【推荐1】A six-year-old longing to keep a unicorn(独角兽) in her backyard figured she’d get the hard part out of the way first.

Last November, Madeline wrote a letter to the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control with a straightforward request. “Dear LA County, I would like your agreement if I can have a unicorn in my backyard if I can find one. Please send me a letter in response.”

Director Mayeda replied two weeks later. The department does in fact license(许可) unicorns, she said, under certain conditions. Those include polishing the unicorn’s horn at least once a month with a soft cloth, feeding it watermelon at least once a week, and giving it regular access to sunlight, moonbeams and rainbows. And, because unicorns are indeed very rare to find, Mayeda is also giving Madeline a toy unicorn to keep her company during her search, as a symbol of appreciation.

“It is always rewarding to hear from young people who thoughtfully consider the requirements of providing a loving home for animals,” Mayeda wrote in the letter. “I like your sense of responsible pet ownership to seek permission in advance to keep a unicorn in Los Angeles County.”

Mayeda told the Washington Post that this is the first time the department has received a request for a license for a unicorn. They were impressed with the first-grader for wanting to ask permission in the first place, and doing her research to work out how to go about that She and her colleagues deal with a lot of “life and death” issues on the job, whether that’s a case of animal abuse or animal hurting people or making decisions about having to put down dangerous or sick animals. So Madeline’s letter has considerably brightened their spirits, and she is due to visit the department this week to discuss her unicorn license application. Safe to say, she’s sure to have a magical surprise.

【推荐2】Dogs can’t speak, but their brains respond to spoken words. Every dog owner knows that saying “Good dog!” in a happy, high voice will make their pet joyfully wag its tail. That made scientists curious: What exactly happens in your dog’s brain when it hears praise, and is it similar to the way our own brain processes such information?

When a person gets others’ compliments, the more primitive, subcortical auditory regions (皮层下听觉区) first react to the intonation — the emotional force of spoken words. Next, the brain taps the more recently evolved auditory cortex (听觉皮层) to figure out the meaning of the words, which is learned.

In 2016, a team of scientists discovered that dogs’ brains, like those of humans, compute the intonation and meaning of a word separately — although dogs use their right brain to do so, whereas we use our left one. Still, a puzzle remained: Do their brains go through the same steps to process approval?

It’s an important question, because dogs are a speechless species, yet they respond correctly to our words. For instance, some dogs are capable of recognizing thousands of names of individual objects, and can link each name to a specific object.

When the scientists studied scans of the brains of pet dogs, they found that theirs, like ours, process the sounds of spoken words in this manner — analyzing first the emotional component with the older region of the brain, the subcortical regions, and then the words’ meaning with the newer part, the cortex.

See why dogs are so successful in partnering us? Dogs and humans last shared a common ancestor some 100 million years ago, so it’s likely that our brains respond to sounds in a similar way. As domesticated animals that have evolved alongside humans in our homes for the past 10,000 years, dogs make special use of it to process human emotions. You know, what we say really matters to dogs!

【推荐3】Thousands of years ago, Britain was covered by thick forests, home to many animals which no longer live in the United Kingdom. But all this has changed. Now the population of the United Kingdom has increased to sixty-five million. Three-quarters of Britain consists of fields, towns or cities. Although 25 percent of land is countryside, new methods of farming mean that there are fewer birds and small animals living in fields than ever before. Now, the United Kingdom does not have large wild carnivores (肉食动物). In Scotland, there are only 400 wildcats-Europe's rarest cats-but these are much smaller than wolves.

Some people would like to change things, however! Some organizations and writers say that Britain needs to become more natural again. They suggest that trees and plants that grew in the United Kingdom before towns and cities were built should be allowed to grow again. They even say that large wild animals which have not lived in the United Kingdom should be helped to return and live wild. They call this "rewilding".

Not everyone agrees. In the last twenty years, over one million trees which originally grew in Scotland have been planted and there are plans for more - but wild animals? Some people ask if wolves will attack sheep or even humans. They are also angry that rewilding might mean an end to walking in the hills which so many people enjoy. So far, there are no wolves or bears in Britain's forests - but soon there might be!

【推荐1】Not all bad emotions (情感) are necessarily bad. In fact, they can direct your behaviour in useful ways. If you’re stuck in traffic, anger with the situation might motivate you to find an alternative route (线路), which will then relieve your stress. But anger is less useful if you’re in the same situation, but stuck on a motorway with no option to alter directions.

