【推荐1】Qomolangma is the world’s highest mountain. You may have learned from your textbooks that its height is 8,844 meters. But not all sides are in agreement on this. Different researchers have given different results. In addition, the height of the mountain can change over time.

That’s why a 30-member Chinese survey team set out to reach the peak of Qomolangma to re-measure its height on May 6. They are equipped with the latest technology. It is not an easy task. The average air temperature on the mountain is-29℃-four degrees lower than in Antarctica-and powerful winds blow all the time. In such bad conditions, surveying drones (无人机) cannot work at the peak of the mountain. That’s why it’s still necessary to send human experts to the peak to get reliable results.

But does a difference of a few meters really matter when it comes to a high mountain?

In fact, measuring the height of Qomolangma is about more than just getting one exact number. Mount Qomolangma is at the point where the Eurasian plate (欧亚板块) meets the Indian plate. It formed 38 million years ago as the two plates hit each other. Changes in the peak’s height can show whether the two plates are heading toward or away from each other. This can help us understand the movement of Earth’s crust (地壳).

The survey team will also get firsthand information about environmental conditions at the top of the mountain. This will help us understand how climate change has affected the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau (青藏高原).

【推荐2】For most of us, swinging （摆动)360 degrees around the spindle (轴)of a swing set is a distant childhood dream, but for some people in Estonia, it's what they never grew out of Not only do they still love struggling against gravity (重力),but they actually created a competitive sport around their favourite entertainment. That spoil is known as "kiiking”.

Swings are deep in Estonian culture, and you can still find various types of swings in villages and towns all around the country They are used by children and adults alike, either for simple fun, or as a way for communities to bond during celebrations. So maybe it doesn't come as a big surprise that Estonia has an extreme sport based on swinging. Some people feel it dull, others pointless, but to those who practise it, kiiking is the coolest thing in the world.

The rules of kiiking are pretty simple. Competitors start swinging at a certain height, and if they can complete a full circuit (圈)around the spin die, they can attempt to do the same after the swing has been raised by a few centimeters, and so on. Those who fail to do a full spindle are left with the result of their last successful attempt.

Watching kiiking videos might give you the impression that it's an easy sport, but Laansalu, who has been practising it since she was 8 years old, says it requires not only great physical strength一strong legs and strong arms,   but also technique—knowing when to stand or sit in the swing chair, and when to push yourself over the spindle of the swing.

There are no international kiiking competitions yet, but Estonia has several national kiiking events throughout the year.

【推荐3】Can' t you stand the sound of heavy breathing or sipping soup? Does the sound of someone chewing gum next to you make your blood boil? You are not alone, but you are not going crazy-there’s a really scientific reason why.

If you shrink back when someone twists their knuckles(指关节), you might want to get checked out for misophonia, a brain abnormality that creates “a hatred of sounds such as eating, chewing, loud breathing, or even pen-clicking,” TIME reports. Actually, it’s just one of the strange habits that prove you’re smarter than everyone else. Although researchers first coined the term misophonia in 2001, doubt has been thrown on it by the medical community. But thanks to recent research, it can be safely drawn that everyday noises can ruin people’s lives. A team at Newcastle University in the U. K. examined MRI brain scans(核磁共振脑扫描) of those with and without misophonia while playing a range of sounds. The sounds were either neutral (like rain or water boiling), unpleasant (a baby crying or a person screaming), or trigger sounds (the sounds of breathing or eating).

The researchers noted significant changes in misophonia sufferers’ brain activity when they heard a “trig- ger sound.” Turns out those with misophonia have a developmental difference in their brains frontal lobe(额叶) that causes their brains to react harshly to those triggers. It also causes them to sweat and their heart rates to increase.

“For many people with misophonia, this will come as welcome news as for the first time we have shown a difference in brain structure and function in sufferers.” said Dr Sukhbinder Kumar. “This study shows the critical brain changes as further evidence to convince a skeptical medical community that this is a real disorder.”

【推荐1】Rainforests provide much of the world’s oxygen. People have been trying to protect them for years. But another type of forest, the cloud forest, is just as important to humans.

These forests are at the tops of mountains, generally near the equator (赤道). These wet, wooded mountaintops are mainly in African and Central and South American countries. They are called “cloud forests” because their height allows for the formation of clouds among the trees. The trees in these forests pull water out of the clouds. The water gathers on the leaves and falls into small rivers below, which flow into towns at the bottom of the mountain. The yearly rainfall in these areas is about 180 centimetres. Cloud forests can pull in up to 60 percent of that. The water is important to the plants and the people in the area. It helps them survive.

Cloud forests are also home to countless species of plants that can’t be found anywhere else. One small cloud forest has as many types of plants as there are in all of Europe. In fact, there are so many that scientists haven’t made a complete list of them yet.

