If life is a beach, then a village in Ireland has come back from the dead after the sand returned 33 years later due to a freak tide.

    Dooagh beach on Achill Island in the west of Ireland, was washed away in 1984 after storms hit the area, leaving a rocky foreshore. The tourists left, causing the hotels and guesthouses as well as the cafes to close down. But in April this year, the sand returned over a ten-day period caused by an unusually high tide that deposited hundreds of thousands of tons of sand along the 300m beach, bringing the beautiful beach back to its former glory.

    Emmet Callaghan from Achill Island Tourist Office told the journalist that the people of the island were excited at the beach's reappearing. “It's so nice for the villagers to have their beach back. It is an incredible example of the force and power of nature and how the coast can change in a matter of days. Yesterday we had traffic block here in the village with cars and people coming from all over Ireland and the UK to see our new beach,” he said. “The people here have always spoken about their days on the beach and how they enjoyed it as children. To have it back with their kids is unbelievable. Now locals are hoping that the beach is given the blue flag status. We already have five blue flag beaches and hopefully, if we keep our beach here, we'll have a sixth.”

    Dr Ivan Haigh from the University of Southampton said there were two explanations as to why the beach has reformed. “It could be a change in sediment (沉积物) supply, from further up or down the coast which has brought a fresh amount of sediment to the beach,” he said. “It could also be due to a change in environmental conditions, either a change in the wave climate or a series of tides that have provided the ideal conditions for this beach to reform.”

    The tourism office and locals hope the new beach will stay, at least for the summer of this year.

    A Spanish company Siesta&Go has opened the first public napping (小睡) space in Madrid. It promises people a quiet rest in the middle of the city's business center.

    Napping spaces are nothing new; places to rest are already set up in other big cities in the world. But the idea would appear to work well with the culture of Spain, where people traditionally take an afternoon nap, called siesta.

    The Madrid nap space recently opened with 19 beds. People can use them by the minute or by the hour, and they can also choose either a private or shared room. An hour of napping inside a private room costs about $15.

    Siesta &Go provides all bedding, clean nightshirts and other materials. Nippers can request to be woken up when their time is up. It also offers areas to work, with armchairs, newspapers and coffee for those not wishing to sleep.

    Philip &Go is one happy customer. Marco says he gets tired during the day because of hard work. He says a siesta is the perfect way to build up energy. "I come for about 30 minutes or something like that. That is usually enough for me to be full of energy."

    While many Spanish people love their naps, others like Carlos Villarroja say they are just too busy to keep the tradition. "It's a Spanish tradition, but I think it's more of a legend (传说) than a tradition. Because of the lifestyle and the working hours, we have very little free time for a siesta at least during the week."

    But many health experts believe there is evidence that taking a short nap can be very good for the body and mind. Scientific studies show that taking a siesta can also prevent illness and lower blood pressure.

    A mother goat is able to pick out her own baby from its voice alone by the time the kid is just five days old.

    Researchers from University of London played kids' bleats to female goats and studied their responses. They were surprised to find that the animals were able to pick out their own kids' voices.

    “A mother and the kid rely a lot on smell to recognize one another and, in the wild, during the first week of their lives, the animals hide in grass and don't call much. It's a strategy they use to avoid enemies,” Dr Elodie Briefer, who led the research, explained to BBC News. “The mother call to the kids when she want them to come and feed, so we expected that kids would recognize the mothers' voices.” In fact, this was the case for deer, which also use this hiding strategy, although they do not belong to the same family of species as goats.

    She and her team recorded and played back young kids' calls to the female goats and recorded their responses. She explained, “Even when the calls came from kids that are five to six days old, we could see the mothers responding more to the voices of their own babies.” Hearing the voice of their own kids, the females would look towards the speaker that the sound was coming from, moving around and calling in response.

    The scientists say that understanding how goats behave and communicate is very important. “This helps us understand just how smart these animals are,” said Dr. Briefer. “Farmers might be able to change their way to raise goats considering this natural behaviour.”

    Four years ago your friends congratulated you and your father talked big continuously. Four years ago you walked among the gothic towers and weathered traditions that sew our community together. But what's next, will I make friends, or I will measure up? And maybe you quietly wondered why a place like Yale, a place that sparked the drive of presidents, a place that raised the world-famous scholars, a place that trained Pulitzer Prize winners, would ever want you? I hope you had these questions because otherwise I might have embarrassed myself. I admit I asked all of these and more.

    I took an unconventional path to Yale. Five years ago I was working the evening shift at a clothing store in the suburbs of Virginia. My family had moved every year for the past five years and our finances were so consumed that retirement was not a possibility. Worse yet, my son was a junior at an Ivy League college in New Jersey and hearing about his privileged friends often reminded me of all the things I wanted to give him but couldn't.