Emotions have physiological effects, such as raising the level of cortisol in your bloodstream, which can affect your health. Indeed, a new study, published in Psychology and Aging, shows that high levels of anger are associated with poor health in older people.

The Canadian study did the study on 226 adults aged 59-93. They took blood samples to assess levels of chronic (慢性的) low-grade inflammation (炎症) and asked the participants to report any age-related chronic illnesses they might have. The participants also completed a short questionnaire about the level of anger or sadness they experienced in three typical days over a one-week period.

For the analysis, the researchers considered whether age could affect the results. They found that higher levels of anger were associated with inflammation and ill health in the oldest participants (aged 80 and above), but not the youngest ones (59-79 years). Sadness was not associated with inflammation or ill health in either age group.

The study is cross-sectional, meaning that it assessed a group of people at a single point in time. To get a fuller understanding of the relationship between bad emotions and health, we need studies that follow participants for a period of time — so-called prospective observation studies. Future studies should also take into account other factors that might relate, such as other emotions, stress and personality.

Although this new research shows a link between emotion and health in older age, we do not know whether anger causes inflammation and illness or whether health problems make people angrier.

【推荐2】The entire country struggled with the never-before-seen heat of the July 2022 heatwave, but for the disabled, the heat hit even harder. The climate crisis is a threat to everyone’s health, but according to a report in 2021, people with disabilities are more vulnerable to the extreme weather events and natural disasters that result from the climate crisis.

Professor Kristie Ebi of the Centre for Health and the Global at the University of Washington, described the topic of heatwaves and disabled people as being an important issue. “Groups at higher risk during periods of high temperature include people with chronic (慢性的) medical conditions, people who take certain medications that can reduce the ability of the body to sweat, and the disabled”, notes Ebi, going on to describe the different threats that heatwaves pose to different types of disabilities. Ebi notes the difficulty people with mobility issues or blindness may have with accessing services, such as cooling shelters. Ebi also comments on the importance of making those with learning disabilities or deaf people know the dangers of high temperatures. “Some studies suggest higher rates of suicide and other mental health issues during heatwaves, requiring targeted help for those with mental disabilities,” she added.

Ailsa Speak, a disability and lifestyle blogger, experiences uncontrollable movements in the heat due to her cerebral palsy (脑瘫). “As you can imagine, when my involuntary movements increase, I get even hotter. It’s just a painful circle really.”

In the absence of a concrete set of plans for people with disabilities during the climate crisis and extreme weather events, people with disabilities continue to be at increased risk of heat-related disease.

To prevent future death and destruction, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent organization tackling climate change, advocates for adaptation planning, as the temperature is set to rise further due to the climate crisis and global warming. The CCC’s 2022 report on the health risks of overheating offers adaptation options to the government to ensure that buildings are fit for future climate change. Nevertheless, the publication does not offer specific advice about people with disabilities and overheating, which thus remains to be discussed promptly and thoroughly.

【推荐3】For adults, communicating in our first language feels easy and natural. Yet learning language is a complex process that is influenced by several factors. When young children are beginning to learn language, some influences, such as the amount of speech a child hears and the amount of time they spend in back-and-forth language interactions with others, have what may appear to be obvious connections to language learning. Perhaps less obvious is that children’s own physical experiences with their environment help them learn new words.

In new research in the cognitive (认知的) sciences, we investigated how this Is the case by considering how children learn words that refer to something they can touch, grasp and interact with. We asked parents to rate how easily a child can physically interact with the object, idea or experiences that a word refers to. We found words that refer to objects that are easy for children to interact with are also words that are learned at an earlier age.

For instance, a word such as spoon is usually learned earlier than a word such as sky. And this relationship remains even when we consider other things that can affect word learning, such as how common a word is in everyday language. Words such as spoon and sky are both relevant to everyday life, and so children will probably hear those words quite early in their development. One difference between them is that spoon refers to something they can touch, grasp and interact with, whereas sky does not.

Our findings agree with those of studies where babies wore small head-mounted body cameras to record their interactions with objects. Those studies show that the children’s own physical experiences helps them learn new words. For instance, in one study researchers found that 18-month-old babies were more likely to learn the-name of a new object when they held that object, and less likely to learn the name if their parent held the new object. Another study found that 15-month-olds who spent more time using new objects had learned more nouns by the time they were 21 months old.