【推荐1】Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half of its corals since 1995 due to warmer seas driven by climate change, a study has found. Scientists found all types of corals had suffered a decline across the world’s largest reef system. The sharp falls came after mass bleaching(白化)events in 2016 and 2017. More mass bleaching occurred this year. “There is no time to lose-we must sharply decrease greenhouse gas emissions ASAP,” the researchers said.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, was conducted by marine scientists at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies in Queensland. Scientists assessed the health and size of coral colonies across the reef from 1995 to 2017. They found populations had dropped by more than 50% in all coral sizes and species, but especially in branching and table-shaped corals. These are the large, structural species which usually provide habitats for fish and other marine life.

Prof Terry Hughes, a study co-author, said these coral types had been “worst affected” by the back-to-back mass bleachings which damaged two-thirds of the reef. Bleaching occurs when corals under stress drive out the algae-known as zooxanthellae(虫黄藻)-that give them colour.

Corals can recover if normal conditions return, but it can take decades. A study in 2019 found that damaged coral colonies had struggled to recover because most of the adult corals had died. “A lifeful coral population has millions of small, baby corals, as well as many large ones,” said lead author Dr Andy Dietzel. “Our results show the ability of the Great Barrier Reef to recover its resilience is compromised compared to the past, because there are fewer babies, and fewer large breeding adults.”

【推荐2】One day last summer, watching the boys and girls trying to catch butterflies I remembered something happened when I was young. When I was a boy of 12 in South Carolina, something happened to me that cured me forever of wanting to put any wild creature in a cage.

We lived on the edge of a wood, and every evening the mockingbirds would come and rest in the trees and sing. No musician can sing more beautiful than the birds. I decided that I would catch a young bird and keep it in a cage and in that way would have my own private musician.

I finally succeeded in catching one and put it in a cage. At first, the bird flew about the cage, but eventually it settled down in its new home. I felt very pleased with myself and looked forward to some beautiful singing from my tiny musician.

I had left the cage out, and on the second day my new pet’s mother flew to the cage with food in her mouth. The baby bird ate everything she brought to it. I was pleased to see this. Certainly the mother knew better than I about how to feed her baby.

The following morning when I went to see how my bird was doing, I discovered it on the floor of the cage, dead. I was shocked! What had happened! I had taken good care of my little bird.

Arthur Wayne, the famousornithologist, happened to be visiting my father at the time. Hearing me crying over the death of my bird, he explained what had occurred. “A mother mockingbird, finding her young in a cage, will sometimes bring it poisonous (有毒的) berries(干果). She thinks it better for her young to die than to live in cage.”

Never since then have I caught any living creature and put it in a cage. All living creatures have a right to live free.

【推荐3】In September, something terrible happened on the west coast of Tasmania, Australia. As many as 380 pilot whales became stranded(搁浅) in shallow water there and later died. This might have been Australia’s largest stranding event on record, the BBC reported.

But this large amount of whale stranding is not uncommon. For centuries, it has happened all over the world and has puzzled scientists. Scientists say the cause is often unknown. But they have offered many different explanations.

Some say the whales chase small fish for food and end up in shallow water because they are not paying attention to where they are going.

Others think the stranding has something to do with Earth’s geomagnetic field (地磁场). They say that a geomagnetic compass in whales’ brains controls their position. Unusual changes in Earth’s magnetic field can affect the whales’ compasses and send them in the wrong direction.

Another explanation suggests that stranding is caused by the close relationships that whales have. Pilot whales travel in large groups. One lead whale might mistakenly lead the whole group to shallow water. “And if one gets into trouble, the others will not leave,” said Sheryl Gibney, a leading biologist from New Zealand. “Some will come in and try to help, they get trapped on the beach, then more will come.”

The whales are trapped by mistake or out of sympathy(同情). Once they get stranded, they will likely die. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the US, less than 10 percent of all stranded whales survive.

【推荐2】We all know that friends are special people who we share our lives with, and who share their lives with us in return. But seeking friends and keeping the friendship going are never easy.

According to research recently published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, the key is to use “we-talk”.

Led by University of California psychologist Megan Robbins and her colleague, the researchers reviewed and analyzed 30 different studies involving over 5,000 participants. This largest-ever analysis “we-talk” suggested that the frequent use of “we” and “us” is linked to happier and healthier relationships.

The word “we” moves people from an individual position into a partnership, which makes us more interdependent. “The pronouns offer an insight into whether people see themselves as individuals or as part of a whole… Word use is a window into what people are thinking and feeling without asking them,” Robbins told Science Daily.

Their research also found that “we-talk” is helpful for solvi ng conflicts. “The primary point is that interdependence may bring about supportive and relationship-centered behaviors and positive perceptions of the partner—especially important in times of stress and conflict,” according to a statement released by Robbins’ lab.

US-based magazine Psychology Today used the word “union” to describe the impact on a partner upon hearing “we-talk”.

Contrary to “we-talk”. there is “I-talk”, which refers to the frequent use of first-person-singular pronouns, such as “I”, “me” and “mine”, when writing or speaking.

Earlier this year, researchers from the University of Arizona, US, analyzed set of data that came from 4.700 people in Germany and the US. They found that too much “I-talk” was an accurate linguistic marker for the likelihood that someone is feeling stressed or experiencing negative emotions.

