You may have seen many pumpkins in posters and TV shows recently since Halloween came on October 31.

    Lanterns made of pumpkins, also known as jack-o'-lanterns, are often seen during Halloween. Many people in the U.S. like to make them and put them in front of their houses. People hollow out（挖空）a pumpkin, carve a face on one side and place a candle inside to make the pumpkin glow. The lanterns can look funny or scary.

    This is not the only way in which pumpkins are part of American culture.

    During the Thanksgiving holiday, pumpkin pie is a common food. It is made from pumpkins and has some delicious spices to give it a nice flavor. People often put some cream on top of it before serving it. It is one of my favorite things to eat during Thanksgiving.

    There is also “pumpkin chucking”. It's a competition where people build machines to throw pumpkins through the air. The person whose pumpkin flies the farthest wins the competition. The world record for pumpkin chucking was set in Utah in 2010. The distance for that world record was about 1.69 kilometers!

    Finally, there are also pumpkin growing contests. For these contests, farmers try to grow the biggest pumpkins they can. The person who has the biggest pumpkin will win the first prize.

    We all think plants were expected to get larger with increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but changes in temperature, humidity(湿度)and nutrient availability seem to have trumped the benefits of increased carbon dioxide" said researchers from the National University of Singapore.

    45 percent of the species studied now reach smaller adult sizes than they did in the past. The researchers pointed out that warmer temperatures and changing habitats, caused by climate change, are possible reasons for shrinking creatures.

    " We do not yet know the mechanisms(机制)involved, or why some organism are getting smaller while others are unaffected," the researchers said. "Until we understand more, we could be risking negative consequences that we can't yet quantify."

    The change is big in cold-blooded animals. Only two decades of warmer temperatures are enough to make retiles (爬行动物)smaller. An increase of only 1 degree centigrade caused nearly a 10 percent increase in metabolism(新陈代谢). Greater use of energy resulted in tiny tortoises and little lizards. Fish are smaller now too. Though overfishing has played a part in reducing numbers, experiments show that warmer temperatures also stop fish growing.

    Warm-blooded animals aren't immune(免除)from the size change caused by climate change. Many birds are now smaller. Soay sheep are thinner. Red deer are weaken And polar bears are smaller, compared with historical records.

    This is not the first time this has happened in Earth's history. 55 million years ago, a warming event similar to the current climate change caused bees, spiders and ants to shrink by 50 to 75 percent over several thousand years. That event happened over a longer time than the current climate change.

    The speed of modem climate change could mean organisms may not respond or adapt quickly enough, especially those with long generation times climate change will be shown in the future.

    Little New Year (Chinese: Xiaonian), usually a week before the lunar New Year, falls on Feb 8 this year. It is also known as the Festival of the Kitchen God, the deity(神) who oversees the moral character of each household. Here are six things you should know about the Little New Year, another sign of the start of spring.

    ⒈Offer sacrifices to Kitchen God

    One of the most distinctive traditions of the Little New Year is the burning of a paper image of the Kitchen God, who will report on the family's conduct over the past year. The offerings to the Kitchen God include pig's head, fish, sweet bean paste, melons, fruit, boiled dumplings, barley sugar, and Guandong candy, a sticky treat made out of glutinous millet and sprouted wheat. Most of the offerings are sweets of various varieties. It is thought that this will seal the Kitchen God's mouth and encourage him to only say good things about the family when he ascends to heaven to make his report.

    ⒉House cleaning

    According to Chinese folk beliefs, during the last month of the year ghosts and deities must choose either to return to Heaven or to stay on Earth. It is believed that in order to ensure the ghosts and deities' timely departure people must thoroughly clean both their persons and their houses, down to every last drawer and cupboard.

    ⒊Eat Guandong candy

    Guandong candy, a sticky treat made out of glutinous millet and sprouted wheat, is a traditional snack that Chinese people eat on the Festival of the Kitchen God.

    ⒋Paste paper-cuts to windows

    In the Little New Year, old couplets and paper-cuts from the previous Spring Festival are taken down, and new window decorations, New Year's posters, and auspicious(吉利的) decorations are pasted up.

    ⒌Bath and hair-cut

    As the old Chinese saying goes, whether they're rich or poor, people often have a haircut before the Spring Festival. The activity of taking bath and haircut is often taken on the Little New Year.

    ⒍Preparations for Spring Festival

    People start to stock up necessary provisions for the Spring Festival since the Little New Year. Everything needed to make offerings to the ancestors, entertain guests, and feed the family over the long holiday must be purchased in advance.

    Being a volunteer brings me happiness. I work with Volunteers for Wildlife, a rescue and education organization at Bailey Arboretum in Locust Valley. Trying to help injured, displaced or sick animals can be heartbreaking; survival is never certain. However, when it works, it is simply beautiful.

    I got a rescue call from a woman in Muttontown. She had found a young owl(猫头鹰) on the ground. When I arrived, I saw a 2­ to 3­week­old owl. It had already been placed in a carrier for safety.

    I examined the chick(雏鸟) and it seemed fine. If I could find the nest, I might have been able to put it back, but no luck. My next work was to build a nest and settle it in a tree.

    The homeowner was very helpful. A wire basket was found. I put some pine（松树） branches into the basket to make this nest safe and comfortable. I placed the chick in the nest, and it quickly calmed down.

    Now all that was needed were the parents, but they were absent. I gave the homeowner a recording of the hunger screams of owl chicks. These advertise the presence of chicks to adults; they might also encourage our chick to start calling as well. I gave the owner as much information as possible and headed home to see what news the night might bring.

    A nervous night to be sure, but sometimes the spirits of nature smile on us all! The homeowner called to say that the parents had answered to the recordings. I drove over and saw the chick in the nest looking healthy and active. And it was accompanied in the nest by the greatest sight of all—LUNCH！ The parents had done their duty and would probably continue to do so.

    During the period from 1660 through 1800, Great Britain became the world's leader. Language itself became submitted to rules during this period. This need to fix the English language is best illustrated (描述) in the making of The Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson. Guides to the English language had been in existence before Johnson began his project in 1746. These, however, were often little more than lists of hard words. When definitions of common words were supplied, they were often unhelpful. For example, a "horse" was defined in an early dictionary as "a beast well known".

    Johnson changed all that, but the task was not an easy one. Renting a house at 17 Gough Square, Johnson began working in the worst of conditions. Supported only by his publisher, Johnson worked on the Dictionary with five assistants. Compared to the French Academy's dictionary, which took forty workers fifty-five years to complete (1639-1694), Johnson's dictionary was completed by very few people very quickly.

Balanced on a chair with only three legs, Johnson sat against a wall in a room filled with books. Johnson would read widely from these books, mark passages illustrating the use of a particular word, and give the books to his assistants so that they could copy the passages on slips of paper. These slips were then stuck to eighty large notebooks under the key words that Johnson had selected. Fixing the word by this method, Johnson could record a word，s usage and its definition.

    How many passages were used? According to Johnson's modern biographer Walter Jackson Bate, the original total number could have been over 240,000. How many words were defined by the lexicographer? Over 40,000 words appeared in two large books in April of 1755. Did Johnson fully understand the huge task he was undertaking when he began? As he told his contemporary biographer James Boswell, "I knew very well what I was undertaking and very well how to do it — and have done it very well."