【推荐3】When I was a little girl, my mom would say, “Half the fun of doing anything is sharing it with others.”     1    Friends and mates allow us to enjoy our successes and our joys, comfort us in our hard moments, and provide a mirror for us to learn more about ourselves. I’ve always looked at friends as the family we choose. They enrich our lives. As Robert Louis Steven once said, “    2    ”.

To be a good friend or partner, it’s important to be a good listener. Hear what your friend or mate has to say first rather than jump to conclusions or get defensive.    3     When they hear their words repeated back to them, it can help them to realize what they said was not exactly what they meant to say.

    4     You know the old golden rule, “Care for others the way you would like them to care for you.” The support of a friend during a tough time could make the difference between success and failure. Encouragement and confidence are the gifts that can help change a person’s life.

Take care, though, with whom you choose to have close relationship, for they can have a great effect on yourself – respect and life path. As someone once told me “    5     They will either take you up or down.”

【推荐1】What is Earth Hour?

Earth Hour is an annual global campaign that encourages people and businesses around the world to switch off electricity at the same time for one hour. Earth Hour started in Australia in2007 when 2.2 million people in Sydney turned off all non-essential lights for an hour. Since then it has grow in to a massive global event. In 2013, millions of people in 7,000 cities and towns around the world switched off their lights for 60 minutes at the end of March. Every year landmarks and well-known buildings around the world take part and go dark for Earth Hour. The campaign even went into space when astronauts reduced power on the International Space Station in 2011.

Earth Hour is organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). It was started by Andy Ridley who is executive director of Earth Hour Global, WWF. He came up with the idea because he wanted to raise awareness of environmental issues by asking people to do something positive to help the planet. Switching off the lights for an hour can make a small difference to the amount of energy we use but Earth Hour is also a symbolic event to make people think about the problems of climate change.

The end of March is around the time of the spring and autumn equinoxes(昼夜平分时) in both hemispheres (半球) respectively, when sunset times are at similar times. This means that a global “lights out” event has most visual effect at this time of year.

As well as famous London landmarks such as Big Ben, London Eye and Buckingham Palace switching off their lights, there are many other events around Britain. On the WWFs interactive map you can see which people, businesses, schools, organizations and landmarks are taking part each year and what they are doing.

【推荐2】There are many ecosystems that are truly suffering from degradation. The solution is that they can be restored by re-introducing several animal species. The United Nations funded a study that shows that if you introduce 20 specific large mammals you can successfully restore a lot of the planet.

Some roles that species play in the environment are critical, so the loss of any of these can harm the world. So that means that on the other hand, re-introducing a species can produce positive results. When a few wolves were re-introduced to Yellowstone Park is one of the most cited examples. There is no doubt that the re-introduced wolves did restore the ecosystem.

Dr. Carly, a scientist, along with her team, was able to identify 13 herbivores and 7 predators that if re-introduced, could help restore a lot of what we’ve destroyed in nature. One species can benefit its environment in a dramatic way, helping create more soil insects and worms.

The team compared environments from 500 years ago to conditions of modern environments to know how travel and the industrial revolution have influenced the planet. And at last they figured out that only 16% of the world still has undamaged wild mammal communities and just 6% looks similar to what it looked like pre-1500.

They suggested that a 54% expansion in territory home to undamaged mammal communities can easily be accomplished, especially in South America and northern areas of Africa. In Europe, re-introducing beaver, bison, wolf, and reindeer could really make a dramatic impact. However, just wolves and wild horses could make a difference to Asia.

“Our recommendations may not be suitable everywhere in the world — local assessments will judge if hunting pressures or the lack of adequate preys mean other issues need addressing before reintroducing them. However, our findings show there are huge areas of the world that could be suitable for large mammal restoration if other factors are managed,” said Dr. Carly.