【推荐3】Cold weather not only threatens the life of human beings but also the survival of wild animals. In Houston, it has claimed some unusual animal victims-bats.

Mary Warwick is the wildlife director at the Houston Humane Society. She was doing shopping when the freezing winds reminded her that she had not heard how the area’s bats were going. So she drove to the bridge where over 100 bats looked to be dead as they lay frozen on the ground. But during her 40-minute drive home, they began to come back to life. The bats made sounds and moved around in a box she had placed on her heated passenger seat for warmth. She returned to the bridge twice a day to collect more.

Two days later, she got a call about more than 900 bats rescued from a bridge in nearby Pearland, Texas. On the third and fourth days, more people showed up to rescue bats from the Waugh Bridge, and a special transportation effort was set up to get the bats to Warwick, which touched her a great deal. Each of the bats was warmed in an incubator (恒温箱) until their body temperature rose.

However, there were too many bats for one person to care for. The society’s current buildings did not have the necessary space, so Warwick and others put the bats in her attic (阁楼). The bats were separated by group in containers usually used for dogs. There, they were able to reach a state of hibernation (冬眠). Over 100 bats died because of the cold and the fall from the bridge but the others are being or have been released.

The society is now raising money to build a special room for bats at the society. The society’s entire animal rescue team will be vaccinated (接种疫苗) and trained in rescuing bats as they prepare to move into a larger building with the special bat room. “That would really help in these situations where we continue to see strange weather come through,” she said. “We could really use more space to rescue the bats.”

【推荐1】The memory of elephants is the stuff of lore (传说), and now it seems they can recall the smell of a relative even after a decade apart.

When Franziska Hörner at the University of Wuppertal in Germany and her colleagues heard about planned reunions between two mother-daughter pairs at zoos in Germany, the took advantage of the chance to test the elephants’ memories. One pair had been separated for two years, while the other had spent 12 years apart.

Hörner collected faecal (排泄物的) samples from these African elephants and others at German zoos, hauling the stinking 10-to-15-kilogram samples around in her tiny car.

Her team presented these samples one at a time to the four elephants in advance of their reunions with family members. When they encountered faeces from unrelated elephants, cither those in the same zoo or unfamiliar animals, they sniffed and walked away.

But when presented with a sample from the mother or daughter they were due to be reunited with, the female elephants repeatedly sniffed the samples and showed a variety of reactions, from making sounds to flapping their ears.

Such reactions may be linked to positive emotions, the researchers say. “That was amazing and really intense,” says Hörner. “We were sure they do remember, and they know exactly what they are smelling there.”

The sample size was small, but it would be cruel to do similar tests on elephants that weren’t being reunited, says Hörner.

“I am not surprised that elephants have memories, especially in social contexts, that last a long time,” says Joshua Plotnik at Hunter College in New York, who wasn’t involved with the work. Elephants live in groups that split up and come back together over long periods of time.

But Plotnik says the experiment may not be a true test of memory. There may be scent cues (线索，提示) common to all relatives that can trigger recognition not linked to memory, he says, and presenting the elephants with other smells would help make sense of their responses.

【推荐3】When scientists and the public worry about sea level rise, they mostly focus on when and where communities will be permanently flooded. But there’s another consequence of rising seas that will affect many more people much sooner: getting cut off from roads and other critical infrastructure (基础设施). It’s a threat that society has not paid nearly enough attention to, says Allison Reilly, a civil engineer at the University of Maryland.

In a new paper, Reilly and her colleagues show the width and pace of the isolation (隔离) threat. Inspired by her work on the eastern shore of Maryland, where people already need to adjust their travel and work schedules to account for tides that frequently flood roads, Reilly and her colleagues calculated that, with one meter of sea level rise, twice as many people across the coastal United States will be isolated than will be fully flooded.

Worse still, many places currently considered at low risk of sea level rise suddenly become much riskier when isolation is taken into account, Reilly says. While planners know that low-lying Florida will be severely flooded, Maine, with its high rocky coasts, is generally thought to be at low risk. But Reilly’s work shows many Mainers are in great danger of being cut off by flooding in coastal communities and river valleys.

This far more immediate effect of rising seas needs to become part of the broader planning process. That kind of planning is starting to happen around the Chignecto Isthmus, an interprovincial land bridge in Canada, connecting New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The New Brunswick and Nova Scotia governments are considering a variety of plans to raise or replace the dikes (坝). For Ollerhead, a Nova Scotian, that work can’t start soon enough. “It will take a lot of sea level rise before Nova Scotia becomes an island, but you could have a storm that cuts off the major transportation links for days, weeks, or months,” he says. “It’s nearly impossible to predict when, but it will happen eventually.”

