【推荐3】Here’s one more tip from Dr. Gerba, who says our kitchen sink is probably dirtier than our toilet. “If an alien came from space and studied the bacterial counts, he probably would conclude he should wash his hands in your toilet and go to the bathroom in your sink.” He says that’s because the kitchen sink is a great place where E. coli (大肠杆菌) to live and grow since it’s wet and damp. Bacteria feed on the food that people put down the drain or — that’s left on dishes in the sink. To reset your sink’s bacteria count back to zero, you’d better regularly wash it with hot water and sanitize your sink with special chemicals. In fact, you may want to do it every day or before preparing dinner.

【推荐1】The creative team behind "Apes" used motion-capture (动作捕捉) technology to create digitalized animals, spending tens of millions of dollars on technology that records an actor’s performance and later processes it with computer graphics to create a final image (图像). In this case, one of a realistic-looking ape.

【推荐2】Otters, are cute, this no one can deny. They have big eyes, short and flat noses and claws (爪子) like tiny hands. They look even cuter when they wear hats and throw food balls into their mouths as if they were bar snacks, like Takechiyo, a pet otter in Japan. Documenting Takechiyo’s funny behavior has earned his owner nearly 230,000 followers on Instagram, a photo-sharing app.

【推荐3】Have you ever noticed the Mu Us Desert (毛乌素沙漠) in the northwest when you read a map of China? If you haven’t, then you probably never will. That’s _______ the desert is disappearing.

You might wonder: Why is this happening? Who is the “killer”? Well, it is the _______ of years of efforts in tree planting. In China, the Mu Us used to be one of the largest deserts in size. Sandstorms were common in northern Shanxi. Lots of people had to leave their homes. The fight against desertification (沙漠化) began in the1970s. A team planned to plant trees in the desert. It once took them a whole afternoon to plant trees under a burning sun. That night, however, a strong wind blew away all the young trees. Crying was _______. The next day, the team replanted all the trees.

In Yulin, there are many other fighters. One of them is Guo Chengwang. He started to plant trees in his village when encouraged by the government in 1985. Guo is now in his nineties. His children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have _______ the job. The family has turned 30 km2 of desert into woods.

These trees have made a big difference. In Yulin, the number of sandy days has _______ from 100 in 2000 to 10 now. With the joined and continuing efforts, the Mu Us Desert will be gone. Our motherland will become greener and lovelier.

【推荐1】However, because Leonardo was born to parents who were not married to each other, he was barred from some studies and professions. He trained as an artist after moving to Florence with his father in the 1460s. It was an exciting time to be in Florence, one of the cultural capitals of Europe. Leonardo trained with one of the city’s very successful artists, Andrea del Verrocchio. He was a painter, sculptor and gold worker. Verrocchio told his students that they needed to understand the body’s bones and muscles when drawing people.

【推荐2】Testing nonhuman memory retention (保持) is challenging; in research studies, “it’s rare that there is a gap of several years between when an animal stores the information and when it is next required to retrieve it,” says University of Oxford zoologist Dora Biro. For a recent study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Biro and her colleagues compared domestic homing pigeons’ paths three or four years after the birds established routes back to their loft from a farm 8.6 kilometers away. The study built on data from a 2016 experiment in which pigeons learned routes in different social contexts during several flights — on their own or with peers that did or did not know the way.

【推荐3】Emma had never read it, nor had she ever purchased a copy. But, when she opened it up, she was floored to see her own name and address inside the cover, in her own handwriting. It turned out that the summer before, at a concert back in Montreal, Emma had met a Californian who was in town visiting friends. They decided to exchange addresses, but neither of them had any paper. The man had opened up a book he was carrying in his backpack and asked Emma to write her name and address inside. When he returned to California, he left the book behind in Montreal, and his friend Alex kept it. When Alex later relocated to Jerusalem, he took the now-treasured book along.

Q: What does the underlined word “floored” in the paragraph mean?