Recent summer temperatures in parts of Australia were high enough to melt asphalt. As global warming speeds up the heat and climatic events increase, many plants may be unable to cope. But at least one species of eucalyptus tree can resist extreme heat by continuing to “sweat” when other essential processes stop, a new study finds.

    As plants change sunlight into food, or photosynthesize (光合作用), they absorb carbon dioxide through pores on their leaves. These pores also release water via transpiration(蒸腾), which circulates nutrients through the plant and helps cool it by evaporation(蒸发). But exceptionally high temperatures are known to greatly reduce photosynthesis—and most existing plant models suggest this should also decrease transpiration, leaving trees in danger of fatally overheating. Because it is difficult for scientists to control and vary trees' conditions in their natural environment, little is known about how individual species handle this situation.

    Ecologist John Drake of the S.U.N.Y. College of Environmental Science and Forestry and his colleagues grew a dozen Parramatta red gum (Eucalyptus parramattensis) trees in large, climate-controlled plastic pods that separated the trees from the surrounding forest for a year in Richmond, Australia. Six of the trees were grown at surrounding air temperatures and six at temperatures three degrees Celsius higher. The researchers withheld (扣留) water from the surface soil of all 12 trees for a month to imitate a mild dry spell, then induced a four-day “extreme” heat wave: They raised the maximum temperatures in half of the pods（three with surrounding temperatures and three of the warmer ones）— to 44 degrees ℃.

    Photosynthesis ground to a near halt in the trees facing the artificial heat wave. But to the researchers' surprise, these trees continued to transpire at close-to-normal levels, effectively cooling themselves and their surroundings. The trees grown in warmer conditions coped just as well as the others, and photosynthesis rates bounced back to normal after the heat wave passed, Drake and his colleagues reported online in Global Change Biology.

    The researchers think the Parramatta red gums were able to effectively sweat — even without photosynthesis — because they are particularly good at tapping into water deep in the soil. But if a heat wave and a severe drought (干旱) were to hit at the same time and the groundwater was exhausted, the trees may not be so lucky, Drake says.

    Other scientists call the finding encouraging. “It's definitely good news,” says Trevor Keenan, an ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who was not part of the study. “It would be very interesting to know how this translates to other species,” he adds. Drake hopes to conduct similar experiments with trees common in North America.

    Say you're in the supermarket parking lot，holding your baby，bags of goods，and trying to open your car. A stranger walks up and says，" Here，let me hold your baby." Should you let him?

    According to a new New York University study，knowing whether or not to trust someone is so important that we can tell whether a face is trustworthy before we even consciously know it's there. The researchers knew from previous studies that people are fairly similar when it comes to how they judge a face's trustworthiness. They wanted to find out whether that would be true if people only saw a face for a quick moment—an amount of time so short that it would prevent making a conscious judgment.

    To carry out their study，the researchers monitored the amygdala (扁桃腺结构) of 37 volunteers while showing them 300 faces for 33 milliseconds each. Those faces had already been tested with a different set of 10 subjects，who saw them for much longer. In those earlier tests，people agreed about whether to trust each face. In this new study，fascinatingly，different parts of the amygdala lit up when a subject saw an untrustworthy face and a trustworthy one—and it lit up more when the face in question was suspicious (可疑的).

    " Faces that appear likely to cause harm are suddenly tracked by the amygdala，so it could then quickly change other brain processes and make fast responses to people—approach or avoid，" says Jon Freeman，the study's senior author. "Our talents for making instant judgments could either come from birth or be learned from the social environment."

    So should you trust the guy in the parking lot? Your brain already knows.

Mark Twain's First Money

      Mark Twain was asked one day if he could remember the first money he ever earned. He thought a long time and then said, "Yes, it was at school. I can remember everything about it. School boys in those days did not take good care of their chairs and desks. There was a rule in our school that if anyone damaged his desk or chair, he would have to pay five dollars or the teacher would beat him in front of the whole school."

    "One day I damaged my desk in some way, I had to pay five dollars or be beaten before the whole school. My father said it would be too bad to have our family disgraced in front of the whole school. He agreed to give me five dollars to hand over the teacher. But before he gave me the money, he took me upstairs and gave me a beating."

    "But as I had one beating and I decided I would take another beating at school and keep the five dollars. So that's what I did. That was the first money I ever earned."

