Easter(复活节) is still a great day for worship, randy in baskets and running around the yard finding eggs, but every year it gets quite a bit worse for bunnies.

    And no, not because the kids like to pull their ears. The culprit is climate change, and some researchers found that rising temperatures arc having harmful effects on at least five species of rabbit in the US.

    Take the Lower Keys March rabbit, for instance. An endangered species that lives in the Lower Florida Keys, this species of cottontail is a great swimmer — it lives on the islands! — but it is already severely affected by development and now by rising levels. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, an ocean level rise of only 0. 6 meters will send these guys jumping to higher ground and a 0.9-meter rise would wipe out their habitat (栖息地) completely.

    The snowshoe hare, on the other hand, has a color issue. Most of these rabbits change their fur color from white in the wintertime to brown in the summer, each designed to give them better cover from predators（捕食者）. As the number of days with snow decreases all across the country, however, more and more bunnies arc being left in white fur during brown dirt days of both fall and spring, making them an easier mark for predators. Researchers know that the color change is controlled by the number of hours of sunlight, but whether the rabbit will be able to adapt quick enough to survive is a big question. The National Wildlife Federation has reported that hunters have noticed their numbers are already markedly down.

    American pikas or rock rabbits, a relative of rabbits and hares, might be the firs' of these species to go extinct due to climate change. About 7-8 inches long, pikas live high in the cool, damp mountains west of the Rocky Mountains. As global temperatures rise, they would naturally migrate (迁徙) to higher ground — but they already occupy the mountaintops. They can't go any higher. The National Wildlife Federation reports that they might not be able to stand the new temperatures as their habitat beats up.

    The volcano rabbit has the same problem. These rabbits live on the slopes of volcanoes in Mexico, and recent studies have shown that the lower range of their habitat has already shifted upward about 700 meters, but there are not suitable plants for them to move higher, so they are stuck in the middle. Scientists are concerned about their populations.

    Native to the US, pygmy rabbits weigh less than 1 pound and live in the American West. They are believed to be the smallest rabbits in the world. Their habitats have been destroyed by development. Several populations, such as the Columbia Basin pygmy, almost went extinct and were saved by zoo breeding programs. Pygmy rabbits also rely on winter cover by digging tunnels through the snow to escape predators, but lesser snowfall is leaving them exposed.

All of this gives new meaning to dressing up in a giant bunny costume this Easter.

Plastic-Eating Worms

    Humans produce more than 300 million tons of plastic every year. Almost half of that winds up in landfills(垃圾填埋场), and up to 12 million tons pollute the oceans. So far there is no effective way to get rid of it, but a new study suggests an answer may lie in the stomachs of some hungry worms.

    Researchers in Spain and England recently found that the worms of the greater wax moth can break down polyethylene, which accounts for 40% of plastics. The team left 100 wax worms on a commercial polyethylene shopping bag for 12 hours, and the worms consumed and broke down about 92 milligrams, or almost 3% of it. To confirm that the worms' chewing alone was not responsible for the polyethylene breakdown, the researchers made some worms into paste(糊状物) and applied it to plastic films. 14 hours later the films had lost 13% of their mass — apparently broken down by enzymes (酶) from the worms' stomachs. Their findings were published in Current Biology in 2017.

    Federica Bertocchini, co-author of the study, says the worms' ability to break down their everyday food — beeswax — also allows them to break down plastic. “Wax is a complex mixture, but the basic bond in polyethylene, the carbon-carbon bond, is there as well,” she explains, “The wax worm evolved a method or system to break this bond. ”

    Jennifer DeBruyn, a microbiologist at the University of Tennessee, who was not involved in the study, says it is not surprising that such worms can break down polyethylene. But compared with previous studies, she finds the speed of breaking down in this one exciting. The next step, DeBruyn says, will be to identify the cause of the breakdown. Is it an enzyme produced by the worm itself or by its gut microbes(肠道微生物)?

    Bertocchini agrees and hopes her team's findings might one day help employ the enzyme to break down plastics in landfills. But she expects using the chemical in some kind of industrial process — not simply “millions of worms thrown on top of the plastic.”

    People are always looking for lost cities and occasionally one is found: Borobudur in Indonesia, for example. But perhaps some of the places people look for never existed — or did they? Here are just a few famous mythical (传说中的) cities.

