5 . In Takoma Park, Maryland, in suburban Washington, people, adults or students, lined up at a pay phone outside a restaurant several times a week.

“Once I put the phone out there, it just took off,” said David Schulman, a Takoma Park violinist who created the Bird Calls Phone. Listeners push 1 to hear a yellow-crowned night heron (夜鹭), 7 to hear a pileated (红冠) woodpecker’s call and 9 for the distinct scream of a red-tailed hawk. Instructions about how to use the phone are in three languages: English, Spanish and Amharic — a reflection of Takoma Park’s Ethiopian community. In all, 10 birds native to the Takoma Park area are featured.

In addition to being fun, listening to Bird songs can reduce stress and anxiety, studies show. Even hearing recordings of birds can relieve negative emotions.

After noticing an abandoned, nonworking pay phone in town, Schulman wondered if he could turn it into something appealing. He said, “I really like the old technology of just picking up a receiver, pressing one button and having something happen.” Schulman thought bringing birds sounds to the abandoned phone was a way to add a bit of nature to the neighborhood.

Takoma Park city officials agreed, and they budgeted $5, 000 to complete the project. Schulman reached out to The McCaulay Library in Ithaca, New York, which agreed to send him a few dozen recordings of native birds. He then managed to gain the help of software engineer and artist Branden Hall to rewire the phone to play different bird calls. Schulman said he persuaded several of his friends to record short descriptions of each bird to go with the calls.

“One thing I like about the Bird Calls Phone is that it’s the opposite of a loud broadcast,” Schulman said. “Only one person can listen at a time, and each person will take away their own unique experience.”

6 . Bumblebees are vanishing at a rate consistent with widespread extinction, and climate change is playing a big role. The analysis comes from a new study published in the journal Science today.

The authors found that the likelihood of a bumblebee population surviving in any given place within North America and Europe has dropped by an average of 30 percent as temperatures have risen.

Pesticides, habitat loss, and pathogens(病原体) have already hit bumblebee populations hard. The new study, however, is able to isolate the effect that hotter temperatures are having on bumblebees. Sadly, bees are having a hard time adapting to a warming world. “If things continue along the path without any change, then we can really quickly start to see a lot of these species being lost forever,” lead author of the study Peter Soroye tells The Verge.

That’s not just a tragedy for the bees. It’s also bad news for all the plants that they pollinate and for humans who eat the fruits (and vegetables) of their labor. “We also lose out on a lot of color on our plates,” Soroye says. “Tomatoes, squash, and berries are just some of the crops we can thank bees for pollinating. Animal pollinators like bees, birds, and butterflies could be responsible for up to 1 out of every 3 bites of food we eat,” the US Department of Agriculture says.

For this study, Soroye and colleagues examined data from 1900 to 2015 on 66 species of bumblebees across North America and Europe. They mapped the places bees called home and how their distribution changed over time. They found that bees were vanishing in the areas that had heated up beyond the limit in which the bumblebees had historically been able to survive.

Some bee populations are colonizing new territories that were previously too cold. But those gains are overshadowed by losses in areas where the bees once thrived but are now too hot.

7 . The Maasai people are the most easily identifiable in Kenya with their very colorful clothing and ornaments on the body. They live a nomadic life, raising and hunting animals near some of Kenya’s most visited wildlife parks.     1    

It is a tradition for a young Maasai man, called a moran in the Maasai language, to kill a lion alone with a spear to show that he is a man. With the kill, a moran would be able to win a “lion name” and admiration among young women.     2     Instead, the young Maasai will take part in a javelin (标枪) throwing competition at an event called the Maasai Olympics.

Mingati Samanya, at the age of 69, is one of the Maasai elders. During his youth, Samanya killed two lions to show he was a man.     3     Samanya is now among the elders who are trying to push the young Maasai to do something different to prove themselves, which includes participating in javelin throwing, jumping and other activities in the community Olympics.

    4     In the past, they killed lions and didn’t get any benefit from it. Right now, when the morans throw a javelin, run or jump, they get not just medals, but also some money.     5     Thanks to the Maasai Olympics and its appealing practice in particular, the lion population in parts of the Kimana Sanctuary (保护区) near Mount Kilimanjaro has increased 10 times over the last 20 years.

A composting (堆肥) program at The Wesley School in Los Angeles is helping students get hands-on experience and ways     1     (handle) human-driven climate change. For the past year, all the leftover food waste from the school has gone into composting containers rather than a landfill     2     it would be buried and would produce planet-warming gases.

The school’s composting program     3     (come) into being in 2022, and this year, the school held a     4    （celebrate) to reveal what happened inside a series of five-foot-tall containers. Steven Wynbrandt, a local farmer     5     composting consultant who has helped the school with its program, broke the ties that held the container closed. Rich black compost spilled out from the container.

The school will use the compost on plants around campus. Some will     6     (offer) to families that want to use it at home, and whatever is left will be donated.

It takes two hours for the container to be emptied and prepared to receive     7     next day’s lunch leftovers. The other containers remain full of food waste that is in the process of     8     (break) down. Decorated     9     (poster) on the outside of each container indicate when they can be opened so that the next generation of plants on campus can benefit     10     the rich soil.