【推荐2】After nearly 20 years of efforts, China has built a monitoring network for endangered Siberian tigers and Amur leopards, covering more than 12,000 square kilometers in the provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang, an expert said on Sunday.

With cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data, more than 4,000 infrared (红外线的) camera video clips of tigers and more than 600 clips of leopards were recorded by a team led by Jiang Guangshun, deputy director of the Feline Research Center of the Natural Forestry and Grassland Administration.

“By comparing the data of tigers and leopards of China and Russia from 2013 to 2015, we have confirmed that 17 tigers and 42 leopards are shared populations of both China and Russia,”Jiang said at the International Forum on Tiger and Leopard Transboundary Conservation which kicked off on Sunday in Harbin, Heilongjiang province. “The ecology has greatly improved since the natural forest protection project started in 1998, and all commercial logging has been stopped, which helped to protect tigers and leopards,”he said.

“However, we still face great challenges,”he said. “The distribution pattern of the two species suggests that the protection of the tiger and leopard requires the establishment of a network of protected sites, the construction of international and domestic corridors and the formation of a permeable landscape. It needs attention and support from all over the world. ”

“Military fences, transportation facilities and farmland in habitats have a strong impact on tigers’ free migration in different areas in China and cross-border areas between China and Russia. Living in small and isolated areas may cause more inbreeding, which can be a factor in their decline in immunity,” Jiang added.

Focusing on big cats around the world, especially tiger and leopard populations, the two-day event attracted more than 300 representatives from 19 countries. Representatives discussed monitoring technology, restoration of populations and habitat areas, landscape resource allocation in protected areas, conflict resolution and other related technical and policy issues.

【推荐3】Commercial fishing is taking away life from our oceans. More than a third of global fish stocks were classified as over fished in 2020, and the European Union (EU) is hoping that investing in technology can help fix the problem in its waters. It is funding a project called Smart Fish H2021, led by Norwegian company SINTEF Ocean, to design equipment to reduce the industry's impact on sea life.

Among the innovations it is testing is a new kind of fishing net called Smart Gear. It makes sounds and uses LED lights of different colors and intensities to attract only target species to the net, encouraging other fish to swim away. “We want to make life easier for the fishers, ” Rachel Tiller, a senior research scientist at SINTEF Ocean, says. “The problem is that we don't have data. We don't know how many fish are in the ocean and we need to find this information.”

Another technology being trialed is Catch Scanner. It produces a 3D color image of the fish, which is analyzed using AI to estimate the weight and identify the species. Catch Scanner can also help tackle rule - breaking; some fishing boats catch more fish than EU quotas (限额) allow, as well as fish of the wrong size and species. Catch Scanner can prevent this by automatically collecting catch information in a database and making it available to authorities such as national coast - guard agencies.

The EU cannot force member states to adopt the Smart Fish innovations, and their success will depend on market demand. However, Tiller says that many fishing companies across Europe have shown interest. “Some of these technologies can be very expensive, ” she says. “So in order for the fishers to want to have them on board, they need to see the benefit.”

Fisherman Aitor Larranaga will soon test Smart Gear off the coast of Spain. He's enthusiastic about smart tech and believes the fishing industry needs to innovate to become more sustainable. “The world moves on, ” he says. “We can't work like we did 200 years ago.”

【推荐1】Digging out potato tubers (茎块) is one of the greatest rewards gardens have to offer. Children in particular are surprised at seeing these tubers that almost magically become chips, mash (泥) or baked potatoes.

Happily, potatoes are very easy to grow. Seed tubers are placed in good garden soil, ideally with some compost (堆肥) for every square meter, in a sunny spot, about 10cm deep at 30cm intervals in rows 60-70cm apart.

Seed tubers are offered as earliest and second earliest and maincrop. The second earliest and maincrops can be stored for winter use but earliest are usually consumed in summer.

