was being told to get “out” of the water they realized the conversations were coming from a white whale.

Noc was about one year old when he was caught off the Pacific coast of Canada. He was kept in an open-ocean pen (围栏) at the US National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego, California. After seven years at the Foundation, he began, automatically, to make unusual sounds, a report in the latest issue of the journal, Current Biology, said.

“We thought of the whale’ s vocalizations(发出的声音) as an attempt to imitate humans. Whale vocalizations often sounded as if two people were talking just out of the range of our understanding,” the authors said. “ ‘These conversations’ were heard several times before we finally realized the whale was the source.” The researchers realized it was Noc when a diver surfaced and asked, “Who told me to get out?” It was then that they realized the word “out”, which was repeated several times, had come from Noc. Later, his speech-like sounds were recorded in the air and underwater.

Noc started making the sounds after seven years in the open-ocean pen, and continued making them for another four years. He died five years ago. Researchers have now analyzed the sound recordings. It was the first time that sound recordings had shown how such sounds imitated speech and were different from the usual calls of the species.

The speech-like sounds were lower than normal whale sounds and much closer to those of the human voice. Also, whales talk to each other by blowing air through their noses, rather than using a larynx(喉), as people do.

“We don’t claim that our whale was a good imitator compared to such well-known imitators as parrots,” the researchers said. “However, the behavior we observed is an example of vocal learning by the white whale. It seems that Noc’s close association with humans played a role in how often and how well he employed his human voice.”

【推荐1】Two weeks ago, I had volunteered to raise three newborn American barn owls. When the director of a local wildlife rehabilitation (康复) center first approached me and asked if I would be interested in raising “the babies” I was overjoyed! Twelve years earlier, the center had received a pair of barn owls, and since then more than 100 of them have been bred and released. Thoughts poured through my head of hours happily spent raising these babies and working with them until they were fully grown. Tossing them up into the sky where they would begin their lives anew in the wild would be so incredibly rewarding.

However, I had assumed incorrectly that we were going to release all of them. In fact, two of the owls were to be released, but the third owl was to be used as an educational animal. For the center to keep one owl when his two siblings were going to be freed seemed cruel, and this angered me. Sensing my anger, our director suggested that before I denounced the plan for this owl, I should at least go out and help with the educational assignment, to see what is accomplished. While still ready to regard this plan as a horrible use of an owl, I reluctantly agreed to go.

Then, things took a 180-degree turn. I found that I had been naive in my assumption that most people knew as much about wildlife as I did, and that they shared my respect for animals. The children at the school where I spoke had never seen the owls or the opossum that I showed them, though both were common inhabitants of our area. Many of them had never even heard of an ocelot. They were full of questions and eager to know more. At that moment, it occurred to me that in front of me were rooms full of 6-and 7-year-olds who, with the “help” of the owls, were learning to view nature in a whole new light.

That afternoon, I returned from the educational assignment with a new-found sense of purpose and happily commenced that task at hand — feeding little pieces of mice to Athena, our newest educational ambassador.

【推荐2】Audio digital (有声数字化)books are becoming more and more popular these years. One of the reasons for this is that audio digital books can be “read” in many places comfortably.

The first favorite place for many people is in bed, before going to sleep. There are nights when a person would want to do nothing but lie in bed going over what has happened in the day. Many people like to just lie in bed in the dark before they fall asleep at night. This would be the perfect time to listen to an audio digital book. If you read an ordinary book, the lights have to be turned on and you have to turn the pages with your hand. An audio book can just be listened to while a person stays comfortably in bed.

The next favorite place to listen to audio digital books would be in the kitchen. For some people kitchen work is boring. Audio digital books provide good entertainment, and people don’t need to turn pages.

An audio digital book is a favorite while a person is gardening. They can help take a person’s mind off job at hand. It can be fun and exciting to do gardening with the help of these books.

Another great place would be while exercising. It allows the mind to be free while the legs, body and arms are kept busy. This would be a great place to listen to these books.

The next favorite place would be while we are on the road to and from work on buses, trains or even on long flights. Audio digital books have become good companions and help us relaxed.

【推荐1】Yesterday, the head of the US federal public health agency said it's on its highest warning level of the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. More than 930 people are thought to have died from the virus so far in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria.

