"Mum, what does it mean when someone tells you that they have a skeleton(骨骼) in the closet?" Jessica asked. "A skeleton in the closet?" her mother paused thoughtfully. "Well, it's something that you would rather not have anyone else know about. For example, if in the past, someone in Dad's family had been arrested for stealing a horse, it would be 'a skeleton in his family's closet'. He really wouldn't want any neighbor to know about it."

"Why pick on my family?" Jessica's father said with anger. "Your family history isn't so good. you know. Wasn't your great-great-grandfather a prisoner who was transported to Australia for his crimes?" "Yes, but people these days say that you are not a real Australian unless your ancestors arrived as prisoners ." "Gosh, sorry I asked, I think I understand now," Jessica cut in before things grew worse.

    After dinner, the house was very quiet. Jessica's parents were still quite angry with each other. Her mother was ironing clothes and every now and then she glared at her husband, who hid behind his newspaper pretending to read. When she finished, she gathered the freshly pressed clothes in her arms and walked to Jessica's closet. Just as she opened the door and reached in to hang a skirt, a bony arm stuck out from the dark depths and a bundle of white bones fell to the floor. Jessica's mother sank into a faint(晕倒), waking only when Jessica put a cold, wet cloth on her forehead.  She looked up to see the worried faces of her husband and daughter.

"What happened？Where am I?" she asked. "You just destroyed the school's skeleton, Mum," explained Jessica. "I brought it home to help me with my health project, I meant to tell you, but it seemed that as soon as I mentioned skeletons and closets, it caused a problem between you and Dad." Jessica looked in amazement as her parents began to laugh madly. "they're both crazy," she thought.

    With only about 1,000 pandas left in the world, China is desperately trying to clone the animal and save the endangered species. That's a move similar to what Texas A & M University researchers have been undertaking for the past five years in a project called "Noah's Ark".

    Noah's Ark is aimed at collecting eggs, embryos (胚胎), semen and DNA of endangered animals and storing them in liquid nitrogen. If certain species should become extinct, Dr. Duane Kraemer, a professor in Texas A & M's College of Veterinary Medicine, says there would be enough of the basic building blocks to reintroduce the species in the future.

    It is estimated that as many as 2,000 species of mammals, birds, reptiles will become extinct in over 100 years. The panda, native only to China, is in danger of becoming extinct in the next 25 years.

    This week, Chinese scientists said they grew an embryo by introducing cells from a dead female panda into the egg cells of a Japanese white rabbit. They are now trying to implant the embryo into a host animal. The entire procedure could take from three to five years to complete.

    "The nuclear transfer (核子移植) of one species to another is not easy, and the lack of available panda eggs could be a major problem," Kraemer believes. "They will probably have to do several hundred transfers to result in one pregnancy. It takes a long time and it's difficult, but this could be groundbreaking science if it works. They are certainly not putting any live pandas at risk, so it is worth the effort," adds Kraemer, who is one of the leaders of the Project at Texas A & M, the first-ever attempt at cloning a dog.

    "They are trying to do something that's never been done, and this is very similar to our work in Noah's Ark. We're both trying to save animals that face extinction. I certainly appreciate their effort and there's a lot we can learn from what they are attempting to do. It's a research that is very much needed."

    Despite what so many people would love to believe，NASA hasn't discovered any evidence of past or present intelligent life on Mars. Therefore, when the Curiosity rover  (好奇号探测器)found something suspicious on the Red Planet's surface, they were not only surprised but also a little bit worried.

    The thin fragment (碎片)was suspicious enough to guarantee its own name, with NASA's Curiosity rover team calling it the “Pettegrove Point Foreign Object Debris，” named for where it was discovered. With no idea what it was or where it came from, the rover's handlers began to worry that it might actually be a piece of the rover itself，suggesting some unseen damage or other issue with the robot. Thankfully，those concerns seem to have been unfound.

    In a new update from NASA the object has now been identified as a natural piece of rock rather than a piece of any man-made craft or vehicle. The team analyzed the unusual object with a tool called the Chem Cam RMI. The instrument uses a laser (激光器)to sniff out the makeup of anything that is pointed at, and the results for this particular piece of debris revealed that it's actually just a very thin piece of rock.

