There are millions of different animals in the world, but some are in danger, and some may soon die out. People can never see them again. Mark and David wanted to find some of these rare animals, so they climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and walked through rainforests.

    A Bat, a Cat or a Squirrel?

    Mark and David found the aye-aye. The aye-aye has bright eyes. It has ears like a bat, a body like a cat and a tail(尾巴) like a squirrel. Some people think the aye-aye brings bad luck. They killed(杀死) many of them, and cut down a lot of trees where the aye-aye lives as well.

    A Strange Parrot

    Mark and David found the biggest parrot in the world that cannot fly. Many years ago, some animals came to the place the parrots lived in, and killed many of them. Now there are only a few left.

    Another Special Animal

    Mark and David went looking for a manatee. A manatee looks like a seal and a hippo. In some places where manatees live, the water in the river gets low. Then the manatee swims to the place where there is more water. Many get stranded(搁浅), and some are killed by other animals and people, too.

    After Mark and David returned, they made a film about these animals. They want to show the world these strange but interesting animals. They want the world to know there are not many of them left, and they all have a place in our world.

    Can plants eat people? Probably not, but there are many plants that eat meat. Some of them are big. And they can eat small animals. One famous meat-eating plant is the Venus flytrap(捕蝇草).

    The Venus flytrap is a very strange plant. It grows in dry parts of the United States. Its leaves are like the pages of a book. They can open and close very quickly. Inside the leaves, there are three small hairs. If a fly touches one of the hairs, the leaf closes quickly. The fly cannot get out. In about half an hour, the leaf presses the fly until it is dead. Then, the plant covers the fly. Slowly, the plant eats the fly.

    Why do plants do it? Most plants get what they need from the sun, the air, and the ground. In some places, the ground is very poor. It doesn't have all these important things, especially nitrogen(氮). Animal meat has a lot of nitrogen, so some plants eat meat to get what they need. Let's hope that some of the bigger plants don't get the same idea!

    If you go shopping in any toy store, you can see clearly the differentgames and toys for boys and girls: there are a lot of pink toys on one side ofthe store for girls; and dark colored cars, guns, and soldiers for boys. Somebig stores with toys may even have a pink floor for girls and a blue floor forboys. In fact, it is difficult to buy a toy for a girl that is not pink.

    Somepeople think that too much pink is bad for girls. Sue Palmer, writer of ToxicChildhood, is very worried that most girls over the age of three are crazyabout the color. According to some scientists, this happens for two reasons. Firstly,most companies offer too many products in pink. Also, many parents think theirlittle daughter looks cute in pink. Sue Palmer says that girls at this agecannot make proper decisions by themselves, but the pink can affect (影响) the choices and thedecisions they will make in the future.

    Someparents are worried too-for example, Vanessa Holburn, thirty-two, who has twogirls under the age of four. Their bedrooms are a sea of pink and Vanessa isnot happy. "Pink says that you are soft and gentle. Blue says that you arestrong and powerful. I want my daughters to be strong and powerful. I'm worriedthat pink will not help them with that,"she says.

    Butnot everyone thinks there's something wrong with pink. Grayson Turner is afather of three girls and he isn't worried at all. "People forget thatthings change all the time," he says. "My girls used to love pink whenthey were little, but as they get older, they change." Turner explainsthat his twelve-year-old daughter never wears pink clothes anymore. "Thislove of pink is just a fashion and all fashions change," he adds. "It'sonly since the 1940s that people have started dressing girls in pink-beforethat it was a color for boys."

    The World Health Organization(世界卫生组织) says air pollution kills seven million people around the world each year. Even if polluted air does not kill us, it can make us very sick.

    However, breathing dirty air may do more than hurt your body. It can also affect(影响) your brain and your ability to think.

A new study shows that air pollution can cause a "huge" reduction(减少)in our intelligence(智商).The researchers reported that long-term exposure(暴露) to air pollution can affect a person's mental(智力的) abilities in two areas: language and math.

Xi Chen, the researcher of the Yale School of Public Health led the study. He and his team found that breathing polluted air can reduce a person's education level by about one year.

    Chen said that the effect(结果) generally is worse for those over 64 years of age, for men and for those with little or no education.

    "The older persons-they are more affected. And we find, quite interestingly, men are more affected than women. And people working outdoors are more affected than people working indoors.

The researchers noted that the effect of pollution on language ability is even more serious as people age, especially among men and the less educated.

    Why were language skills more affected than math? There are two main kinds of tissue(组织)in the brain: white matter and grey matter. White matter is more connected with a person's language skills, while grey matter is connected to our ability to solve math problems. Studies have shown that air pollution has a great effect on the white matter in the brain, but not the grey matter.

    Chen said that air pollution did affect the math skills, just not as much as their language skills.

    When you carry your heavy schoolbag on the way to school or home, do you know the fact that the heavy schoolbag influences your interest in learning knowledge? Don't worry. You may be able to say goodbye to your heavy schoolbag in the near future.

    Instead of burying(埋葬) your face in an ocean of textbooks, newspapers, magazines and novels, you will soon find that an E-book reader can take the place of them all.

    An E-book reader is a new kind of mini machine designed to hold thousands of text files and display them on the screen as real text printed(印刷) on a paper page.

    In the same way in which the iPod(a kind of MP3) has changed the way people enjoy music, E-book readers could change the way that books are read. Some scientists have predicted that E-books will be used widely in our daily life, especially in schools.

    The size of an E-book reader is the same as that of real books. Its screen is different from that of a computer. It is as thin as a piece of paper. The words on an E-book reader's screen look exactly the same as those on real pages. However, you can do more with an E-book reader than you can with a real book. The reader can change the size of the words and connect to the Internet to download new books.