“If you are speaking in a personal context—so you’re speaking about something that’s of relevance to you”, lead researcher Allison Tackman told The Independent. “But if you’re communicating in a context that’s more impersonal, such as describing a picture, we did not see the relationship emerge.”

As you can see from the two studies, too much “I-talk” can make you feel depressed. But “we-talk” can encourage you to become more positive and create a chain effect of healthy interdependence with others.

So next time you’re talking to a friend, try using more “we-talk”. You may find yourself feeling more positive and the effect it will have on your friend will be positive as well.

Most people have a list of wishes—things that they think will bring them happiness. Happiness lists are easy to come up with. However, the mechanism behind them is somewhat complicated, since it involves what psychologist Daniel Gilbert calls the greatest achievement of the human brain—the ability to imagine. To imagine what will bring joy to our future selves requires mental time travel, which is a unique human skill resulting from two million years of evolution. We use this skill every day, predicting our future emotions and then making decisions, whether big or small, according to our forecasts of how they'll make our future selves feel.

Yet, our imagination often fails us. When we're lucky enough to get what we wished for, we discover that it doesn’t come with everlasting happiness. And when the things we feared come to pass, we realize that they don't crush us after all. In dozens of studies, Gilbert has shown that we can mispredict emotional consequences of positive events, such as receiving gifts or winning football games, as much as negative events, like breaking up or losing an election. This impact bias(影响偏差) —overestimation of the intensity and duration of our emotional reactions to future events—is significant, because the prediction of the duration of our future emotions is what often shapes our decisions, including those concerning our happiness.

Just as our immune systems work tirelessly to keep our bodies in good health, our psychological immune systems routinely employ an entire set of cognitive(认知) mechanisms in order to deal with life's habitual attack of less-than-pleasant circumstances. Actually, our psychological immune system has an impressive feature of its own: the ability to produce happiness. Thus, when life disappoints us, we “ignore, transform, and rearrange” information through a variety of creative strategies until the rough edges of negative effects have been dutifully dulled. When we fail to recognize this ability of our psychological immune systems to produce happiness, we're likely to make errors in our affective forecasting.

Happiness, Gilbert points out, is a fast moving target. As passionate as we’re about finding it, we routinely misforecast what will make us happy, and how long our joy will last. In reality, he adds that the best way to make an affective forecast is not to use your imagination, but your eyes. Namely, instead of trying to predict how happy you'll be in a particular future, look closely at those who are already in the future that you’re merely contemplating(冥想) and ask how happy they are. If something makes others happy, it'll likely make you happy as well.

【推荐2】Many studies have shown that getting more exercise is good for our brain. But can it happen the other way around? Can working on elevating mood help us to exercise more? The answer to this question is positive.

A study conducted by Emmons and McCullough formed three groups. One group was told to journal once a week and list 5 things that happened during the week that they were grateful for. Another group was told to journal once a week and list 5 things that had been a problem for them. A third group was told to journal once a week about 5 things that affected them, but were not given instruction as to whether they should be positive or negative.

After 10 weeks, the group that had focused on gratitude ended up 25%happier than the other two groups. Astonishingly, the gratitude group also exercised almost 1. 5 hours longer per week than the other groups.

Daniel Amen, in his book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, notes that emotional tagging of events is critical to survival. If we tag an event negatively, it can cause an avoidance response. If we tag an event positively, it can drive us to action.

Apparently, our survival is more dependent on being able to perceive a threat to our being, rather than notice that something good is happening. Focusing on the negative can cause us to lose sight of the big picture.

Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Happiness Hypothesis, explains that once we take a negative stance, we look for evidence that supports it. If we find some evidence-enough so that our position makes sense-we stop thinking. When this happens, often people will not start a change of thinking for themselves.

Jonathan Haidt notes that gratitude increases one's sense of control over a situation. A sense of control can bring about an increase in action, energy, and happiness. This can translate into sustained optimism, the ability to consider new options, set new goals, and, yes, even exercise more.

【推荐3】Earthquakes cannot be forecast, but engineers can prepare for them. Seismic-isolation systems use concrete (水泥), rubber and metal to reduce quake damage. But such adaptations are expensive. Engineer Jian Zhang of the University of California, Los Angeles, says the system can increase building costs by 20 percent. Although these systems might save more than they cost over time, builders in some areas may not have the money for them.

A new seismic-isolation method uses the physics of rolling to create a simpler, lower-cost choice with easily found things: used tennis balls. The team of Michalis Vassiliou, an engineer, based its method on an early form of seismic isolation that rolls a shaking building to a stop the way a skater comes to rest. By separating a building from the ground with a layer of balls, rolling isolation changes horizontal shaking into a soft rocking movement and uses friction to reduce the shaking.

The researchers built a cheap model consisting of four filled tennis balls between two concrete boards, and they found that it withstood simulated (仿造的) earthquake shaking while supporting eight kilonewtons (千牛顿) of force per ball — about twice what isolation systems might experience under one-story houses. The balls had to contain exactly — the right amount of the concrete mixture to reduce the shaking without cracking during tests.

Zhang, who didn’t take part in the study, says that the work is valuable. But she notes that the results are basic. Vassiliou agrees that next steps will mean creating and testing a larger model with hundreds of tennis balls. Vassiliou says that he has received money to test the system on the ground to improve the invention. “For this to actually be applied,” he adds, “you need to develop it with engineers from developing countries so that it actually deals with their needs.”