Authors (作者)

    Alexandru Micu: Author

    ZME Science author profile | e-mail: alex@zmescience.com

    Main focus: technology, biology

    Curiosity (好奇心) is what drives Alex forward-his interest in learning more about the planet being matched only by his ability to discuss things with a light heart. Alex tries to make others more interested in special science and technology. He does things in his own way.

    Dragos Mitrica: Author

    ZME Science author profile | e-mail: dragos@zmescience.com

    Main focus: wheather

    Dragos loves nature, and does everything he can to understand it. This interest led him to many unexpected places in his life, and now, he mainly studies and understands how ancient (古代的) weather changed, and what this means for the future.

    Henry Conrad: Author

    ZME Science author profile | e-mail: henrykconrad@gmail.com

    Main focus: technology

    Henry Conrad is a game developer from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Whenever he's not working or reading the latest tech news, he enjoys writing about the latest inventions and technology, which benefits (有益) him a lot. It helps him find rich writing materials (材料).

    Mihai Andrei: Editor-in-chief

    ZME Science author profile | e-mail: andrei@zmescience.com

    Main focus: geophysics, environment

    Andrei has put a lot of sweat and tears into ZME Science ever since he was a student. He is always looking for the most interesting subjects, presenting them in a way that everybody can understand. He believes that education is the key towards a better future and he tries to persuade people to become better persons of the planet. His background is in Geology and Geophysics, but now, he focuses more on environmental studies.

    If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars，we would go in darkness happily，the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal(夜间活动的) species on this planet. Instead，we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun's light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don't think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it's the only way to explain what we've done to the night: We've engineered it to  receive us by filling it with light.

    The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequences 一 called light pollution 一 whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad  lighting design，which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky. III-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels 一 and light  rhythms — to which many forms of life, including, ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect or life is affected .

    In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze(霾) that mirrors our fear of the dark. We've grown so used to this orange haze that the original glory of an unlit nigh, - dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadow on Earth, is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.

    We^'ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further form the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing, Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet(磁铁). The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.

    Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times righter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint including most other creatures ,we do need darkness .Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.

    Living in a glare of our making,we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night .In a very real sense light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy arching overhead.

    People generally tend to pick out the best-looking fruits and vegetables when shopping for produce, but Canadian supermarket chain Loblaws is attracting customers with badly-shaped and faulty produce at the price of 30% lower than normal-looking ones.

    A trial run of the ugly food line, named “Naturally Imperfect”, began with only apples and tomatoes to choose from. Consumer demand has been so huge that Loblaws is going to introduce more unsightly vegetables and fruit options like onions and mushrooms. The line is available at other stores, including Real Canadian Superstore and Your Independent Grocer.

    All the produce that will be sold through Naturally Imperfect would otherwise have been used in juices, sauces, or soups, or have not been harvested at all. The director Dan Branson explained that this program benefited both food producers who would otherwise have to let abnormal harvest go to waste, and consumers who could buy fresh produce at low prices. And he was right, given how popular the line has become.

    “It really went well beyond our expectation,” Branson said. “I think it really spoke to the fact that Canadians are out there really looking for some options.”

    Of course, Canadians know that beauty is more than skin deep, but they also recognize that they can get the same flavor and nutritional benefits in spite of appearances. The positive response to the initial offering of apples and potatoes showed the opportunity to expand the line and offer more options at a greater price to Canadian families.

    “If you grow produce in your backyard, there will be a lot of produce that won't look as pretty as what you will see in a grocery store, said Branson. “And nature doesn't grow everything perfectly. I'd like to think if somebody were to take a No Name Naturally Imperfect apple, put right beside a No.l apple, close their eyes and eat them, there would be no difference.”

    Are you interested in country music? I like it very much! It will take me away for a while after I am tired. The guitars and songs will take me to mountains and fields.

    Country music usually talks of everyday life and feelings. It's the spirit of America, easy to understand, slow and simple.

    Country music developed in the Southern United States. It was the folk music of American countryside. Many of songs tell about the lives of farmers. They talk about love, crops or death.

    The life of the countryside can be hard, so the words in country music are often sad. At first, people played the music only at family parties. But it became more popular later. In the 1920s, people played country songs on the radio, and they made them into records.

    When people in the countryside moved to towns and cities to look for work, they took their music with them. Country music continued to change and became popular across America.

    John Denver was one of America's most famous country singers in the 1970s.His song Take Me Home, Country Roads is well­known and people still play it today.

    Unemployment in the United States is still high at 6.7％. But for job seekers, especially those with college educations, researchers say finding a job can be as easy as logging(登录)on to a computer. It used to be that looking for a job meant hurrying around, knocking on doors and turning to ads. But that's changing, thanks to the Internet. A new report says, for college graduates, looking for a job is getting easier. More than 80 percent of the jobs are available online.

    At the height of the depression(萧条), in the U. S. the highest unemployment rate was 10％, just a little more than two million jobs were being posted each month. But as the recovery takes hold, the job picture looks increasingly bright.

    That's great news for Hamilton. Only once has he ever applied in person for a job at a shopping mall. He said, "I think my generation—the idea of going door to door, out knocking and saying, hey are you hiring? —like that—doesn't exist anymore…those days are gone. Just go online.''

Kim Dancy recently graduated with a master's degree in Public Policy. She found her dream job as an education policy researcher. But she says finding the perfect job online takes a lot of perseverance. She said, "It can be really frustrating and it takes a long time, but if you applied for enough positions and really do your homework you will get somewhere.

    The report's findings suggest careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math provide the greatest opportunities, with salaries that range between $30 to $45 an hour. But for maximum income and satisfaction, workers must be prepared to move and change jobs at least every five years.

Crocodiles today look very similar to ones from 200 million years ago. There are also very few species alive today—just 25. Other animals such as lizards (蜥蜴) and birds have achieved a diversity of many thousands of species in the same amount of time or less.

Prehistory also saw types of crocodile we don't see today, including giants as big as dinosaurs, plant-eaters, fast runners and snake-like forms that lived in the sea. The rate of their evolution is generally slow, but occasionally they evolve more quickly because the environment has changed. In particular, their evolution speeds up when the climate is warmer, and their body size increases.

The body size of crocodiles is important because it interacts with how fast animals grow, how much food they need, how big their populations are and how likely they are to become extinct. The limited diversity of crocodiles and their apparent lack of evolution is a result of a slow evolutionary rate. It seems the crocodiles arrived at a body plan that was very efficient and perfect enough that they didn't need to change it in order to survive. This perfection could be one explanation why crocodiles survived Cretaceous period (白垩纪), in which the dinosaurs died out.

Crocodiles generally develop better in warm conditions because they cannot control their body temperature and require warmth from the environment. The climate during the age of dinosaurs was warmer than it is today, and that may explain why there were many more varieties of crocodiles than we see now. Being able to draw energy from the sun means they do not need to eat as much as a warm-blooded animal like a bird or a mammal (哺乳动物).