Since 2008, hunters have illegally killed more than 3000 rhinos in South Africa. The International Union for Conservation of Nature warns that rhinos may die out by 2026. People who hunt and kill illegally are called poachers. The most effective way to watch for and prevent illegal hunting is from the air. However, piloted flights are too costly. Fortunately, some Spanish college students have invented a drone (无人机) that can observe more places than a plane.

    Arnau Garcia is an aeronautical (航空学的) engineering student at the Polytechnic Institute of Catalonia, in Spain. He says observers from the air have trouble finding poachers when they hide under the trees. Mr. Garcia and other students have worked with the drone manufacturer HEMAV to help find the hidden poachers. They make it by using the thermal camera, which is especially sensitive to body heat. Even when the poachers keep still, it can also keep track of them.

    The drone can fly in the wind up to 55 kilometers per hour. It has an autopilot system, so it memorizes the flight path. The drone also has a microphone, a video camera and a GPS system. These permit it to report accurately where a picture is taken. After each flight, the drone can bring back detailed information about where rhinos are found, the conditions of water and plants in the area, and the positions of suspected poachers.

    Experts say the drone can fly as far as 70 kilometers from the base. It means that it could quickly observe large areas for poachers. However, the same search operation would take days for human observers. Thanks to the drone, many poachers have been caught and the number of rhinos is on the increase. In addition, HEMAV has received an increasing number of orders for the drone. Even South African national park officials attempt to fill the air with drones.

    Two thieves came to a house to steal something, they dug a hole in the wall of the house.

    There lived many mice in the house. The woman in the moonlight saw a mouse crawl (爬行) into the house. “Look! In comes one,” she said to the man in the house. He was so frightened that he hurriedly crawled out of the house and said to the one waiting outside, “She found me when I was just in.” But the thief outside didn't believe him, so he said, “Let us two try to crawl into the house together.” At that time two mice happened to crawl into the house, too. The woman saw the mice and shouted, “In come two, catch them!” The two thieves were terribly frightened. The man in the house said, “You saw them come in but where are they? I will catch them tonight.” The two thieves started running away at once.

    The two thieves wanted to make it clear whether they had been found or not the night before. The next day they acted as men selling sweet potatoes and came before the house. The man and the woman were ploughing in their fields. The rein (缰绳) broke and the woman came home for a rope. She saw two men selling sweet potatoes and wanted to buy some. She picked out two which looked like mice. At the time the man couldn't wait for her any longer in the fields and he ran back from the fields to hurry her up. The woman showed the sweet potatoes to the man and said, “How they look like the two of last night.” The man said, “I asked you to fetch a rope, why don't you hurry for it?” The two thieves ran away very quickly without their sweet potatoes.

How Room Designs Affect Our Work and Feelings

    Architects have long had the feeling that the places we live in can affect our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. But now scientists are giving this feeling an empirical（经验的，实证的） basis. They are discovering how to design spaces that promote creativity, keep people focused and lead to relaxation.

    Researches show that aspects of the physical environment can influence creativity. In 2007, Joan Meyers-Levy at the University of Minnesota, reported that the height of a room's ceiling affects how people think. Her research indicates that higher ceilings encourage people to think more freely, which may lead them to make more abstract connections. Low ceilings, on the other hand, may inspire a more detailed outlook.

    In additions to ceiling height, the view afforded by a building may influence an occupant's ability to concentrate. Nancy Wells and her colleagues at Cornell University found in their study that kids who experienced the greatest increase in greenness as a result of a family move made the most gains on a standard test of attention.

    Using nature to improve focus of attention ought to pay off  academically, and it seems to, according to a study led by C. Kenneth Tanner, head of the School Design & Planning Laboratory at the University of Georgia. Tanner and his team found that students in classrooms with unblocked views of at least 50 feet outside the window had higher scores on tests of vocabulary, language arts and maths than did students whose classrooms primarily overlooked roads and parking lots.

    Recent study on room lighting design suggests than dim（暗淡的） light helps people to loosen up. If that is true generally, keeping the light low during dinner or at parties could increase relaxation. Researchers of Harvard Medical School also discovered that furniture with rounded edges could help visitors relax.

    So far scientists have focused mainly on public buildings. "We have a very limited number of studies, so we're almost looking at the problem through a straw（吸管）," architect David Allison says. "How do you take answers to very specific questions and make broad, generalized use of them? That's what we're all struggling with."

    How does a sunset work? We love to look at one, but Jolanda Blackwell wanted her eighth-graders to really think about it and question.

