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    One night in March 1999, a man was driving from California to Oregon, US, to visit some friends. He had stopped his car to have some food when he started to hear strange noises. Turning on the headlights, he saw an 8-foot-tall creature covered in thick, dark hair. The creature stared at him for a minute, turned in the road and walked off slowly into the woods.

    In the past 50 years alone, there have been thousands of reported sightings of similar creatures in the US, Canada, the Himalayas(喜马拉雅山地区)and even Hubei Province in China. The creature is known as bigfoot.

    Bigfoot is said to be a very tall(between 2 and 4. 5 metres), ape-like(类人猿似的)creature that is covered in hair and walks upright on two legs. It is very wary(警惕的)of human beings.

    Believers think bigfoot is a direct descendent(后代)of ancient gigantopithecus(巨猿). But it remains one of the planet's undiscovered secrets. There is a little evidence(证据)to support the believers' theory: traces of hair, footprints and body prints as well as the reported sightings. Some people have even showed what they say with photos or films of bigfoot.

    But so far, no one has found bones or any other definite proof that the giant creature exists.

    As a result many people believe the evidence is just part of a big trick.

    The footprints are easy to make and they say: all you need to do is to make two large feet out of plaster(石膏), attach them to the bottom of your shoes and walk with big steps. As for the photos and films, they are just people dressed in ape suits.

    They also say the sightings are not real, just people making mistakes. For example, bigfoot could be a bear living in the wild that sometimes stands up on its back legs.

    In the United States and several other countries , 2.5 million children play baseball in an organization called Little League . They play on teams in their hometowns . Their parents and other adults in the community coach or instruct them and serve as umpires（裁判员）to make sure that everyone follows the rules . Local businesses give money for the ball fields and the uniforms . Local teams compete against each other and the winners get to play teams that are more distant . Eventually , the top teams go to the Little League World Series .

    One hundred years after Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown , New York , in 1839 , Little League got started in Pennsylvania . Three men started the game for neighborhood boys with a smaller playing field and fewer innings（局）than adult baseball . Little League became popular after World War II when the game spread across the United States . By 1955 it was played throughout North America and within five years it had spread to Europe. Children's baseball really caught on in Japan and Taiwan of China and teams from those areas won the World Series seven out of eight years . After this , the organization tried banning foreign teams from the World Series , but the ban came to an end after one year .

    At first , Little League was only for boys aged nine to twelve . However , in 1974 , the parents of girl baseball players brought a law suit . The courts ruled that Little League had to include both boys and girls . Later Little League added on softball and other games for teenagers up to age eighteen . Occasionally , a Little Leaguer becomes a professional player . For example , Gary Carter went from Little League to play nineteen seasons in the Major Leagues , ten of them as an All-Star player . By and large , youngsters play baseball for fun , but their parents are pround of them .

    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.

Life in the Clear

Transparent animals let light pass through their bodies the same way light passes through a window. These animals typically live between the surface of the ocean and a depth of about 3,300 feet—as far as most light can reach. Most of them are extremely delicate and can be damaged by a simple touch. Sonke Johnsen, a scientist in biology, says, "These animals live through their life alone. They never touch anything unless they're eating it, or unless something is eating them."

And they are as clear as glass. How does an animal become see-through? It's trickier than you might think.

    The objects around you are visible because they interact with light. Light typically travels in a straight line. But some materials slow and scatter (散射) light, bouncing it away from its original path. Others absorb light, stopping it dead in its tracks. Both scattering and absorption make an object look different from other objects around it, so you can see it easily.

    But a transparent object doesn't absorb or scatter light, at least not very much. Light can pass through it without bending or stopping. That means a transparent object doesn't look very different from the surrounding air or water. You don't see it you see the things behind it.

    To become transparent, an animal needs to keep its body from absorbing or scattering light. Living materials can stop light because they contain pigments (色素) that absorb specific colors of light. But a transparent animal doesn't have pigments, so its tissues won't absorb light. According to Johnsen, avoiding absorption is actually easy. The real challenge is preventing light from scattering.

Animals are built of many different materials—skin, fat, and more—and light moves through each at a different speed. Every time light moves into a material with a new speed, it bends and scatters. Transparent animals use different tricks to fight scattering. Some animals are simply very small or extremely flat. Without much tissue to scatter light, it is easier to be see-through. Others build a large, clear mass of non-living jelly-like (果冻状的) material and spread themselves over it.

    Larger transparent animals have the biggest challenge, because they have to make all the different tissues in their bodies slow down light exactly as much as water does. They need to look uniform. But how they're doing it is still unknown. One thing is clear: for these larger animals, staying transparent is an active process. When they die, they turn a non-transparent milky white.

    Thanks to exchange programmes an increasing number of young students are following educational courses in foreign countries. The Erasmus Programme, which started in 1987, is a European Union student exchange programme. It provides opportunities for young people from Europe to study in a foreign country for shot An intercontinental version of the programme, known as Erasmus Mundus, has existed since 2003, providing non-Europeans the opportunity to study in Europe.

Woodcut New Year picture, a historic art form of woodcut painting, is for the occasion of Chinese Spring Festival. It features beautiful art designs with bright, delightful colors {#blank#}1{#/blank#} fits the mood of the people longing for a happy life. 

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After being listed as National Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2006, woodcut New Year picture has enjoyed {#blank#}9{#/blank#}(great) popularity, significantly influencing the artistic styles of other nations as well. The making of the picture, a package process from drafting, woodcut, painting, to hand painting touch-up, keeps millions of its lovers {#blank#}10{#/blank#} (lose) in its striking beauty.