【推荐1】World Elephant Day is the perfect time to find out more about these amazing animals and what we can do to preserve them so they do not go the way of the mammoth（猛犸象）.

World Elephant Day was created in 2011 by two Canadian filmmakers Patricia Sims and Thailand’s Elephant Reintroduction Foundation and was first celebrated on August 12, 2012. They made the documentary Return to the Forest, a fascinating 30 minute film about the reintroduction of caught Asian elephants to the wild.

Currently, the demand for ivory（象牙）is becoming bigger and bigger, whose price is higher than that of gold, making elephants bigger targets than ever. Habitation loss is also a danger to the world’s elephant population as it robs elephants of the hundreds of pounds of food they need every day, making it more difficult for them to breed and making it easier for hunters to track them down. Circuses and tourism are also serious threats to the animals’ well-being.

The best way to celebrate this day is to take the opportunity to educate yourself about these magnificent（巨大的）mammals and share your knowledge with others. As ever, simply spreading the word about the dangers these magnificent mammals face via social media can actually make a real change. Expose that “training” elephants often involves tying and beating them daily for months on end. If you want to get a bit more involved, you could choose to make a donation to a foundation dedicated to protecting elephants from hunters or relocating them to locations better suited to their needs.

Whichever way suits you best, make sure that you spend this day in a way that helps elephants all over the world, so we, in turn, can continue to wonder at them and their uniquely fascinating way of life.

【推荐3】Here is some good news for people who are worried about great white sharks. US researchers say that the number of great white sharks off the coast of California is likely to rise. They also say that they are not at risk of dying out. It’s really exciting, isn’t it? The findings suggest that there are around 2,000 white sharks swimming in the eastern North Pacific, not 219 as the research done three years ago suggested.

“It’s a delightful thing to find that the largest and most powerful group in the sea are in good shape,” said George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research. “That we found these sharks are doing OK and better than OK, makes us believe that other shark populations might also be doing well,” Mr. Burgess added.

The earlier count was based on the research carried out in two places. These places are the Farallon Islands, west of San Francisco, and nearby Tomales Point. But sharks are difficult to count，and their populations are not stable at the two sites. As a result, researchers widened their research scope (范围) to include other known gathering spots, from Mexico to British Columbia and Alaska. By considering all life stages of sharks there, researchers found that their numbers were more likely around 2,000, not 219.

The US National Marine Fisheries Service has declined to add white sharks to the endangered species list, estimating (估计) about 3,000 sharks in the eastern North Pacific. But, not all wild animals are so lucky. Some are still at risk of dying out. We all should do what we can to protect wild animals.

【推荐3】Generations of Americans have been brought up to believe that a good breakfast is one of life’s essentials. Eating breakfast at the start of the day, we have all been told again, is as necessary as putting gasoline in the family car before starting a trip.

But for many people the thought of food as first thing in the morning is by no means a pleasure. So despite all the efforts, they still take no breakfast. Between 1977 and 1983, the latest year for which figures are available, the number of people who didn’t have breakfast increased by 33 percent-from 8.8 million to 11.7 million-according to the Chicago-based Market Research Corporation of America.

For those who feel pain or guilt about not earing breakfast, however, there is some good news. Several studies in the last few years indicate that, for adults especially, there may be nothing wrong with not taking breakfast. “Going without breakfast does not affect performance,” said Arnold E. Bender, former professor of nutrition（营养）at Queen Elizabeth College in London, “nor doe giving people breakfast improve performance.”

Scientific evidence linking breakfast to better health or better performance is surprisingly inadequate, and most of the recent work involves children, not adults. “The literature,” says one researcher, Dr. Ernesto Pollitt at the University of Texas, “is poor.”