World Elephant Day is the perfect time to find out more about these amazing animals and what we can do to preserve them so they do not go the way of the mammoth（猛犸象）.

    World Elephant Day was created in 2011 by two Canadian filmmakers Patricia Sims and Thailand's Elephant Reintroduction Foundation and was first celebrated on August 12, 2012. They made the documentary Return to the Forest, a fascinating 30 minute film about the reintroduction of caught Asian elephants to the wild.

    Currently, the demand for ivory（象牙）is becoming bigger and bigger, whose price is higher than that of gold, making elephants bigger targets than ever. Habitation loss is also a danger to the world's elephant population as it robs elephants of the hundreds of pounds of food they need every day, making it more difficult for them to breed and making it easier for hunters to track them down. Circuses and tourism are also serious threats to the animals' well-being.

    The best way to celebrate this day is to take the opportunity to educate yourself about these magnificent（巨大的）mammals and share your knowledge with others. As ever, simply spreading the word about the dangers these magnificent mammals face via social media can actually make a real change. Expose that “training” elephants often involves tying and beating them daily for months on end. If you want to get a bit more involved, you could choose to make a donation to a foundation dedicated to protecting elephants from hunters or relocating them to locations better suited to their needs.

    Whichever way suits you best, make sure that you spend this day in a way that helps elephants all over the world, so we, in turn, can continue to wonder at them and their uniquely fascinating way of life.

    You probably know you should say” please” and “thank you ” at restaurants. You probably know the rules of a library. You know you should respect and be nice to your classmates. But do you have music manners?

    Keep It Down! You have to notice the volume of your music. You should not play your music so loud that everyone around you can hear it. Some people might even get angry. Usually, when you play the music loud on an MP3 player, other people can't hear the words of the song. They just hear a loud sound. Not one wants to listen to this. Very loud music can also be bad for your ears, so even if you are alone when listening to our MP3 player, you shouldn't have it turned up too high.

    Take Them Off! You need to know when to turn your MP3 player off and put it away. Libraries and schools don't allow MP3 players. There are other places, like museums, that don't have rules, but it would be rude to have your MP3 player on. Sometimes, it just doesn't make sense（没意义） to listen your MP3 player at event. Why would you listen to music at a play, a movie or a sporting event? You would miss what is going on and others would wonder why you even came.

    Take One Out! Once in a while it's okay just to take out one earphone and not the other. Imagine you are listening to your MP3 player when someone asks you the way. It would not be rude to take out one earphone, tell him the way, and put back the earphone and continue listening. You can also do this when you order food at a fast-food restaurant.

    It's Your Choice! There are times when you need to decide what is best. For example, some people can listen to music on their MP3 Players when read books, while others think it is disturbing. In cases like this, you need to do what seems right for you.

    Cooperation at work is generally seen as a good thing. The latest survey by the Financial Times of what employers want from MBA graduates found that the ability to work with a wide variety of people was what managers wanted most. But managers always have to balance the benefits of teamwork, which help ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal, with the dangers of “groupthink” when critics are reluctant to point out a plan's drawbacks for fear of being kept out of the group. The disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 was a classic case of groupthink. Skeptics were reluctant to challenge John F. Kennedy, the newly elected American president.

    Modern communication methods mean that cooperation is more frequent. Workers are constantly in touch with each other via e-mail messaging groups or mobile calls. But does that improve, or lower performance? A new study by three American academics, tried to answer this question. They set a logical problem (designing the shortest route for a travelling salesman visiting various cities). Three groups were involved: one where subjects acted independently; another where they saw the solutions posted by team members at every stage; and a third where they were kept informed of each other's views only intermittently.

    The survey found that members of the individualist group reached the premier solution more often than the constant cooperators but had a poorer average result. The intermittent cooperators found the right result as often as the individualists, and got a better average solution. When it comes to ideal generation, giving people a bit of space to a solution seems to be a good idea. Occasional cooperation can be a big help: most people have benefited from a colleague's brainwave or (just as often) wise advice to avoid a particular course of action.

