Would it surprise you to learn that, like animals, trees communicate with each other and pass on their wealth to the next generation?

    UBC Professor Simard explains how trees are much more complex than most of us ever imagined.

    Although Charles Darwin thought that trees are competing for survival of the fittest, Simard shows just how wrong he was. In fact, the opposite is true: trees survive through their co-operation and support, passing around necessary nutrition “depending on who needs it”.

    Nitrogen (氮) and carbon are shared through miles of underground fungi (真菌) networks, making sure that all trees in the forest ecological system give and receive just the right amount to keep them all healthy. This hidden system works in a very similar way to the networks of neurons (神经元) in our brains, and when one tree is destroyed, it affects all.

    Simard talks about “mother trees”, usually the largest and oldest plants on which all other trees depend. She explains how dying trees pass on the wealth to the next generation, transporting important minerals to young trees so they may continue to grow. When humans cut down “mother trees” with no awareness of these highly complex “tree societies” or the networks on which they feed, we are reducing the chances of survival for the entire forest.

     “We didn't take any notice of it,” Simard says sadly. “Dying trees move nutrition into the young trees before dying, but we never give them chance.” If we could put across the message to the forestry industry, we could make a huge difference towards our environmental protection efforts for the future.

    At any discussion of a job offer, money can be a deal breaker. Negotiating an attractive deal, however, can be hard for many job candidates because they lack the necessary skills or simply because they're too concerned that pushing for a high salary can cost them the job.

    These factors certainly can be hurdles (障碍), but it doesn't mean that you give up trying to get the best deal you can get. Needless to say, if money isn't a big factor in your decision, you still need to make sure that the deal you're accepting is fair compared to what's offered in the market. Selling yourself short once can impact your future salaries and set you back financially.

    Here are common mistakes that many jobseekers commit in negotiating money.

    Negotiate too early. Timing is of essence in any negotiation, and negotiating a salary too early in the process can cost you dearly. Many employers, in fact, rank this as one of the biggest mistakes job candidates make. The best timing to begin a salary discussion is after you and your future employer are nearly sure that you've been selected for the position.

    Abandon professionalism. It's common that people, after going through a long recruitment process, can be shocked that the salary offered is significantly below their expectations. If you find yourself in this situation, don't abandon your professional attitude or throw a fit. This likely will get you nowhere except the door.

    There're two options to this situation: the first is that the employer is inflexible (不灵活的) about the budget, and in this case, you may just leave and make a graceful exit from the hiring process.

    The second option is that there's some negotiation room for the hiring manager with other decision makers in the organization. If this is the case, you may be surprised that a final push with a positive attitude and a well-delivered presentation about your skills and market price can get you closer to your expected salary. Still, if this is not acceptable, you don't have to take it.

    By now, you've probably been warned that a robot is coming for your job. But rather than repeat the warning, I've decided to throw down a challenge: man against machine.

    Start with the task we're doing right now: communicating in fluent human. We're sharing abstract ideas through words that we choose with an understanding of their slight difference and impact. We don't just speak in human; we speak as humans. A robot who says that science is fun is delivering a line (念一句话). A human who says that science is fun is telling you something important about being alive.

    Here's another inbuilt advantage we take for granted: as humans we are limited by design. We are bound in time: we die. We are bound in space: we can't be in more than one place at a time. That means when I speak to an audience, I am giving them something special. It's a custom-made, one-off, 100% robot-free delivery, from today's one-and-only Australian Chief Scientist.

    True, I now come in digital versions, through Twitter and Facebook and other platforms, but the availability of those tools hasn't stopped people from inviting me to speak in person. Digital Alan seems to increase the appetite for human Alan, just as Spotify (a digital music service) can increase the demand for a musician's live performances.

    Thanks to technology, many goods and services are cheaper, better and more accessible than ever before. We like our mass-produced bread, and our on-tap lectures and our automated FitBit advice. But automation hasn't killed the artisan bakery (面包店). Online courses haven't killed the booming, alongside their machine equivalents.

    Here's a third argument for the win. We humans have learned the habit of civilization. Let me explain this point by a story. A few years go, some researchers set out to study the way the people interact with robots. They sent out a small robot to patrol (巡逻) the local mall. That robot had a terrible time, and the villains of the story were children. They kicked him, bullied him, and smacked (掌击) him in the head.

