The production of coffee beans is a huge, profitable business, but, unfortunately, full-sun production is taking over the industry and
bringing about a lot of damage. The change in how coffee is grown from shade-grown，production to full-sun production endangers the very existence of, certain animals and birds, and even disturbs the world's ecological balance.
On a local level, the damage of the forest required by full-sun fields affects the area's birds and animals. The shade of the forest trees provides a home for birds and other special(物种) that depend on the trees' flowers and fruits. Full-sun coffee growers destroy this forest home. As a result, many special are quickly dying out.
On a more global level, the destruction of the rainforest for full-sun coffee fields also threatens(威胁)human life. Medical research often makes use of the forests' plant and animal life, and the destruction of such species could prevent researchers from finding cures for certain diseases. In addition, new coffee-growing techniques are poisoning the water locally, and eventually the world's groundwater.
Both locally and globally, the continued spread of full-sun coffee plantations (种植园)could mean the destruction of the rainforest ecology. The loss of shade trees is already causing a slight change in the world's climate,
and studies show that loss of oxygen-giving trees also leads to air pollution and global warming. Moreover, the new growing techniques are contributing to acidic(酸性的) soil conditions.
It is obvious that the way much coffee is grown affects many aspects many aspects of life, from the local environment to the global ecology.
But consumers do have a choice. They can purchase shade-grown coffee whenever possible, although at a higher cost. The future health of
the planet and mankind is surely worth more than an inexpensive cup of coffee.

    Italy is one country where beauty is prized more than any other virtue(美德). That is, except in the small town of Piobbico, the self-declared World Capital of Ugly People. The road sign at the edge of the town even warns visitors that they are entering the ugly zone. People who consider themselves ugly have been gathering in Piobbico since the 1960s. That's when Ugly Club president Telesforo Lacobelli established a dating agency for women who believed they were too ugly to attract husbands. Lacobelli believes that he is ugly himself because he has a short nose in a country where long or large noses have always been considered beautiful.

    People from around the world travel to Piobbico to tell their sad stories of ugliness. During the annual Festival of the Ugly, which occurs on the first Sunday of every September, hundreds of people gather in Piobbico's town square to elect the president of the Ugly Club. Lacobelli wins the election every year. The Ugly Club has over 20, 000 members. They carry ID cards that grade their ugliness from bearable to extreme. A prize is awarded to Ugly Club members who qualify as extremely ugly.

    The Ugly Club president insists that ugliness is a virtue. Since beautiful people get a lot of attention for their beauty alone, they have to work hard to prove their other virtues. Ugly people, on the other hand, are genuine and do not have to prove anything to anybody, according to Lacobelli.

    Lacobelli is a spokesperson for ugly people everywhere. He believes that the uglier one is, the better life can be. Though the club enjoys making fun of beauty, especially beauty contests, Lacobelli has a serious side as well. He believes that too many people suffer from financial and emotional pressures because they don't meet society's standards of beauty. The fact that beautiful people are more successful in the workforce is a problem that Lacobelli has attempted to bring forward to the Italian public and government.

    Lennon Flowers' mom was diagnosed with lung cancer when she was a senior in high school. This young woman gave up her big dreams to go to New York University and become an actor and instead entered the University of North Carolina so she could be close to home. Though she was surrounded by a community of friends, she rarely brought up her mom. “I became good at not talking about what was happening to me,” she explains. “I got really, really good at being really, really busy.”

    When her mother died during her senior year in college, many of Lennon's friends hadn't even known she was sick. In part, she said she kept silent about it due to her belief that it protected other people.

    Three years after her mother died, Lennon moved to Los Angeles for a job and, met Carla Fernandez. They had an immediate connection. Later, while apartment hunting side-by-side, Carla admitted that her father had died just six months earlier. Lennon shared her own story. A seed was planted.

    A couple of months later Carla organized a dinner party for five women, Lennon among them. All of them had lost a parent already though they were only in their 20s; all of them had felt alone in that loss.

    An emotional movement was born: The Dinner Party. Today, there are 31 “tables” across the country and the initial organization plans to create even more.