    In 2007, the editors of the Oxford Junior English Dictionary, convinced that their reference work “needed to reflect the consensus experience of modern-day childhood.”banned a group of old terms used less today describing the natural world. They inserted newer and supposedly more useful words describing the digital fields that young people in habit today.

    Thus they say goodbye to “acorn”, but say hello to “attachment”. “Beech” and “bluebell” come out of the dictionary. While “blog” and “broadband” come into it. And they say farewell to “catkin” and “cowslip” because here come “celebrity” and “chat room”.

    It's possible, of course, that those Oxford editors had a good reason for their vocabular cleansing. Perhaps they had read the Cambridge University study revealing that most young children can identify Pokémon(神奇宝贝)species far more easily than they can name real-life sparrows.

    But is this simply another fight in the language war, an ongoing battle between people? Some people argue that a dictionary should model how language works best, while some people insist that it should capture how language works now.

In Britain, some citizens felt justified in fighting back against the decision of the Oxford editors. The protest of the thinning of the word herd almost immediately attracted more than200, 000 signatures.

    Susie Dent, author of Modern Tribes：The Secret Languages of Britain, is doing everything in her power to guarantee “the old markers of time”. “Fortnight”(fourteen nights, or two weeks)is among her cherished favorites.

    Thanks to them, I can now show off my knowledge that a “snollygoster” is a “shrewd person, especially a politician”.

    Few facts about modern life seem more undeniable than how busy everyone seems to be. Across the industrialized world, large numbers of survey respondents tell researchers they're overburdened with work, at the expense of time with family and friends.

    But the total time people are working, whether paid or otherwise, has not increased in Europe or North America in recent decades. What's more, the date also show that the people who say they're the busiest generally aren't.

    Part of the answer is simple economics. As economies grow, and the incomes of the better-off have risen over time, time has literally become more valuable: Any given hour is worth more, so we experience more pressure to squeeze in more work.

But it's also a result of the kind of work in which many of us are engaged. In the past, farming work was subject to weather limits, white at present people live in an "unlimited world," and there are always more incoming emails, more meetings, more things to read, and digital mobile technology means you have a few more to-do list items.

    With time pressure weighing us down, it's hardly surprising that we live with one eye on the clock. But psychological research demonstrates that this time-awareness actually leads to worse performance. So the ironic consequence of the "busy feeling" is that we could handle to-do list less well than if we weren't so rushed.

    Arguable worst of all, the feeling of rush spreads to affect our leisure time, so that even when life finally does permit an hour or two for recovery, we end up feeling that leisure time should be spent "productively," too.

    If there's a solution to the busyness epidemic(流行病), other than the universal 21-hour workweek, it may lie in clearly realizing just how reasonable our attitudes have become. Historically, the ultimate symbol of wealth, achievement and social superiority was the freedom not to work. Now, it's busyness that has become the indicator of high status. "The best-off in our society are often very busy, and have to be," says Gershunny. "You ask me, am I busy, and I tell you: "Yes, of course I'm busy because I'm an important person!"

    Too often, we measure our worth not by the results we achieve, but by how much of our time we spend. We live crazy lives, at least in part, because it makes us feel good about ourselves.

    For Chinese, it's a time for dragon boat racing and Zongzi (粽子). But across the Yellow Sea, South Korea, wrestling (摔跤) and swing play are the highlights. However, both events go by the same name—the Dragon Boat Festival—which falls on May5 of the lunar calendar.

    One festival, two cultures: does one nation have the right to call its own? It has been reported that South Korea will apply (申请) to the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO联合国教科文组织) to make the celebration its cultural heritage (文化遗产). If successful, people from other countries may see the Dragon Festival as a Korean creation.

    As the birthplace of the yearly event more than 2, 000 years ago, China is not happy with the situation. "It would be a shame if another country successfully made a traditional Chinese festival part of its own cultural heritage ahead of China," said Zhou Heping, deputy culture minister. The Ministry of Culture is even thinking of making its own application to UNESCO, covering all traditional Chinese festivals, including the Dragon Boat event.

    Over the years, the Dragon Boat Festival has spread throughout the world. In Japan and Viet Nam, as well as South Korea, the festival has mixed with and become part of local culture. With this in mind, some experts say that it is meaningless to argue about which country the festival belongs to. "No one can deny that it came from China," said Long Haiqing, an expert from Hunan Province. "But if all the countries involved can protect culture heritage together, they will all benefit."