The female dog, who Leonard appropriately named Gobi, joined Leonard on the second day of the annual 4 Deserts Race Series and ran side-by-side with him for 77 miles. Leonard noticed Gobi running with 101 runners during the first day, but on the second day, Gobi was on the start line, looking up at him. "This was the first contact I had with her and as I ran off the line I noticed her by my side," he said. "I didn't speak much to her that day, but at the finish line she followed me into the tent and we slept next to each other. That was it then."

    Leonard shared his sleeping space, water and food with his small companion during the race. He even lent her a hand when needed. "I carried her across rivers that she could not cross on her own," he wrote on his Crowdfunder page.

    After the race, it was clear to Leonard that he had developed a special bond with the pup and started researching ways to get Gobi to the UK. He learned that it would take four months for Gobi to be medically checked and cleared for entry, all of which will cost $6,560 USD, an amount that has been surpassed(超过) due to a successful Crowdfunder campaign that raised $13,330 USD.

    Green tree ants are important builders in the rainforest. They're like the worker bees of the ant world. The native forest of Thala Beach Nature Reserve is the natural home of these insects.

    They climb all over the tree that contains their nest and protect it from enemies with great fierceness. The ants are often in the fruiting trees of Tropical North Queensland. When an animal tries to help themselves to some tasty fruit, they find themselves attacked by a powerful, frightening army of green tree ants! Their bite is not very painful but many ants attacking at the same time can be extremely uncomfortable.

    The nests are large and constructed by sticking the leaves at the end of branches together to create a home looking roughly like a globe. Most of the nest construction and weaving is conducted at night. A mature colony of green tree ants can hold as many as 100,000 to 500,000 workers and may include as many as 12 trees and contain as any as 150 nests. Green tree ant colonies have one queen and a colony can live up to eight years.

    However, the ants are so busy that they fail to spot a dishonest figure. There is a spider called the Salticid spider, or the jumping spider, as they are sometimes referred to, which has excellent eyesight and is only active during daylight, weaving a protective covering of silk to spend the night in. Interestingly, the Salticid spider does not look like a green tree ant. Instead, it chemically copies green tree ants' smell. Effectively pretending to be an ant, it goes into the green tree ants' nest, enters the nursery and feasts on their babies. Green tree ants don't have good eyesight and smell everything with their antennae (two long thin parts on an ant's head). Therefore, the ants think the spider is another ant and ignore its presence within the nest.

    Next time, as you wander around Thala's native forest, keep an eye out for these busy little creatures. Look up into the trees and you'll likely spot their nests.

    Last month, the president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, held an underwater meeting. The purpose of the ocean floor conference is to highlight the effects of global warming on his island nation.

    The Maldives, located in the Indian Ocean, is the lowest-lying country on Earth. Melting glaciers and polar ice are causing sea levels to rise, putting the Maldives and other low-lying areas at risk of being swallowed by the sea within the next 100 years.

    What can be done? Scientists and leaders from 190 nations will try to figure that out at the United Nations climate change conference next month. The main goal of the meeting is to come up with a new climate agreement for 2012 and beyond. That is when the existing plan, the Kyoto Protocol will expire. The agreement was created in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. Since then, it has been ratified(正式批准) by 190 nations. The countries promised to limit the amount of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, which they produced each year.

    The debate over who should cut greenhouse emissions has been going on for years. The US has been hesitant to reduce emissions unless fast-growing nations such as China and India also reduce their use of fossil fuels. In recent months, China has taken steps to be greener. But India has been unwilling to change. It argues that it is unfair for rich nations to ask poorer countries to cut down on emissions.

    While world leaders work on a plan in Copenhagen, there are many things you can do to help the planet. You can save fuel by walking or biking instead of riding in a car. You can start a recycling program in your community. You can plant trees. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air and give off oxygen.

