【推荐2】The scientists are digging for fossils（化石）. Fossilized bones tell the story of dinosaurs and animals that were once living creatures and appeared on Earth some 225 million years ago. Dinosaurs dominated the planet for 150 million years, much longer than people have existed.

Dinosaurs came in many shapes and sizes. The smallest dinosaur was less than 3 feet long. The largest were plant eating giants called Sauropods longer than a city bus.

Their weight closes to 50,000 pounds. To sustain its enormous body, it would endlessly grab branches and leaves and swallow them down a 20-foot throat. That is a neck as high as a two-storey house. With each step a weight greater than an eight ton ball would hit the earth. Despite their large size dinosaurs' share some characteristics with modern animals. Like today's reptiles（爬行动物）most, not all dinosaurs laid eggs. Its mate probably brought food to the nest like birds do. The mother tended her eggs and like a bird she placed them into a circle. Many plant eating dinosaurs lived in groups probably to defend themselves against the meat-eating or the dinosaurs who hunted them.

But 65 million years ago something happened that brought a sudden end to the dinosaur age. No one knows exactly why the dinosaurs suddenly disappeared. Most scientists think the killer came from outer space. A large object from outer space hit the earth causing a lot of dust in the atmosphere. The earth became dark and the dinosaurs died off. But scientists believe their descendents（后代）may live on. The skeletons（骨骼）of some dinosaurs are similar to modern birds. The common ancestor of these birds was probably a small two-legged meat-eating dinosaur. As the digging and research continues, each new find may help prove the dinosaurs did not really disappear after all. The birds are in fact living, breathing and flying dinosaurs.

【推荐3】To give grasshoppers (蚱蜢) some credit -- jumping across yards and between branches takes a lot more expertise than it might appear. There are incredibly tiny factors to consider, such as the resistance in launch surface, as well as desired distance, speed, and landing.

Most jumping robots can’t compete with the insect, as their jumps are limited to starting atop extremely rigid surfaces. But a new bouncing robot developed by researchers in Carnegie Mellon’s College of Engineering is crossing those barriers, and showing promise for how autonomous devices could operate in the future.

A team of scientists led by professor of mechanical engineering Sarah Bergbreiter recently optimized a robot’s latch mechanisms (弹簧机制) used to boost it upward. Previously, these latches were primarily thought of as simple “on/off switches that enabled the release of stored energy. However, Bergbreiter and her team employed mathematical modeling to illustrate that these latches both were capable of controlling energy output, as well as controlling the transfer (传递) of energy between the jumper and the launch surface.

To test their work, the team positioned a small jumping robot atop a tree branch and recorded the precise energy transfers in its jumps’ first moments.“We found that the latch can not only mediate (调节)energy output but can also mediate energy transfer between the jumper and the environment that it is jumping from,” said Bergbreiter.

Now that researchers better understand the interactions at play in the opening moments of jumping, they can now begin working on ways to integrate this into future robotic designs. “It has been nearly impossible to design controlled insect-sized robots because they are launched in just milliseconds,“ explained Bergbreiter. “Now, we have more control over whether our robots are jumping up one foot or three. It’s really fascinating that the latch -- something that we already need in our robots -- can be used to control outputs that we couldn’t have controlled before.”

【推荐1】Vertical (垂直的) farming involves using vertically piled layers and other innovative resources to help your crops grow.     1     You get to grow your plants while using the small space at home. Below are some benefits of vertical farming for small house owners.

Reduce water usage. Watering a vertical garden is easy, simple, and uses less water. If your plants are grown in a traditional way, you’ll need lots of water to keep up with your plants’ growth.     2    

Save space. As a small, house owner, space is a big concern. However, vertical farming ensures that you can create a garden in your home and fully enjoy the experience.     3     So, if you aim to save space in your home and still have a garden, vertical farming is perfect.

    4     Vertical farming is mainly done indoors and entirely depends on you to provide the best conditions. With commitment, you can continuously ensure consistent food production despite the seasons.

Cut down on chemicals and pesticides. Vertical gardens will not require you to invest in pesticides and chemical fertilizers to keep your plants alive. In addition, insects will not have easy access to your plants since you’ll be gardening in a controlled environment.     5    

【推荐1】An ancient chemical process enabled Earth to become a fertile place packed with life. Now researchers are imitating this process in an attempt to slow global warming. Every plant, animal, and person owes their life to a series of chemical reactions: photosynthesis, which turns water and carbon dioxide into food using sunlight. As benefit receivers of photosynthesis, humans depend on plants in a sort of carbon seesaw (跷跷板). Plants take in CO₂ and release O₂. We do the opposite, taking in O₂ and releasing CO₂.

This seesaw is part of the much broader carbon cycle that has affected the radiation balance of our planet. Cutting down plenty of forests and the burning of carbon-based fossil (化石) fuels cause the levels of CO₂, a major greenhouse gas, to rise. And plants on Earth along with other natural parts of the carbon cycle can’t restore the balance on their own.

But what if we could copy what plants do to seize some of that extra CO₂ to make fuels constantly, instead of relying so heavily on fossilized carbon?“ Artificial photosynthesis is a really attractive approach,” says Jillian Dempsey, a chemist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “You’re able to store the energy of the sun in the bonds of molecules (分子).”

A hydrogen device with 12.6% efficiency that Agbo recently built was less than one inch across. For artificial photosynthesis to become practical, it needs to produce enough fuels to compete with the world’s existing energy supply of relatively inexpensive and abundant fossil fuels. It will take a lot of time and money before artificial photosynthesis can compete with fossil fuels. But the needed expenses won’t come close to the social cost of climate change. A recent survey of more than 2,000 economists projected the economic damages from climate change will reach $1.7 trillion per year by 2025 and roughly $30 trillion per year by 2075. Artificial photosynthesis could inch us back toward a better balance on the planet’s carbon seesaw.

【推荐2】Our planet is losing species at an alarming rate. As the world has become increasingly industrialized, natural habitats have been destroyed to build cities that are unlivable for wildlife. However, a pair of European designers, architect Rene Hougaard and product designer Alexander Qual, believe there are ways to encourage cities to coexist with nature. Inspired by everyday people who build “insect hotels“ in their backyards, they’ve created outdoor furniture that would be beautiful to look at, but also allow bugs, birds and wildflowers to thrive (繁殖).

The natural world tends to appear messy and chaotic to the human eye, but there is often method in the madness. Qual and Hougaard kept this in mind as in all the structures, they played with the concepts of order and messiness.

Qual created a large, yellow, leaf-shaped insect hotel, that’s designed to be placed on a flower bed in a park. The structure contains wooden blocks with holes that are 6, 7 and 8 millimeters in diameter (直径), since different insect species prefer holes of different sizes.

Hougaard created a metal log bench with an empty space in the middle specifically designed to hold a decaying (腐烂的) log that can provide a habitat for insects and plants, along with birds and bats. While humans often shun decay, Hougaard imagines a place where people can sit down and observe the slow process in which bacteria break down the wood, creating food for insects, birds and other animals.

As for the question of whether people actually want to be so close to bugs, snakes and nesting birds, the designers acknowledge that modern humans have been trained to stay away from such creatures. But Hougaard says these structures keep animals contained, while allowing people to observe and appreciate them safely. And eventually, if we want to maintain biodiversity, humans need to become much more comfortable living alongside wildlife, rather than feeling the need to destroy it. After all, we humans need nature to survive.