You may laugh it off if someone told you that extreme weather disasters were actually a child's tricks. But El Nino, meaning “little boy” in Spanish, could be about to cause trouble

    A recent statement from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned ofa strong El Nino event that may be similar to the strongest in modern times. Scientists believe that evidence shows a more than 90 percent chance that it is coming — and it's going to be big. “If this lives up to its potential, this thing can bring a lot of floods, mudslides（泥石流）, and trouble,” said Bill Patzert, a NASA scientist.

    El Nino is a climate event occurring in the Pacific Ocean. The wind usually blows strongly from east to west due to the rotation（旋转）of the Earth. This causes water to pile up in the Western Pacific and pulls up colder water from the boom in the eastern part. However, in El Nino years, the winds pushing the water get weaker and cause the warmer water to shift back toward the east. This warms the ocean as it travels before finally reaching the shores of North and South America. In an El Nino event, the waters of the eastern Pacific can be up to 4 degrees Celsius warmer than usual.

    Most El Ninos last from 9 to 12 months and their effects are felt around December. They don't happen every year though, usually between every two to seven years.

    Last seen in 1997-98, El Nino caused severe droughts in Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as deadly floods in Peru and Ecuador. The world also heats up during an ElNino-1998 became the warmest year on record at the time. If the current trend continues, 2015 is almost certainly to become the hottest year yet again.

    A strong El Nino also affects hurricane seasons around the planet. The warmer the Eastern Pacific is, the more hurricanes it gets. The Western Pacific, on the other hand, tends to see more and stronger typhoons.

    The weather isn't the only thing that's affected. Warmer surface waters in the Eastern Pacific make the cold-water fish swim away and damage the fishing industry in much of Latin America.

    A new study shows that rising levels of planet-warming gases may reduce important nutrients in food crops.

    Researchers studied the effects of one such gas—carbon dioxide—on rice. The researchers grew rice plants in a controlled environment. They set carbon dioxide levels to what scientists are predicting for our planet by the end of the century. They found that the resulting rice crops had lower than normal levels of vitamins, minerals and protein. The researchers said the effects of planet-warming gases would be most severe for the poorest citizens in some of the least developed countries. These people generally eat the most rice and have the least complex diets, they noted.

    In the experiment, scientists grew 18 kinds of rice in fields in China and Japan. They pumped carbon dioxide gas over the plants in an effort to create the atmosphere of the future. Rice grown under high carbon dioxide conditions had, on average, 13 to 30 percent lower levels of four B vitamins and 10 percent less protein. The crops also had 8 percent less iron and 5 percent less zinc（锌）an rice grown under normal conditions. However, vitamin E levels increased by about 13 percent on average.

    The results are bad news, “especially for the nutrition of the poorer population in less-developed countries,” said the University of Tokyo's Kazuhiko Kobayashi, who helped to write the report. That includes about 600 million people in Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Laos and other nations, mainly in Southeast Asia, the report said.

    One of the scientists is Sam Myers of Harvard University in the American state of Massachusetts. He said that findings like this are an example of the surprises climate change create. “My concern is there are many more surprises to come,” he said.

    Myers noted that pollution, loss of some species, destruction of forests, and other human activities are likely to produce unexpected problems. He said that you cannot completely change all the natural systems that living organisms have grown to depend on over millions of years without having effects come back to affect our own health.

    The new study suggests a way to lower the nutritional harm of climate change. One way, Kobayashi said, is grow different forms of rice that have shown to be more resistant to higher carbon dioxide levels.

    As we all know, friendship is important in our daily life. A friend can give us help and share our difficulties and happiness. But how to make friends is still difficult to some of us. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

Be friendly to others. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} You should try to make a stranger feel at home wherever he happens to be. Think more of others than of yourself and never judge a person by his look and clothes.

    Be reliable. If you and your friend agree to meet somewhere, don't be late. If you're not going to make it on time or make it at all, call them as soon as you realize it. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Be someone that people know they can depend on.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Listen carefully to what people say, remember important details about them （their names, their likes and dislikes）, ask questions about their interests, and just take the time to learn more about them.

    Encourage your friends. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} A friend to all is a friend to none. Never make fun of or laugh at your friends in front of others. You should come to support them.

A.  Be a good listener.

B.  When you say you'll do something, do it.

C.  A true friend always gives courage to his friends.

D.  Never leave your friend when he is in trouble.

E.  The following information can give you some tips.

F.  Smile at others and you are sure to get a smile in return.

G.  He will remain with them in both good as well as bad times.

    The deadliest Ebola(埃博拉病毒) outbreak in recorded history is happening right now. The outbreak is unprecedented(空前的) both in the number of people who have gotten sick and in the geographic scope. And so far it's been a long battle that doesn't appear to be slowing down.

