【推荐2】When the patient arrives, it can barely move its body. The parrot tries to spread its green wings — and fails — to fly. It is just one of dozens of rainbow lorikeets (彩虹鹦鹉) being treated for a mysterious paralyzing (瘫痪) illness. Cases of what is called lorikeet paralysis syndrome (LPS) have been increasing over the past decade, says vet Claude Lacasse.   But scientists are puzzled as to what is causing it.

Lacasse has partnered with several researchers to try solving the mystery. So far, they’ve ruled out hundreds of human-made chemicals as well as various infectious diseases. Their current theory is that LPS is caused by a plant the birds are eating, something that flowers or fruits between late spring and early fall — when cases always rise.

But researchers have no idea which plant or plants might be involved, why the disease is getting worse or whether climate change is playing a role. For now, the main concern is figuring out everything the sick lorikeets are eating.

Ecologist Rachele Wilson used a technique involving testing DNA in sick birds’ droppings to match it to specific plant DNA. These data suggest the birds are feeding on more than 130 plant species, at least 30 of which are potentially poisonous. Other researchers are not just looking at plant DNA but also at bacterial and animal DNA to allow for the possibility that the birds are swallowing a poisonous insect in fruit, or a poison produced by bacteria found on a plant.

It’s possible climate change plays a role by driving rainbow lorikeets to seek out unusual food sources. Animals are broadening their hunting range and going into more traditionally uninviting areas to find food, including fruit, seeds and, strangely, even meat.

With climate change causing more extreme weather events and intensely hot summers, the need to find what’s paralyzing rainbow lorikeets — and potentially other species — is of urgent concern.

“They’re amazing birds,” Phalen says. “It’s hard to see them as sick as they are.”

【推荐2】Tortoise and turtle shells can be used to study nuclear pollution. scientists have found. Just as tree rings can provide snapshots (简要说明) of the Earth’s climate. and ice cores can give us information on past temperature, researchers found that the layers of shells can be used as a time stamp of periods with nuclear fallout.

The researchers focused on turtles and tortoises from areas that have seen nuclear pollution. and measured the uranium (铀) that was present in the bony outer shell that is usually made of keratin (角蛋白) . Each layer of shell equals to one year of the tortoise’s life, and so can reveal what happened in its surrounding environment.

Five different turtles and tortoises from natural history collections were studied. One of these came from Enewetak Atoll, and was collected in 1978. Enewetak Atoll and its neighbour, Bikini Atoll, in the Pacific, were the sites of 67 nuclear tests, with Enewetak the site of 43 of these. Though the sea turtle was probably not alive during the time of the testing, researchers still found uranium pollution in the turtle 20 years after testing ended.

Researchers also looked at an eastern box turtle from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in the US. Oak Ridge is the site of a nuclear facility that has produced and processed uranium since 1943. The turtle that was studied from there was collected in 1962 and may have bioaccumulated radionuclides, or radioactive materials, from uranium waste products in the area.

The research supports the idea that these animals can bioaccumulate human-made radionuclides, or from the environment. It also supports the idea that these animals. Which often live a long time, can record information about human activity with nuclear landscapes over a long period. We anticipate that combining analyses of historically collected and modern samples will significantly expand our environmental monitoring abilities as they relate to ongoing nuclear pollution questions.

【推荐3】I grew up in the Great Lakes State, and for many years now, during my annual summer, visit back to Michigan, I’m always happy about what I don’t see. I don’t see crowds of Californians rushing lovely lakeside towns like Petoskey or Glen Arbor. I don’t see hundreds of New Yorkers playing about Lake Michigan or coming down the steep white sands of Sleeping Bear Dunes.

No offense to the masses on both coasts, but I’ve always been glad the original charms of northwest Michigan felt like my secret-or at least a secret held by a smaller group of people, largely from the Midwest.

Lately, however, I’ve been thinking about the downside of being out of sight and out of mind.

Most people seldom think about Lakes Michigan, Huron, Superior, Erie, and Ontario. Many can’t even name all five. But they should care about them because, as Tim Folger writes in this month’s cover story, the Great Lakes are “arguably the continent’s most precious resource, unmeasurably more valuable than oil, gas, or coal.”

Together the lakes hold more than 20 percent of the surface freshwater on Earth and 84 percent of the surface freshwater in North America. Almost 40 million Americans and Canadians “drink from the lakes, fish on them, transport goods over them, farm their shores, and work in cities that wouldn’t exist” without them, Folger writes.

And yet we abuse them terribly: polluting them, introducing invasive species, allowing fertilizer runoff(径流) to create algal(藻类) blooms large enough that they can be seen from space. Climate change means the lakes don’t freeze as much as they used to, and severe storms have become more frequent.

So read Folger’s story. Appreciate the beauty of the landscape in the amazing photos by Keith Ladzinski. Become an advocate to protect our Great Lakes.