【推荐2】Now Sea World on the Gold Coast is the only dolphin park in Australia to continue keeping dolphins in captivity. This wouldn't have been possible without thousands of warm-hearted supporters being a voice for dolphins protection over many years.

In August last year, Ben Pearson, our head of campaigns in Australia and New Zealand, appeared before the NSW upper house inquiry into the use wild animals for entertainment to put forward our case for ban on captive Dolphin breeding in the state. “If a dolphin were bred today, it may still be alive in 2070. This regulation frees future dolphins from being kept in lockdown at a time when the public acceptability of keeping dolphins in captivity for entertainment is declining. As the tide turns against using marine mammals in captivity for entertainment, conversation about what will happen to the dolphins at Sea World needs to start now. First step is a ban on further breeding,” Ben Pearson said.

Major travel brands including Tripadvisor and Booking. com have already committed to stop selling tickets to dolphin shows and encounters. As well as these great changes for dolphins from the travel industry, Canada recently passed a ban on keeping dolphins and whales for entertainment. This is part of a global movement towards better treatment of these wild animals, which includes the nations of Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, India, Luxembourg, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK.

Dolphins are magnificent, intelligent animals. They belong in the wild and should not be bred in captivity for entertainment. In their natural environment, dolphins swim freely in 100 square kilometres of ocean, sometimes more, but the average dolphin in captivity has a fraction of that space. Together, we can make this the last generation of dolphins in captivity.

【推荐3】On Feb. 23, an environmental advocacy group “Grassroots” led by students hosted its monthly clothing exchange. The clothing exchange is a free activity on campus where students can donate clothes in exchange for new ones.

“One of the key things about sustainability (可持续性) is to reuse,” Crystal Tynon, Co-president and Clothing Exchange Chair, said. “Instead of throwing away old clothes and buying new clothes, you can donate them and give them a new purpose. You might be done with those clothing items, but someone else might not be.”

According to Tynon, “Grassroots” is hoping to expand the activities to other schools. In order to do so, the team is brainstorming new ways to get the word out about donations, hours and events. Now, the clothing exchange is one of the club’s most well-known activities. “Throughout the semester when people realize we have these exchanges, they genuinely bring clothes and participate a lot more. So it does make a difference to clothing sustainability and it does create a community where everyone can share their clothes,” she added.

As “Grassroots” is an initiative dedicated to sustainability, paper advertisement is not an option. Instead, the center relies mostly on word-of-mouth and e-mail announcements. It is bringing speakers to campus to talk about sustainability and environmental advocacy. It also has partnerships with local organizations such as “the Sunrise Rochester”, working together to have volunteers become more involved in local sustainability.

Chloe Mendoza has been a volunteer since her freshman year. Not only does Mendoza appreciate the intended mission of promoting sustainability, but she also thinks the center has transformed into a safe and accepting community space for all students. Those who have come in looking for something practical often end up leaving with an armful of clothing and a heart full of warmth.

“My favorite part about working there is that we get to help people find things that they need for free. Just providing a place for students to go where there isn’t pressure to spend money is really important. A lot of students love saving, so it’s something that students can relate and engage with easily, so I think it’s a really easy way to get students more involved in sustainability,” says Mendoza.

【推荐1】"If you don't have time to read, you won't have time or tools to write," writes Stephen King in his memoir. He goes on to explain writers must read widely and frequently to develop their own voice and to learn how to write sentences and structure stories in ways that make readers want to pick up their work and read it.

This idea that we must be readers first in order to be writers is echoed throughout books on writing and is often the first piece of advice that authors offer to aspiring novelists. " The more we read, the faster we can perform that magic trick of seeing how the letters have been combined into words that have meaning," writes best-selling author Francine Prose in Reading Like a Writer.

According to a recent University of Florida study of 48 MBA students, what students read in college directly affects the level of writing they achieve. In the study, researchers surveyed students about their reading materials and habits, and they also took a writing sample from their cover letters. Researchers then ran those samples—as well as samples from news stories the participants had read—through programs to assess the writings' complexity.

Upon analyzing their findings, researchers concluded that students who read academic journals and literary fiction scored higher in measures of writing complexity than those who primarily read popular fiction or web contents published on sites like BuzzFeed, Reddit and The Huffington Post.

Research has found that deep reading is distinctive from other types of reading in which we merely read text superficially. The language found in literary fiction, for example, is complex and rich in detail and metaphor. And the brain handles this language by creating a mental representation that draws on the same brain regions that would be active if you were experiencing the event in real life.

Regardless of what science may say about how reading affects writing though, writers themselves tend to agree that you can't be a successful writer unless you are first a voracious（求知欲强的）reader. By reading, writers not only accumulate knowledge, but they also gain a better understanding of language, learn their genre（风格），grow their vocabulary and most importantly, find inspiration.

Perhaps that's why when the late writer and Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago was asked about his daily writing routine, he said," I write two pages. And then I read and read and read."

【推荐2】People are divided into those who can jump out of bed each morning and those who need several hours to wake up. I have hated getting up early all my life. The moment the alarm goes off in the morning, I feel sick. Nights, though, are different; I'll happily stay up and I'll do anything to escape an early start.

This makes me an owl, but I know many lark who insist that dawn is the best part of the day. While I go to work sleepy, they have been up for hours and even seem cheerful about it. But it is wrong to say that society is exactly divided into larks and owls.

Surveys that explore what time of day people prefer to do activities show that only 20% of adults ate true larks or owls. That leaves 80% of us—half of which lean towards one direction or the other, the other half are neither.

Schools and work often start very early, and there's a sense of love for getting up early while owls are simply slovenly. But no one suggests that larks are lazy for having an early night while owls are working.

Fortunately, science is on my side. I'm not sleeping my life away or missing the best part of the day. I'm behaving according to my genes. Researchers have found that one's chronotype is largely genetic. So it seems that when I try to get up early I am fighting my genes. With the help of an alarm clock I can force myself to get up early. But as soon as I fail to set the alarm my genes will return me to my old ways.