【推荐1】Giant pandas could be left hungry and struggling to survive by global warming, scientists have warned. A new study predicts that climate change is certain to wipe out much of the bamboo on which the bears rely for food. Prime panda habitat in China could be completely lost by the end of the century. Human development adds to the threat by blocking the bears' access to places where bamboo is less affected by rising temperatures.

The research focused on the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi province, which is home to around 275 wild pandas. The animals make up around 17% of the entire wild giant panda population. Qinling pandas have been isolated for thousands of years due to a long history of human habitation around the mountain range. Their limited range makes them particularly sensitive to the loss of food resources.

Bamboo, which carpets the forest floor where the pandas live, is the single item in the bears' diet and also provides essential food and shelter for other animals. The plant's unusual reproductive cycle limits its ability to adapt to climate change. One species studied by the scientists only flowers and reproduces every 30-35 years. Tuanmu's team pointed out that three main bamboo species were likely to disappear in the Qinling Mountains as the climate warmed.

"We will need advance actions to protect the current giant panda habitats," said leading researcher Mao-Ning Tuanmu, from Yale University in the US. "We need time to look for areas that might become panda habitat in the future, and to think now about connection between good panda habitats and habitats for other species."

Conservation efforts should now aim to protect areas that have a better chance of supplying pandas with food, despite climate change. Natural "bridges" could also be created to help the pandas escape from a bamboo shortage. Looking at the climate impact on the bamboo can help us prepare for the challenges that the panda will likely face in the future.

【推荐2】Many years ago, dogs and wolves were the same. But about 14,000 years ago, some wolves began to change. They were no longer as wild. No one knows exactly how this happened. Angus Phillips of National Geographic Magazine thinks it may have happened like this: “Some wolves moved close to human cooking fires after smelling something good to eat. Then they worked to get closer to groups of humans. They did this by being helpful or proving they would not hurt people. The humans might have used the wolves’ better hunting skills to help them hunt animals. The wolves could warn humans of danger at night. Over thousands of years, humans kept the large, rough wolves out of the human camps. This led to the development of different kinds of dogs that were more friendly to people. They began to look different than wolves. They were generally smaller than wolves, with a shorter nose.”

Through the late 19th century, humans would raise dogs for special skills they wanted, such as hunting, helping with the work on farms or protecting animals. Today, the most common use of a dog is for friendship. Some people even consider their dog to be a part of their family. Scientists are finding that dogs can even understand human emotions. Around the world today there are more than 400 million dogs. But their relationship with people is not always close. Some of these dogs become strays. They live on the streets and often eat garbage. Diana Bharucha, from Bangalore,

Diana, started a program called ‘Stray Dogs Free Bangalore.’ She says that dogs should have a home with a human master. Diana told the news-magazine Citizens Matters: “If the dog population continues to increase, they will go back to living in a group and turn wild. They will start hunting like wild animals which will be a danger for human life.” Humans are still learning how to live together with dogs. This relationship can be wonderful but difficult. But people will continue to share their lives with man’s best friend: the dog.

【推荐1】As trees across the northern areas turn gold and deep red, you can find autumn colors in parks and woodlands, in the cities, countryside, and mountains. People are wondering what these colors are for. For years, scientists have worked to understand the changes that happen to trees in the autumn. Up to now there have been different explanations for why natural selection makes autumn colors so widespread.

Dr. Hamilton from Oxford University proposed that bright autumn leaves contained a message: they warn insects to leave them alone. In autumn, insects choose trees where they will lay eggs. When the larvae（幼虫）come out the next spring, they feed on the trees, often with a result of destruction of the trees. Dr. Hamilton suggested that trees could ward off these insects with poisons. They could have strong defenses by letting egg-laying insects know what was in store for their eggs.

Dr. Hamilton and students turned the theory into a mathematical model, which showed that warning signals could indeed drive the evolution（进化）of bright leaves. It was a first attempt to see what was out there.

A research team from the University of Wisconsin gave a quite different explanation. “If you are up here in Wisconsin, by the time leaves change, all the insects that feed on leaves are gone.” Dr. Hoch said. He believed that autumn colors served mainly as protection.

According to Dr. Hoch and his team, autumn colors might be able to protect the leaves from sun damage or frost（冰冻）injury—in other words, they actually act as a sunscreen to avoid the destruction to the leaves. Besides, autumn colors might protect the leaves from water loss. If the cells in the leaves become dry, the connections between the cells will be weakened and leaves will break off.

