【推荐1】Cuckoos (布谷鸟) are masters of cheating. When it comes to raising young, they don’t spend the energy building a nest, protecting eggs or feeding children. Instead the female passes these roles on to other birds. They don’t raise their own young. Usually, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, fooling other birds into thinking the cuckoo eggs are theirs.

To succeed in doing this, a female cuckoo watches over her chosen nest to observe feeding times. When the host parent leaves its nest in search of food, the cuckoo quickly lays her eggs among those already in the nest. Sometimes, she will even destroy and remove one of the host’s eggs to make room for her own.

Cuckoos are medium-sized birds with long tails, and often have gray or brown backs. When they hatch (孵化) and begin to grow in a host’s nest, the difference between the two can be obvious to an onlooker. Often the cuckoo is twice the size of its foster (收养的) parents, but still continues to receive food from them.

The cuckoo imposter (冒名顶替者) is usually the only baby bird that the host parent has to care for. This is because when the cuckoo hatches after around 11 days, it gets rid of all the other eggs in the nest. It will lift each egg onto its back before throwing them one by one over the edge of the nest. Even then, the non-biological parent will continue to treat it as one of its own.

Also, cuckoos have developed to produce eggs that are similar in color to their main hosts’. This reduces the chances of eggs being attacked. Female cuckoos have been known to take host birds’ attention away after laying their eggs by producing a noise similar to Eurasian sparrowhawks, scaring birds away from returning to the nest and allowing time for the cuckoo to make her escape unnoticed.

【推荐3】Dogs are man's best friend. If you plan on buying a dog, try to put in a little bit of research. You will find out that there are plenty of dog breeds(品种)to choose from, but some are more expensive than others. Not just in terms of the purchase price, but also grooming(动物美容)and medical expenses.

In this list, we will cover the most expensive dog breeds in the world that you can buy. We’ll even include the dog's price tag, grooming expenses, and average health care costs.

Kerry Blue Terrier

With a purchase price at $ 600 this dog might be inexpensive. However, due to their many health concerns, health care costs can reach up to $ 7, 000. If taken care of, they can live up to 15 years.

Great Dane

The Great Dane breed is a big dog with an average price of $ 800. This breed has a life expectancy of 7 to 10 years. The average health care costs are expected to be around $7, 100.

Bernese Mountain Dog

The purchase price for one of these huge 120-pound dogs is around $800. This breed has a life expectancy of 9 to 12 years. This breed has many health concerns like elbow and hip dysplasia(髓关节发育不良)which will cost you around $ 6, 500.

German Shepherd

Known for their cleverness as a sheepherder, the purchase price for one is around $ 800. Although they can live for up to 13 years, their health care costs up to $20, 500. What causes their health care to be expensive is treating common health conditions such as hip dysplasia.

【推荐1】As more and more people speak the global languages of English, Chinese, Spanish, and French, other languages are rapidly disappearing. In fact, half of the 6,000-7,000 languages spoken around the world today will likely die out by the next century, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

In an effort to prevent language loss, scholars (学者) from a number of organizations-UNESCO and National Geographic among them-have for many years been documenting (记录) dying languages and the cultures they reflect. Mark Turin, a scientist at the Macmillan Centre Yale University, who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas, is following that tradition. His recently published book, A Grammar of Thangmi with an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture, grows out of his experience living, working, and raising a family in a village in Nepal.

Documenting the Thangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayan reaches of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. But he is not satisfied to simply record these voices before they disappear without record. At the University of Cambridge Turin discovered a wealth of important materials, including photographs, films, tape recordings, and field notes, which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection. Now, through the two organizations that he has founded, the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project, Turin has started a campaign to make such documents, for the world available not just to scholars but to the younger generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet, Turin’s notes, the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.

【推荐2】I think a close friend is someone you get on really well with, who helps you when you have problems, who gives you advice, and who always has time for you. I didn’t have many close friends when I was at school or at university, for I was very shy, but now I have several. They are all women—I think it’s difficult to make a close friend with the opposite sex (异性) .

