Wildfires rage as China’s Chongqing suffers unrelenting record heat wave

From: CNN       August 23, 2022

Thousands of emergency responders are battling to     1     fast-spreading wildfires in China’s southwestern city of Chongqing amid a weeks-long, record heat wave in the region.

The fires, which have been visible at night from parts of the downtown area, have     2     forests and mountains around the mega city in recent days. On social media, residents in downtown Chongqing complained of smelling smoke inside their apartments, while others posted pictures of burning embers from the fires reaching their balconies.

Municipal authorities have not yet reported any casualties and said the fires are being kept under control, according to an update on Tuesday morning. More than 1,500 residents have been     3     to safe zones, while 5,000 firefighters, police, local officers and volunteers, and seen firefighting helicopters have been dispatched to help combat the blazes, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The fires in Chongqing were the result of “spontaneous combustion” mainly caused by     4     high temperatures, Bai Ye, a professor at China’s Forest and Grassland Fire Prevention and Extinguishing Research Center told state-run Beijing Daily.

The wildfires are another knock-on effect of a crippling heat wave China’s worst since 1961 -that has swept through southwestern, central and eastern parts of the country in recent weeks, with temperatures crossing 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in more than 100 cities.

They are also part of a global trend of wildfires that have ravaged areas from Australia to California, with scientists saying     5     global temperatures due to human-driven climate change increase the risk of these events.

China’s heat wave has also brought     6     demand for air conditioning and reductions in hydropower capacity due to drought conditions that have     7     the country’s     8     critical Yangtze River and connected waterways.

Earlier this week, Sichuan province, neighboring Chongqing, extended temporary power outages at factories in 19 of the region’s 21 cities. The power cuts will now run until at least Thursday, in a move the local government says will ensure residential power supplies. Last week, the province’s capital city Chengdu began     9     lights in subway stations in a bid to save electricity. Chongqing enacted an order for factories to suspend operations for seven days starting last Wednesday, according to state media.

On Tuesday morning, China issued a red alert heat warning, the highest of four color-coded levels, to at least 165 cities and counties across the country. Chinese authorities have     10     said more than 900 million people across the country have been affected by the heat wave this summer.

Throughout history, people have fought bitter wars over political ideology, national sovereignty and religious expression. How much more     1     will these conflicts be when people fight over the Earth’s most indispensable resource water? We may find out in the not-too-distant future if projections about the     2     of water in the Middle East and other regions prove correct.

Less than three percent of the planet’s     3     is fresh water, and almost two-thirds of this amount is     4     in ice caps, glaciers, and underground aquifers too deep or too remote to access. In her book, Pillars of Sand-Can the Irrigation Miracle Last, Sandra Postel outlines three forces that     5     tension and conflict over freshwater. Using up the water “resource pie”. In India, the world’s second-most populous nation, with over 1 billion inhabitants, the rate of groundwater     6     is twice that of recharge, a deficit higher than in any other country. Although water is a renewable resource, it is not a(n)     7     one. The freshwater available today for more than 6 billion people is no greater than it was 2,000 years ago, when global population was approximately 200 million. (The current U.S. population is 287 million.)

Global     8     accounts for about 70% of all freshwater use. In five of the world’s most water-stressed, controversial areas the Aral Sea region, the Ganges, the Jordan, the Nileland and Tigris-Euphrates population increases of up to 75% are projected by 2025. With the fastest rate of growth in the world, the population of Palestinian territory will more than     9     over the next generation. Most experts agree that, because of geography, population     10     and politics, water wars are most likely to break out in the Middle East, a region where the amount of available freshwater per capita will decrease by about 50% over the next generation.

Lucky Dog is committed to finding loving forever homes for each of our dogs and cats. Our customized adoption process is designed to find the best fit for adopters, whatever they may be looking for. You may have a specific pet in mind or just beginning your search for a new family member; wherever you are in the process our Adoption Coordinators are here to guide you through the process.

We are incredibly grateful for the overwhelming interest in our animals. You may notice that our dogs, cats, puppies and kittens are being adopted incredibly quickly and may not stay on the website very long. Please, don’t let that deter you! We have more new arrivals coming in all the time, and Lucky Dog is committed to finding you a great fit for your family. We will be happy to help you find a match once we receive your adoption application.

THE ADOPTION PROCESS

Step 1

Complete a Dog or Cat Adoption Questionnaire at the link below. If you are interested in applying for a specific animal on the website, please be sure to list their names on your questionnaire. If you cannot select an animal please still submit your questionnaire and write in the notes who you might be interested in! You only need to apply once and we will ensure it is directed to the right person. Please note that submitting an application is the first step in our process and does not guarantee adoption of a particular dog or cat. 

