As global temperatures continue to rise, more “extreme rain” events—intense, cats-and-dogs down pours—can be expected, said the study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. And that, scientists said, means an increased flood risk, particularly for the world's driest areas. The study challenges the idea that global warming is causing dry areas to become drier and wet areas wetter.

    “In both wet and dry regions, we see these great increases in heavy precipitation（冰雹）,” lead author Markus Donat, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales, told Nature.

    Donat and his team collected data from 1951 to 2010 on extreme precipitation events from 11, 000 weather stations around the world, Nature reported.

     In that time, the number of days with“extreme precipitation” increased 1 percent to 2 percent per decade.

  “We found a strong relationship between global warming and an increase in rainfall, particularly in areas outside of the tropics,” Donat said in a statement.

  “Importantly, this research suggests we will see these extreme rainfall events increases at regional levels in dry areas, not just as an average across the globe,” Donat added.

    Peter Stott, a senior climate scientistat Met Office, told Climate Central that the study's findings are important, because more violent rainfall and flooding will “challenge our capability toadapt to a rapidly changing climate.”

    As Nature reported, the researchaligns（结盟）with a 2015 study that found global warming has led to a sharp increase in record-breaking precipitation events. Donat told Nature that his study should come as a warning to world governments.

    You've flown halfway around the world；you've sniffed out this place that nobody in Falongland or Thailand seems to have ever heard of；so what on earth is there to do here？You consider this question as you sink into an old wooden beach chair that holds you above the sand.

It was a long journey from Bangkok to Huaplee.By the time you found the bus station and got yourself sorted out，it took almost as long as the flight from Falongland.

    Huaplee is located just south of Hua Hin，about two hundred kilometres from Bangkok，down the west side of the Gulf of Thailand. Not many tourists find this place，and the ones that do wonder if finding it has been their purpose all along.

    There's an apparent laziness that surrounds you here.It's what this place offers，and it's free of charge.The small waves that tap the shoreline seem to slow everything down.You settle into your beach chair in preparation for a long rest.You sit there and watch the sea.

    It's early afternoon，so the cook comes out and asks what you'd like to eat this evening.Before long he's rushed off to the market to buy the ingredients for whatever it was that you ordered－every meal fresh and to order.No menu here.

    There is no poolside noise here but just that wonderfully warm，clear blue sea.There's no street noise.The only sounds are the murmurs of nature.

    For now you just count your blessings (福祉)，listing them in the sand with your toe (脚趾)．You don't have to worry about being late for work. You don't have to do anything.

    The beach to your right stretches off to the horizon (地平线)，slowly narrowing to nothingness only to reemerge again on your left，now steadily widening until it covers the chair beneath you.Sand to your left and sand to your right; it's unbroken，endless.No start，no end，just sand，sun，and peace.Step off it，and you re­enter the world of traffic，stress，work，and hurry.

    Normally you're the type who can't sit still for more than ten minutes，but you're on Huaplee Lazy Beach now and，in the right frame of mind，it stretches all the way around the world.

     “How could it take me so long to find it？” you wonder.

    When other nine-year-old kids were playing games, she was working at a petrol station. When other teens were studying or going out, she fought to find a place to sleep on the street. But she beat these terrible setbacks（挫折） to win a highly competitive scholarship and gain entry （录入）into Harvard University. And her amazing story has inspired a movie, “Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story”.

    Liz Murray, a 22-year-old American girl, has been writing a real-life story of willpower and determination. Liz grew up with two drug-addicted parents. There was never enough food or warm clothes in the house. Liz was the only member of the family who had a job. Her mother had AIDS and died when Liz was just l5 years old. The effect of that loss became a turning point in her life. Connecting the environment in which she had grown up with how her mother had died. She decided to do something about it.

    Liz went back to school. She threw herself into her studies, never telling her teachers that she was homeless. At night, she lived on the streets. “What drove me to live on had something to do with understanding, and by understanding that there was a whole other way of being. I had only experienced a small part of the society,” she wrote in her book Breaking Night.

    She admitted that she used envy （妒忌）to drive herself on. She used the benefits that come easily to others, such as a safe living environment, to encourage herself that “next to nothing could hold me down”. She finished high school in just two years and won a full scholarship to study at Harvard University. But Liz decided to leave her top university a couple of months earlier this year in order to take care of her father, who has also developed AIDS. “I love my parents so much. They are drug addicts. But I never forget that they love me all the time. ”

    Liz wants moviegoers（常看电影的人） to come away with the idea that changing your life is “as simple as making a decision”.

    You know those nutrition guidelines the government issues every few years? It turns out that following them isn't just good for your health. It's good for the planet, too.

