【推荐1】The Battista family of New York City was on vacation in Ocean City, Maryland when their 2-year-old Fisher went lost on July 4, 2020.

The Battistas immediately blanketed the area with missing posters, barraged (炮击) social media, and even got Fisher face-time on a local floating billboard (广告牌).

With no leads, the family decided to remain in the area for an extended stay. They hired a tracker and even consulted with an “animal communicator” in hopes of tapping into Fisher’s whereabouts (行踪) — all to no avail.

The family also set up a find-fisher Facebook page, which quickly gathered 8,000 followers, and launched an online fundraiser to raise awareness and help them in their efforts to bring their beloved fur baby home.

“Signs have been posted, and we’ve extended our stay in Ocean City and arranged to bring in a professional dog tracker, in addition to making continuous searching trips in a car, on foot, and on a bike,” Matthew Battista wrote.

On April 20, 2021, 290 days after Fisher made his unauthorized Independence Day exit, Baltimore City resident Wayne Horn was repairing his motorcycle when he noticed a stray (走失的) dog in the road. When a friend of Horn’s posted picture of the found dog to Facebook, the responses of “That’s Fisher!” came back faster than a boomerang (回旋镖).

Informed of the news, Elissa Battista recognized Fisher immediately. “From the moment I saw the photos I knew it was him from the markings and his little tongue sticking out,” she posted to Facebook.

The reunion was quickly arranged. The Battistas had some local friends pick him up from the Horns, and then Elissa made the five-hour trip to retrieve Fisher and bring him home. Apart from minor signs of possible frostbite (冻伤), Fisher was in excellent shape.

【推荐2】Parrots have been known to mimic words, but have you ever thought how they communicate? The sounds they make may sound meaningless to us, but new research has found that wild parrots are actually given names by their parents.

According to a study led by Karl Berg of Cornell University in the US, nestlings (雏鸟) are given a unique sound of their own, which stays with them for their entire lives.

In the study, the team placed hidden cameras in the nests of 17 different wild parrots. After studying their sounds, the team found slight differences in the calls parents used to communicate with each chick. And even before the nestlings had learned to communicate properly, the baby birds seemed to recognize and mimic their calls.

Sounds very similar to humans, doesn't it?

The study also proved that these signature calls are acquired socially not genetically. To do this, scientists switched the eggs in nine of the 17 nests, so that half of the parrots were raising nestlings that were not theirs. Using the recordings, the scientists concluded the nestlings all used names similar to those the parents (whether biological or nonbiological) called them for the first weeks of their lives. Lucie McNeil, from National Geographic, said, “this would be the first proven example of a non- human species teaching acoustical(声学的)communication.”

Lead scientist for the study, Karl Berg told National Public Radio of the US, “Most people say, ‘Well, all those calls are just noise’, but I think they're having conversations.”

When asked what else the parrots might be saying, Berg replied, “The theory is that these birds are deciding where the food is.” “Do we want to go 3 km North-northwest?” “Do we want to go to that field?’ They are sort of arguing or discussing.” Natural science author, Virginia Morell wrote: “Very gradually, scientists are learning to understand the conversations of very different animals that live lives rich with plans, quarrels and romance.”

You never know, if the science of animal translation keeps advancing, we might one day be watching a reality series about parrots.

【推荐2】Where should an adventurous tourist go? After you've done sightseeing in London, shopping in New York, enjoyed the local food in Paris, and danced to your heart's content at the Brazilian carnival, where else can you go? What attractive tourist destination awaits you?

Well, Antarctica sounds like the holiday of a lifetime! It's considered the last great wilderness on Earth. Just a few scientists in research stations share the icy landscape with penguins and other animals which can struggle with the low temperatures.

Tourism began in Antarctica in the 1950s and it's still small part. About 37,000 tourists are expected there this season, but many won't even leave the boat.

The BBC’s Juliet Rix visited the frozen continent and asked herself if she should be there at all, causing potential problems to such a sensitive environment. Her tour guide admitted that all visitors leave a footprint and they all go to the same places, the accessible coastline, which is also where the penguins and seals go to raise.

But some people believe that if carefully controlled, tourism can be good for Antarctica. It has no native population and it needs advocates. Visitors to the icy continent might be ready to support and even to fund its preservation. And they're likely to engage in the discussion about global warming, which has led to the melting of glaciers.