    El Dorado

    El Dorado is a story that began in 1537, when Spanish explorers found the Muisca people in the mountains of what is now Colombia. They heard the story of a man who covered himself with gold and dived into a lake. Then people began to talk of El Dorado — 'the golden man'. Soon people started to think of El Dorado as a place, too — a city of gold and amazing riches. Nowadays, the name 'El Dorado' is still used to mean 'a place where you can get rich quickly'.

    Atlantis

    There was once an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It was the mythical island of Atlantis. The people of the island were very rich, thanks to the natural resources (资源) on their island. For hundreds of years, they lived simple lives. But slowly they began to change. They started to want power. So the gods decided to destroy Atlantis. Suddenly, the island and its people were swallowed (淹没) by the sea and were never seen again.

    Shambhala

    In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala is a mystical (神秘的) country that is hidden somewhere behind the Himalayas. Shambhala is a word from an old language that means 'place of peace' or 'place of happiness'. It is said that there is no war in Shambhala, and in the future, when the world is full of war, a huge army will come out of Shambhala, destroy the world's bad rulers, and start a new Golden Age. Some people say this will happen in 2424.

    Going to university is supposed to be a mind-broadening experience.

    That assumption is possibly made in contrast to training for work straight after school. But is it actually true? Jessika Golle of the University of Tubingen, Germany, thought she would try to find out.

    Her result, however, is not quite what might be expected. It shows that those who have been to university do indeed seem to leave with broader and more inquiring minds than those who have spent their immediate post-school years in vocational training for work. However, it is not the case that university broadens minds. Rather, work seems to narrow them.

    After studying the early career of 2095 German youngsters, Dr. Golle reached the conclusion.

    During the period under investigation, Germany had three tracks in its schools: a low one for pupils who would most probably leave school early and enter vocational training; a high one for those almost certain to enter university; and an intermediate one, from which there was a choice between the academic and vocational routes.

    The team used two standardized tests to assess their volunteers. One was of personality traits and the other of attitudes. They administered both tests twice once towards the end of each volunteer's time at school, and then again six years later.

    Of the original group, 382 were on the intermediate track, and it was on these that the researchers focused. Of them, 212 went to university and the remaining 170 chosen for vocational training and a job.

    When it came to the second round of tests, Dr Golle found that the personalities of those who had gone to university had not apparently changed. Those who had undergone vocational training and then got jobs were not that much changed in personality, either except in one crucial respect they had become more responsible.

    That sounds like a good thing, compared with the common public image of undergraduates as a bunch of pampered layabouts(娇生惯养的闲人). But changes in attitude the researchers recorded were more worrying. In the university group, again, none were detectable. But those who had chosen the vocational route showed marked drops in interest in tasks that are investigative and enterprising in nature.

    And that might restrict their choice of careers. Some investigative and enterprising jobs, such as scientific research, are, indeed off limits to the degreeless.

    But many, particularly in Germany, with its tradition of vocational training, are not. The researchers mention, for example, computer programmers, finance-sector workers and entrepreneurs as careers requiring these attributes.

    If Dr Golle is correct, and changes in attitude brought about by the very training Germany prides itself on are narrowing people's choices, that is indeed a matter of concern.

    Whenever we see a button, we are eager to press it because we know something will happen. This is true in most cases, for example on a doorbell and on the “on/off” button on the TV. But some buttons are actually fake, like the “close” button on a lift.

    Many people are in the habit of pressing the “close” button because they don't have the patience to wait for the lift doors to shut. But lifts, “close” buttons are a complete scam, at least in the US—the doors will not close any faster no matter how hard you press.

    It started in the 1990s when the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in the US, making sure that all lifts stayed open long enough so that people with disabilities could enter. Only US firefighters and repairmen can use the buttons to speed up the door-closing process if they have a code or special keys.

    But to normal lift riders, the buttons aren't completely useless. According to psychologists, fake buttons can actually make you feel better by offering you a sense of control.

    “Perceived (能够感知的) control is very important. It reduces stress and increases well-being,” Ellen J. Langer, a psychology professor, said, “Having a lack of control is associated with depression.”

    Experts have revealed that a lot of buttons that don't do anything exist in our lives for this same purpose. For example, many offices in the US have fake thermostats (温度调节器) because people tend to feel better when they think they can control the temperature in their workspace.

    But psychologists found it interesting that even when people are aware of these little “white lies”, they still continue to push fake buttons because as long as the doors eventually close, it is considered to be worth the effort.

    “That habit is here to stay,” John Kounios, a psychology professor, said, ''Even though I have real doubts about the traffic light buttons, I always press them. After all, I've got nothing else to do while waiting. So why not press the button in the hope that this one will work?”