One night, a bear came into the city of Vancouver in Canada. It walked through the streets, passing houses, shops and offices until it found some food in the bins outside a restaurant and started eating. In the morning, someone saw the bear and called the police. They came with a vet(兽医) from the city zoo, put the bear in a truck and took it back to the mountains. Luckily, the bear was safe, but what happens in other countries when big animals come into cities?

In Cape Town, South Africa, baboons (狒狒) enter the city when they are famished. They go into gardens and eat fruit from trees, or into houses and take food from cupboards and fridges. Baboons are strong animals and they can frighten people. But the city can be dangerous for baboons too.

Sometimes, they are killed in traffic accidents. Human food is also not a good choice for their teeth because it has a lot of sugar. Now, there are baboon monitors working in Cape Town to return the animals to the countryside.

In Berlin, Germany, wild pigs sometimes come into the city to look for food. They eat plants from parks and gardens, and cause accidents in the streets. Some people like the wild pigs and give them food and water to drink. Other people, however, think the wild pigs are influencing their lives.

In some cities, you can see birds, insects, mice and squirrels every day. But sometimes, it is dangerous when big animals come into cities to find food. We need some good ideas to help them solve the food problem without hurting both them and us.

【推荐3】“It’s a windy day in Laguna San Ignacio, and the waves seem to come from all directions,” said Sara Clemence in Bloomberg Businessweek. My children and I are riding on a 18-foot boat—small enough that we can reach down into the water if a gray whale swims up alongside. And then we see what we’ve come for: a heart-shaped shower of water and a dark mass rushing below it. As instructed, we splash (溅泼) the water strongly to signal the huge whale, which turns out to be a mother with her weeks-old baby. The baby soon swims beneath our boat, emerges to blow mist in my face, then “lies onto its side like a 2-ton puppy.” Leaning down, I touched its skin gently. “It feels electric. Also, a bit like petting a hard-boiled egg.”

San Ignacio is one of very few places where a person can pet a whale. The whales come each year to the coast of Baja California to give birth and to mate. If you’re lucky, you can “shake hands with a leatheryfin (鳍)” or even “plant a kiss on a cold, salty cheek.” I usually worry about such interactions, because wild creatures can become deeply stressed by human contact. But boat numbers are strictly limited in these protected waters.   And any whale that approaches a boat does so on its own terms. Like that baby whale: “We see him a few times, and he seems to like being petted and splashed.”

So we are two species, connecting through touch, but also through eye contact: “More than once, after nosing around our boat, a young gray turns on its side so one dark, baseball-size eye is looking up at us.” Whalers   used   to   call   gray   whales   “devil   fish”   because   these   magnificent   creatures   turn   violent   when threatened—“or, say, when their babies are harmed.” That makes it feel even more of a blessing when, on our third day there, a large mama whale approaches the boat. “I’m splashing when I feel her nose press up into my hand.” Though she’s “wiser and apparently more alert” than her child, “she still decides to trust us.”

【推荐1】There is increasing evidence that, unless you are a wheelchair user, sitting down too much can be a risk to your health. The less sitting or lying down you do during the day, the better your chances for living a healthy life.

Sitting for long periods can lead to weakening and wasting away of the large leg and gluteal (臀肌) muscles. If these muscles are weak, you are more likely to injure yourself from falls.    1     Sitting for long periods can also cause problems with your back, especially if you consistently sit with poor posture or don’t use an ergonomically designed chair.

    2     This might be because people who spend a lot of time sitting are missing the positive mental effects of physical activity and fitness. If so, getting up and moving may help.

Humans are built to stand upright. Your heart and cardiovascular system work more effectively that way. Your bowel (肠) also functions more efficiently when you are upright.

When you sit, you use less energy than you do when you stand or move.     3     If you spend a lot of time sitting, digestion is not as efficient, so you retain those fats and sugars as fat in your body.