    " What we found is that impacts vary across nations, but in the high­impact nations, in general, you can see that, if you follow a nationally recommended diet, despite the fact that these diets don't mention explicitly—or most of them don't explicitly mention—environmental impacts, that you are going to have lower environmental impacts due to that. So that's sort of fairly clear across all the high­income nations." said Paul Behrens, an environmental scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

    The food we eat takes a big toll on the environment. A third of the ice­free land on Earth is used for agriculture, and according to some estimates, producing food accounts for roughly a fifth of all human­caused greenhouse gas emissions. Fertilizer runoff also leads to other problems, like the algae blooms in Lake Eerie and the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

    However, following dietary guidelines would reduce those impacts, especially in wealthy countries like the US. "Most of the reductions come from meat and dairy," which have an outsized impact on land use and pollution, and are a major source of greenhouse gases.(That's partly due to cow farts. Seriously.) Following the suggestions would also mean eating fewer calories, since many people here eat more than they need.

    Overall, in high­income countries, Behren's team estimates that following the rules could result in as much as a 17 percent reduction in land use, a 21 percent reduction in nutrient pollution, and a 25 percent drop in agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Cutting down on how much food we waste—which is roughly a third in the US—could help even more. The results are in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    Of course, people are notoriously bad at following diets. But: "These nationally recommended guidelines do actually have a knock­on effect on other areas of policy making. So if I'm developing a new healthy­eating­for­schools program then that's going to be based off a lot of detail that I get from the nationally recommended guidelines. So while it might not necessarily be the case that people follow directly …they actually are quite influential on the preparation of other advice."

    It seems that a smaller environmental footprint and a healthier lifestyle could go hand in hand.

    Gregory Kloehn digs through dustbins every day, but not for the reason that most people would think. He isn't homeless. In fact he is trying to help the homeless.

    Gregory began his life as a sculptor. But he often felt that his sculpture (雕塑) which just stood in rich people's houses for years, lacked a meaningful purpose. So in 2015 he decided to put his artistic energies into creating homes to sell—not ordinary homes but small structures built entirely from recycled materials.

    The thought of creating homes for the homeless didn't come to him until the year 2017, when a homeless couple asked him for a tarp (防水布). Instead of a tarp, Gregory offered them something better: a small home with a water tank, a kitchen and a tap for waste. They were so grateful that Gregory decided to focus his efforts on helping house the homeless population in his city. And soon his "Homeless Homes Project" was started.

    Before starting a new home, Gregory goes hunting for materials by digging through dustbins. Everything he finds is usable—refrigerator doors become house doors; washing machine doors often serve as windows, and the tops of cars become strong roofs. He put wheels at the bottom for users to move their homes around easily. Each home takes two to three days to make.

    So far Gregory has donated dozens of homes to the city's most needy. While his small low- cost mobile homes are not the final solution to the problem of homelessness, they are really practical and do provide a warm and safe place for the homeless to stay in. They are simply a way for one man to do something nice for those in need of some help.

    Gregory has written a book titled Homeless Architecture, where he explains techniques to build those homes and he is now working on weekend workshops. "A lot of people who hear about what I'm doing want to get involved," he said. "Maybe we can meet someplace and put a couple of homes together."

A 16th century drawing by one of the key figures of the German Renaissance has been valued in excess of $10 million after it was initially purchased at a yard sale for just $30 in 2017.According to Agnews Gallery—the London auction house in possession of the artwork—Albrecht Dürer,who died in 1528,is regarded as both the greatest German artist of his time and as one of the most important artists and intellectuals of the European Renaissance.The drawing that has been rediscovered is titled "The Virgin and Child".As Dürer's career and legacy have been studied in depth since his death,it is extremely rare to find unknown works of his.

Boston-based art collector Clifford Schorer,who is a consultant to the gallery,added Thursday that he came across the rare artwork,thought to have been completed in 1503,by chance on the way to a party in Massachusetts in 2019.He had forgotten to bring a gift to the party,so he went to a bookstore,which sold collectable volumes.The bookseller told him his friend had a Dürer drawing and asked if he would take a look at it.Schorer agreed,but held out little hope.

The artwork had been purchased at a yard sale at the home of an architect who had been gifted the piece from his art dealer father,Schorer said."Generally speaking,it's an inverse(反向的) relationship between how dramatic the claim is and how much of a let down it is.For example if someone tells me they have a Leonardo da Vinci,I'm usually pretty confident I'm going to see some images that are unimpressive," Schorer said.

But when he arrived to examine the artwork weeks later,he was taken aback by its quality."It was like experiencing a kind of electricity.When you're in my world you spend your life looking for unknown things that lead to fascinating research avenues...and I could see I was at the beginning of something extremely exciting," Schorer said.