1 . Rainforests are home to a rich variety of medicinal plants, food, birds and animals. Can you believe that a single bush（灌木丛）in the Amazon may have more species of ants than the whole of Britain! About 480 varieties of trees may be found in just one hectare of rainforest.

Rainforests are the lungs of the planet-storing vast quantities of carbon dioxide and producing a significant amount of the world's oxygen. Rainforests have their own perfect system for ensuring their own survival; the tall trees make a canopy（树冠层）of branches and leaves which protect themselves, smaller plants, and the forest animals from heavy rain, intense dry heat from the sun and strong winds.

Amazingly, the trees grow in such a way that their leaves and branches, although close together, never actually touch those of another tree. Scientists think this is the plants' way to prevent the spread of any tree diseases and make life more difficult for leaf-eating insects like caterpillars. To survive in the forest, animals must climb, jump or fly across the gaps. The ground floor of the forest is not all tangled leaves and bushes, like in films, but is actually fairly clear. It is where dead leaves turn into food for the trees and other forest life.

They are not called rainforests for nothing! Rainforests can generate 75%of their own rain. At least 80 inches of rain a year is normal-and in some areas there may be as much as 430 inches of rain annually. This is real rain-your umbrella may protect you in a shower, but it won't keep you dry if there is a full rainstorm. In just two hours, streams can rise ten to twenty feet. The humidity（湿气）of large rainforests contributes to the formation of rainclouds that may travel to other countries in need of rain.

2 . Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is road testing a new way to keep winter roads ice-free – by spreading on them cheese brine, the salty liquid used to make soft cheese, like mozzarella.

Wisconsin, also called "America's Dairyland," is famous for its cheese. The state produced 2.8 billion pounds of cheese last year! As a result, there was a lot of leftover cheese brine. Disposing of(处置)the brine can be expensive. So what should cheese makers do with the waste?

Normally, towns use rock salt to de-ice streets. The salt lowers waters' freezing point, causing ice to melt(融化). But using cheese brine could help both cheese producers and cities save money, while keeping roads safe. Cheese brine has salt in it, which, like the rock salt, helps lower water's freezing point.

In addition to saving money, cheese brine could also be a more environment-friendly option. Many people suspect that all the rock salt used every winter is harming the environment.

Rock salt is made of sodium chloride, the sane con-pound (化合物)in ordinary table salt. Sounds harmless, right? But while you probably add only a small amount of salt to your food, road crews spread about 20 million tons of salt on U.S. Roads every year!

The chemical washes off roads and goes into the ground. There it can pollute drinking water, harm plants. and eat away soil. By spreading cheese brine on streets before adding a layer of rock salt, Milwaukee may be able to cut its rock salt use by 30 percent.

Cheese brine has a downside too – a shell similar to that of bad milk. "I don't really mind it," Emil Norby told Modern Farmer magazine. He works for one of Wisconsin's county highway commissions and came up with the idea of using cheese brine. "Our roads smell like Wisconsin!" he said.

3 . If you are a fruit grower — or would like to become one — take advantage of Apple Day to see what’s around. It’s called Apple Day but in practice it’s more like Apple Month. The day itself is on October 21, but since it has caught on, events now spread out over most of October around Britain.

Visiting an apple event is a good chance to see, and often taste, a wide variety of apples. To people who are used to the limited choice of apples such as Golden Delicious and Royal Gala in supermarkets, it can be quite an eye opener to see the range of classical apples still in existence, such as Decio which was grown by the Romans. Although it doesn’t taste of anything special, it’s still worth a try, as is the knobbly(多疙瘩的) Cat’s Head which is more of a curiosity than anything else.

There are also varieties developed to suit specific local conditions. One of the very best varieties for eating quality is Orleans Reinette, but you’ll need a warm, sheltered place with perfect soil to grow it, so it’s a pipe dream for most apple lovers who fall for it.

At the events, you can meet expert growers and discuss which ones will best suit your conditions, and because these are family affairs, children are well catered for with apple-themed fun and games.

Apple Days are being held at all sorts of places with an interest in fruit, including stately gardens and commercial orchards(果园). If you want to have a real orchard experience, try visiting the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale, near Faversham in Kent.

4 . Hidden beneath the surface in the roots of Earths astonishing and diverse plant life, there exists a biological superhighway linking together the members of the plant kingdom in what researchers call the "wood wide web".

The network is comprised of thin threads of fungus (真菌) that grow outwards underground up to a few meters from its partnering plant, meaning that all of the plant life within a region likely connected to one another. The partnership is beneficial for both parties involved, plants provide carbohydrates (碳水化合物) to the funguses and in exchange, the funguses aid in gathering water and providing nutrients to its partnering plant.

A study conducted by Rensen Zeng of the South China Agricultural University found that this also allowed for plants to warn one another of potential harm. The study showed Broad Beans used the fungal network to spy on one another for upcoming danger.

Like our Internet, this fungal connectivity is also full of crime. Some plants, such as Golden Marigolds have been found to release poisons into the network to slow down the growth of surrounding plants in the fight for water and light. Other plants, such as the Phantom Orchid, do not have the chlorophyll (叶绿素) and must get the necessary nutrients from surrounding plants.

Research suggests that animals such as insects and worms may be able to detect slight exchanges of nutrients through the network, allowing them to more easily find delicious roots to feed on; however, this has not been conclusively made clear in experimentation. The more we learn about this phenomenon, the more our understanding of the plant life of our planet will continue to change. Perhaps one day, we may be able to map out these complex networks entirely.

