2 . Deforestation is the purposeful clearing of forested land. Throughout history and into modern times, forests have been cut to make space for agriculture and raising animal, and to obtain wood for fuel, manufacturing, and construction.

Deforestation has greatly changed landscapes around the world. About 2,000 years ago, 80 percent of Western Europe was forested; today the figure is 34 percent. In North America, about half of the forests in the eastern part of the continent were cut down from the 1600s to the 1870s for wood and agriculture. China has lost great expanses of its forests over the past 4,000 years and now just over 20 percent of it is forested.

Today, the greatest amount of deforestation is occurring in tropical rainforest, aided by extensive road construction into regions that were once almost inaccessible. Building roads into forests makes them more accessible for exploitation. Slash-and-burn agriculture is also a big contributor. With this agricultural method, farmers burn large numbers of trees, allowing the ash to fertilize the land for crops. Tropical forests are also cleared to make way for logging, cattle ranching, and oil palm and rubber tree plantations.

Deforestation can accelerate global warming and threaten the world’s biodiversity. More immediately, the loss of trees from a forest can leave soil easy to be eroded (侵蚀). This causes the remaining plants to become more vulnerable (脆弱的) to fire as the forest changes from being a closed, wet environment to an open, dry one.

While deforestation can be permanent, this is not always the case. There have, however, been increases in the size of some forests, often, because trees in those areas were replanted. Forests can also naturally recover themselves if the land is nurtured and protected from any further timber harvesting.

Slowing the loss of forests, experts say, will require countries and communities to develop effective forest management plans. Such plans, they say, must strike a balance between environmental protection and the economic needs of human society.

3 . Animals are gentle and often fall victim to cruelty because they trust and don’t fight back. We are so grateful to be able to save our animals and prove to them that the world can be good. Five years ago, six cows pushed through three fences and escaped from a slaughterhouse (屠宰场). However, sadly, they were finally rounded up and retuned to the slaughterhouse. Because it was national news, the community insisted they be allowed to live and even raised money for their freedom. The slaughterhouse owner agreed to release them to a sanctuary (庇护所), but no one came to get them.

Unwilling to see them die, Jay jumped on a red eye flight and got there in time to stop their slaughter. He took “The St Louis Six” to the hospital to be treated for their various wounds and infections. Later, I flew to St Louis to meet them. The minute I saw them, I knew they had a story to share with the world and that we had to help them.

In the coming months, we found a gorgeous property in St Louis and opened a Gentle Barn as home for The St Louis Six. Once scared and desperate to live, now the boys are trusting, loving, and giving hope to humans in our Cow Hug Therapy sessions where they wrap their necks around our guests who come to The Gentle Barm looking for hope.

Animals have always been my greatest teachers. They taught me whether we are trying to survive or looking for a safe home, sometimes we need to leave something behind to find a better way of life. We may be afraid of change, but only when we are brave enough to face the unknown and head out on our own can we realize our dreams!

5 . Merle Liivand was born in Estonia. As a child, she had health problems, and began swimming to help her lungs get stronger. She was soon taking part in open water swimming contests, sometimes even in icy water. In 2017 and 2019, she represented Estonia at the World Aquatics Championships.

Eleven years ago, Ms. Merle moved to Miami, Florida. In one training session, she nearly wound up swallowing some plastic floating in the sea. That experience made her think of all the sea animals who faced similar pollution every day. She began swimming with a special single swimming fin(鳍状物) attached to both of her feet. This rubbery “monofin” allows her to swim by kicking both of her legs together. “Swimming with the monofin without using my arms is similar to how dolphins and sea animals swim,” says Ms. Merle. She believes that swimming with a monofin “sends a bigger message”.

Ms. Merle first set the world record for swimming with a monofin in 2019, when she swam 10 kilometers off the coast of California. In 2020, she broke the record again by swimming 20. 6 kilometers, this time in Miami, Florida.

Last year, she set a new Guinness World Record by swimming 30 kilometers, again in Florida. Even though it took her 9 hours and 19 minutes to set that record, Ms. Merle says she knew she could go farther. So for the last year, Ms. Merle has been getting up at 4 every morning, putting on her monofin and going swimming.

On May 7, Ms. Merle broke the record once more, this time swimming the length of a full marathon. It took her 11 hours and 54 seconds to swim 42.2 kilometers.

To keep her energy up, a friend followed her in a kayak and gave her food and water from time to time. Along the way, Ms. Merle picked up all the trash she found and put it in the kayak. By the end of her marathon, the kayak held three bags full of trash.