Although there are different explanations about autumn colors, it has really given them a deeper concern for this time of year. “People sometimes say that science makes the world less interesting by just explaining things away,” one famous biologist said. “But with autumn leaves, the more you know about them, the more amazed you are.”

【推荐2】A competition about Versailles literature (凡尔赛文学) was carried out on Sina Weibo recently. So what is Versailles literature?

    1     It came from The Rose of Versailles, a Japanese manga series about aristocratic (贵族化的) life at the palace of Versailles in France in the late 18th century, and was coined by a Chinese influencer earlier this year. Known as humblebragging (谦虚的吹牛), it is a boast disguised as a complaint. “    2    ” and “I thought I lost weight this morning. So disappointed when I realized it was because I took off the huge diamond ring my boyfriend gave me last night.” are some examples of Versailles literature.

The psychology behind humblebragging is to be recognized for one’s successes and be liked by others at the same time, according to scholars.     3     Most researchers concluded from their research that humblebraggers are perceived more negatively than straight braggers due to the former’s insincerity.

“    4     People don’t like braggers, but they at least see them as more sincere than humblebraggers,” said Francesca Gino.

So, how can we annoy humblebraggers back? “Just pretend you don’t get whatever it is they try to show off,” a netizen advised. “    5    ”

【推荐3】During the period from 1660 through 1800, Great Britain became the world’s leader. Language itself became submitted to rules during this period. This need to fix the English language is best illustrated (描述) in the making of The Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson. Guides to the English language had been in existence before Johnson began his project in 1746. These, however, were often little more than lists of hard words. When definitions of common words were supplied, they were often unhelpful. For example, a “horse” was defined in an early dictionary as “a beast well known”.

Johnson changed all that, but the task was not an easy one. Renting a house at 17 Gough Square, Johnson began working in the worst of conditions. Supported only by his publisher, Johnson worked on the Dictionary with five assistants. Compared to the French Academy’s dictionary, which took forty workers fifty-five years to complete (1639-1694), Johnson’s dictionary was completed by very few people very quickly.

Balanced on a chair with only three legs, Johnson sat against a wall in a room filled with books. Johnson would read widely from these books, mark passages illustrating the use of a particular word, and give the books to his assistants so that they could copy the passages on slips of paper. These slips were then stuck to eighty large notebooks under the key words that Johnson had selected. Fixing the word by this method, Johnson could record a word，s usage and its definition.

How many passages were used? According to Johnson’s modern biographer Walter Jackson Bate, the original total number could have been over 240,000. How many words were defined by the lexicographer? Over 40,000 words appeared in two large books in April of 1755. Did Johnson fully understand the huge task he was undertaking when he began? As he told his contemporary biographer James Boswell, “I knew very well what I was undertaking and very well how to do it — and have done it very well.”

【推荐2】In 1914, Ernest Shackleton and his team left England in a wooden sailing ship called the Endurance, hoping to become the first to cross Antarctica.

But in 1915, the Endurance became trapped over the Weddell Sea. The ice destroyed the Endurance and later sank it. Shackleton and all of his men abandoned the ship and managed to stay alive. Although they failed to complete the expedition, the tale of their long and difficult return is one of the most famous survival stories of all time.

Much was known about the location of the Endurance. The ship’s captain kept accurate records of the ship’s position. The ship’s photographer even took pictures of it as it went down. But the ship, deep in the icy waters near Antarctica, had never been found.

Now, a search team called “Endurance22” located the ship, which was found 1.87 miles below the ocean’s surface, about four miles south of its last known position. The team reports that the ship is in excellent shape. 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 worms that normally break down wooden objects underwater don’t live in the cold waters around Antarctica.

The Endurance 22 is led by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. The team ran the project from an ice­breaking ship. To locate the Endurance, the team used two underwater robots called Sabertooths which can travel by themselves deep under the sea. What makes them unique is that they can travel under the ice and go where the ship can not. Once the ship was located, the Sabertooths used high­quality cameras and scanners to record the Endurance in detail.

The Endurance 22 plans to create a digital 3D model of the wreck site, using the careful scans they made. This will allow scientists to study the ship in detail without disturbing it.