    When I told him this he relied, “If you really want to spoil me, spoil yourself. ”Then he took my hands and told me I had a brilliant mind and deserved better than everything I had ever known.

    That summer I started community college while working full-time. Education was my second chance. I awoke my curiosity, vitality( 活力) and dignity that I never knew I could feel. When I read Eliot, Miller and Morrison, it was as if I were the first person to have ever read them, as if they were secret insights into the human soul and situations and I knew I couldn't stop.

    Walking among these gothic towers, among these traditions, and among this brilliant, vibrant and unapologetically eclectic Class of 2014 has been inspiring. Whether debating issues in class, or chatting over coffee, I have enjoyed, learned and loved every moment I have shared with you. You have made me a better person and I only hoped I have helped in some way to do the same for you.

    And yet even now this is dreamlike. Four years ago I was convinced no one would want me, I wouldn't measure up and as far as knowing what was next, I supposed I had resigned myself to more of the same. But I've come to learn that nothing great can really be accomplished without a healthy dose of terror. No one ever wrote epic(史诗般的) poems, built monuments or told bedtime stories about people who played it safe.

    I was terrified when I came to Yale. A big part of me thought I wasn't good enough. But a big part of life is ignoring the naysayers(反对者) especially the one inside you. Most people are stopped from doing great things by no one but themselves. I learned to tell myself to shut up. Sometimes in the mirror in the morning and others times in the dark before I went to bed. I came to realize once I could overcome my own fear I could overcome just about anything. If you haven't felt this yet I recommended it: it's the greatest joy you'll ever know.

    You've likely all met your own fear and misgivings(担忧、害怕). I charge you to tell that voice to shut up when necessary because in the end your greatness will not be about IQ but about the sincerity of your ambitions, the toughness of your character and your unwillingness to compromise in the face of difficulty, fear and uncertainty.

    And should someone tell you that it can't be done, or you're not good enough or it's not worth the trouble? Should others ask you to take the safe route, or stick to the path of least resistance? Should people say it's too late or your dreams are impractical? Look them in the eye, laugh a little and let them know “Nothing is impossible”.

    I was asked by a reader recently why so many animals seem to have pink ears, when their bodies are all different colours? The truth is that most animals actually don't have pink ears. Let us explain.

    Near the equator (赤道), where the climate is hot, animals are likely to have darker skin, including on their ears. Think of the African elephant, which has quite dark ears. In colder climates, skin colour is usually lighter and often pink.

    Why is skin colour different in different climates？Skin pigmentation, which is what gives skin its colour, can protect against sunburn and skin cancer (癌症). When animals live in colder parts of the world, they don't need it as much to survive. Light-coloured skin also helps animals stay warmer because it reduces heat loss, which is useful if you're in a colder climate.

    For most animals, the colour of their fur or other body covering has generally developed as camouflage. That allows animals to mix into the background and avoid being eaten, or for predators (捕食者) to remain hidden during hunting. One example is the sandy-coloured coat of the desert fennec fox, which uses camouflage for both hunting and hiding.

    By the way, in many animals, ears come in many different shapes and sizes. For example, in bats, the serval (a type of African wildcat) and the fennec fox, the ears are large compared to their body size—this helps them hear better because it allows them to sense more sound waves. Naked mole-rats have tiny ears because they need to dig a lot. Big ears would get in the way. The other downside of big ears is that you can lose a lot of body heat. That's why animals that live in really cold places, like the Arctic fox, have quite small ears.

    Roughly the size of a soda can, sitting on a bookshelf, a relatively harmless device(设备) may be turning friends away from your home. The elephant in your living room is your Internet-connected camera, a device people are increasingly using for peace of mind in their homes. But few stop to think about the effect these devices may have on house guests. Should you tell your friends, for instance, that they're being recorded while you all watch the big game together?

    "It's certainly new territory, especially as home security cameras become easier to fix," says Lizzie Post, president of the Emily Post Institute, America's distinguished manners advisors." I think it will be very interesting to see what manners appear in terms of whether you tell people you have a camera or not, and whether guests have a right to ask that it be turned off, if it's not a security issue. "Post wants to make clear that she's not talking about legal rights, but rather personal preference.

When it comes to security cameras, Post says it's a host's responsibility to make sure guests feel comfortable within their home. If the host casually acknowledges that there is a camera in the room by telling a story about it, that may be enough to provide an opening for a guest to say if they are uncomfortable.

    However, if a contractor(合约工)is working in your home, you don't need to tell them that there are cameras watching. Then again, the camera can also work in contractors' favor. "If anything does go wrong while they're in the house, they don't want to be blamed for it," she says. "In fact, the camera could be the thing that proves that they didn't steal the $20, or knock the vase off the table.