    Ebola is both rare and very deadly. Since the first outbreak in 1976, Ebola viruses have infected thousands of people and killed roughly 60 percent of them. Symptoms can come on quickly and kill fast.

    The current outbreak started in Guinea sometime in late 2013 or early 2014. It has since spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia, including some capital cities. And one infected patient traveled on a plane to Nigeria, where he spread the disease to several others and then died. Cases have also popped up in various other countries throughout the world, including in Dallas and New York City in the United States.

    The Ebola virus has now hit many countries, including Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Senegal, and the United States. The virus, which starts off with flu-like symptoms and sometimes ends with bleeding, has infected about 6,500 people and killed more than 3,000 since this winter, according to the World Health Organization on September 30, 2014.

    There are some social and political factors contributing to the current disaster. Because this is the first major Ebola outbreak in West Africa, many of the region's health workers didn't have experience or training in how to protect themselves or care for patients with this disease.

    Journalist David Quammen put it well in a recent New York Times article, "Ebola is more dangerous to humans than perhaps any known virus on Earth, except rabies(狂犬病) and HIV. And it does its damage much faster than either."

Hopefully, researchers are working to find drugs, including a recent $50 million push at the National Institutes of Health. And scientists are working on vaccines(疫苗), including looking into ones that might be able to help wild chimpanzees, which are also susceptible to the disease. The first human Ebola vaccine trial is scheduled to start in the spring of 2015.

    Many people find that music lifts their spirits. Now a new research shows that music therapy (疗法) can be a useful treatment for depression.

    The finding that music therapy offers a real medical benefit to depression sufferers comes from a review by the Cochrane Collaboration, a non-profit group that reviews health care issues. Some studies looked at the effects of providing music therapy to patients who were receiving drug treatment for depression. Others compared music therapy to traditional talk therapy. In four out of five of the trials, music therapy worked better at easing depression symptoms than therapies that did not employ music, the researchers found.

    “While the evidence came from a few small studies, it suggests that this is an area that is well worth further investigation.” said lead author Anna Maratos. Ms. Maratos notes that music therapy might be particularly useful for adolescents who may reject a traditional form of counseling. Some older patients also may not be comfortable talking about their feelings but do tend to express themselves through songs.

    There are two main types of music therapy. Sometimes, a therapist will listen to music with a patient and talk about the feelings or memories that it arouses. In another form, the therapist is a skilled musician and will improvise (即兴创作) music with the patient. If the patient doesn't play an instrument, he or she might be given a simple percussion (击打) instrument and the therapist will play along.

    Other studies have shown a benefit from music therapy in the treatment for dementia, learning disabilities, strokes and pain management during labor and birth. The problem is that there isn't very much high-quality research. "It doesn't easily attract serious research funding. It's difficult to do high-quality, large-scale trials." said Ms. Maratos.

    It is reported that a record-breaking high-speed rail will connect Inner Mongolia in the north to Hainan in the south. According to the Shaanxi Development and Reform Commission, the proposed line will operate at a speed of 350 kilometers per hour(217 mph).

    Beginning in Inner Mongolia's Baotou city and running through southern Shaanxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi and Guangdong, its final stop would be in Haikou city on Hainan Island, China's southernmost province.

    Though the exact length of the proposed route has not been released, it will likely become the world's longest high-speed rail line as the journey by road between Baotou and Haikou is approximately 3, 000 kilometers(1, 864 miles) long. Currently, the world's longest high-speed rail line is almost 2, 300 kilometers long (1, 429 miles), running from Beijing to Guangzhou.

    The proposed rail is part of China's aim to create another "Silk Road of the 21st Century" and improve the country's transportation network while driving land development and urbanization(城市化) in some provincial areas.

    Many of the provinces through which the high-speed trains will travel are near major bodies of water, such as the Yellow River in Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi province, the Yangtzi River in Hubei and the South China Sea, where the line would end. It will also take passengers to popular tourist attractions including Zhangjiajie, Xi'an, Guilin and minority areas in western Hunan and Hubei.

    "The country is now shifting its focus and investing in the western regions and economically underdeveloped areas, making up for China's long debt to these areas, " Tan yuzhi, professor of the School of Economics and Management at Hubei University for Nationalities, told local media. " The project will significantly narrow regional disparities(差异) and solve minority issues."

    However, Deng Hongbing, director of China University of Geosciences' Center for Regional Economic and Investment Center, said that if the north-to-south railway is to go ahead, there needs to be a sound ecological program in place to ensure the protection of these underdeveloped and ecologically sensitive areas.