    The point is not that the children were violent. The point is that the adults were not. They restrained whatever primitive impulse (冲动) they might have felt in childhood to smack something smaller and weaker in the head, because they had absorbed the habit of living together. We call it civilization. If we want artificial intelligence for the people, we'll need every bit of that civilizing instinct.

    Together, these points suggest to me that humanity has a powerful competitive edge. We can coexist with our increasingly capable machines and we can make space for the full breadth of human talents to flourish.

    Downloading music over the Internet is pretty common among high school and college students. However, when students download and share copyrighted music without permission, they are against the law.

    A survey of young people's music ownership has found that teenagers and college students have an average of more than 800 illegally copied songs each on their digital music players. Half of those surveyed share all the music on their hard drive (硬盘), enabling others to copy hundreds of songs at any one time. Some students were found to have randomly linked their personal blogs to music sites, so as to allow free trial listening of copyrighted songs for blog visitors, or adopted some of the songs as the background music for their blogs. Such practices may be easy and free, but there are consequences.

    Sandra Dowd, a student of Central Michigan University, was fined US $7,500 for downloading 501 files from Lime Wire, a peer-to-peer file sharing program. Sandra claimed that she was unaware that her downloads were illegal until she was contacted by authorities. Similarly, Mike Lewinski paid US $4,000 to settle a lawsuit（起诉）against him for copyright violation (违反). Mike expressed shock and couldn't believe that this was happening to him. “I just wanted to save some money and I always thought the threat was just a scare tactic(战术).” “You know, everyone does it,” added Mike.

    The RIAA （Recording Industry Association of America）, the organization that files lawsuits against illegal downloaders, states that suing (控告) students was by no means their first choice. Unfortunately, without the threat of consequences, students are just not changing their behavior. Education alone is not enough to stop the extraordinary growth of the illegal downloading practice.

    JERUSALEM—Israel's Environmental Protection Ministry asked citizens Wednesday to avoid unnecessary physical activity and stay indoors, as a serious sandstorm struck the Middle East in a thick yellow haze (霾) for a second day with no hope to see things clearly.

    The ministry said heavy levels of dust and sand in the air were a threat to cities throughout the country. The ministry's website advised pregnant women, the elderly and those with heart and respiratory (呼吸的) conditions to stay indoors, and asked schools to keep children indoors.

    The emergency service Magen David Adom reported that it has treated more than 300 Israelis suffering from breathing problems, and that hospitals have more respiratory-related patients, including a large number of the elderly and those with asthma and related conditions.

    The domestic Israeli airlines Arkia and Israir continued to ground their flights to Eilat because of reduced visibility.

    The sandstorm has affected Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, where at least five deaths have been reported.

    "There has been nothing that came close to the magnitude of this sandstorm," said Daniel Rosenfeld, a professor with the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

    "While Israel has experienced a number of sandstorms in the past, they started from the Sinai Desert and the Sahara Desert to the south and were joined by winter windstorms that cleared the air," he said. In this case, the storm comes from Syria and Iraq to the north and east.

    Because the storm is hitting during the summer, at a time of both little wind and severe heat and humidity, forecasters expect the particles to remain in the air throughout the weekend and possibly into next week.

    "This is really puzzling," said Rosenfeld, adding that he and his colleague will conduct research into the origins of the unprecedented (前所未有的) storm. (326 words)

    A man went into a restaurant and sat down at a table. He ordered the most expensive dishes. The waiter served the meal. He ate it with great joy. Then a small boy came in and sat at his table.

    The waiter came up and said to the man, "What would your little boy like, sir?"

    "Oh, just an ice cream," the man told him. Then he stood up and said to the waiter, "I'm just going out to buy a newspaper."

    He left the restaurant. The waiter gave the boy an ice cream. The boy took it and then stood up and walked to the door. The waiter ran towards him.

    "Excuse me," he said, "But your father hasn't come back and he hasn't paid for his meal or for your ice cream."

    "He's not my father," the boy said. "I don't know him at all."

    The waiter was puzzled. "What do you mean?" he asked.

    "The man came up to me in the street," the boy said, "He asked me if I liked an ice cream. I told him I did. Then he told me to come into the restaurant at 2 o'clock and sat down at his table. He said he'd give me one."