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.

    There are all kinds of horses in the world. But one of them you can't ride. It doesn't live on land, but in the sea. Its head looks like the head of a horse .So people call it a "sea horse." In fact, The sea horse is a small fish. It likes to live in warm water. A sea horse always stands up in the water when it swims.

    The mother sea horses give eggs, but they put the eggs inside   father's body to keep them safe in its pouch until they hatch()孵化. When the eggs are hatched after 40 to 50 days, the baby sea horses swim away.

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    Have you seen advertisements about hair care products? The models(模特) have shining hair like jewels(宝石). But now making hair shine is no longer the task of hair care products, because hair can be made into real jewels. Believe it or not, a company called LifeGem in the US makes it possible.

    The company is in the business of taking hair from dead people and making them into diamonds(钻石). Now the company plans to make three diamonds using Beethoven's hair to show their latest technology. The work will take about 7 months. In the end, Beethoven's long hair will become three shining diamonds.

    Since the great musician died in 1827, you may wonder where they got Beethoven's hair. A man called John Reznikoff gave the hair to the company. He holds the Guinness World Record for the latest and most valuable collection of celebrity(名人) hair. His collection also includes hair of Napoleon, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. In total, the collection is worth over five million dollars.

    Though it sounds unbelievable, diamonds made with hair are for the families to remember the dead.