As global temperatures continue to rise, more “extreme rain” events—intense, cats-and-dogs down pours—can be expected, said the study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. And that, scientists said, means an increased flood risk, particularly for the world's driest areas. The study challenges the idea that global warming is causing dry areas to become drier and wet areas wetter.

    “In both wet and dry regions, we see these great increases in heavy precipitation（冰雹）,” lead author Markus Donat, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales, told Nature.

    Donat and his team collected data from 1951 to 2010 on extreme precipitation events from 11, 000 weather stations around the world, Nature reported.

     In that time, the number of days with“extreme precipitation” increased 1 percent to 2 percent per decade.

  “We found a strong relationship between global warming and an increase in rainfall, particularly in areas outside of the tropics,” Donat said in a statement.

  “Importantly, this research suggests we will see these extreme rainfall events increases at regional levels in dry areas, not just as an average across the globe,” Donat added.

    Peter Stott, a senior climate scientistat Met Office, told Climate Central that the study's findings are important, because more violent rainfall and flooding will “challenge our capability toadapt to a rapidly changing climate.”

    As Nature reported, the researchaligns（结盟）with a 2015 study that found global warming has led to a sharp increase in record-breaking precipitation events. Donat told Nature that his study should come as a warning to world governments.

B

    Have you ever wondered why the roots of the plants always know which way to grow—into the soil but not above it? Some British scientists have recently solved this mystery.    

      It turns out that roots have special hairs that tie them into the soil and help them grow their way past obstacles, a team at the John Inners Center in Norwich reports in the February 29 issue of Journal Science.

    "The key is in the fuzzy(有绒毛的) coat of hairs on the roots of plants," says professor Liam Dolan. "We have found a growth control system that enables these hairs to find their way and to become longer when their path is clear."

    Root hairs explore the soil in much the same way a person would feel their way in the dark. If they come across an obstacle, they make their way around until they can continue growing in an opening. I the meantime, the plant is held in place as the hairs grip the soil.

    The hairs are guided by a clever chemical trick. A protein(蛋白质) at the tip of the root hairs called RHD2 helps them to take calcium(钙) from the soil. Calcium makes the hairs grow, and produce more RHD2, and take more calcium.

    But when an obstacle blocks the hair's path, or the hair reaches the surface of the soil, the cycle is broken and growth starts in another direction.

    This system gives plants the flexibility to explore a complex environment and to live in even the most unpromising soils, says Dolan.

    In poor soils such as in parts of Australia and Africa, native plants have adapted by producing enormous numbers of root hairs. A better understanding of this adaptation will allow scientists to develop hairy rooted crops that can grow in unfriendly environments.

    According to Dolan, "Research in the John Inners Center is taking a breeding approach(育种方法) to increase hair length in wheat but it will be some time before new cultivars(栽培变种) are developed."

    Top 5 smart wearable vendors in the world

    Market research company IDC's latest data showed that a total of 21 million smart wearables were shipped in the third quarter of 2015, up by 197.6% year-on-year.

    As a rather new area, market players change positions frequently. China's BBK, owner of a children's phone watch brand Xiaotiancai, outperformed Samsung and broke into the top five clubs, gaining a market share of 3.1 percent.

    Let us have a look at the top 5 vendors.

    No 5 BBK

    Shipment volume: 0.7 million

    Market share: 3.1%

    People can watch a video on the website of Guangdong Xiaotiancai Tech Company Limited to know more about its phone watches.

    No 4 Garmin

    Shipment volume: 0.9 million

    Market share: 4.1%

    Garmin's new fenix 3 multi-sport GPS training watch is displayed at the 2015 International CES, a trade show of consumer electronics, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Jan 7, 2015.

    No 3 Xiaomi

    Shipment volumes: 3.7 million

    Market share: 17.4%

    The Mi Bands, developed by Xiaomi's ecosystem company Huami Co Ltd, has a function to track the user's heart beat while in motion.

    No 2 Apple

    Shipment volume: 3.9 million

    Market share: 18.6%

    Customers try to use an Apple Watch in an Apple retail store in Hangzhou city, East China's Zhejiang province, April 24, 2015. The watch went on sale on April 24 around the world.

    No 1 Fitbit

    Shipmen volume: 4.7 million

    Market share: 22.2%

    Various Fitbit devices were displayed outside the New York Stock Exchange on Jun 18, 2015, when the company got listed.

    An international group of coffee experts has considered Ethiopia's coffee as the best in the world. Coffee is a top export of the country. But at home, it is seen as national pride. Ethiopians feel good about their coffee, and enjoying a drink with friends is a long tradition.

    International coffee experts travel the world to find the best coffee. They keep returning to Ethiopia. Some people say the climate produces quality beans. Morton Wenner is a coffee importer. He said, “Ethiopia has different ancient types of coffee. They are planted in places with perfect soil, perfect altitude, and climates that are really suitable for coffee processing, such as drying and things like that.”

    Finding the best quality beans is often an issue of taste. The process is known as cupping — tasting and comparing coffee from different roasted beans, grading and then pricing them.

    But before international experts come to taste, coffee beans are studied in small coffee laboratories. Helen Assefa, a lab technician, describes the process, “When the coffee comes to the lab, we assess its quality first by recording the details. Then we weigh the wetness level and screen the beans for analysis. After that we polish the coffee beans and taste the samples. At the end we check for imperfect beans.”

    Ethiopia is making big profits on its coffee reputation by exporting coffee to more than 120 countries. The country has an export income of more than $840 million a year. But not all the best coffee leaves Ethiopia. Forty percent of the coffee grown in the country stays there. It remains an important part of everyday life at work, at home and at ceremonies just to celebrate that special cup.

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Every profession or trade, every art, and every science has its technical vocabulary, the function of which is partly to name things, or processes which have no names in ordinary English, and partly to secure greater exactness in terminology (术语). Such special dialects are necessary in technical discussion of any kind. Being universally understood by those engaged or interested in the particular science or art, they have the accurateness of a mathematical formula (公式）. Besides，they save time in these kinds of discussions, for it is much more economical to name a process than to describe it. Thousands of these technical terms are very properly included in every large dictionary, yet, as a whole, they are rather in the suburbs of the English language.

Different occupations, however, differ widely in the character of their special vocabularies. In trades and handicrafts, and other professions, like farming and fishery, which have occupied great numbers of men from remote times, the technical vocabulary is very old. It consists largely of native words, or of borrowed words that have worked themselves into the very central part of our language. Thus, though highly technical in many particulars, these vocabularies are more familiar in sound, and more generally understood, than most other technical terms. In law, medicine, and philosophy, the special dialects have also become pretty familiar to cultivated persons and have contributed much to the popular vocabulary. Yet among these professions, each one still possesses a large body of technical terms that remain essentially foreign, even to educated speech. And the proportion has increased in the last fifty years, particularly in the various departments of natural and political science and in the mechanic arts. Here new terms are coined with the greatest freedom, and abandoned when they have served their turn. Most of the newly-invented terms are restricted to special discussions, and seldom get into general literature or conversation.

Yet no profession is nowadays, as all professions once were, a close combination. Lawyers, doctors and men of science all communicate freely with others, not in a merely professional way. Furthermore, what is called "popular science" makes everybody familiar with modem views and recent discoveries. Any important experiment, though made in a remote or provincial laboratory, is at once reported online, and everybody is soon talking about it-as in the case of AI.