For Suilasaikhan, a man living in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region(IMAR)(内蒙古自治区), life was hard years ago. When the wind blew, the sand made it almost impossible for him to see anything. He had to find his way back home by following the barking of dogs.

    Thankfully, things are much better today. About one third of the desert is now covered with trees, and sandstorms are less common. Ian Teh, who comes from Malaysia, came to China last year and was amazed to see people planting trees in the several deserts in northern China. "To be honest, it was hard to imagine it was ever a desert at all," he said.

    These are the results of Chinas years-long efforts to deal with desertification (沙漠化). In the 1950s, this widespread problem affected the life of about 400 million people in 18 provinces and autonomous regions in China. So China started several programs to deal with it. For example, the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, saw thousands of trees planted in northern China.

    In 1994, China joined the United Nations' convention (公约) against desertification and created the world's first law on sand prevention in 2001. With these efforts, the past five years have seen the area of desert in China decrease by 242,400 hectares.

    Desertification isn't the problem only in China. With china's success in dealing with desertification, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) believes the country is a good example for other countries to follow. "China is one of the most successful countries in greening the desert and has lessons to share with the world." UNEP Executive Director Erik Solheim told Xinhua.

    The sixth mass extinction of life on the Earth is unfolding more quickly than feared, scientists have warned. More than 30 percent of animals with a backbone — fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals — are declining in both range and population, according to the first comprehensive analysis of these trends.

    Around a decade ago, experts feared that a new range wipeout of species was appearing. Today, most agree that it is underway — but the new study suggests that the die-out is already growing fast.

    The loss of biodiversity has recently accelerated. Several species of mammals that were relatively safe one or two decades ago are now endangered, including cheetahs, lions and giraffes, the study showed.

    There is no mystery as to why: our own ever-expanding species — which has more than doubled in number since 1960 to 7.4 billion — is eating, crowding and polluting its planetary cohabitants out of existence. By comparison, there are as few as 20,000 lions left in the wild, less than 7,000 cheetahs, 500 to 1,000 giant pandas.

    The main drivers of wildlife decline are habitat loss, over-consumption, pollution, other species, disease, as well as hunting in the case of tigers, elephants, rhinos and other large animals prized for their body parts.

    Climate change is thought to become a major threat in the coming decades, with some animals — most famously polar bears — already in decline due to rising temperatures and changing weather patterns.

    If all the food that's thrown away in three American cities could be saved, it would provide 68 million meals for people who don't have enough to eat, according to a recent study.

    The researchers found that, in the cities they surveyed（调查）, more than a kilogram of edible food per person is wasted each week. Edible food is food you can eat. It doesn't include things like apple cores（果核）, egg shells, or bones from meat. Fruits and vegetables were the most common edible foods found in the dustbin, followed by food leftover from meals. Eggs, bread and milk were also commonly thrown out.

    The people taking part in the survey gave several reasons for throwing edible food away. Most said the food went off. Some said they weren't interested in eating leftovers. A few said the food had passed the “Best Before” date printed on the label（标签）. When food is wasted—by families, restaurants or grocery stores—we are also wasting all of the resources that go into producing that food. That means we are wasting water, land, energy and labour, as well as the fuel needed to transport food.

    A lot of food is wasted before it even reaches the grocery store（食品杂货商）. Some food is damaged while it is being transported from the farm to the stores. Fruits and vegetables that don't look attractive enough don't even get put onto the shelves because most people won't buy them. Grocery stores, restaurants and hospitals also waste a large amount of food. The researchers suggest that grocery stores should donate any food that is still okay to eat to homeless shelters, instead of throwing it away. Prepared meals from hospitals or restaurants could also be donated to shelters.

    A new study shows that rising levels of planet-warming gases may reduce important nutrients in food crops.

    Researchers studied the effects of one such gas—carbon dioxide—on rice. The researchers grew rice plants in a controlled environment. They set carbon dioxide levels to what scientists are predicting for our planet by the end of the century. They found that the resulting rice crops had lower than normal levels of vitamins, minerals and protein. The researchers said the effects of planet-warming gases would be most severe for the poorest citizens in some of the least developed countries. These people generally eat the most rice and have the least complex diets, they noted.

    In the experiment, scientists grew 18 kinds of rice in fields in China and Japan. They pumped carbon dioxide gas over the plants in an effort to create the atmosphere of the future. Rice grown under high carbon dioxide conditions had, on average, 13 to 30 percent lower levels of four B vitamins and 10 percent less protein. The crops also had 8 percent less iron and 5 percent less zinc（锌）an rice grown under normal conditions. However, vitamin E levels increased by about 13 percent on average.

    The results are bad news, “especially for the nutrition of the poorer population in less-developed countries,” said the University of Tokyo's Kazuhiko Kobayashi, who helped to write the report. That includes about 600 million people in Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Laos and other nations, mainly in Southeast Asia, the report said.

    One of the scientists is Sam Myers of Harvard University in the American state of Massachusetts. He said that findings like this are an example of the surprises climate change create. “My concern is there are many more surprises to come,” he said.

    Myers noted that pollution, loss of some species, destruction of forests, and other human activities are likely to produce unexpected problems. He said that you cannot completely change all the natural systems that living organisms have grown to depend on over millions of years without having effects come back to affect our own health.

    The new study suggests a way to lower the nutritional harm of climate change. One way, Kobayashi said, is grow different forms of rice that have shown to be more resistant to higher carbon dioxide levels.

    Along the river banks of the Amazon and the Orinoco there lives a bird that swims before it can fly, flies like a fat chicken, eats green leaves, has the stomach of a cow and has claws(爪) on its wings when young. They build their homes about 4.6m above the river, an important feature(特征) for the safety of the young. It is called the hoatzin(麝雉).

    In appearance, the birds of both sexes look very much alike with brown on the back and cream and red on the underside. The head is small, with a large set of feathers on the top, bright red eyes, and blue skin. Its nearest relatives are the common birds, cuckoos. Its most striking feature, though, is only found in the young.

    Baby hoatzins have a claw on the leading edge of each wing and another at the end of each wing tip. Using these four claws, together with the beak(喙), they can climb about in the bushes, looking very much like primitive birds. When the young hoatzins have learned to fly, they lose their claws.

    During the drier months between December and March hoatzins fly about the forest in groups of 20 to 30 birds, but in April, when the rainy season begins, they collect together in smaller living units of two to seven birds for producing purposes.

When I was a kid, my mom liked to make breakfast food for dinner every now and then. And I remember one night in particular when she had made breakfast after a long, hard day at hospital.

On that evening so long ago, my mom placed a plate of eggs, sausage and extremely burned toast in front of my dad. I remember waiting to see if anyone noticed! Yet all my dad did was to reach for his toast, smile at my mom and ask me how my day was at school. I don't remember what I told him that night, but I do remember watching him spread butter and jelly on that toast and eat every bite!

When I got up from the table that evening, I remember bearing my mom apologize to my dad for burning the toast. And I'll never forget what he said: "Honey, I love burnt toast."

Later that night, I went to kiss daddy good night and I asked him if he really liked his toast burnt. He took me in his arms and said, "Your momma put in a hard day at work today and she's really tired. And besides, a little burnt toast never hurt anyone!"

You know, life is full of imperfect things and imperfect people. What I've learned over the years is that learning to accept each other's faults is one of the most important keys to creating a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship. This good quality is the base of any relationship—husband­wife or parent­child or friendship! As far as I'm concerned, I'm not the best engineer as expected. However, I have made my efforts. That's enough.

So learn to take the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of your life. Burnt toast isn't a deal­breaker! Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket but into your own. You will appreciate the value of every soul including yourself.