For centuries, elephants have played a big role in the world's economies, culture and religion. The African elephant used to be found all over Africa and the Asian elephant moved from Syria to China to Indonesia. Nowadays, elephants are found in small groups in the south of the Sahara Desert and scarcely in Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka and India.

    In the early twentieth century, there were close to ten million elephants, and now the elephant number is as low as 252,000 and expected to drop down to 160,000 by 2025. Between 2007 and 2014, the elephant population fell by at least 30%, or 144,000 elephants. As researchers have traveled over the African plains, they only spotted one herd of 36 elephants in an area like the size of Mexico. It is clear that these gentle mammals are disappearing right before our eyes.

    There are many reasons why the elephant population has been decreasing, one of which is their habitat. Humans are competing with elephants for living space, and as more and more humans clear the land that is being used by elephants, the elephants have less space. Elephant hunting or "poaching" has been a major factor for the disappearance of this species, and they are killed only for their valuable ivory tusks. Although the trade of tusks is illegal, it is still a common practice in many places.

    Often, all the local people living among elephants would be farmers, and found that they could make more money by selling the tusks of one elephant, than doing manual labor for twelve years. That alone makes it really hard to prevent them from killing the elephants.

    Some places such as Botswana, have put in extra effort to protect their wildlife from poachers by founding their Botswana Defense Force, which is made up of around 700 specially-trained soldiers that are stationed in 40 different areas. You may feel worried about the present situations elephants are in, but there are ways to help. To find out how you can help elephant conservation, adopt an elephant, or donate, click here.

    Galaxy saw a man and a woman who communicated with the sign language at the train station when she was on the way home one evening. She noticed that the woman asked the man for the direction. He told her that he did not know. Galaxy decided to help them. She had learned the sign language when she served as a volunteer in the deaf and mute（聋哑）school. Then she showed the woman the direction and left her email address to them in case they needed her help later.

    She received an email from that man the next day. Kazrim was his name. Galaxy replied his mail sincerely.

    They both started chatting online soon after and began seeing each other. Although they only communicated with the sign language, it never bothered her.

    Galaxy was fond of him gradually. Obviously, Kazrim was the same too. He presented Galaxy with a bunch of sunflowers and asked her sincerely, “Are you willing to be my girlfriend?” Galaxy was pleasantly surprised. She requested him to give her some time to persuade her parents.

    As she had expected, her parents were very angry after they had learned of their love story. Galaxy explained, “Kazrim is an excellent and a very optimistic person. He has a very positive attitude towards life and work. He cares for others always. He is 100％ better than the normal. Moreover, the mute is still a human. He should possess a perfect and wonderful love. ”

    Her parents asked to see him, then. The very worried Galaxy took Kazrim home a few days later. When they were on the train, Kazrim told her, "I'm going to tell your parents I'll be looking after you well with all my life!” Galaxy was deeply moved.

    As soon as they had entered the house, Galaxy introduced him to her parents. She said, "This is Kazrim.” Just right after her speech, an unbelievable thing happened. Kazrim threw the gift away and held her in his arms tightly.

    He said, “YOU CAN TALK?” It was the same question that Galaxy wanted to ask, too.

    The four people were shocked all of a sudden. As a matter of fact, Kazrim always believed that Galaxy was a mute and he still fell in love with her deeply.

    On 29 May last year, I was doing my swim training for a half Ironman race in the bay near my home.

    I was finishing my first loop (圈) when I felt jaws coming around my body and a sharp pain. The water was dark, so I couldn't see anything. It just came out of nowhere and then it was gone in a flash. I knew it was something really big and assumed it was a shark. I panicked, but knew I needed to get out of the water. I was kicking wildly in case it came back. There was a lifeguard boat close by, so I waved my arms in the air and screamed for help. It got to me within 20 seconds. At that point I didn't feel anything; adrenaline (肾上腺素) had taken over. The lifeguards held me under the arms and pulled me up out of the water. Then the pain kicked in and it was pretty hard to bear. Some muscle had been bitten off my right arm. I felt a lot of warm, gushing blood.

    My chest felt heavy, as if someone had put their foot on it, and I was having trouble breathing. It was extremely painful. When I got to the hospital, I told the nurses to put me to sleep because of the pain. I just wanted them to fix me.

