【推荐2】Who would win in a fight, a lion or a tiger? Well, if size has anything to do with the matter, the tiger would win. That’s because tigers are the largest of all cat species.     1     They can dash as fast as 40 miles per hour for short distances and leap as far as 30 feet. You may not think that such large, fast, and fierce tigers need help to survive, but they do.

At the start of the 20th century, there were over 100,000 tigers living in the wild. By the turn of the century, the number of tigers outside of catch decreased to just over 3,000. Interestingly, the most serious threats that tigers face come from a much smaller species, one with an average weight of around 140 lbs. That species is Homo sapiens, better known as humans.     2    

    3     People have long valued the famous striped(有条纹的) skins. Though trading tiger skins is now illegal in most parts of the world, tiger fur are worth around $10,000 on the black market. Though the fur would be incentive(刺激) enough for most hunters, other parts of the tiger can also fetch a pretty penny. Some people in China and other Asian cultures believe that various tiger parts have cure function. Traditional Chinese medicine calls for the use of tiger bones, among other parts, to cure some disease.

    4     In other words, people hunted tigers only for the thrill and achievement of killing them. Such killings took place in large scale during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when an English hunter might demand to kill over a hundred tigers in their hunting career. Though this practice is much less popular today than it was in the past, it has not stopped entirely.

Humans have done great damage to the world’s tiger population through hunting, but perhaps more damage has been caused through the destruction of habitat. Tigers once ranged widely across Asia, all the way from Turkey to the eastern coast of Russia. But over the past 100 years, tigers have lost 93% of their historic range. The tiger population is now isolated in small pockets in southern and southeastern Asia.     5    Humans have built towns and cities. Road and transport systems were created to connect these towns and cities. To feed the people living in these areas, forests and fields have been cleared to create farmland. A major difficulty to preserving tigers is the large amount of territory(领土,领域) that each tiger requires. Each wild tiger demands between 200 and 300 square miles. Because tigers need so much territory, it is really difficult to acquire enough land to support a large population of tigers.

【推荐1】Scientists have discovered the world’s largest known field of sea grass. They did it using videos shot by some unusual helpers — tiger sharks. The work helps protect the sea grass, and also shows a powerful way to explore the ocean.

Sea grasses are flowering plants that normally grow in shallow waters near coasts. They grow in thick fields, known as meadows (草甸). Sea grass meadows help clean the ocean’s water, and provide food and shelter for many sea creatures. Importantly, sea grass meadows also help in the fight against the climate crisis. That’s because they store huge amounts of carbon — the harmful pollution that’s making global warming worse. Damaging these sea grass meadows can release this pollution again, so it’s important to protect them.

Though they’re very important, scientists don’t have a good idea of the size and number of the world’s sea grass meadows. From above, the meadows can be hard to spot, because the water is either too deep or not clear enough. And the ocean is so huge that it’s simply not possible to study it all by diving.

So a team of scientists decided to have sharks help with the research. Tiger sharks are huge, strong and deadly. They also live underwater, are fast swimmers and spend a lot of time in sea grass meadows.

Between 2016 and 2020, a team of researchers attached cameras and other trackers to seven tiger sharks. After catching the sharks, scientists worked quickly to attach the equipment and then let them go again.

The cameras were designed to fall off after a few hours and float to the surface. Tracking signals helped the scientists find the floating cameras and collect the videos the sharks had taken. The scientists were left with hours of videos taken as the sharks traveled for miles over the sea floor.

【推荐2】“Don’t tell anyone”. We hear these words when someone tells a secret to us. But it can be hard to keep a secret. We often tend to“spill the beans”, even if we regret it later.

According to Asim Shah, professor in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine, US, keeping a secret may well“become a burden”. This is because people often have an“obsessive (强迫性的) and anxious urge to share it with someone”.

An earlier study, led by Anita E. Kelly, a scientist at the University of Notre Dame, US, suggested that keeping a secret could cause stress. People entrusted with secrets can suffer from depression, anxiety, and body aches, reported the Daily Mail.

But with secrets so often getting out, why do people share them at all? Shah explained that people often feel that it will help them keep a person as a friend. Another reason people share secrets is guilt over keeping it from someone close to them. A sense of distrust can develop when people who are close do not share it with each other.“Keeping or sharing secrets often puts people in a position of either gaining or losing the trust of someone.”according to Shah.

He added that talkative people could let secrets slip out. But this doesn’t mean that it is a good idea only to share secrets with quiet people. A quiet person may be someone who keeps everything inside. To tell such a person a secret may cause them stress, and make them talk about the secret.

