If you're wondering when you might get the flu, a new study indicates you should keep an eye on your local weather report.

    According to a research published in the Journal of Clinical Virology, if you keep your eye on the weather and watch for the first major dip in the temperature, you can essentially mark your calendar in prediction for an outbreak the flu.

    To figure out how the weather and flu outbreak may be connected, researchers analyzed statistics of 20,000 people in an area over three seasons. The number of people who caught the flu was then compared with local weather data.

    After each season, the team noticed one consistent finding: The first really cold period with low outdoor temperatures and low humidity (湿度) was always followed by a week of a mass influenza outbreak.

    The researchers say that aerosol particles (气溶胶粒子) containing virus and liquid are more able to spread in cold and dry weather. So, in theory, if you sneeze or cough and the surrounding air is very dry, the air will absorb the moisture and the particles containing the virus keep spreading through the air for a longer period of time.

    Luckily there are ways to keep off the illness regardless of the weather. Washing your hands, coughing into the crook (弯曲) of your arm and getting vaccine (疫苗) are the best ways to prevent the flu from spreading. People over the age of 65, pregnant women and young children are at the highest risk of developing complications (并发症) related to the virus, according to the CDC.

    Wild animals are our friends, but many of them are getting fewer and fewer. We should try to protect them. The four animals below are now in danger.

     Tibetan Antelopes

    Tibetan antelopes are medium - sized animals. They mainly feed on grass. They are usually found in groups of about 20. They are killed for their wool, which is warm, soft and fine and can be made into expensive clothes. Although people can get the wool without killing the animals, people simply kill them before taking the wool. The number of them is dropping year by year. There are less than 75,000 Tibetan antelopes left in the world, down from a million 50 years ago.

    Golden Monkeys

    Golden monkeys are mainly found in Sichuan, Gansu, Shanxi provinces and Shengnongjia mountainous area of Hubei Province. Golden monkeys have golden - orange fur. They move around in the daytime, usually in groups of as many as 100 to 200 heads, or 20 to 30 heads. They feed on fruits and young leaves of bamboos. But people are destroying the environment where they live. Trees and bamboos are disappearing, so golden monkeys have less and less to eat.

    Elephants

    Elephants are very big and strong. They are bigger than any other animals on land. They are grey and have long trunks and tusks. They have poor eyesight, but very good hearing and smell. They can lift heavy things and break down branches with their trunks. Elephants are very friendly towards each other and towards their neighbours. Normally, they live in a group for many years. Young male elephants do not leave the group until they are about 12 years old. Now, there are very few elephants in the world. The number of them is becoming smaller and smaller because their living areas are used for fanning. Also, people hunt them for their tusks.

    Wolves

Wolves are not very big. They have grey fur. Solves have very good eyesight, hearing and smell. Wolves' food is various. They eat animals, insects and snails. They are friendly to each other and never attack people. They do not kill for fun. Wolves are in danger, too. They are losing their living areas because people cut down forests. Soon they will have no home or food.

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    In no particular order, here are some songs on the Music app of my phone:

On a Sunday Afternoon by Lighter Shade of Brown— A student of mine introduced this rap song to me all the way back in the early 1990s, when I was teaching Spanish at a local university. The story in the song takes place not too far from where I live in Los Angeles. It's a good "driving" song, nothing difficult or "deep".

Say Something by A Great Big World—A more recent song about a couple losing contact with each other. The piano part is of very little playing but beautiful.

    The Weight by The Band — Another old song, originally made public in 1968, but one I didn't hear until I was in high school more than 10 years later. I don't understand the words to the song completely, but the feeling of the song is very comforting to me.

Under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers — This Los Angeles group wrote a song that I used to listen to when I first moved to LA more than 25 years ago. I didn't know anyone here when I first arrived. When I got bored, I used to drive up and down the major streets that cross the city from east to west, listening to this song about t4the city of angels" being as "lonely as I am" (Don't worry. I have plenty of friends now.)

