【推荐2】We human beings need to stay in touch with nature-many studies show how much better people feel when in sight of trees. Yet even more importantly，nature itself needs us to stay in touch. Many politicians and scientists have told us that we can "conquer" nature，but in reality nature will always be beyond our control---we do have the power to destroy it. The fate of all the animals and their habitats depends largely on our attitude towards them. Whether or not we ourselves survive depends on how well we look after the rest. For our sake as well as theirs，we need to consider it seriously.

But how can we care at all if we spend our lives indoors？Born in South London at the end of the Second World War，at least I knew what a sparrow was（they're rare now）and you couldn't put a spade into our tiny garden without cutting a worm in half. We knew，too，that milk comes from cows and that old men can grow amazing carrots on poor land. Ultra-urban（极度城市化）as we may have been，at least we were in touch.

"Now we have a generation who frankly are not in touch. So how can they care if the countryside is sold off to the highest bidders，and used to park helicopters，and our crops come free from Monsanto and our livestock live in factories？They will know no other way.

But if we settle for the ultra-urban life，if we allow all wilderness to be compromised and hand our farming over to industrial chemists then，quite simply，the world will fall apart--as it has been doing already. We have to rethink what agriculture is really for，and why conservation matters to us，as well as to other creatures. Changes of strategies begin with attitude and attitude begins with awareness.

【推荐1】More than five million different kinds oforganisms(生物体) live on the Earth. For thousands of years, humans have searched for ways to organize thisdiversity(多样性). In the eighteenth century, a Swedish professor, physician, and naturalist named Carolus Linnaeus developed the system of naming and classifying organisms that we use today.

Linnaeus contributed to the modern classification of organisms in two ways. He first developed a convention for naming life forms.

Before Linnaeus came up with a standardized system of naming, there were often many names for a single species, and these names tended to be long and confusing. Linnaeus decided that all species names should be in Latin and should have two parts, one indicating thegents(plural: genera), a group that includes similar species and one indicating the specific name of the species. When written alone, the specific name is meaningless since many different species in different genera have the same specific name. The specific namefamiliaris, for example, is commonly used to describe species. Therefore, when used by itself, it would not describe any one organism. When the genus is also given, however, as inCanis familiaris, we know that the name refers to a specific organism: the domestic dog.

Linnaeus was also the originator of modern taxonomy, a system of classifying nature based onhierarchical(分层的) groupings. Linnaeus first grouped life forms into three broad groups, called kingdoms. These kingdoms were animals, plants, and minerals. He divided each of these kingdoms into classes, classes into orders, orders into genera (genus is singular) and then genera into species, grouping organisms according to shared physical characteristics.

Although modern taxonomists still use the hierarchical structure of Linnaeus’s classification system as well as his method of grouping organisms according to observable similarities, they have added hierarchical levels and significantly changed Linnaeus’s original groupings. The broadest level of life is now a domain. All living things fit into only three domains. Within each of these domains there are kingdoms. Each kingdom contains phyla (singular is phylum), followed by class, order, family, genus, and species.

In addition to the Linnaean kingdoms of plants andanimals, biologists recognizeprokaryotes,protists, andfungias separate kingdoms. Theprokaryotesare the oldest and most abundant group of organisms. They are also the smallest cellular organisms. Common bacteria, which have been known to survive in many environments that support no other form of life, fall into this category. Theprotistkingdom is made up of a variety of single-celled or simple multicellular organisms.Protistsdo not have much in common. They are, essentially, those organisms which do not fit into any other kingdom.Fungicompose a third kingdom. Like plants, the cells of fungi have cell walls, giving them a tube-like structure. However,fungido not produce their own carbon as plants do. Rather, they acquire nutrients by absorbing and digesting carbon produced by other organisms. Yeasts and mushrooms are examples offungi.

【推荐2】You are what you eat-and what you eat may be encoded in your DNA. Studies have indicated that your genes play a role in determining the foods you find delicious or disgusting. But exactly how big a role they play has been difficult to figure out. “Everything has a genetic component even if it’s small,” says Joanne Cole, a geneticist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “We know that there is some genetic contribution to why we eat the foods we eat. Can we take the next step and actually locate the regions in the genome (基因)?”