    American and British people use different greetings. In the USA the commonest greeting is “Hi”. In Britain it is “Hello!” or “How are you?”. “Hi!” is creeping(不知不觉地进入) into British, too. When they are introduced to someone, the Americans say, “Glad to know you.” The British say, “How do you do?” or “Pleased to meet you.” When Americans say “Good-bye”, they nearly always add, “Have a good day.” or “Have a good trip.” etc. to friends and strangers alike. Britains are already beginning to use “Have a good day.”

    The British usually use “got” in the sense of “have”. The Americans hardly ever do.

AmE: Do you have a car, room, etc.? Yes, I do.

BrE: Have you got a car, room, etc.? Yes, I have.

    There are a number of differences between American and British English in the spelling of words, e.g. check(US)/cheque (UK). Many American words ending in “or”, e.g. honor, labor are spelt in British English with an “our,” e.g. honour, labour. Many verbs in American English with “ize” or “izing” forms, e.g. organize, realizing are spelt in BrE with “ise” or “ising”, e.g. organise, realising. In American English, “practice” is used both for the verb and noun. In BrE, the verb is spelt “practise”, and the noun “practice.” In American English, one writes “traveler,” while in British English, one writes  “traveller”.

    It was once predicted that British and American English would become separate languages finally. But the opposite has happened. The links(联系) between the two countries are so strong that linguistically(语言上地),and probably culturally(文化上地) too, they are closer together than ever.

    It is increasingly popular for Chinese young people to share their experiences on Social media, such as the “moments” (朋友圈) on popular instant messaging service WeChat.

    “I have been reading 'Jane Eyre' for 40 days with 48,000 words finished,” Li Anqi said. Li has been sharing her reading experience on WeChat moments every day since January. Working in Yinchuan, capital of Northwest China's Ningxia, Li wants to learn English very much, but cannot bare (摆脱) the daily grind (日常工作) of school lessons.

    “I found many of my WeChat friends had been reading books or learning English on mobile reading apps, and I did not want to fall behind,” Li said.

    In January, she spent more than 100 yuan purchasing an online reading class at the Bohe Reading app, which tells customers they can: “Finish reading your first English book here.” At the reading class, teachers assign reading homework and give instructions to 430 class members every day.

    A survey report released (发布) on Thursday said 70.9 percent of primary and middle students in China use the Wechat instant messaging App. At the same time, 75.9 percent of Chinese children have their own mobile phones, according to China National Children's Center.

    The figures were based on a survey of nearly 9,000 children across China. However, 28.8 percent of them never read news online and 43.2 percent have never touched newspapers.

    The Center called for efforts to address the digital divide between urban and rural education and protect children's privacy as Internet users.

Even though they're not the most exciting things in the world, plants have fascinated us ever since the days of early humans. They may not do any tricks or greet us when we come home at night like a dog would, but that doesn't mean they're any less interesting than animals.

However, just when we thought we knew everything we could about them, a recent study found that plants may possess a secret ability that's gone unnoticed all this time. According to the study by Australian biologist Monica Gagliano, published in the journal Oecologia, plants may be able to hear sounds.

To come to this conclusion, Gagliano and her team planted pea seedlings in a pair of different Y-shaped pots with two arms. The first pot's arms led to fresh water, while the other's led to either dry soil or a sealed plastic tube containing flowing water.

Naturally, the first pot's seedlings grew toward the water. What's surprising, however, is that the second pot's seedlings grew toward the sealed water supply and not the soil.

They just knew the water was there, even if the only thing to detect was the sound of it flowing inside the pipe, Gagliano told Scientific American. Gagliano believes that plants are able to use their leaves to detect sound waves, which make tiny vibrations (振动) as they're produced.

This could explain why so many people believe that singing or playing music to their plants helps them grow.

I had a plant that I used to wash the leaves once a week and sing to it, plant lover Heather Goodall told BBC News. It grew from being about 2 feet tall to 7 feet tall in just a couple of years.

So, does this mean we should start treating our plants like pets? Not necessarily, although perhaps it does mean we should give them more respect. I would like to see plants acknowledged more as the amazing, interesting, exotic living beings they are, and less as a mere source of human nutrition, Fatima Cvrckova, a scientist at Charles University in the Czech Republic, told BBC News.