4 . The cold, wet weather of winter often puts out any wildfires that are still burning, but not in the far North areas, such as Alaska, Canada, and other parts of North America. Some forest fires just don’t die in these places. Think of the fires as “zombies” (僵尸): Scientists do. When summers are warmer than normal, some fires can hide through the winter. They burn dead plant matter and soils under snow. In May 2021, scientists reported their work to a scientific journal. The scientists saw that zombie fires are rare but they could become more common as the world warms, the study warns.

“Some years, new fires were starting very close to the previous year’s fire,” explains Rebecca Scholten. She studies Earth and environmental sciences at Vrije University Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The new fires made scientists wonder how often fires might survive the winter. The scientists started by combing through firefighter reports. Then they compared these with satellite images of Alaska and northern Canada. The scientists looked for fires that began close to fires from the year before. They also focused on blazes starting before the middle of summer. Random lightning or human actions spark most fires in the area, Scholten says. But those fires happen later in the year.

Zombie fires accounted for less than 1 percent of the total area burned by fires from 2002 to 2018. But it changed from year to year. Take 2008, for example. A zombie fire burned Alaska that year. It caused almost one-third of fire damage that year. One clear pattern emerged: Zombie fires were more likely to happen after very warm summers. High temperatures may allow fires to reach more deeply into the soil. Such deep burns are more likely to survive to spring.

The zombie fire threat could grow. The climate is warming. Forests in the far North already are warming faster. “We’re seeing more hot summers and more large fires and intense burning,” Scholten says. Plus, zombie fires could cause more issues. The fires release huge amounts of greenhouse gases. These trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere is a layer of gases that surround the Earth. Scholten’s research could help fire management. Firefighters would know to check for them after warm summers.

5 . A team of scientists recently published one of the most comprehensive efforts yet to understand just how much carbon great whales absorb from the ocean, and the value that presents in the fight against climate change.

“Whales are large-bodied animals, and they live for a long time. Many of them migrate over vast distances,” said study leader Heibi Pearson, a marine biologist at the University of Alaska Southeast. “And so they have the potential to have these huge impacts on the ecosystem, including the carbon cycle.”

In their most direct impact, whale bodies hold an enormous amount of carbon that would otherwise be in the ocean or atmosphere. Twelve great whale species hold an estimated 2 million tons of carbon in their bodies, the authors found.   

And that’s just the living members of the whale family. Another 62,000 tons of carbon is kept under the sea every year in the form of whale falls. When a whale dies in open water and sinks into the deep, a lifetime of collected carbon goes with it. It can take up to 1,000 years for water and elements at the bottom of the sea to cycle back up to the surface, which means that carbon is effectively sequestered for that long.

In addition, whales’ waste facilitates the growth of organisms at the base of the marine food chain, promoting the growth of carbon-consuming life throughout the ecosystem.     

However, whale populations still haven’t recovered from the destructive effects of industrial whaling. Commercial hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries decreased the total mass of whales on the planet by 81%, according to the authors.

“Whales alone are not going to solve climate change, but thinking about whales as playing a role in the carbon cycle can help motivate whale conservation,” said Andrew Pershing, a co-author of the study. “There are a lot of win-wins there, and I think that’s very true of a lot of natural climate solutions.”

7 . Leisa is a Food Nutrition Service Associate at a school. Since she has _______ problems, students used to just point at the _______ they wanted. And no one could offer Leisa a simple _______ like “good morning” in sign language.

Fourth grade teacher Kari noticed pupils _______ to communicate with Leisa, so she decided to do something. Having taken American Sign Language, Sari decided to teach her pupils a few words to make   _______ lunch easier, along with making Leisa feel like the well-loved _______ of the community that she is.

Happily, when the principal heard about Kari’s _______ he asked Kari to teach the entire school how to sign!

Every day students eats and staff learn and practice a new _______. They also learn how to _______ the words for the food options that day. The principal feels that ________ sign language to the school community has been a ________ experience for everyone. Actually, it was so popular that they decided to keep it going year-round.

Being able to speak with Leisa makes students emotional, and they are all ________ about learning sign language. Seeing her idea to teach ASL is ________ for everyone, Kari is thrilled.

Learning someone else’s language is one of the ________ ways to show them you care. Now we’re happy to hear that Leisa is feeling so ________ and included at her work!

