Food production does great harm to our environment. There are many procedures involved in the manufacture of food that result in greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Some procedures require the consumption of large amounts of fossil fuels, such as the transportation and storage of food products. Other factors that cause great damage to our environment include the overuse of fresh water.

    The production of beef is more damaging to the environment than that of any other food we consume. Raising large numbers of cattle requires the production of large amounts of food for the animals. It's estimated that producing one pound of beef requires seven pounds of feed.

    Land use is also a problem. If the cattle are free-range cattle, large areas of land are required for them to live on. This has led to disastrous forest cutting and the loss of rare plants and animal species, particularly in tropical rain forests in Central and South America.

    Another problem specific to beef production is methane emissions (甲烷排放). Although many people are aware of the damaging effects of carbon dioxide, they don't realize methane's global warming potential is 25 times worse, making it a more dire problem.

    Unfortunately, beef consumption is growing rapidly. This is the result of simple supply and demand factors. Specifically, there are two main causes of demand that are encouraging the production of more supply. First, the increase in the world population means there are more people to consume meat. The second factor is socioeconomic advancement. As citizens in developing nations become financially stable, they can afford to buy more meat.

    Therefore, one way to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions is for people around the world to significantly cut down on the amount of beef they eat.

    To fight for the conservation of forest ecosystem, several ecologists including Daniel Janzen convinced Del Oro, an orange juice producer, to donate part of their forestland to a national park. In return, Del Oro was allowed to throw large amounts of waste in the form of orange peels (皮) on a 3-hectare piece of land within the national park at no cost. Dealing with tons of leftover peels usually involved burning them or paying to have them poured into a landfill, so the proposal was very attractive.

    But a year later, another juice company challenged the deal in court, arguing that their competitor was “polluting a national park”. They ended up winning, and the deal between Del Oro and the national park fell through.

    Then in 2013, while discussing possible research avenues with Timothy Treuer, Daniel Janzen mentioned the orange story. Feeling interested, Treuer decided to stop by that piece of land that had been covered with fruit waste 15 years earlier. What he found shocked him.

    “While I would walk over exposed rock and dead grass in the nearby fields, I'd have to climb through undergrowth and cut paths through walls of vines (藤) in the orange peel site itself.” said Timothy Treuer.

    Treuer and his team spent months picking up samples (样品), analyzing and comparing them. They found great differences between the areas covered with orange peels and those that were not. The area with orange waste had richer soil.

    The effect that the orange peels had on the land is probably not that surprising to people familiar with composting (施肥), but what is really shocking is that a judge actually thought the waste of orange “mined” a national park and stopped it from going forward. Now that Timothy Treuer's study has received worldwide attention, this type of “ruining” is being seriously considered as a way of bringing forests back to life.

    Family Fun in Canadian Museum of Nature

    Bring the whole family to rediscover our fully redecorated museum.

    WHAT TO SEE AND DO

    Check out What's On for all the events, educational activities and HD movies happening during your visit. Care for birds, dive down into the depths at the helm (舵柄) of a research submersible(潜水器) or explore a cave… on the first floor. Don't miss our gallery play areas on the third floor when visiting with kids. By visiting here, your children will learn more about nature. Check out Our Exhibitions which presents our special exhibitions and our galleries. Be sure to stop at our Nature Boutique on the second floor for a vast selection of games, books and nature-related souvenirs from 9:30 am until the museum closes for the day.

    HOURS, ADMISSION, SERVICES AND MORE

    The Canadian Museum of Nature provides a lot of information, images and videos on our websites about nature, such as http://www.nature.ca/en/family-fun and http://www.expeditionarctic.ca/. The museum also participates in several social networks. Follow us on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.

    Retired judge Davison hated all the quiet. Evy, his wife of 66 ears, had passed away, and he was lonely and sad in the months after her death. But he knew how to beat those feelings; he decided to build a pool.

    Davison contacted a family-run company in Hopkins, Minnesota, that had built a pool for his previous house 40 years ago. “They did such a great job before and were still in business, so they came out and planned it,” Davison said.