Shah said that to judge whether to tell someone a secret, you’d better put yourself in their position. Think about how you would feel to be told that you mustn’t give the information away. Shah also recommended that if you accidentally give up someone’s secret you should come clean about it. Let the person know that their secret isn’t so secret anymore.

【推荐1】Sometimes when she felt bored, she would pick up one of the numerous biographies（传记） about herself and begin to note on it. “I never did that” or “simply not true” she would write roughly in the margins at the sides of pages. Since journalists, biographers and more recently even “bloggers” had been writing about her since the day she was born, there was plenty of material to edit. Not that her notes or corrections were ever shared with the authors. Lately, however, she even seemed to have lost her appetite for correctness. Did it matter anymore if things were not right?

She knew that sitting alone chewing away on downbeat thoughts would not get her anywhere and would leave those around her confused and upset, should they ever catch her out. After all she was the decisive one, always on top of her game. A printed timetable for the following day lay on the table. full day of openings and presentations, of smiling and nodding and flowers.

Shaking herself out of her gray mood, she stepped over towards the computer where a sudden burst of energy gave her an idea. The screen flashed up in front of her but instead of clicking on the familiar icons which would lead her to the emails Randolph had considered she needed to read, she simply went to visit Mr. Google and began her search for train timetable.

A dish heaped with multi-coloured jellies and plenty of ice cream, served by a white-gloved train waiter with a perfect moustache. So many years had passed but she still remembered the jelly dissolving on her tongue in small but delicious mouthfuls. Each spoonful had to be lifted delicately to her mouth under the watchful eye of her grandmother, who was a stickler for good manners. It was unlikely that they served jelly on the trains these days, what with all the concern about childhood fatness, but even a Spartan menu could not kill the romance of a train journey. As the timetable for Linehurst line flashed in front of her, she remembered that the Mayor of Alwoy would be expecting her to make a short predictable speech at the opening of the new bridge.

【推荐2】Short Story Competition

●The competition begins at June 30 and ends at December 15.

●It is open to all local citizens of Ontario who are at 16 or over, except the employees and judges. and anyone living with any employee of the sponsors or judges.

●The author's name. address, phone number and a 25-50-word self-introduction must be included with each entry on a separate sheet of paper. The name of the author should not appear in the story itself.

●Stories must be original and unpublished up to the time the winners are declared on December 25.

●Stories must be written on a computer, be double-spaced and no more than 2,500 words. Total word count should be printed on the front page of the story,

●No changes to a story are allowed once the Star receives your entry. Typescripts （文稿）will not be returned.

●A $ 5 entry fee must accompany each entry. Cheques or money orders should be made out to the Star Short Story Competition. Please do not send coins,

●Winners will be informed by telephone between 9 am and 5 pm on December 25.

●Professors from the Writing Centre at Ryerson University will complete the first round of judging. Another group of professional writers will select the final three.

More Information：

Send your story to：the Star Short Story Competition, the Star Street, Ontario M5E1E6. Full contest rules are available at www. the star, com/contests

Tel： 416-367-2000

【推荐3】It’s a Saturday night, the kids are asleep and we have no plans. Before we fall into our routine and watch a movie, I try to talk my husband into playing a card game. Unconvinced, he continues tapping away on his phone. But just before disappearing into the social media rabbit hole, he has an idea. He looks over me and suggests, “Why don’t we try calling one of our friends?”

I look at him with raised brows, as if his suggestion is somewhat ridiculous and perhaps even socially unacceptable. You can’t just call someone out of the blue now…right? But then I think again and realize that at one point in time, in the not so distant past, this was the norm. I spent my early teenage years connecting with friends through a phone that was connected to a wall. It wasn’t “smart”, but it allowed me to keep in touch with the latest gossip and news. We would chat for hours, sometimes while I hid under my blanket in order to avoid the chance of being caught by my parents.

I could even memorize the phone numbers of loved ones then. While I did own an address book—and there was always the White Pages, where you could look people up by their names—I had the contact details of special friends, first loves and family members committed to memory. I guess these days, they would be on my “Favorites” list in my smartphone.

Today, many of my “favorite” people are followed from a distance through social media, and even they very rarely—if ever—would get an actual call from me. The birth announcement by my oldest friend is received through catching a well-defined bump into a photo that I scroll past. The news of a divorce from a couple whom I had considered my second parents when I was in middle school arrives after a photo of a woman led me on a quest for more gossip. Bits of such information, a collection of wonderful, exciting, shocking and also boring news, may have been a part of my digital feed for years. The idea of actually picking up the phone to reconnect with a long-lost friend is an intimidating one—even seeing the name of an old friend pop up in an incoming call can feel a little afraid.

I ask my husband, “Who would we call?” After tossing around a few names, we agree on some potential candidates—people whose lives have taken them in different directions, but with whom we still share deep friendships.