8 . Rachel Carson’s classic best seller about ecological threats, Silent Spring, started a wave of American environmentalism. It played a direct role in the 1972 decision to ban the use of the pesticide(杀虫剂)DDT. Sixty years ago, the public was introduced to Carson’s arguments. The coming anniversary makes this a good time to consider whether the book achieved one of her major goals: protecting wildlife and, in particular, birds.

Carsen took a complex technical subject — the damaging effects of persistent pesticide and expressed it in one simple, poetic image: a spring in which no birds sang. She asked us to imagine what it would be like to awaken in the morning in a world without these songs. She wrote with grace, and she made us feel the loss. But how well have we acted on Carson’s warnings?

With some exceptions, we haven’t been very successful, and neither have birds. Twenty-nine percent of North American birds have died out since 1970, Grass lands were the hardest hit, with a documented loss of more than 700 million breeding individuals. The number of dead birds totaled nearly three billion, a figure that sparked(引起) a campaign with tips on what people can do to save them. Given these data, it is easy to conclude that despite the brilliance of her writing, Carson did not succeed in protecting birds.

Still, the 2019 bird study, despite its worrying results, also suggests that protecting biodiversity is not lost cause. One important exception is wet lands, where bird abundance increased by 13 percent. The other animative exception is bald eagles, which acre on the edge of extinction at the time Carson wrote, but they recovered in large part as a result of the ban on DDT. A news story published by the Au dub on Society notes that “the numbers show that taking steps like wildlife management, habitat restoration and political action can be effective to save species.”

9 . Who says that being roommates with someone from a completely different generation has to be strange? Lately, more and more Americans are becoming intergenerational roommates who are separated by at least one generation living together. They’re changing the way people think they should be living.

There has been a major increase in intergenerational roommate arrangements within the United States since 1971. In fact, statistics show that this number has actually quadrupled(增长四倍) since then. In a Pew Research Center article, it shared that by March 2021, there were at least 59.7 million US residents that had multiple generations living underneath one roof.

There are a ton of factors that come into play for these types of arrangements. For some, it’s because of the increase in the average life-expectancy age, a decreased birth rate, a rise in college tuition, the ever rising rentals occurring in almost every coastal city, and more. But if anything, many claim that one main reason behind the rise is due to older people having space to rent out and that having younger folk around just makes them happier.

According to a 25-year-old robotics student living in Massachusetts, Nadia Abdullah, who moved in with her 64-year-old roommate Judith in 2019, “It was perfect — Judith has become like my family.”

Their arrangement was $700 a month from Nadia, plus the promise of her doing some help around the house. This also allowed Nadia to live just 6-miles from Boston and 30-minutes from her robotics job located in Beverly Mass. Nadia was matched with Judith through website, a renting hub(中心) specifically created to find intergenerational roommates.

Another young renting hub reviewer, Kaplan, also gave some insight into the service and why it’s so special, saying, “Through this, I lived with Sarah while attending Harvard. She provided the type of knowledge you just can’t Google-showing me how to garden, how to cook fish, and add French Romanticism to life.”

10 . More than 100 people, all visually damaged models, attended a fashion show organized by a 41-year-old Hempstead blind model, Annalee Smith, on Saturday.

Smith, who began modeling five years ago and won The Face of Kurvacious Model Competition last year, was diagnosed(诊断) with retinitis pigmentosa(色素性视网膜炎) at the age of 12. The rare genetic condition worsened her vision.

She explained that there were few visually damaged role models in the public field. And while the first New York fashion show starring blind models took the stage in 2016, visually damaged models still don’t have a large presence in fashion.

So Smith began planning her own show over a year ago. She initially planned for only a handful of models, but after announcing the event, she expanded the number of participants after reaching more visually damaged woman than she expected. “I’m inspired even by my own self,” she said.

Rafia Lawal, also a model, 37, was diagnosed with cataracts as a young girl. She auditioned(试演) for a spot on “America’s Next Top Model ” during the show’s early seasons but wasn’t selected. She blamed it on her previous lack of confidence and insecurity due to her disability. “Instead of looking at the camera, I was kind of closing my eyes,” she said. Now filled with confidence, she said she viewed the event as a chance to correct the belief that blind or visually damaged women don’t care about fashion.