    The loud continuous noise of the cars or the sound of a plane can force its way into the deepest forest, yet it's not only humans that ere bothered by the noise.

    Bioacoustician Bernie Krause has been studying the effect of noise pollution on wildlife, and has come across some interesting behaviors, especially among animals that communicate by vocalization（发声）, like humans. Birds use sound to communicate, but in noisy places, these animals have to shout over the natural noise to be heard.

    Krause mentions a study of nightingales to clarify what he means. The birds responded to traffic noise by singing louder and louder until they actually went beyond noise pollution standards in the city. To belt out (sing loudly) their songs, they increased their lung pressure fivefold, but scientists state that this is not dangerous for the birds themselves.

    Studies show that sudden noise can cause certain birds to leave their nests, exposing the young to their enemies. One study also showed that songbirds that nested close to busy motorways were much less productive than those that nested farther away. Mammals（哺乳动物）too are affected. A recent study showed that nursing caribou responded to plane noise by not producing enough milk to feed their young.

    In some cases noise pollution can actually help some animals while harming others. Toads（蟾蜍）and frogs are known to vocalize in synchrony（同步；同步方式）so that no predator (their enemies) can zero in on them. Krause found that when planes flew overhead and disturbed the toad's song, they lost their synchronicity, and it took them 45 minutes to get it back again. That gave their natural enemies plenty of time to find and catch individual toads by sound.

    According to Kruse, “Not only will noise pollution bother wildlife, but it won't help our lives either.”

    It's a safe bet that a robot made your car and made your computer. Pretty soon, they could be making your bed and breakfast too.

     Increasingly, engineers are saying that robots are going to move out of research departments and into your home. Companies including General Electric are working on designs for small robots. Products like the Roomba, a robot that can clean floors, are flying off the shelves.

     What's behind this new robot revolution? It's partly a matter of technology. Devices that can recognize and respond to a human voice have been developed. There are now a few different ways for robots to move around. They can walk, crawl or ride on wheels. Robots are being made smaller and smaller. They are also becoming more and more able.

     A bigger part of the story is on the demand side. From the day the television remote control was invented, people around the world have searched for new ways to be lazy. Take into consideration that more and more people can afford robots, and the time seems ripe to introduce robots to the ordinary family.

     To be sure, robots that walk on two legs and talk like people are still a long way off. However, robots that do basic housework such as cleaning or gardening are sure to come out soon. One thing is certain—when these robots do come into our homes, it will change things forever.

Robots have long been drawing inspiration from animals, with the creation of robot dogs or snake-shaped robots. And yet, the field of robotics is far less enthusiastic about the other kind of living things—plants. Barbara Mazzolai, an Italian roboticist owes this to a misconception about plant behavior: that they cannot move or think. "It's not true at all, " she says. To challenge this view, Dr Mazzolai and her team recently launched a machine called "FiloBot", a robot based on a climbing species. 

To survive, a climbing plant must switch between several different behaviors. In forest environments, it must first grow out of the soil and travel along the ground in search of a support to hold onto, such as a nearby tree. Once a support is located, though, the plant fixes itself around the object and then growing towards the light. To choose the best angle to grow upwards, a climbing plant uses its shoots(芽) to receive information about light and gravity. 

FiloBot has sensors on its main shoot. It can 3D-print its body with plastic and grow at a controllable rate. These functions, researchers found, enabled FiloBot to cross gaps, and find things to attach to. The lack of heavy on-board computing device means that it is light and requires minimal care, while its slow pace means that it doesn't disturb things around it, making it possible to move through a complex, unseen environment, or monitoring disaster sites. 

For now, FiloBot is still being tested. Its tendrils(卷须) have not left the laboratory. Still, it has already been employed in deconstructing plant behaviour. For example, it was long assumed that climbing plants find their supports by growing towards shade, though the exact mechanism was unclear. FiloBot could imitate this behaviour by detecting far-red light, which is typical of shaded areas, providing clues to how plants do it. 

Dr Mazzolai hopes that such projects will inspire other roboticists to take their cues from plants and develop completely new technologies.