7 . Dogs are capable of understanding the emotions behind an expression on a human face. The study is the latest to reveal just how connected dogs are with people. The research also provides evidence that dogs use different parts of their brains to process human emotions. By living in close contact with humans, dogs have developed specific skills that enable them to interact and communicate efficiently with people. Recent studies have shown that the dogs’ brain can pick up on emotional clues contained in a person’s voice, body smell and posture,and read their faces.

In this study,the authors watched what happened when they presented photographs of the same two adults’ faces(a man and a woman) to 26 feeding dogs. The images were placed strategically to the sides of the animals’ line of sight and the photos showed a human face ex-pressing one of the six basic human emotions: anger,fear,happiness,sadness,surprise,dis-gust or being neutral.

The dogs showed greater response and cardiac(心脏的)activity when shown photo-graphs that expressed arousing emotional states such as anger, fear and happiness. They also took longer to resume feeding after seeing these images. The dogs’ increased heart rate indicated that in these cases they experienced higher levels of stress.

In addition,dogs tended to turn their heads to the left when they saw human faces ex-pressing anger,fear or happiness. The reverse happened when the faces looked surprised, possibly because dogs view it as a non-threatening, relaxed expression.“Clearly arousing, negative emotions seem to be processed by the right side of a dog’s brain,and more positive emotions by the left side,”says Siniscalchi.

The results support that of other studies done on dogs and other mammals. These show that the right side of the brain plays a more important part in regulating the sympathetic out-flow to the heart. This is a fundamental organ for the control of the “fight or flight”Behavioral response necessary for survival.

“Since late July, there have been large-scale and high-intensity high temperatures in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River due to an    1    (normal) strong subtropical high pressure system in the western Pacific,” Chen Tao said. “    2     (base) on our analysis, the system will continue and high temperatures will persist in those regions for the coming two weeks.”

Chen Lijuan, chief forecaster at the National Climate Center said, high temperatures     3    (stay) in many parts of southern China since June. “While this year’s duration of regional high temperatures is set to break the record and become the    4    (hot) year since 1961,” she said. Shanghai,    5    entered its 41st day of temperatures above 35℃ on Sunday, has experienced six days with high temperatures above 40℃ this summer. The city’s temperature hit 40.9℃ on July 13,    6    (equal) the highest temperature in Shanghai since records began in 1873.

Affected by the high temperatures, some areas in the Sichuan basin and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River have already experienced drought and may continue or get     7    (bad), said Chen Tao. The high temperature weather has a certain unfavorable impact     8    agricultural production in the southern region, and continuous high temperatures are not     9    (benefit) to the     10    (grow) and development of some crops.

10 . Insects are disappearing. The world has 25 per cent fewer terrestrial insects now than in 1990. This includes those we rely on to pollinate our crops and clean our rivers. If we don’t solve this problem very soon, some species will disappear.

There are many causes for the insect decline, but insecticides (杀虫剂) are a major part of the problem. Those used today are longer lasting and up to 10,000 times more toxic than some that were banned in the 1970s. Adding to the problem is that these pesticides are now applied to crops prophylactically (预防地) and used whether pests are present or not.

Overall, the amount of pesticide applied to the land is decreasing, but this is a grossly misleading statistic. A recent paper found that, between 2005 and 2015, there was a 40 per cent reduction in the amount of pesticide applied to crops measured by weight. But because modern insecticides are so much more toxic, the global toxicity of treated land to pollinating insects has more than doubled in the same period.

Governments and regulating agencies are aware of the problem, and some parts of the world have moved to ban the use of certain insecticides outdoors in an attempt to help bees survive. But the pesticides used instead are just as toxic.

One often-touted approach is to use pesticide-free pest control methods. These varied techniques are gathered under the name of integrated pest management (IPM) and have been around for decades. They offer effective crop protection and include methods such as crop rotation and the use of natural predators. But their adoption has been incredibly slow, because spraying pesticides is viewed as an easier option. As a result, IPM methods are unfortunately seldom used today

Neither changing insecticides nor shifting to IPM is a quick fix. We argue instead that we need a subtle shift in focus, away from killing pests and towards protecting crops.

By using the minimal dose we need to protect crops, we could reduce the amount of insecticide to a fraction of what is used today. Farmers would benefit from these changes. They would spend less money on pesticides and improve crop production by keeping health pollinator insects about. Reducing insecticide doses won’t solve the insect decline problem but it is a move that could win us time to make food production more sustainable and reconcile (使和谐) farmlands and the natural ecosystems we crucially depend on. And that will allow insects to recover.