    NASA describes the inspection: The planning day began with an interesting result from the previous plan's Chem Cam RMI analysis of a target that was referred to as “Pettegrove Point Foreign Object Debris”(PPFOD)，and supposed to be a piece of spacecraft debris fact. In fact it was found to be a very thin slice of rock, so we can all rest easy tonight. Curiosity has not begun to shed its skin!

    How this particularly thin sliver of rock got to where it is—and why it seems to be a different colour than the surrounding sand and debris—remains unexplained, but at least the rover isn't falling apart.

    Guide dogs are going to be available for the children who are unable to see normally in the UK for the first time, as the age limit is to be removed. The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association is to begin training dogs to help blind people under the age of 16.

    The association says too many youngsters with impaired eyesight are lacking in independence. They have only a limited social life because of their disability. Giving some of them guide dogs at a younger age is intended to help them to widen their range of activities and to improve their sense of self-confidence and independence. Guide dogs for these teenagers will begin to be provided from next year. There has been an experimental project to test the use of guide dogs with younger people.

    Charlotte, aged 14, was among the youngest guide dog owners. She had been gradually losing her eyesight since the age of eight, and lost her eyesight completely this year. She has been assisted by a two-year-old guide dog. Charlotte used to have a long stick to help her move around, but having a guide dog allows her much more freedom and makes her feel safer.

    However, the association says there is a worryingly patchy supply of services for the young blind people across the UK, and it calls for a sharp increase in the number of guide dogs all over the country. As with adult blind people, only a small number of them are likely to be considered suitable for a guide dog. Most will continue to rely on extra help and training from education and social services.

    Fashions have a lot of rules. Most of them, however, are just wrong. But there's one rule that goes beyond tradition and into the field of scientific study of the brain: Black garments are slimming. It all comes down to how your visual system processes the light. The below holes in each square are the same in size, yet the white hole looks bigger than the black hole.

    In the 1500s, Galileo Galilei noticed that some of the planets looked larger when viewed with the naked eye (肉眼) than they did when viewed through a telescope, making the white light of Venus (金星) appear eight to ten times larger than Jupiter (木星) in the night sky. He knew something strange must be going on with his vision to cause this illusion, but he wasn't sure what it was. Luckily, scientists never stopped wondering, and in 2014, they figured it out.

    Our visual system operates via two main channels: "on" neurons (神经元) that are sensitive to light things and "off" neurons that are sensitive to dark things. When it came to the dark "off" neurons, the researchers found that they responded predictably to dark shapes on a light background — the greater the contrast between the two, the more active these neurons were. But the light "on" neurons behaved unpredictably. Even with the same amount of contrast, light objects on a dark background caused a greater response in these neurons.

    This makes some sense, evolutionarily speaking. In the dark of night, you'd want to be able to take in every bit of light you can get, so a visual system that enlarges light objects on a dark background could be very useful. However, it's not that hard to see dark objects in the light of day. It has some effects in the colors of your clothes and in the appearance of the planets—the brighter appearance of Venus in the night sky makes it look bigger than the darker Jupiter.

At a snow park in Zhangiakou, Hebei, Chinese teenage snowboarder Su Yiming won a silver in the men's snowboarding competition on February 7, 2022. It was the first time that a Chinese snow boarder had ever competed in this event at any Olympics. 

Su was introduced to snowboarding at the age of 4 by his parents who were both snowboarding fans. Su fell in love with the sport the first time they took him to a ski center. Later he kept on practicing after class. To save up more time for snowboarding, he would get up at 5 a. m. and finish his homework early. Su just saw snowboarding as a hobby in the beginning. However, on July 31, 2015, when he knew that 2022 Winter Olympics would be held in Beijing, his mind tuned to professional (职业性的) competition. He dreamed of joining in the Winter Olympics. And he decided to go professional. 

In 2018. Su became a member of China's national snowboarding team. In 2020 and 2021, he took home gold medals (奖牌) in all national competitions. In January 2021, he became the first Chinese male snowboarder to finish the Cab 1800-one of the most difficult snowboarding skills. 

Behind his success is Su's hard work. He has made full use of every chance to train more. Usually he arrived at the training center earlier than his teammates. In that way, he could practice more. He even broke several snowboards in one week because of heavy training.