    I woke up after surgery four hours later. My doctor was amazed when I managed to move my fingers: the bite just missed a major nerve. My right lung had been damaged; I had several broken bones and a nerve in my leg was cut, so I have reduced feeling at the top of my leg. The shark also bit through my upper back muscle.

    Local experts determined that the shark was probably 9-10 feet long. It was young, about seven years old. It just attacked me, left and didn't come back because it figured I wasn't food.

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    While residents of wealthy nations tend to have greater life satisfaction, new research shows that those living in poorer nations report having greater meaning in life.

    These findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological science, suggest that meaning in life may be higher in poorer nations as a result of greater religiosity (笃信宗教). As countries become richer, religion becomes less central to people's lives and they lose a sense of meaning in life.

    “Thus far, the wealth of nations has been almost always associated with longevity, health, happiness or life satisfaction,” explains psychological scientist Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia. “Given that meaning in life is an important aspect of overall well-being, we wanted to look more carefully at differential patterns, correlates (相关物), and predictors for meaning in life.”

    Oishi and colleague Ed Diener of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign investigated life satisfaction, meaning, and well-being by examining data from the 2007 Gallup World Poll, a large-scale survey of over 140,000 participants from 132 countries. In addition to answering a basic life satisfaction question, participants were asked: “Do you feel your life has an important purpose or meaning?” and “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”

    The data revealed some unexpected trends: “Among Americans, those who are high in life satisfaction are also high in meaning in life,” says Oishi. “But when we looked at the societal level of analysis, we found a completely different pattern of the association between meaning in life and life satisfaction.”

    When looking across many countries, Oishi and Diener found that people in wealthier nations were more educated, had fewer children, and expressed more individualistic attitudes compared to those in poorer countries — all factors that were associated with higher life satisfaction but a significantly lower sense of meaning in life.”

    The data suggest that religiosity may play an important role: Residents of wealthier nations, where religiosity is lower, reported less meaning in life and had higher suicide rates than poorer countries.

    According to the researchers, religion may provide meaning to life to the extent that it helps people to overcome personal difficulty and cope with the struggles of working to survive in poor economic conditions:

    “Religion gives a system that connects daily experiences with the coherent whole (连贯的整体) and a general structure to one's life … and plays a critical role in constructing meaning out of extreme hardship,” the researchers write.

    Oishi and Diener hope to reproduce these findings using more comprehensive measures of meaning and religiosity, and are interested in following countries over time to track whether economic prosperity gives rise to less religiosity and less meaning in life.

    China has announced it's abolishing its one-child policy. What difference has it made, statistically speaking?

    400 million births prevented. The one-child policy, officially in place since 1979, has prevented 400 million births. Parents have faced fines and other punishments for having more children.

    The majority of the decrease in China's fertility(生育)rate happened in the 1970s.It dropped from 5.8 children per woman in 1970 to 2.7 in 1978. Despite the one-child policy the rate had only fallen to 1.7 by 2013. 21:28 baby death rate. Since the one-child policy was introduced, baby girls have become more likely to die than boys.

    In the 1970s, according to the United Nations, 60 males per 1,000 live births died under the age of one. For girls the figure was 53. In the 1980s, after the one-child policy became official, the rate for both was 36. By the 1990s, 26 males per 1,000 live births died before the age of one-and 33 girls. The 2000s saw 21 boys per 1,000 live births dying and 28 girls.

    1.16 boys born for every girl

    Sexually selective abortions have been considered as a major cause of China's unusual sexual imbalance.

    Gietel-Basten, associate professor in social policy at Oxford University, says the births of many girls are not registered if parents have broken the rule by having two children, adding officials often turn a blind eye. It's estimated there are now 33 million more men than women in China.

    4：2：1 families

    With the ageing of China's population and the continuation of the one-child policy, a “4: 2 :1”home is the description given to households in which there are four grandparents cared for by two working age parents, who themselves have one child.

    By 2050, it's predicted that a quarter of China's population will be 65 or older. The predicted decline in the number of people of working age is thought to have persuaded the government to drop the one-child policy.