The story of Sir Nicholas Winton is the one that you would imagine could only happen on the silver screen. Sir Nicholas Winton was a British man who went to heroic efforts, potentially putting himself at risk, during World War II. Sir Winton was responsible for ensuring the safety of 669 Jewish children by aiding their escape from countries occupied by Nazis. Finally, the Jewish children were brought to England where he worked to make sure families in his native country would help the kids by taking them into their homes.

    Recently, this unbelievable story has again been making the rounds on the Internet, particularly after a rerun of the BBC show called "That's Life", which featured Sir Winton. People around the world were moved at the details of the story, with saying it to be the best story they've ever seen.

    Sir Winton kept his entire plan completely secret, even his wife had no idea about his planning until fifty years later. After the war, years passed and many people remained in the dark about Sir Winton's extraordinary achievement. Some fifty years later, his wife Greta was searching in their house and discovered a Winton's notebook which documented the names of all the children. She worked with BBC and they produced a TV episode(插曲) of their program "That's Life" that served as an honor for Sir Winton's work.

    In 2003, Sir Winton was knighted by the Queen of England for his work. He also was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. He also had a small planet named after him by Czech astronomers. Sir Winton died peacefully in his sleep at the old age of 106, in 2015. Leaders around the world paid tribute(悼念). Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Daniel Taub, said, "He was a hero of our time, having saved 669 Jewish children from Nazis. His story, as a point of light in a period of darkness, will forever be remembered."

    Summer Science Class registration begins on March 8 ! If you are interested in science，the environment，or conservation and you are in grades 7 －12 ，sign up soon for Black Rock Forest Consortium's Summer Science Class program. You can download the Summer Science Classes 2013 brochure here. It is easy to register；just call 845-534-4517 or click here.

    Twelve-week-long courses in the natural sciences and the arts are offered at Black Rock Forest in Cornwall from July 15 through August 9.Two more classes are offered with site partners，including “The Art of Scientific Observation，” hosted jointly by Black Rock Forest Consortium and Storm King Art Center ，one of the world's leading sculpture parks ，and “A Nautical   Expedition” hosted jointly by the Consortium and the Constitution Marsh Audubon Center.

    We are delighted to announce two special “away” classes that are part of the Summer Science Class program this year: an“Adirondack Eco-Adventure” beginning August 11，and “Conservation Biology in Florida，” beginning June 23 and featuring field work on the Gulf Coast in cooperation with the University of Florida's Seahorse Key Marine Biological Laboratory. For more information on the Summer Science Class program，please read our press release. Black Rock Forest Consortium is a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 to advance scientific understanding of the natural world through research，education and conservation programs.

    Russ Gremel, now 98 years old, decided it was time to donate $2 million to the Illinois Audubon Society, a charity to purchase nearly 400 acres of land for wildlife protection. Gremel was able to make this amazing donation because he purchased $1,000 worth of Walgreens stock seven decades ago whose value has grown recently.

    "A single man with no kids, Gremel has lived in the same Chicago house for 95 years, and has always lived simply", neighbor Patrick Falso told TODAY. Falso said he heard Gremel say many times the "money wasn't mine to begin with" and that he always intended to give it away.

    The Gremel Wildlife shelter was founded on June 4. Illinois Audubon Society president Jim Herkert said Gremel's donation was extremely generous. "It's allowing us to protect a really valuable and important possession and realize one of Gremel's wishes that we could find a place where people could come out and experience nature the way he did as a kid," Herkert told TODAY.

    After doing all this, this past weekend, Gremel adopted an old Chihuahua（吉娃娃犬）. Winnie the dog was picked up as a homeless dog several months ago. She suffered from a kind of cancer, which was treated—and all she needed was a loving home, which Colleen Collins, the founder of Perfect Pooches Adoption Agency, was determined to find.

    Gremel had lost his own beloved Chihuahua earlier this year. When he reached out to Collins about Winnie, she felt this could be a good match. That feeling grew when she brought Winnie to his house for a meet and greet, and Winnie was introduced not only to Gremel but also some of his friends and neighbors. One had brought over a lot of fresh strawberries; all said they'd be there to help out in any way needed.

