【推荐3】How to Study Effectively

With pressure and competition rising in education, students nowadays are eager to find the best methods or tools to improve their academic scores. So, questions like “What is the best study method?” or “How can I learn knowledge faster?” arise in their minds.    1    .

Play the role of a teacher

A useful way to remember lessons is to explain them aloud to yourself. Once you learn a study material, try to explain it to yourself or your friends as your teachers explain it to you. This will help you to clear your confusion related to the lesson.    2    . This will not only help the details stick in your mind but help you to be well prepared for your exams.

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Many students face a challenge like “Why can’t I remember what I’ve studied?”.     4    . A tired brain is a barrier to learning. Exercise before studying helps to lift your mood. In fact, physical activity helps wake you up so you feel ready when you sit down with your books.

Absorb information in smaller chunks (块)

    5     : You divide the 11 numbers into three smaller groups. It’s easier to get these three chunks to stick in your mind than it is to remember the whole thing as a single string of information. You can use this strategy when studying by breaking a list down into smaller parts. Work on memorizing each part as its own group.

Last but not the least, these tips on how to study effectively can only work if there is enough motivation and willpower to do well. You have to motivate yourself to reach the study goals.

【推荐1】Across vast areas of the tropics (热带地区) from Southeast Asia to Africa, forests have been cut down in recent decades, but at least in some areas reforestation efforts have been made to take in carbon (碳).

It remains to be seen, however, whether these newly planted forests will manage to survive in the face of changing climate, which will bring more intense heat, lengthened droughts, and occasional wildfires.

To find out, scientists from the University of Hong Kong decided to run hundreds of computer models to explore various results under different conditions. The key aim of the study was to see if carbon stored in these regrown forests would remain locked up, and they have found this will likely be the case even under the most severe climate conditions.

“Our computer models show in many parts of the tropics reforestation is worth it, because these new forests should be able to survive until the end of the century and continue to store extra carbon from the atmosphere in the process,” explains Jed Kaplan, a professor at the university.

However, the role of newly planted forests as a carbon collector in the tropics will have only a limited effect on climate change, especially because many existing forests in the tropics will struggle in the face of rising temperatures and are already losing their ability to store carbon, “Massive tree planting won’t be enough to avoid climate disaster, but it can play a role. And if done with biodiversity and the people who call these forests home, reforestation can have many benefits,” says Alexander Koch, the other author of the study.

“So far we have only been able to look at carbon, but other aspects such as biodiversity in restored forests are also impacted by climate change. Assessing those impacts will be the next step,” he adds.

【推荐3】The green and red watermelon is a sweet, refreshing summer snack. But it wasn’t always so sugary or brightly colored. So what did watermelons originally taste and look like, and from where did they come?

The fruit isn’t from the Fertile Crescent of ancient Mesopotamia, as so many other domesticated (家养的) crops are, research shows. Susanne Renner, a scientist, and her colleagues carried out comprehensive genetic sequencing (基因测序) of the domesticated watermelons — the kind you might find on supermarket shelves — along with six wild watermelon species.

“We found the modern genomes (基因组) of the domesticated watermelon are more closely related to the Sudanese wild type than any other that we analyzed,” she said. The Sudanese wild watermelon has some obvious differences from the domesticated version. “The flesh is white and not very sweet, and it’s mainly used as animal feed,” Renner said. Nevertheless, the genetic similarity between the two species led the researchers to conclude that the Sudanese fruit is probably a precursor (前身) to the red and sweet domesticated watermelon.

It’s likely that ancient farmers grew non-bitter varieties of the wild watermelon and thus increased its sweetness over many generations through the domestication process. The red color is probably also thanks to artificial selection, in which farmers likely favored and selectively bred red fruit.

We already knew that the ancient Egyptian king Tutankhamun was buried with watermelon seeds 3,300 years ago, yet that isn’t sufficient proof of a domesticated, sweet watermelon. But then, Renner found an image of a watermelon-like fruit on an ancient Egyptian tomb painting, thought to be more than 4,300 years old. In a separate tomb, another image showed the watermelon cut up in a dish alongside other sweet fruits. This realization, coupled with Renner’s genetic findings, suggests that the watermelon was most likely domesticated around that time either in Egypt or within trading distance of the ancient empire.

“Historically speaking, that’s a very significant finding,” said Hanno Schaefer, a professor of plant biodiversity. “It’s becoming clearer that we’ve greatly neglected the North African region. We’ve focused too much on the Fertile Crescent and we need to invest more resources into studying the agriculture of North Africa.”