    Further clues come from a book, Superminds, by Thomas Malone of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He says that three factors determine the collective intelligence of cooperating groups: social intelligence (how good people were at rating the emotional states of others); the extent to which members took part equally in conversation (the more equal, the better); and the cooperation of women in the group (the higher, the better). Groups ranked highly in these areas cooperated far better than others.

    In short, cooperation may be a useful tool but it doesn't work in every situation.

    A retired United States soldier named Terry McGlade, who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, his dog Major is a hero. He is specially trained to says sense when McGlade is about to have a seizure, get his phone and dial 911 for help.

    When Major had recently sensed an incident about to happen, and McGlade collapsed and hit the floor, Major was able to get to McGlade's phone, and more or less bite on the phone which is specially set up so that when multiple buttons are pressed and held in, it goes into emergency call mode, and dial 911.

    "He was actually able to get my phone out of my pocket," McGlade said.

    The 911 operators who got the call from Major said they never heard him bark or anything. However, they could hear what sounded like a confused man in the background, and did get quite suspicious after quite a few calls from McGlade's cell phone kept coming in. Quite clearly, Major was using his leg and also stepping on the screen to get the phone to díal for help.

    After Major was sure someone would be on their way to help, he then made his way out to the front of the house to wait. When police and ambulance arrived, he led them into the house and right to McGlade, still in distress.

    "I probably would have been in severe trouble if he wouldn't have called," McGlade said.

    McGlade was taken to the hospital, where he was kept overnight for observation, but thanks to his best friend, and now hero of the day, Major. He is feeling much better, and will make a full recovery with little risk of lasting damage from this particular incident.

    You probably know that frogs hop (双足跳). But did you know that there's a small frog in the Pacific Northwest that belly flops (肚子先着水)? It's called a tailed frog.

    Dr. Rick Eisner, who has been studying tailed frogs for the past few years, says, "I've looked at thousands of jumps and have never seen them land on their feet like other frogs." Most of the time, tailed frogs land on their stomachs and then bring their back legs in to prepare for another jump.

    Eisner first noticed these frogs because of the way they swim. Other frogs kick both of their back legs at the same time. But when a tailed frog swims, it pushes first with one leg and then the other.

    To try to find out why tailed frogs bellyflop, Eisner and other scientists collected and filmed different kinds of frogs. They found that all of the frogs start their jumps the same way: They hold out their legs. The change comes in the landing. Tailed frogs can't move their back legs as quickly as other frogs do. Maybe they don't need to. Tailed frogs live around water and quickly jump into the water to escape danger.

    Early frogs developed around watery areas and could jump quickly into the water to escape danger. Scientists think those frogs blended in with (与…融合在一起) the green plants on the side of the rocky rivers, just like today's tailed frogs. "I would guess that other animals would have problems detecting them," explains Eisner. When other animals find those early frogs, the frogs could jump into the river. They didn't need to continue hopping.

    Tailed frogs and other kinds of frogs went their own ways about 200 million years ago. Tailed frogs stayed by rivers. Other kinds of frogs moved to places where new hopping skills allowed them to survive.

    Reality TV show has been charged with making the nation silly, but a study suggests part of the show could be good for children.

    Massey University PhD student Jacinta Hawkins looked at the influence of TV programs on kids' health knowledge, attitudes and behavior. She said programs which showed overweight people on TV is making children say "I don't want to grow up like that'."

    The research was part of Ms Hawkins' paper on how schools improve health. She spoke to 92 children, ages from 7 to 13, from six Auckland primary schools to find out how they received information on nutrition and physical activity. Some said they learnt from TV news programs, but most of them mentioned reality shows such as Fat Chance, Honey We're Killing the Kids and Downsize Me.

    "Earlier studies had looked at the effect junk-food advertising had on children," Ms Hawkins said, "but messages within TV programs had not been explored. Children from the six schools largely recognized program content, rather than advertising, as a source of food and physical activity messages. They are learning habits of eating and exercise from TV programs. "

    The children also recognized that their parents had a role to play in shaping health behavior. Talking about Honey We're Killing the Kids, which shows how people will look if they continue with good habits, children said they developed attitudes from their family's habits. MMs Hawkins said children remembered what they had seen and thought it was the parents' duty to lead by example.