—Marie

I don’t really have any close friends. I know a lot of people but mainly through work, and the kinds of social occasions (场合) when we meet are business dinners and evening parties. I think if you come from a really close family, then friends are a bit unnecessary. I like spending my free time with my family.

—Richard

I think a close friend is someone who you’ve known for a long time, and who you still get on with. They probably share similar hobbies with you so you can do things together. I’ve got three close friends who I was at high school with and we often go away together (without our parents of course). We always go camping, play football, or walk outside in the open air.

—David

For me close friends are the people you spend your free time with. I go out at weekends with a group of people—there are about seven of us, and I’d say we are all close friends. We also live near each other. I don’t think you can have close friends far away from you; you need to be able to see each other often. But I don’t think you need to be doing the same things. I mean I’m at university but none of my friends are.

—Ana

【推荐1】Recently according to a new research，humans have had a link to starches (含淀粉的食物) for up to 120,000 years — that’s more than 100,000 years longer than we’ve been able to plant them in the soil during the time of the Ice Age’s drawing to an end. The research is part of an ongoing study into the history of Middle Stone Age communities.

An international team of scientists identified evidence of prehistoric starch consumption in the Klasies River Cave, in present-day South Africa. Analyzing small, ashy, undisturbed hearths (壁炉) inside the cave, the researchers found “pieces of burned starches” ranging from around 120,000 to 65,000 years old. It made them the oldest known examples of starches eaten by humans.

The findings do not come as a complete surprise — but rather as welcome confirmation of older theories that lacked the related evidence. The lead author Cynthia Larbey said that there had previously only been genetic (基因的) biological evidence to suggest that humans had been eating starch for this long. This new evidence, however, takes us directly to the dinner table, and supports the previous assumption that humans，digestion genes gradually evolved in order to fit into an increased digestion of starch.

Co-author Sarah Wurz said, “The starch remains show that these early humans living in the Klasies River Cave could battle against their tough environment and find suitable foods and perhaps medicines. And as much as we all still desire the tubers (块茎), these cave communities were grilling starches such as potatoes on their foot-long hearths. They knew how to balance their diets as well as they could, with fats from local fish and other animals.”

As early as the 1990s, some researchers started to study the hearths in the Klasies River Cave. Scientist Hilary Deacon first suggested that these hearths contained burned plants. At the time, the proper methods of examining the remains were not yet available. We now know human beings have always been searching for their desired things.

【推荐3】On Wednesday, a search team called Endurance 22 announced that it had located the wreck (沉船) Endurance. The Endurance was found 1. 87 miles below the ocean’s surface, about four miles south of its last known location near Antarctica. The ship sank after it got trapped in the ice in the Weddell Sea in 1915.

The discovered ship is still in excellent shape. The name can be clearly read on the back of the ship. Its wheel looks ready to be turned. Even though the ship is made of wood and is over 100 years old, it has survived with little damage. Scientists say that the small organisms (微生物) that normally break down wooden objects underwater don’t live in cold water around Antarctica.

The Endurance 22 is led by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. The team ran the project from an ice-breaking ship which was able to handle the difficult conditions of the Weddell Sea. To locate the Endurance, the team used two underwater robots called Sabertooths, which were especially useful, since they could travel under the ice and go where the ship could not. The robots were looking for anything sticking up above the seafloor. For the last two weeks, the Sabertooths robots have been scanning the seafloor in a 150-square mile area around the Endurance’s last known location. Last Saturday, the ship was found. After the ship was located, the Sabertooths used high-quality cameras and scanners to record the Endurance in detail.

The Endurance is expected to remain untouched. Antarctica’s waters are protected by an international agreement, which means the ship can’t be disturbed. The Endurance 22 team plans to create a digital 3D model of the wreck site, using a careful scan they made. This will allow scientists to study the ship in detail without disturbing it.