Seasoned potato growers buy early seed potatoes in February and place them in a cool, reasonably light place and let them sprout (发芽). It takes six weeks for small sprouts to form.

Early potatoes are typically planted from middle March in the South, but are likely to emerge before the first season finishes in May. The shoots are frost-sensitive requiring protection on cod nights with either earth or newspapers.

Second early and maincrop potatoes are planted in middle April—the frost risk will be low, but not absent, by the time they emerge. As the stems (茎) grow, soil should be drawn around them until the leaves meet in the row in early summer. At this stage, the potato field is a series of ridges (脊，垄). The tubers form in the ridge, protected from light that turns them green. Covering with black plastic or a thick layer of compost is also accessible instead of ridging, but plastic is not sustainable and slugs (鼻涕虫) can multiply in compost.

Once the flowers are fully open, it is time to dig plants when the tubers are the size of a hen’s egg. They grow rapidly but gradually lose their juicy new potato flavour, so harvest freely.

【推荐2】Can plants talk? Modern research has found something amazing: they do communicate with each other.

It has been known for some time that plants use chemicals to communicate with each other. This happens when a plant gets attacked by insects. The plant gives out chemicals from the leaves that are being eaten. This is like a warning, or a call for help： "I'm being attacked! " When another plant gets the chemicals, it starts to give out its own, different chemicals. Some of these chemicals drive insects away. Others attract the wasps（黄蜂；蜜蜂）！ The wasps kill the insects that are eating the plants. Scientists hope to learn more about this plant warning system, so that we can use it to grow more crops.

More surprisingly, plants also use sound to communicate. People can't hear these sounds ； but plants are making them. Some plants make noises with their roots. Corn and chili plants do this. Some trees make clicking noises when there is not enough water.

Most surprisingly of all, plants have an amazing system of communication that can link nearly every plant in a forest. Scientists call this system the “ wood wide web”. The wood wide web is linked underground by fungi（霉菌）.It links the roots of different plants to each other. It is in some ways similar to the Internet we use. Using the wood wide web, plants can share information and even food with each other. However, it may lead to bad effects. Plants may use it to steal food from each other,     or spread chemicals to attack other plants. Perhaps one day scientists will learn how to create a “firewall“ to help prevent these attacks within the wood wide web.

Scientists are learning more every day about the secret ways in which plants talk to each other. Maybe one day we will know enough about plant communication to be able to "talk” with them ourselves.

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【推荐3】A recent study suggests that logging (cutting down trees to use the wood) does not necessarily mean that things can’t live in the left-over forest any more. In fact, chopping down trees sometimes attracts more plants and wildlife than in forests where the trees have been left untouched.

Experts believe that about 70% of the world’s forests have had at least some logging. Until recently it wasn’t clear exactly what impact this had on other wildlife in forests. However, new research carried out on the island of Borneo, in Southeast Asia, shows that logging can encourage healthy animal and plant life.

Scientists from Oxford University used tens of thousands of camera traps (cameras connected to sensors that only photograph when movement is detected) to find out how many animals were in forests that had been logged and how many were in forests where the trees just died naturally. The scientists worked out that the total weight of birds in logged forests was more than double, and for mammals it was more than three times as much. They also found that animals in logged forests get two and a half times as much energy from food than in untouched forests. The scientists think there is more food available in logged forests because more light reaches the forest floor when some of the canopy (dense tree tops) has been cleared away. This extra light helps smaller plants grow bigger, giving more food to wildlife like insects, deer and wild pigs. Yadvinder Malhi, an ecologist, said, “The whole forest gets more edible and more tasty.”

The study makes it clear that although more animals and plants might be able to live there, logging even part of a forest is still bad. That’s because untouched forests, with more and bigger trees, absorb lots of carbon dioxide, a gas that causes climate change. However, the study is important because conservationists didn’t think logged forests were important to protect. The new research shows that even damaged forests can have lots of wildlife that needs protecting.