6 . My school appeared on the news last week because we had made an important change in our local area. Our class had planted a large garden in what was once only a vacant lot. It was a lot of work but it was all worth it. I got blisters(水泡) from digging, and we all got insect bites, too.

I learned a lot about gardening and collaboration(合作), and then I learned about the media. Our teacher telephoned the TV station and informed them of what we had accomplished. She spoke with the producer. The producer checked with the directors, but they said there were plenty of stories similar to ours. They wanted to know what was special about our particular garden, since many schools plant them.

The teacher explained that, after going on the Internet to learn about the prairie(大草原), we had made a prairie garden. We had gone to a prairie and gotten seeds from the plants, and then we planted them. We did not water the garden, but we did weed it. We decided to let nature water it with rain, since that was how prairies grew in the past. We sent a picture of the garden to the news station. In the picture, the grass was so high that it stood taller than the fourth grade students.

As a result, the producer sent a reporter to our school. He interviewed the headmaster and asked him many questions about the garden. After that, they interviewed us, and we explained to them what we had learned through this project.

That night, we watched the news, and there we were. The news reporter told our story. It was only two minutes long, but it was us. We were famous. All that work, all those blisters, it was worth it. We knew that when we saw the garden every day, but now we knew that the whole city thought so, too.

8 . As a geothermal scientist, I know that boiling rivers exist—but they are always near volcanoes. You need a lot of heat to make that much water boil. We were working in the volcanic gap, a 950-mile-long area that covers most of Peru, where there hasn’t been active volcanism for the past two million years.

Yet we’d found the Shanaya, a name originated from “heating thing”. My measurements averaged 190°-195°F. The locals think it’s so hot because of the Yacumama, or “water mother”—a spirit who gives birth to waters—represented by a snake-head-shaped rock at the origin of the heated water.

I had to cut my way through the bush at the side of the river to take temperature readings. All the while, right next to me was this very hot, fast-flowing body of water. A friend at the nearest village had told me, “Use your feet like eyes.” You can’t see heat, but you can feel it when you step near it. I wore sandals(凉鞋）.

I was at a part of the river measuring 210°F, standing on a rock the size of a sheet or paper, when the rain fell. It was like a curtain rising. The temperature differential between the rain and the river caused a whiteout. I couldn’t see, but I whistled to let my partner know I was OK.

At 130°F flesh cooks, and the water around me was nearing twice that. My eyes would have cooked in less than a minute, and I couldn’t have seen how to get out. I saw rats fall in, their eyes turning milky white. I kept whistling.

After 15 minutes the rain stopped and the steam cleared. A hard rain in most situations would have been nothing important. Here, for a matter of minutes, it thinned the line between researching and being boiled alive.

9 . London has a new unusual magazine. But it is not printed on paper. Everyone who has a television can receive it because it is on TV.

In order to read this magazine you have to have a decoder. Each page of it is numbered, so you only have to dial the number to choose which subject you want to read about. There is a wide choice — everything is included from cooking to the latest sports news.

If you want to read the news, the first thing you have to do is to turn to the index page which has an easy-to-remember page number, 100 for example. The news is on pages 101 to 109 so you push out the numbers and the news appears written across your screen. Perhaps you want to go out in the afternoon, so you press 181, and a brightly coloured weather map appears on the screen. But the weather is terrible so you decide to go shopping and dial 162 for a list of the week’s best bargains. But should you drive or take the train? To answer that question you only have to press 189 for the traffic report. It is very simple to use. But probably the best thing about the service is that it is being updated all the time. Journalists type new material directly onto the screen and whole pages of the magazine can be replaced in minutes.

London already has three services. One is transmitted (输送) by ITV while the other two on BBC. BBC engineers do not think that their idea will ever replace books and newspapers because they can be taken with you everywhere. But many people would agree that this is a breakthrough as great as the invention of printing, which could change not just our reading habits but our way of life thoroughly.

10 . On her third Christmas, my daughter Jillian didn't have the energy for opening presents. At 23-months, she had been diagnosed with neuroblastoma, an aggressive tumor. I didn’t know how challenging the holidays could become until Jillian died. Being sorrowful became my full-time job in the following days. The pain was a wildfire in my chest and nothing could put it out.

A week before the fourth Christmas, Tom and I bought a three-foot plant that slightly resembled a Christmas tree. My adult nephew Frankie came along. We were busy decorating the tree and Frankie reached into a Christmas decoration box and pulled out a toy angel with a white gown that my aunt had crafted years before. As he lifted the angel, her hair fell out in one big bunch, just like Jillian's.

We burst into laughter. In between gasps, Frankie looked up with the angel in hand and said, “Hi, Jillian.” Tom emerged from the bedroom and saw our tree, “It’s small, bald and beautiful! Just like Jilly-boo. I like it.”

I moved closer to Tom and he put his arm around my shoulder. Looking at the angel, I knew it would help us through the holidays. Like us, it was sad and pitiful, but full of beautiful memories of Jillian.

“Do something new.” said a minister who ran a support group I went to. It’s as if you must create a new space in your heart to keep it beating, despite the bleeding hole.

Tom and I were eventually able to experience the wonder of a four-year-old at Christmas. On the one-year anniversary of Jillian’s death, I discovered I was pregnant. Our second daughter, Cadence, brought us back to joy and hope. Cadence is nine now, and hoping Santa will bring her a dog this year. Eleven years after Jillian’s death, Christmas is almost Christmas again.