【推荐1】Today, I’ve been recording an audiobook. I am excited that I have realized my life-long dream.

I will never forget at primary school I used to wait with breathless anticipation to take my turn reading out a paragraph of great works in front. At my secondary school, when students were encouraged to select and present a reading at “morning talk”, I often added my name to the list.

This was all handy background for my career in broadcasting. But, much as I enjoy hosting shows and interviewing people, I often find myself missing the simple pleasures of reading out loud. I’d thought about putting myself forward as a narrator(朗读者) for audiobooks. But I’m not an actor. I can’t do regional accents or play female voice. Non-fiction, then, seemed the obvious target, but I felt that such books were best read by their authors. If it were authors’ own voice, their stories would touch me.

Recently, delivering my son’s nightly bedtime story has reawakened my love for reading out loud—highlights so far have included Charlotte’s Web. But I never thought I’d get the opportunity to do it professionally.

Then, last month, I was contacted by James Plunkett, author of End State, a forthcoming book about political ideas. He had no desire to read his book out loud, but as a fan of my program, he thought I might do a reasonable job.

So, I’ve spent this week in a studio, simply reading stuff out loud. And I’m LOVING IT!

Mind you, it’s an entirely unexpected experience. It’s disheartening when the recording needs to be stopped because I’ve just carelessly skipped over a ‘ the’, or had to clear my throat, or catch my breath. I’ve also learned how many words I’ve been mispronouncing my entire life: behavioral is BE-HAYVE-YOU-RAL, not BE-HAYVE-EE-AH-RUL.

Though tackling this 339-page book doesn’t turn out to be that easy, I’ve found the whole process awesome, and hope this becomes the first of many.

【推荐1】Have you ever wondered what wild animals do when no one is watching? Scientists have been able to record the “private” moments of wildlife with leading-edge technology. Low-cost, dependable and small modern cameras are of big help.

Cameras placed in hard-to-reach places have taken videos of everything from small desert cats to later snow-loving felines (猫科动物) in the northern Rocky Mountains. These cameras are important tools to learn new information on wildlife.

Some videos help scientists see the effects of climate change. For example, the desert animal javelina (矛牙野猪) and the tree-loving coatimundi (南美浣熊) have been caught on cameras north of their normal home. This could mean global warming is enlarging their living area northward.

Researchers use cameras, along with Global Positioning Systems or GPS. They attach GPS devices to animals living in or around Yellowstone National Park. Then they can record their movements, or migrations (迁移). These cameras can be left in the wild for days, weeks or even months. They can provide information on how many animals are moving over a given period of time.

Putting those cameras in place requires careful planning. Videos recorded by those cameras can show details about animal behavior. However, they have their problems too. Animals such as wolverines (狼獾) and bears sometimes attack them. Scientists do not know if the attacks are the result of anger or interest. Also, the devices have become popular tools to help hunters look for animals. Some people argue that it is unfair to use the cameras that way. Even with such problems, wild cameras are clearly important scientific tools in researching wild animals.

【推荐2】Growing up in the Philippines, construction worker Johnny Manlugay combs the beaches each night for the eggs of sea turtles. He knows exactly what to look for, as he was trained as a child by his grandfather on how to locate the animals and their eggs. Back then, his family traded or ate them. It wasn’t about getting rich. It was just a part of life.

But Manlugay has since turned over a new leaf. Now, he uses his tracking skills to protect the sea turtles that visit the beaches he lives by. “I’ve learned to love this work,” Manlugay acknowledged in an interview. “We didn’t know poaching (偷猎) was illegal and that we should not eat turtle eggs and meat.”

Manlugay carefully moved each egg into a bucket he brought with him, as well as some sand from the turtle nests, so as to hand them over to Coastal Underwater Resource Management Actions(CURMA)— the group leading the conservation program on the beaches.

The conservation effort established in 2009 has transformed sea turtle poachers into helpers, offering training to help save thousands of turtles and keep their eggs from ending up in markets and on plates. “We talked to the poachers, and it turned out poaching was just another means for them to earn a living,” explained Carlos Tamayo, the director of operations. “They had no choices.”

Once collected, the eggs are then reburied in protected areas to ensure the hatch. Another former poacher, Jessie Cabagbag, who grew up eating turtle meat and eggs, takes care of one of the protected areas now. “I stopped poaching when we underwent training and were taught that what we have been doing was illegal and that these species of turtles are endangered,” he explained. Now, he admits, “I am truly proud. I am happy that I can contribute to the conservation of the turtles.”