Ebola can be deadly in up to 90% of cases, depending on the type. The virus is spread through direct contact with body fluids from an infected person. There is currently no known cure or vaccine for the virus.

The reason why the market hasn't produced a drug to battle Ebola is that there are not many people who die from this disease. In the history of this disease, there have been probably fewer than 3,000 known deaths since 1976, among which only one was not in Africa. Besides, most drug companies are interested in drugs that will treat millions of people since it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a drug. However, the U.S. government got interested in this because of its concerns about whether Ebola could actually end up as a terrorist agent. The government think it would be better if they develop some drugs in their back pocket, should somebody try to use this virus to attack people.

Although there hasn't been an effective cure for Ebola, at present there are three different methods to treating this disease. The first is very similar to other anti-viral drugs that are already at the market and this approach is being developed by a company called BioCryst Pharmaceuticals. The second one uses a completely different method, and it uses genetic material that can actually block the viruses’ own genetic material. This is a kind of far out idea and it's being developed by a Canadian company called Tekmira. And the third is a cocktail treatment of antibodies. This was the drug given to the two sick Americans. And it now also has been given to a Spanish minister who got sick while in West Africa.

At the current trend, within another few weeks, there will have been more cases in this outbreak than in all previous recognized outbreaks of Ebola put together. The governments in several countries have now introduced a number of measures aimed at preventing the spread of the virus.

【推荐2】The common cold is the world’s most widespread illness, which is probably why there are more myths(神话) about it than any of the other illnesses.

The most widespread mistake of all is that colds are caused by cold. They are not. They are caused by viruses passing on from person to person. You catch a cold by coming into contact, directly or indirectly, with someone who already has one. If cold causes colds, it would be reasonable to expect the Eskimos to suffer from them forever. But they do not. And in isolated Arctic regions explorers have reported being free from colds until coming into contact again with infected(感染的) people from the outside world by way of packages and mails dropped from airplanes.

At the Common Cold Research Unit in England, volunteers took part in Experiments in which they gave themselves to the discomforts of being cold and wet for long stretches of time. After taking hot baths, they put on bathing suits, allowed themselves to be doused(浸入) with cold water, and then stood about dripping（滴干 ）wet in drafty（通风的） rooms. Some wore wet socks all day while others exercised in the rain until close to exhaustion．Not one of the volunteers came down with a cold unless a cold virus was actually dropped in his nose.

If cold and wet have nothing to do with catching colds, why are they more frequent in the winter? In spite of the most painstaking research, no one has yet found the answer. One explanation offered by scientists is that people tend to stay together indoors more in cold weather than at other times, and this makes it easier for cold viruses to be passed on.

No one has yet found a cure for the cold. There are drugs and pain suppressors such as aspirin, but all they do is to relieve the symptoms.

【推荐3】Sometimes when we are in our darkest hour, something completely unexpected happens that can give us a little bit of hope and comfort.

Jessica was a healthy woman. One day, she woke up and something was not right. After she was sent to the hospital, her heart rate slowed by nearly 50 percent. It took nine days for doctors to zero in on what was causing her problem.

After several weeks, Jessica was able to move her lips. Staff noticed this and introduced Jessica to Consuelo Gonzalez, a professional lip reader. Consuelo can understand what people are saying by the shape their lips make. She can also understand how annoying it is to not be able to communicate because she has been completely deaf since the age of 8.

For a few hours each week, Jessica could have long conversations with Consuelo, diving into the ocean of words she dearly missed. Through Consuelo, Jessica asked the doctors and nurses questions she had long wanted answers to. She also talked to Consuelo about the vivid dreams she was mixing up with reality.

In fact, there are other ways for Consuelo to earn a living by reading lips, but she says helping patients separate horrible dreams from reality is the most rewarding way she can use her unique skill. “What is really wonderful is being able to use this skill to create healing and to create communication between human beings. That’s what feels good. That’s what’s the best: Love.”

After four and a half months in the hospital, Jessica finally recovered. Consuelo was there, holding Jessica’s hands. Jessica eventually went back to work as a math professor. After her experience she wrote a new living will. One thing she added is that if she ever becomes incapacitated like this again, she is never to be left alone.