    Kevin, who works on new pools for the company, helped Davison with everything, from initial planning and completing contracts back in March to teaching him how to filter the water once the pool was finish in July.

    “If You build it, they will come,” he thought. He invited all the neighborhood kids over to swim. Now it's not so quiet anymore.

    He hears the sounds of laughter and splashing as he sits on a chair in the shade, watching happy children play in his backyard.

    “I knew they'd come.” 94-yvear-old Davison told KARE-TV.

    Neighbor Jessica thought the judge was joking when he talked about putting in a pool until she saw the work starting. Now she and her four kids have been regulars since the pool was finished in July.

    “It's him spreading joy throughout our neighborhood for these kids.” Jessica said.

    Davison's pool includes a diving board and reaches nine feet in the deep end under the board. It's especially welcome in a town that doesn't have a public outdoor pool.

    Although Davison has three adult children, he doesn't have any grandchildren.

Jessica says she's told him, “You kind of adopted our whole neighborhood of kids. These are your grandkids.”

    The judge's rules require that a parent or grandparent stay while the children are swimming. Once the kids leave, he likes to swim, too.

    Davison tells KARE-TV that he realizes that putting in the pool didn't make a lot of financial (经济的) sense for an old man. But that didn't matter to him.

    “I'm not sitting by myself looking at the walls.” he says. “What else would you think of doing where you could have a whole bunch of kids over every afternoon?” The 94-year-old judge now hears laughter all day as he watches children splash in his backyard pool.

    Boomerang children who return to live with their parents after university can be good for families, leading to closer, more supportive relationships and increased contact between the generations, a study has found.

    The findings contradict research published earlier this year showing that returning adult children trigger a significant decline in their parents' quality of life and wellbeing.

    The young adults taking part in the study were "more positive than might have been expected about moving back home—the shame is reduced as so many of their peers are in the same position, and they acknowledged the benefits of their parents' financial and emotional support. Daughters were happier than sons, often slipping back easily into teenage patterns of behaviour, the study found.

    Parents on the whole were more uncertain, expressing concern about the likely duration of the arrangement and how to manage it. But they acknowledged that things were different for graduates today, who leave university with huge debts and fewer job opportunities.

    The families featured in the study were middle-class and tended to view the achievement of adult independence for their children as a "family project". Parents accepted that their children required support as university students and then as graduates returning home, as they tried to find jobs paying enough to enable them to move out and get on the housing ladder.

    "However", the study says, "day-to-day tensions about the prospects of achieving different dimensions of independence, which in a few extreme cases came close to conflict, characterised the experience of a majority of parents and a little over half the graduates".

    Areas of disagreement included chores, money and social life. While parents were keen to help, they also wanted different relationships from those they had with their own parents, and continuing to support their adult children allowed them to remain close.

    Some spiders hunt on the ground, others build webs to trap their food, but the grass water spider catches its prey by running along the surface of the water.

    This special water spider lives on the grassy banks of streams where mosquitoes, damsel flies and other insects come to feed and breed.

    Although it is one of the largest spiders in New Zealand, it has an unusual ability. It doesn't disturb the water as it waits for its meal, and there is barely a ripple(波纹) when it skims(掠过) across the surface at lightning speed to catch its prey.

    Grass water spiders deal swiftly with larger insects like damsel flies by pulling their heads under the water and holding them there until they drown.

    After a meal, the grass water spider spends up to half an hour grooming(修饰) itself. It wipes its eight eyes, brushes its antennae(触角), and takes special care to clean the hairs on its body.

    It is the hairs that trap tiny bubbles(泡沫) of air so that the spider can run down a blade(叶片) of grass and stay underwater for up to an hour when it is frightened. The hairs also keep the spider dry, even underwater.

    It is only when the female spider is caring for the young that she does not hunt on the water. After mating, she produces a large egg sac(囊), which she carries around for five weeks. Once the eggs start to hatch, she attaches the sac to some blades of grass or a thistle. She then tears the sac open and releases the tiny spiders into the nursery web.