【推荐3】The International Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN) added the Chinese paddlefish (白鲟) to its list of threatened species in July, 2022. People will never see a living Chinese paddlefish again as it has been declared extinct. For many people in China, this might be the first time they had heard the name of the fish that was once a denizen(栖息者) of the Yangtze River Basin.

The fish is thought to have been around since about 200 million years ago. It was among the world’s biggest freshwater species and could grow up to 7.5 meters in length. The last time the fish was spotted was in 2003 in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in Yibin, Sichuan Province. It was an injured female sturgeon(鲟鱼). After local people treated its wounds, it was released into the river.

According to the IUCN, the global sturgeon reassessment found that 100 per cent of the remaining 26 sturgeon species in the world are now at risk of extinction, up from 85 per cent in 2009. Their decline over the past three generations is steeper than previously thought.

“The extinction of the Chinese paddlefish should be a warning to everyone,” said Zhou Fei, China’s chief program officer at the World Wide Fund for Nature. “It has provided an opportunity for conservation experts to raise public awareness about the urgency of protecting freshwater species in the Yangtze River Basin and educate the public on the need for more efforts to save other species living in the region from extinction,” he added.

To prevent further loss of freshwater species in China, people must act urgently. There is no time to waste. Also, long-term threats to their life and habitats must be eliminated by taking systematic protection measures. The protection of biodiversity will delay the extinction of some species. It’s not something that can be achieved by certain departments. Instead, it requires joint efforts from all sectors of society.

【推荐1】For most city people, the elevator is an unremarkable machine that inspires none of the enthusiasm or interest that Americans give trains, jets. and even bicycles. Dr. Christopher Wilk is a member of a small group of elevator experts who consider this a misunderstanding. Without the elevator, they point out. there could be no downtown skyscrapers or tall buildings. and city life, as we know. would be impossible. In that sense, they argue, the elevator's role in American history has been no less significant than that of cars. In fact. according to Wilk, the car and the elevator have been locked in a“secret war”for over a century. with cars making it possible for people to spread horizontally (水平地) . and elevators pushing them toward lite in close groups of towering vertical (垂 直的) columns.

If we tend to ignore the significance of elevators. it might be because riding in then tends to be such a brief. boring. and even awkward experience -- one that can involve unexpectedly meeting people with whom we have nothing in common, and an unpleasant awareness of the fact that we' re hanging from a cable in a long passage.

In a new book, Lifted, German journalist and cultural studies professor Andreas Bernard directed all his attention to this experience, studying the origins of elevator and its relationship to humankind and finding that riding in an elevator has never been a tally comfortable experience.

“Aterl50 years, we are still not used to it." Bernard said. “We still have not exactly learned to cope with the mixture of closeness and displeasure." That mixture. according to Bernard, sets the elevator ride apart from just about every other situation we find ourselves in as we go about our lives.

Today, as the world' s urban population explodes. and cities become denser, taller, and more crowded, America' s total number of elevators - 900.000 at last count, according to Elevator World magazine's 2012 Vertical Transportation Industry" - are a force that' s becoming more important than ever. And for the people who really. really love them, it seems like high time that we looked seriously at just what kind of force they are .

【推荐3】Have you ever wondered what the longest word in the English language is? Believe it or not, there’s no simple answer to the question. You might think it would be as easy as opening a dictionary and looking for the longest word. However, it’ s far more complicated than that.

Over time, many people have suggested many different words for the title of the longest word in English. How can that be? That’s because the first thing that people have different opinions on is what should be considered a word. Some of the words were simply made up to be the longest! For example, there is one really famous long word that most kids know. It comes from Disney’s movie Mary Poppins: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, which means wonderful. But since that 34-letter word was made up simply to be sung as a song in a movie, should it count?

How about long words that actually describe something in the world? Scientists have come up with several possible choices. The name of a virus totals 1, 185 letters. There’s also a protein whose name totals 1, 909 letters. Should these win the title? “Not so fast!” say some people. Are these words ever actually used? Can they even be pronounced? And are they meaningful just because they are made up to be long?

If you’re wondering about some long words in common English, here are some examples. Those words include uncharacteristically (20 letters), deinstitutionalization (22 letters) and counterrevolutionaries (also 22 letters). Or perhaps the word “smiles” is the longest word in English. Sure, it has only six letters, but there is a “mile” between the first and the last letters!