There are many different kinds of disasters around the world. As an adult you know what to do during a disaster, but what about the children? Some adults think it would probably never happen to them, so they don't teach their children what to do. Before it's too late, here are ways to help you prepare your child for a disaster:

    Educate: It is always good to let your child know about possible disasters. This doesn't mean children have to live in fear. When teaching them about disasters, keep the conversation positive（积极的）by telling them there is a solution（解决办法）to the disaster. Keep the conversations short, allow for questions and answer honestly.

    Prepare: Always be prepared, that is the best advice for children. For example, when preparing for bad weather, get the tools you need, like candles, radios, food, water and medicine. Teach your child what is needed in certain disasters so that they know what is available for them, if ever needed.

    Plan: You should always have a plan for you and your child for any dangerous situation. Write out a simple list that they can read. The plan could start with “listen to an adult's advice and/or call 119”.

    Practice: Once you have got the correct safety tools and worked out the right plan, practice every few months. Practicing what to do during a disaster with your child will help them if the time comes.

    Disasters can't be avoidedbut they can be lessened（减轻）once you areprepared and ready for one.

    The leaders （领导人） of 13 countries had a big meeting in St Petersburg, Russia from November 21 to 24, 2010.The meeting was about tigers. They talked about the ways to protect the animals in their countries. They agreed to spend more money protecting tigers and they wanted to double the number of tigers in the world before 2022.

    Tiger is one of the world's most endangered animals. The World Wildlife Fund （WWF） says, there are only about 100,000 wild tigers now. And the number is becoming smaller and smaller. 'If nothing happens, tigers will face disasters,' said WWF spokeswoman Marie von Zeipel.

Nine types of tigers lived 100 years ago, but now at least three of them have died out. ‘If people leave tigers alone and don't kill them, then the number of tigers will double in 10 years,' said Jean-Christoph Vie, a French tiger expert (专家).

    China is one of the 13 countries where tigers live. There are about 50 wild tigers in China now. They are the Bengal tigers in Tibet, Indochinese tigers in China's southwest, and Siberian tigers in the northeast. The South China tigers lived in southeast China many years ago but disappeared in the 1970s. Many experts think they have already died out.

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    American Sign Language, often called ASL, is used by most people with hearing problems in the United States and Canada.

    Besides ASL, there are more than fifty sign languages used throughout the world today, including Mayan Sign, British Sign, Israeli Sign, and Chinese Sign. Like spoken languages, sign languages are different from each other. But all sign languages are based on sight instead of sounds.

    Sign languages have several main visual (视觉) parts that work together to express meaning. The first part is the shape made by the hands. Movement is also important. Moving the body or organs (器官) like hands affects the meaning of the shape. The place where the sign is made and the direction the hands face are crucial as well. Other visual clues (线索), such as the expression on a person's face, can sometimes change a sign's meaning. For example, a change in a smile can show whether a signer is happy, very happy, or overjoyed. Raising the eyebrows can mark a question.

    In sign languages, the visual parts are combined (结合) in different ways to create signs.

These signs stand for things, actions, feelings, and ideas. ASL has about 4,000 different signs. Like spoken  languages,  sign  languages  cannot  be  translated  word-for-word.  

    For English word may be represented by a series of signs in ASL. Or several English words may be

represented by a single ASL sign. Unlike spoken languages, the signs are organized according to sign-language grammar and the most important word or idea is signed first.

    In ASL, the letter signs are made with one hand. Signers would rarely, if ever, spell out all the words they are signing. That would be as awkward and slow as speakers spelling each spoken word. However, American Sign Language does not have signs for proper names, so signers may use the alphabet to spell these. Also, sign languages often borrow words from other languages. They may spell words using finger spelling which is done with a set of hand shapes that stand for letters of the alphabet.

    Sign languages  develop  naturally  when  people  with  shared  culture  and  needs  want  to communicate with each other. Signers are closely linked to each other, perhaps more than to speaking people in their own communities. Signers share points of view, values, needs, and problems,as well as languages.

    Today many people like growing plants at home because the plants help make the indoor environment beautiful and healthy. However, sometimes people may be too busy to remember to water their plants. If you have the same problem, don't worry. Designer Alastair Crompton can help you solve the problem with his amazing product-Plant Pod. It can water itself without any help.

    The Plant Pod is a self-watering container (容器) for small to medium-sized plants inside the house. Alastair Crompton makes it use a very simple process to provide the plant with the water it needs every day. With a Plant Pod, people no longer need to worry about how much water is perfect for their plants to grow. The water in the Plant Pod is enough to last for at least two weeks. So if people are away from home on a short holiday, they don't need to ask their relatives or neighbours to look after their plants. Won't it be great to see your plants welcome you when you are back home after one or two weeks?

    Clothes are traditionally made of natural materials, such as cotton, leather and wool. They are all from plants or animals, but that doesn't mean they're friendly to the earth. For example, farmers have to use a lot of chemicals to grow cotton plants.

    Scientists are now looking for new ways to make clothing materials. They hope the new materials are both comfortable and good for the earth. Scientists have worked out how to make materials out of corn husks(棉籽), chicken feathers and rice straws.

    "They used to be useless things. We always have a problem of how to deal with them," Yang, a scientist says, "Now, we can turn them into beautiful materials. Chicken feathers are better than other things. They have small air pockets like honeycombs. That means it will be very warm if you use them to make a jacket or sweater, and I think more and more people will like to buy these kinds of clothes."

    They say music is universal, and it seems to be true since wherever we go, we see people listening, playing or dancing to it. We tend to think that music is larger than our cultural differences and shows the deeper connections between us.

    But according to a recent study published in the Current Biology, music doesn't speak to everyone. There is a condition, the researchers argue, called "musical anhedonia". They say that those who have this condition may have few abilities to experience pleasure from music.

    For the study, 30 people listened to the same, mostly classical music pieces. They were then asked to complete a questionnaire on how they felt about the music. At the same time, the researchers measured their heart rate and skin reaction, which are considered physiological measures of feelings.

    According to the researchers, most of the people in the study got pleasure from the music. They had a quicker heartbeat and sweatedmore. However, a small number of them had very little and even no pleasant feeling while they were listening to the music. These people had none or very few of the physical signs which the others in the study experienced.

    The researchers say that this means people have different abilities to enjoy music and that "there are people who specifically can't enjoy music at all"

    To study the condition more deeply, another group of scientists, at Columbia University, US, researched brain activities. They found that the key is the blood flow to the reward system in the brain. People who got less pleasure from music had comparatively lower blood flow to areas involved in the reward system of the brain when they were listening to music.

    The lower blood flow makes it more likely that the brain's "reward system" will be inactive. And it will produce less of the "pleasure chemical" dopamine. As a result, people get less pleasure from music.

    If the research is correct, according to National Public Radio, there are simply people who just don't get music. They may get pleasure from many things, but a good tune isn't one of them.