New research led by Cole has gotten a step closer. Through a large-scale genomics analysis, her team has identified 481 genome regions that were directly linked to dietary patterns and food preferences. The findings, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, were presented last month at the American Society for Nutrition’s annual conference.

The team based the new study on a 2020 Nature Communications study by Cole and her colleagues that used data from the U.K. Biobank, a public database of the genetic and health information of 500,000 participants. By scanning genomes, the new analysis was able to identify 194 regions associated with dietary patterns and 287 linked to specific foods such as fruit, cheese, fish, tea and alcohol. Further understanding how genetics impact how we eat could reveal differences in nutritional needs or disease risks.

“One of the problems with a lot of these genomics studies is that they’re very small. They don’t have enough people to really be able to identify genes in ways that are credible. This study had a huge group of people, so it’s really powerful.” says Monica Dus, a geneticist at the University of Michigan. “The other thing that I thought was really great is that there are so many different features that they’re measuring related to diet including cholesterol (胆固醇), the body and socioeconomic backgrounds.” As the research advances, Dus says, such genome analysis could potentially assist health care providers and even policymakers to address larger issues that affect food access and health.

It’s definitely true that it may contribute to making sure there aren’t food deserts-areas which have limited access to fresh, healthy and affordable food or to making sure that there’s a higher minimum wage so that everyone can afford to eat, although the journey ahead remains lengthy and challenging.

【推荐3】Until recently, scientists and authors were in absolute disagreement over the point of crying. In King Henry VI, Shakespeare wrote,”…, to weep is to make less the depth of grief”, and the American writer Lemony Snicket said “unless you have been very, very lucky, you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit”.

Charles Darwin, on the other hand, thought that shedding tears (the act of crying) was merely a useless side effect of the way that the muscles around the eye worked. For him, those muscles had to contract（收缩）from time to time so that they didn’t overflow with blood; the expulsion of tears was simply an unintended consequence of that evolved physiological（生理学的）process. He did acknowledge that crying could help young infants attract the attention of their parents, though.

We now know that crying—at least, the sort that adults do—is a complex physiological response to some kind of emotional stimulus. The most noticeable feature is of course the shedding of tears, but it also includes changes in facial expressions and breathing patterns.

From a scientific perspective, crying is different from shedding the kind of tears like when you accidentally rub your eyes after eating spicy foods. Even the tears themselves are different. In 1981, Minnesota psychiatrist William H Frey II discovered that tears flowing due to sad movies had more protein in them than those that flowed in response to some freshly chopped onions.

If you shed tears of laughter when seeing a funny comedy show or you're moved to tears when listening to a bridegroom’s wedding vows to his bride, you may know that emotional tears aren't limited to feelings of deep sadness. While all of us are familiar with the feelings that are associated with crying, whether for joy or sorrow, we know little about why we do it as adults-but there are plenty of ideas.

One idea is that adult crying isn't actually all that different from the sort that babies do, at least when it comes to its social nature. In other words, perhaps weeping is a literal cry for attention, a means of soliciting support and help from our friends when we need it the most. It’s a way of communicating our inner emotional state at a time when we may not be able to express it clearly.

While this may explain some forms of crying, many researchers have found that adults often cry when they’re completely alone. Another possibility is that crying might serve as a means of “secondary appraisal,” helping people to realize just how upset they are, a way of just how upset they are and helping them understand their own feelings.

Another idea is that crying provides relief from stressful situations. The idea is consistent not only with the words of Shakespeare, but also with the words of Roman Poet Ovid, who wrote, “It is some relief to weep; grief is satisfied and carried off by tears.” The Greek Philosopher Aristotle also wrote that crying “cleanses the mind”. In a 1986 study of popular US magazines and newspapers, one psychologist found that 94% of articles about crying suggested that it helped to relieve psychological tension.

Indeed, a 2008 study of nearly 4,300 young adults from 30 countries found that most reported improvements in both their mental and physical well-being after a short period of crying, but not all. Some reported no change after a crying session, and some even said that they felt worse afterwards.

The difference seems to lie in the social context: if a person felt embarrassed about crying in public, for example, they might feel less resolved than if they cried alone or with a friend. The study also found that when people tried to suppress or hide their crying, they ended up feeling less relieved afterwards.

So the notion of having “a good cry” is not without merit. In the end, adults might just cry for the same reason as human infants: to seek help from their friends and family.