These forests are being destroyed at an increasing speed. Trees are being cut down, and roads are being built in their place. Some people have a goal to get government money to protect the forests. But they have had little success so far. Another way is to take the place of the destroyed plants with new ones. That, too, has been difficult because the plants are so special. There’s plenty of work to be done, but saving the cloud forests is still possible with creative solutions.

【推荐2】We all enjoy the colors of autumn leaves. Did you ever wonder how and why a fall leaf changes color? Where do the yellows and oranges come from? To answer those questions, we first have to understand what leaves are and what they do.

Leaves are nature’s food factories. Plants take water from the ground through their roots. They take a gas called carbon dioxide from the air. Plants use sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into glucose, which is a kind of sugar. Plants use glucose as food for energy and as a building block for growing. The way plants turn water and carbon dioxide into sugar is called photosynthesis, which means “putting together with light.” A chemical called chlorophyll helps make photosynthesis happen. Chlorophyll is what gives plants their green color.

As summer ends and autumn comes, the days get shorter and shorter. This is how the trees “know” to begin getting ready for winter.

During winter, there is not enough light or water for photosynthesis. The trees will rest, and live off the food they stored during summer. They begin to shut down their food-making factories. The green chlorophyll disappears from the leaves. As the bright green fades away, we begin to see yellow and orange colors. Small amounts of these colors have been in the leaves all along. Covered up by the green chlorophyll, we just can’t see them in summer.

The bright reds and purples we see in leaves are made mostly in the fall. In some trees, like maples, glucose is trapped in the leaves after photosynthesis stops. Sunlight and the cool nights of autumn cause the leaves turn this glucose into a red color. The brown color of trees like oaks is made from wastes left in the leaves.

It is the combination of all these things that make the beautiful colors we enjoy in the fall.

【推荐3】Many gardeners believe that “talking” to their plants helps them grow — it turns out that they may not be crazy after all. According to the scientists from the University of Exeter, plants may keep communicating with each other through a secret “unseen” language.

For their experiment, the scientists picked a cabbage plant that is known to send out a gas when its surface is cut. In order to get video evidence of the communication, they changed the cabbage gene by adding the luciferase (荧光素酶), which is what makes fireflies (萤火虫) glow in the dark.

When the changed cabbage plant was in full bloom, they cut a leaf off with a pair of scissors, and almost immediately, thanks to the luciferase, they could see the plant sending out “methyl jasmonate (茉莉酸甲酯)”.

While this was a known fact, what was surprising was the fact that the minute this gas began to give out, the nearby cabbage plants seemed to sense some kind of danger and started to send out a gas that they normally have to keep enemies like caterpillars (毛虫) away.

What the scientists are not sure is whether the plants are trying to warn the other leaves or the near plants about the danger — something that will require further research. However, the team, which is led by Professor Nick Smirnoff, is quite excited about the findings because this is the first time it has been proved that plants do not live a passive life, but actually move, sense and even communicate with each other.

【推荐3】By the end of the century, if not sooner, the world’s oceans will be bluer and greener thanks to a warming climate, according to a new study.

At the heart of the phenomenon lie tiny microorganisms (微生物) in the ocean called phytoplankton. Because of the way light reflects off the organisms, these phytoplankton create colorful patterns at the ocean surface. Ocean color varies from green to blue, depending on the type and concentration of phytoplankton. Climate change will fuel the growth of phytoplankton in some areas, while reducing it in other spots, leading to changes in the ocean’s appearance.

Phytoplankton live at the ocean surface, where they pull carbon dioxide into the ocean while giving off oxygen. When these organisms die, they bury carbon in the deep ocean, an important process that helps to regulate (调控) the global climate. But phytoplankton are vulnerable to the ocean’s warming trend. Warming changes key characteristics of the ocean and can affect phytoplankton growth, since they need not only sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow, but also nutrients.

Stephanie Dutkiewicz, a scientist in MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, built a climate model that projects changes to the oceans throughout the century. In a world that warms up by 3C, it found that multiple changes to the color of the oceans would occur. The model projects that currently blue areas with little phytoplankton could become even bluer. But in some waters, such as those of the Arctic, a warming will make conditions more suitable for phytoplankton, and these areas will turn greener. “Not only are the quantities of phytoplankton in the ocean changing.” she said, “but the type of phytoplankton is changing.”

And why does that matter? Phytoplankton are the base of the food web. If certain kinds begin to disappear from the ocean, Dutkiewicz said, “it will change the type of fish that will be able to live on.” Those kinds of changes could affect the food chain.

Whatever color changes the ocean experiences in the coming future will probably be too gradual and unnoticeable, but they could mean significant changes. “It’ll be a while before we can statistically show that the changes are happening because of climate change,” Dutkiewicz said, “but the change in the color of the ocean will be one of the early warning signals that we really have changed our planet.”