You may be thinking, “I exercise several times per week.” Unfortunately, you cannot undo 8 hours of continuous sitting with a workout. Don’t throw away all that hard work at the gym by hitting the couch for the rest of the day.     4    

However, simple modifications to your routine can make a big difference. When you’re tidying up, put items away in small trips rather than taking them all together. Get off the bus one stop early and walk the rest of the way. If you work in an office, stand up while you read emails or reports. Sitting can’t be avoided completely.     5    

【推荐2】It doesn’t matter how clever you are or how much education you’ve had, you can still improve your mind. And improving your intelligence quotient (IQ) doesn’t have to mean studying hard. There are many methods that can help your brain. Here are three of them, from the British science magazine New Scientist.

Working memory

IQ is not decided by genetics. Some methods can help increase it.

Why: Until recently, a person’s IQ was thought to be determined by genetics. But recent studies suggest that a basic brain function called working memory could increase one’s IQ. Working memory is the brain’s short-term storage system. The amount of information the working memory can hold is related to general intelligence.

How: Training helps us expand the working memory. Common training tasks include: doing math questions that have intermediate (中间的) steps; remembering the position of objects on a map; or remembering a string of digits (数字), like a phone number, without writing it down.

Body and mind

Physical exercise can help the brain as well as the body. It’s good for those who hate studying hard.

Why: Physical exercise helps the growth of new brain cells. Until recently, it was believed that we produced no new brain cells in our lifetime. But, in 2000, US scientist Fred Gage showed that even adults could grow new brain cells. He also found that exercise was one of the best ways to achieve this.

How: Simply walking for half an hour three times a week can improve learning, concentration and reasoning by 15 percent. Even more gentle exercise like yoga can do good for your brain. A study last year showed that the best way to get a mental lift is to bend over backwards.

The Mozart effect

Music may tune up your thinking. But simply turning up the sound won’t make you clever.

Why: American scientist Frances Rauscher made waves by discovering in 1995 that listening to Mozart improved people’s mathematical reasoning. Last year, Rauscher reported that Mozart’s music seemed to increase activity in genes involved in nerve-cell signaling in the brain.

How: Listening to Mozart and taking music lessons can really help. Six-year-old children who were given music lessons got a 2-to 3-point increase in IQ scores. Music lessons exercise a lot of mental skills, because of the need of accurate finger movements, and listening for rhythm.

【推荐3】Most people would describe a dollar millionaire as rich, yet many millionaires would disagree. They do not compare themselves with teachers or shop assistants but with the other parents at their children's private schools. To count the number of rich people in the world, however, an arbitrary cut-off point is needed, and $1 million is as good as any. Capgemini defines anyone with investable property of $ l million or more as a “high-net-worth individual”. By this measure the planet has about 10 million millionaires. According to Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, a bank Credit Suisse, another bank, uses a less strict definition: a millionaire is anyone whose net assets exceed $1 million. That includes everything: a home, an art collection, even the value of an as-yet-inaccessible pension. The Credit Suisse "Global Wealth Report" estimates that there were 24.2 million such people in 2015, about 0.5% of the world's adult population. By this measure, there are more millionaires than there are Australians. They control $69.2 trillion in property, more than a third of the global total.

How did these people grow rich? Mostly through their own efforts. Only 16% inherited their stash. The most common way to get rich is to start a business: nearly half (47%) of the world's wealthy people are entrepreneurs.

You do not have to be a genius to build a million-dollar business, but it helps if you are intelligent and extremely hard-working. In their book “The Millionaire Next Door”, Thomas Stanley observed that a typical American millionaire is surprisingly ordinary. He does not live in the fanciest part of town — why waste money that you can invest? And his tastes are so plain that you can barely tell him apart from his neighbours. He buys $40 shoes, and his car of choice is a Ford.

Another 23% of the world's millionaires got rich through paid work, estimates Capgemini. A few vault easily over the million-dollar bar. Gregory Maffei, the boss of Liberty Media, earned $87,095.882 in 2010. The median pay for chief executives at the 456 largest publicly quoted firms in America was $7.23 million, according to the Hay Group, a consultancy. But the vast majority are skilled professionals or managers who have been careful with their money. An dentist in America makes about $200,000 a year. He may leave medical school heavily in debt, but after a lifetime of earning, saving and investing he can probably amass $1 million.