Step 2

You will be contacted via email by a Volunteer Lucky Dog Animal Rescue Adoption Coordinator or Screener. They will then schedule an initial phone screening to further discuss your needs, preferences and lifestyle as you look for a new family member.

Step 3

Your Adoption Coordinator or Screener will also conduct any required checks, including a vet check to ensure your pets are up to date on medical needs, a landlord check if you rent, and a virtual home visit -- during which a knowledgeable volunteer will meet with all residents of your home to identify any risks or items to monitor when your new pet arrives and ensure that everyone is ready to welcome them home!

Step 4

At the time of adoption, the following adoption fees will be required, as well as a leash, ID tag, martingale collar and carrier for cats/kittens.

●Puppy (1 to 6 months): $425

●Young/Adult Dog (7 months to 8 years): $400

●Senior Dog (9 years and older): $300

●Dogs Receiving Heartworm Treatment: $475

●One Cat/Kitten: $175

●Two Cats/Kittens: $300

Spay/Neuter policy update:

A nonrefundable spay/neuter deposit will be added to a puppy or kitten’s adoption fee should you want Lucky Dog to pay for the cost of spay/neuter surgery at one of our low-cost vet partners. Adopters must be able to provide transportation to and from the partner visits.

Extreme conditions produce extremely tough plants. The big difference between "drought—tolerant" plants and these tough plants: metabolism. Many different kinds of plants have developed tactics to weather dry spells. Some plants     1     of water to see them through a drought; others send roots deep down to subsurface water supplies. But once these plants use up their stored water or tap out the underground supply, they cease growing and start to die. They may be able to handle a drought of some length, and many people use the term "drought tolerant" to describe such plants, but they never actually stop needing to     2     water, so Farrant prefers to call them drought     3    .

Resurrection plants, defined as those capable of recovering from holding less than 0.1 grams of water per gram of dry mass, are different. They lack water—storing structures, and their existence on rock faces prevents them from     4     groundwater, so they instead developed the ability to change their metabolism. When they detect a/an       5     dry period, they change their metabolisms, producing sugars and certain stress—     6     proteins and other materials in their tissues. As the plant dries, these resources take on first the     7     of honey, then rubber, and finally enter a glass—like state that is "the most stable state that the plant can maintain," Farrant says. That     8     the plant's metabolism and protects its dried—out tissues. The plants also change shape, shrinking to minimize the surface area through which their remaining water might evaporate. They can recover from months and years without water, depending on the species.

What else can do this dry—out—and—revive trick? Seeds—almost all of them. At the start of her career, Farrant studied seeds such as avocados(牛油果) , coffee and lychee(荔枝). Though     9    , such seeds are delicate — they cannot bud and grow if they dry out. Most seeds can wait out the dry, unwelcoming seasons until conditions are right and they sprout. Yet once they start growing, such plants seem not to retain the ability to hit the     10     button on metabolism in their stems or leaves.

6 . Almost all animals sleep, but do they dream? We certainly can't ask animals if they dream, but we can at least ________ the evidence that they might. There are two ways in which scientists have gone about this seemingly ________ task. One is to look at their physical behaviour during the various stages of the sleep cycle. The second is to see whether their sleeping brains work similarly to our own sleeping brains.

The story of how we ________ how to look into the minds of sleeping animals begins in the 1960s. Back then, reports began to appear in medical journals describing people acting out ________ in their dreams. This was curious, because during so-called REM sleep(rapid eye movement), our muscles are usually paralysed.

Researchers realised that causing a similar state in ________ could allow them to explore how they dream. In 1965, French scientists Michel Jouvet and J F Delorme found that removing a part of the brainstem, called the pons, from a cat's brain ________ it becoming paralysed when in REM. The researchers called the condition "REM without atonia" or REM-A. Instead of lying still, the cats walked around and behaved aggressively. This hinted they were dreaming of ________ from their waking hours.

________ movement is not the only way of looking into dreams, though. Researchers can now ________ look into the electrical and chemical activities of brain cells in animals while they sleep. In 2007, MIT scientists Kenway Louise and Matthew Wilson recorded the activity of neurons in a part of the rat brain called the hippocampus, a structure known to be involved in the formation and encoding of memories. They first recorded the activity of those brain cells while the rats ran in their mazes. Then they looked at the activity of the very same neurons while they slept. Louise and Wilson discovered similar patterns of firing during ________ and during REM. ________ , it was as if the rats were running the maze in their minds while they were sleeping. The results were so clear that the researchers could infer the rats' precise ________ within their mental dream mazes and map them to actual spots within the actual maze.

Does the behaviour of cats in science experiments actually ________ dreaming? Do rats have any subjective awareness that they' re running their mazes in their minds while they nap? We can say with a reasonable amount of ________ that the physiological and behavioural features of dreaming in humans have now been seen in cats, rats, and other animals. Yet what it's actually like to ________ a dream if you' re not human remains a mystery.