【推荐1】In 2018, social scientist Roger Tyers decided to take the train from Southampton to Shanghai, a journey of almost two weeks, when he won a research fellowship in China. Tyers used to fly a lot. He changed his mind when he read a report warning that extraordinary societal changes would be needed if humanity wanted to keep global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.

Tyers’s trip, by his calculations, generated just 10% of the emissions(排放) that the flights would, which pleases him, even though his train tickets came close to three times the price of the flights.

Tyers is one of many climate scientists who are advocating less air travel and following their own advice. Today, as the coronavirus continues to ravage(蹂躏) much of the world, Tyers’s concerns have declined — at least temporarily — because nearly all conferences and meetings have switched to virtual models.

But the carbon-footprint issue will remain in the long term. Once the pandemic is brought to control, scientists will again wrestle with how to balance the need to fly to meetings and fieldwork sites with their desire to limit air travel. A study in October showed that climate scientists tend to fly more often for work compared with their peers, because of their remote fieldwork locations and their travel to international conferences, including those addressing climate change.

Many feel strongly that virtual networking cannot adequately replace actual face-to-face time, and that opportunities to meet in person with peers（同行）and senior colleagues in their field are essential for career advancement. Yet they point out that climate change is already having disastrous effects.

So what do climate scientists advise? There are multiple ways, they say, to connect with colleagues, peers and others without boarding an airplane. Some are encouraging conference organizers to continue to offer virtual versions of all sessions, noting that attendance rose dramatically for many conferences that went online—only last year. Others are calling for a regular series of online meetings to help people connect virtually. Many researchers were already using video platforms such as Zoom and Skype for meetings, as well as text and messaging platforms such as Slack and Twitter for networking and posting updates and articles.

【推荐3】The fishermen of Senegal have joined forces to protect one of the ocean’s most endangered species — the sea turtle, a classic case of “poacher turned gamekeeper”.

The coastal waters of Senegal in West Africa are home to several species of sea turtles which are all beautiful creatures but are affected by pollution, poaching and even fishing nets.

“Once we were the biggest eaters of turtles, now we have become their biggest protectors,” said Abdou Karim Sall, a fisherman who led the Management Committee for the Marine Protected Are (MPA) of Joal-Fadiouth.

The Joal-Fadiouth MPA, covering about 174 square kilometers, was founded in 2004, and it’s backed by the government, local authorities and several associations. It is an area aimed at protecting marine ecosystem, habitats and species, including endangered species like the sea turtle. Its benefits are obvious: maintaining biodiversity, increasing fish catches on fishing grounds, as well as economic development.

For a long time, Sall has been working to raise local awareness of sea turtle protection. “Even former turtle sellers have been ‘changed’ by receiving three small boats to take tourists to sea,” he said. Instead of strict restrictions, the Joal-Fadiouth MPA has been trying to educate local communities about the economic benefits so that they would join the project. “It’s after they are told: ‘It’s an endangered species’,” Sall said.

Local residents have also set out to protect the nests. During summer and fall, a few dozen turtles may stop to lay eggs on the beaches of Joal-Fadiouth. MPA agents and village volunteers protest their nests with fences. “People come at 6 a. m. so that other animals do not take the young.” said Sall.

Sall added the number of turtles had decreased by about 30% in the past 20 years, and chances of survival of a young turtle were no higher than one in a thousand. But the fisherman-conservator agreed, “Awareness has not worked 100%.”

【推荐2】Whether you realize it or not, you probably practice certain rituals (惯例) every day of your life. When we say ritual, we do not mean simple daily tasks like brushing your teeth or washing your dishes. Those are routines. The difference between rituals and routines is the attitude behind the action. A routine is a task performed out of necessity, and a person can do it without really thinking about it. A ritual, on the other hand, is far more purposeful. The purpose can vary from health to relaxation to entertainment. When a person is doing a ritual, it’s more about focusing on the experience than just finishing it.

Rituals not only help us become more aware of the present moment, but they can also reduce anxiety. Studies have shown that people about to perform a difficult task are likely to have lower levels of anxiety if they perform a ritual before the task. This is because the repeated performance of a certain action can signal the human brain that everything is normal and predictable, even under uncertain situations. In other words, rituals bring a sense of stability. This is why many famous sportspeople have well-known pre-competition rituals. Spanish tennis legend Rafael Nadal, for example, has an on-court ritual of positioning his water bottles in a certain way. He states that it helps him gain a sense of order in the high-level competition.

With the calming effects of rituals, it is no wonder that so many people perform them every single day. Why not try out a new ritual yourself? Popular rituals which people perform every day include taking a walk, gardening, taking a bath before bed, or performing a series of stretches facing the sun.