    So Blackwell had her students watch a video of a sunset as part of a physics lesson on motion. "I asked them: ' So what's moving And why' " Blackwell says. Some thought the sun was moving; others knew that a sunset is the result of the Earth spinning around on its axis. "Usually, my biggest challenge is trying to keep them patient," she says. "They just have so many burning questions."

    "Every day, we meet new information," says Charan Ranganath, a psychologist. Ranganath was curious to know why we keep some information and forget other things. So he got 19 volunteers and asked them to review more than 100 questions. When the participants' curiosity was aroused, the parts of' their brains that regulate pleasure and reward lit up. Curious minds also showed increased activity in the brain, which is involved in greater memories.

    "Curious brains are better at learning not only about the subject at hand but also dull information. This is a phenomenon teachers can use in the classroom," says Evie Malaia, a professor. "Say a kid wants to be an astronaut," she says. NL Well, how do you link that goal with learning multiplication tables(乘法表)" "A teacher may choose to ask her class an interesting word problem that involves space exploration," Malaia says. Students may remember the answer to the word problem, but they'll also remember how they found the answer through multiplication.

    What Ranganath wants to know most is why some people seem naturally more curious than others. Lots of factors, including stress, aging and certain drugs  affect dopamine(多巴胺) processing in the brain. "If we could figure these things out, we could help those who may just seem bored," Ranganath says.

    Blackwell says she doesn't have to deal with that problem too often. She says her students love exploring the mysterious unknowns in science: What happens when a car crashes. How do rainbows work "I tell my kids there's no dumb questions," Blackwell says. "That's science: asking questions and seeking answers."

The Ig Nobel awards are usually known as the "Igs" and are given out every year at around the same time as the real Nobel awards. The "Igs" are given for achievements that "make people laugh, and then make them think". The name "Ig Nobel" is a language joke. "Nobel" sounds like "noble" -- meaning "very honored". And Ig Nobel sounds like "ignoble" meaning the opposite of noble — that is, "not honored"

    According to Marc Abrahars, who co-founded the award in 1991, "Most prizes, such as Nobel Prize, reward the goodness of the people who receive them. These prizes are meant to honor the extremes of humanity-those whose achievements should be seen as very good."

    "The Ig Nobel Prize isn't like that. The Ig honors the great confusion in which most of us exist much of the time. Life is confusing. Good and bad get all mixed up. If you win an Ig, it shows that you have done something. What that thing is may be hard to explain. But the fact is, you did it, and have been recognized for doing it."

    The Nobel science prizes encourage us to think that all over the world great discoveries are being made that will do good to the whole world. But real science is not like that. The main job of science is to find out what is not true. This leads people into areas of research that seem completely senseless. Why did a team of Japanese scientists spend months trying to teach birds to enjoy the paintings of Picasso? Why did a Norwegian biologist start a project to encourage insects to drink beer? It is hard to say. But it won them all an Ig.

    Sometimes science tells us things that we don't want or need to know. We don't want to know that falling in love and going mad are exactly the same as far as the brain is concerned. And we don't really need to know that worrying about money can cause tooth disease. Only the Ig award brought these great achievements to our attention.

For most of us, walking is something we do automatically. It doesn't require much effort, so many of us fail to remember the benefits of walking for health.

Physical activity doesn't need to be hard. Whether you're regularly active or not, even a quick ten-minute daily walk can deliver a host of health benefits. But what happens if we stop walking ahead and start challenging our brains and bodies by walking backwards? Not only does this change of direction demand more of our attention, but it may also bring additional health benefits.

One of the most well-studied benefits of walking backwards is improving stability and balance. Walking backwards can improve how a person walks and balance for healthy adults and those with knee problems. Walking backwards causes us to take shorter, more frequent steps, leading to improve the muscles of the lower legs. But the benefits of changing direction aren't just that- -an interest in backwards movement has led researchers to discover various other benefits. While normal walking can help us maintain a healthy weight, walking backwards may be even more effective. Energy expenditure when walking backwards is almost 40 percent higher than walking at the same speed forwards, with one study showing reductions in body fat for women who completed a six-week backwards walk.

Walking backwards is simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy. So, how can you add walking backwards into your exercise plan? When walking backwards, we're more likely to crash into something or fall over, so in the interest of safety, it's best to start indoors where you won't crash into someone or outside in a flat, open area. Look over your shoulder. Keep your head and chest upright while reaching back with your big toe for each step, rolling through the foot from toe to heel. Once you become more confident walking backwards, you can begin to speed things up.