According to Rix, guidelines are followed when you're about to set foot in Antarctica and tourists have to disinfect their boots to make sure no alien species are introduced.

And once on land, there's no eating or smoking. Rocks, bone fragments—nothing should be taken as a souvenir and nothing should be left behind.

Tourists fortunate enough to visit the Antarctic must be aware that this is not their home and keep their fingers crossed that future generations will also be able to enjoy such breathtaking views.

【推荐3】When you were trying to figure out what to buy for the environmentalist on your holiday list, fur probably didn’t cross your mind. But some ecologists and fashion (时装) enthusiasts are trying to bring back the market for fur made from nutria (海狸鼠).

Unusual fashion shows in New Orleans and Brooklyn have (showcased) nutria fur made into clothes in different styles. “It sounds crazy to talk about guilt-free fur — unless you understand that the nutria are destroying vast wetlands every year”, says Cree McCree, project director of Righteous Fur.

Nutria were brought there from Argentina by fur farmers and let go into the wild. “The ecosystem down there can’t handle this non-native species (物种). It’s destroying the environment. It’s them or us.” says Michael Massimi, an expert in this field.

The fur trade kept nutria check for decades, but when the market for nutria collapsed in the late 1980s, the cat-sized animals multiplied like crazy.

Biologist Edmond Mouton runs the nutria control program for Louisiana. He says it’s not easy to convince people that nutria fur is green, but he has no doubt about it. Hunters bring in more than 300,000 nutria tails a year, so part of Mouton’s job these days is trying to promote fur.

Then there’s Righteous Fur and its unusual fashion. Morgan says, “To give people a guilt-free option that they can wear without someone throwing paint on them — I think that’s going to be a massive thing, at least here in New York.” Designer Jennifer Anderson admits it took her a while to come around to the opinion that using nutria fur for her creations is morally acceptable. She trying to come up with a label to attach to nutria fashions to show it is eco-friendly.

【推荐1】LONE TREE, colorado-patanjali Rao, a 15-year-old Colorado high school student and young scientist, who has used artificial intelligence （AI） and created apps to deal with social problems, has been named Time magazine's first-ever "Kid of the Year".

Time says Rao stood out for creating a world-wide community of young inventors and inspiring them to go after their goals. Rao insists that starting out small doesn't matter, as long as you have a passion （热爱）for it.

Rao's sense of invention started early. At age 12, she developed a portable device to discover lead in water. She has also created an app called Kindly that uses artificial intelligence to help prevent cyberbullying （网络欺凌）. It allows teens to type in a word or phrase to find out if the words they are using are bullying and lets them decide what they are sending.

She said that "Work is going to be in our generation's hands pretty soon. So if no one else is going to do it, I'm going to do it.”

Rao has partnered with schools, museums, and science, technology, engineering and math organizations, and other societies to work for thousands of other students.

In a world where science is increasingly questioned or challenged, Rao insists that devotion to science is an act of kindness and the best way that a younger generation can better the world. “We have science in everything we're involved in, and I think the biggest thing to put out there is that science is cool, innovating is cool, and anybody can be an innovator," Rao says.

"Anybody can do science.”

【推荐3】A water lily painting, Water Lily Pond, by Claude Monet, the French impressionist artist, was sold for more than S80 million on Tuesday, breaking the auction (拍卖) record for himself. Water Lily Pond was part of a four-work collection of water lily paintings that Monet put up for sale during his lifetime.

The four paintings of Monet’s water lily garden were signed and dated by the artist in 1919. One of the other paintings is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, while another was sold at auction in 1992 for $12. 1 million and is in a private collection now. The final painting in the series was cut into two before World WarⅡ.

“After a fierce bidding battle between a number of buyers in the room and on the telephone, the painting finally was sold to a collector for $80.4 million, setting a new world record price for the artist at auction,” said Olivier Camu, a scholar of impressionist art.

The last record for a Monet work was set in May when Le Pont du Chemin de fer a Argenteuil was sold for $41.4 million. The painting sold on Tuesday was bought at a 1971 New York auction for $320,000. It has not been exhibited since then.

Monet’s later works had unique characteristics, especially Les Grandes Decorations, another good example, which was bedded in Musee de I`Orangerie in Paris five months after Monet’s death in 1926.

Monet created his water lily garden in Giverny, France. He selected different water lilies in an effort to get as many different colored flowers as possible, specially creating the garden as a base for his paintings.