    Lennon says, “As people gather month after month, they branch out from talking about their lost loved ones and start exploring what those losses have taught them about the meaning of life.”

    On Saturday evening, CCTV showed a computer-generated image of the Chang'e 3 lander's path as it approached the surface of the moon, saying that during the landing period it needed to have no contact with Earth. As it was just hundreds of meters away the lander's camera broadcast images of the moon's surface.

    The Chang'e 3's solar panels, which are used to absorb sunlight to generate power, opened soon after the landing. The mission blasted off (发射) from southwest China on Dec. 2 on a Long March-3B carrier rocket. It is named after a mythical Chinese goddess of the moon and the “Yutu” rover vehicle, or “Jade Rabbit” in English, afternoon the goddess' pet.

    China's military-backed space program has made much progress in a relatively short time, although it is behind the United States and Russia in technology and experience. China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003, becoming the third nation after Russia and the United States to achieve manned space travel independently. In 2006, it sent its first probe (探测器) to the moon. China plans to open a space station around 2020 and send an astronaut to the moon after that.

    “They are taking their time with getting to know about how to fly humans into space, how to build space stations, how to explore the solar system, especially the moon and Mars. They are making big advancements, and I think over the next 10-20 years they'll certainly be matching Russia and America in this area and maybe overtaking them in some areas.”

Hair Loss (Alopecia)

    Information about male pattern baldness(秃顶) causes, triggers and treatment in the UK.

    In contrary to popular belief, hair loss­or alopecia­can start at any age. While it is associated with mature males, and statistics show it does mainly affect men above 40, the reality is you can notice symptoms in your 30s, or even 20s and teen years.  The NHS statistics state that 25% of men start losing their hair by the time they reach 30. The most common form of hair loss is male pattern baldness­also known as androgenic alopecia­that affects more than half of men around the world.

    One option many men seek is treatment to avoid further hair loss, especially early on in the process. With treatments, such as Propecia, that specifically target male pattern baldness, it is possible to stop hair loss completely and even encourage fresh new hair growth.

    What is alopecia?

    Alopecia is the medical term for hair loss. Most commonly affecting males, hair loss in men is caused by an increased sensitivity to the male sex hormones (androgens). The type of alopecia you have (as well as hereditary and external factors) can influence levels of hair loss. The most common type of hair loss (alopecia) is male and female pattern baldness. Other types include：

    * Alopecia areata (patches of baldness, usually on the scalp)

    * Scarring alopecia (hair loss directly affecting the hair follicles)

    * Telogen effluvium (hair thinning over a larger area on the top of the head, rather than bald patches)

    * Anagen effluvium(most commonly caused by cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy)

    Whales, like all mammals(哺乳动物),need air, and come to the surface to breathe through a blowhole. A drone(无人机)that floats over the blowholes of humpback whales as they are making annual journey along Australia's east coast is being used by Australian scientists for collecting nasal mucus(鼻腔粘液)of whales.

    Vanessa Pirotta, a biologist at Macquarie University says that nasal mucus indicates the health of the whale. "It is the biological mixture that you see as a whale takes a breath as it surfaces from the water," she said. You can hear sounds of sharp breaths as a whale breathes because, after all, they are animals like you and I. So as they take a breath it is a lot of lung bacteria coming out from their lungs, which we can collect to provide a brief idea of whale health.

    Australian researchers have attached a special dish that is used in scientific tests to a drone which flies through the whale's nasal mist. As a whale comes to take a breath—you can actually see it coming to the surface on really good weather days —the drone then lowers, the dish is then opened, collecting nasal mucus for later research.

    The research could help to solve one of the secrets of another impressive creature of the deep —the Southern right whale. Its numbers have recovered on Australia's west coast since hunting became suppressed but its population on the eastern seaboard remains stubbornly low.

    In the past, studies into whale health had to rely on examining whales that were either killed or those whales that had been trapped on a beach. Drones allow scientists to collect nasal mucus from free-swimming whales to gather information in a safe way.