【推荐1】Two hours from the tall buildings of Philadelphia live some of the world's largest bears. They are in northern Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, a home they share with an abundance（丰富）of other wildlife.

The streams, lakes, grasslands, mountain and forests that make the Poconos an ideal place for black bears have also attracted more people to the region. Open spaces are threatened by plans for housing estates and important habitats are endangered by highway construction. To protect the Pocono's natural beauty from irresponsible development, the Nature Conservancy named the area one of America's "Last Great Places".

Operating out of a century-old schoolhouse in the village of Long Pond, Bud Cook, the president of the Conservancy, is working with local people and business leaders to balance economic growth with environmental protection. By forming partnerships with people like Francis Altemose, the Conservancy has been able to protect more than 14,000 acres of environmentally important land in the area.

Altemose's family has farmed in the Pocono area for generations. Two year ago, Francis worked with the local branch of the Nature Conservancy to include his farm in a county farmland protection program. As a result, his family's land can be protected from development and the Altemoses will be better able to provide a secure financial future for their 7-year-old grandson.

Cook attributes the Conservancy's success in the Poconos to having a local presence and a commitment to working with local residents.

"The key to protecting these remarkable lands is connecting with the local community," Cook said. "The people who live here respect the land. They value quiet forests, clear streams and abundant wildlife. They are eager to help with conservation efforts."

For more information on how you can help the Nature Conservancy protect the Poconos and the world's other "Last Great Places," please call 1-888-564 6864 or visit us on the World Wide Web at www.tnc.org.

【推荐2】As a result of pollution，Lake Erie, on the borders of the USA and Canada, is now without any living things.

Pollution in water is not simply a matter of “poisons” killing large numbers of fish overnight. Very often the effects of pollution are not noticed for many months or years because the first organisms (生物体) to be affected are either plants or plankton(浮游生物). But these organisms are the food of fish and birds and other creatures.When this food disappears, the fish and birds die too. In this way a whole food chain can be wiped out, and it’s not until dead fish and water birds are seen at the river’s edge or on the seashore that people realize what is happening.

Where do the substances which pollute the water come from? There are two main sources of sewage (污水) and industrial waste. As more detergent (洗涤剂) is used in the home, so more of it is finally put into our rivers, lakes and seas. Detergents harm water bird, dissolving the natural substances which keep their feathers waterproof. Sewage itself, if not properly treated, makes the water dirty and prevents all forms of life in rivers and the sea from receiving the oxygen they need. Industrial waste is even more harmful as there are many highly poisonous things in it, such as copper and lead (铅).

So, if we want to stop this pollution，the answer is simple: sewage and industrial waste must be made clear before flowing into the water.It may already be too late to save some rivers and lakes, but others can still be saved if the correct action is taken at once.

【推荐3】Cycling has become more popular in the UK recently for a number of reasons. One of those must be the British cycling success at both the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 and the London Olympic Games in 2012. Sir Chris Hoy won three gold medals in Beijing and another two in London. He and Jason Kenny are the most successful Olympic cyclists of all time. The UK also won the Tour de Frances six times.

Cycling is not just a sport though, and Tony is just one of the many people who like to cycle long distances because they want to enjoy the natural beauty of the UK. He belongs to Sustrans? a volunteer organization created in the 1980s. Sustrans has combined quieter roads and disused railway tracks to create the National Cycle Network of cycle-friendly routes. Cyclists follow these routes to raise money for charity, but also because they enjoy the scenery across England and like to get away from the busy city life.

Connie lives and works in London and, like half a million Londoners every day，she travels to and from work by bike. Since the introduction of the Congestion Charge where drivers pay to bring a car into the center of London during working hours in 2003, the capital city has seen an almost 50 percent increase in the number of people traveling by bike. Cycling to work takes the same amount of time as it would by bus or tube. Connie says that cycling is cheaper and keeps her fit, too.

Nigel is a campaigner. In addition to traveling to and from work by bicycle, doing some charity rides and generally enjoying cycling, Nigel runs a local campaigning group and helps organize the ‘critical commute’ ---where cyclists gather every last Friday of the month and cycle into work together. For Nigel, cycling is about saving the planet, a cost-effective way of reducing our carbon footprint today.

【推荐2】Do you need to throw your smart phone away to live your best life? Not necessarily, according to researchers from Ruhr Universitat Bochum who suggest that we could all benefit from cutting down on screen time-just only a little bit time.

On average, we spend more than three hours a day glued to our smart phone screens. Between social media, news feeds, endless video games, and an app for pretty much everything else, there’s always something to draw our attention. In recent years, studies have blamed smart phones for modern problems ranging from rising anxiety rates to neck pain. It begs the question: Are people all really better off switching back to landlines (座机)?

“The smart phone is both a blessing and a curse,” says study leader Dr. Julia Brailovskaia, whose team set out to answer that question by gathering together 619 volunteers, hoping to know how much the smart phone is good for us. Two hundred people put their smart phones completely aside for a week; 226 reduced the amount of time they used the device by one hour a day; 193 people didn’t change anything in their behavior.

Researchers interviewed each person about both their overall lifestyle habits and well-being four months later after the experimental week ended. “We found that both completely giving up the smart phone and reducing its daily use by one hour had positive effects on the well-being of the participants,” as Brailovskaia sums up the upshots. Notably, changing their smart phone habits for just one week appeared to produce lasting outcomes among subjects. Even four months afterward, participants who were told to avoid using their smart phones totally were using their phones for an average of 38 minutes less per day.

Meanwhile, the “one hour less” group were using their phones as much as? 45 minutes less per day after four months. This group also showed improved life satisfaction, more exercise, and less depression.

“It’s nor necessary to completely give up the smart phone to feel better.” Brailovskaia concludes.

【推荐3】We seem to find out someone broke into a big company’s databases and left with millions of credit card numbers, passwords or other valuable information. Now a new kind of worry: someone could seize control of your wireless home network and steal your information from under your nose.

That’s the possibility raised by a couple of cyber security researchers from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. The problem, they say, is a weakness in the very protocol meant to make wi-fi secure. That protocol is called Wi-Fi Protected Access II, WPA2. And WPA2’s weakness could allow an attacker within physical range of your wi-fi network to make a copy of that network that they could then control. The researchers call their approach a key reinstallation attack, or KRACK.

It’s important to know that a KRACK attack remains a possibility for now. The scientists realized the threat while investigating wireless security. They’ll present this research on November 1st at the Computer and Communications Security (CCS) conference in Dallas and in December at the Black Hat Europe conference in London.

In their KRACK assumption, wireless devices would be fooled into connecting to the false network. And the attacker would be able to access all of the information that devices send and receive while connected to that network — even if that information has been coded. Android and Linux would be especially easy to attack because of how their encryption keys (密钥) are set.

One measure of protection against such an attack would be to make sure they you’ve installed the most up-to-date versions of your apps, browsers and wireless router software. Updated software is most likely to include the security patches (补丁) needed to avoid falling victim to a KRACK attack, because chances are that KRACK won’t remain simply a proof-of-concept for long.