    Memory, they say, is a matter of practice and exercise. If you have the wish and really make a conscious(自觉的) effort, then you can quite easily improve your ability to remember things. But even if you are successful, there are times when your memory seems to play tricks on you.

    Sometimes you remember things that really did not happen. One morning last week, for example, I got up and found that I had left the front door unlocked all night, yet I clearly remember locking it carefully the night before.

    Memory "tricks" work the other way as well. Once in a while you remember not doing something, and then find out that you did. One day last month, for example, I was sitting in a barber shop waiting for my turn to get a haircut, and suddenly I realized that I had got a haircut two days before at the barber shop across the street from my office.

    We always seem to find something funny and amusing in incidents caused by people's forgetfulness or absent-mindedness. Stories about absent-minded professors have been told for years, and we never get tired of hearing new ones. Unfortunately, however, absent-mindedness is not always funny. There are times when "tricks" of our memory can cause us great trouble.

    City trees grow faster and die younger than trees in rural forestry, a new study finds. Over their lifetimes, then, urban trees will likely absorb less CO₂ from the air than forest trees.

    As we all know, the earth would be freezing or burning hot without CO₂. However, CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, meaning it traps energy from the sun as/heat. That makes temperatures near the ground rise. Human activities, especially the widespread burning-of fossil(化石)fuels, have been sending extra greenhouse gases into the air. This has led to a rise in average temperatures across the globe.

    Studies had shown forests readily absorb CO₂, but there hadn't been much data on whether city trees grow, die and absorb CO₂ at the same rate as forest trees do. So some researchers decided to find out.

    To figure out how quickly trees were growing, researchers tracked their diameters (the width of their trunks) between 2005 and 2014. A tree's diameter increases as it grows, just as a person's waist size increases as they gain weight. About half the weight of a tree is carbon, research has shown. Most of the rest is water. Over the nine years' tracking, the researchers found city trees absorbed four times as much carbon from the air as forest trees. However, they were twice as likely to die. So over the lifetime of each type of tree, forest trees actually absorbed more CO₂.

    City trees grew faster because they had less competition for light from their neighbors. In a forest，trees tend to grow close together，shading their neighbors. Street trees also benefit from higher levels of nitrogen (氮)in rainwater. Nitrogen helps plants grow. Waste gases from gas-burning cars also contain nitrogen, thus enriching city air with nitrogen. Later, rainwater may wash much of it to the ground. Some street trees may also have better access to water than trees in the country because the underground water pipes can leak.

    The negative (负面的) health effects of sleep shortages during the week can't be changed by marathon weekend sleep sessions, according to a new study.

    Researchers have long known that routine sleep deprivation (缺乏) can cause weight gain and increase other health risks, including diabetes. But there are still some people who hope that shutting off the alarm on Saturday and Sunday will repay the weekly sleep debt and remove any ill effects.

    The research, published in Current Biology, ruins those hopes. Despite complete freedom to sleep in and nap during a weekend recovery period, participants in a sleep laboratory who were limited to five hours of sleep on weekdays gained nearly three pounds over two weeks and experienced metabolic disruption (代谢紊乱) that would increase their risk for diabetes over the long term. While weekend recovery sleep had some benefits after a single week of inadequate sleep, those gains were wiped out when people returned right to their same sleep schedule the next Monday.

    "If there are benefits of catch-up sleep, they're gone when you go back to your routine. It's very short-lived," said Kenneth Wright, who led the research. "These health effects are long-term. It's kind of like smoking once was — people would smoke and wouldn't see an immediate effect on their health, but people will say now that smoking is not a healthy lifestyle choice. I think sleep is in the early stage of where smoking used to be."

    Wright said that the study suggests people should prioritize sleep — cutting out the optional "sleep stealers" such as watching television shows or spending time on electronic equipment. Even when people don't have a choice about losing sleep due to child-care responsibilities or job schedules, they should think about prioritizing sleep in the same way they would think about a healthy diet or exercise.