Climate change is difficult to handle, but this doesn't mean people are just sitting on the sidelines waiting for the unavoidable. Everyone can join in fighting climate change. Here are some citizen-science projects in which you can take part.
Meado Watch
This project, out of the University of Washington, is looking at how climate change is affecting wildflowers on Mount Rainier. Volunteers collect data along hiking tracks when wildflowers bud, flower, fruit and produce seeds. The project is also collecting photos of wildflowers from across Mount Rainier National Park.
Great Backyard Bird Count
For four days every February, volunteers around the world count birds in 15 minutes. These observations can be made anywhere, including your own backyard. The counts provide scientists with data on where birds are found and how many there are. The count has been going on for over 20 years.
Water Monitoring in Minnesota
Residents of Minnesota can sign up to be a volunteer monitoring water for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Volunteers are arranged to a lake or stream. Twice a month during the summer, they take measurements of water clarity（透明度）. Those data let the government see whether water clarity has been changing over time as well as assess the health of those waterways.
Redmap
Gretta Peel is an ocean ecologist at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia. She studies where sea species are moving in response to climate change. She sets up a program called Redmap. It asks people to report "uncommon" sea species they've seen in Australian waters. "We want to have an early indication（迹象）of what species were moving where they live," she explains.
Manute Bol played ten years in the National Basketball Association. But he will be remembered as much for his shot-blocking in the NBA as for his charity work in Sudan. He died on June nineteenth from kidney（肾）failure and a rare and painful skin disorder.
Manute Bol was born in southern Sudan. He stood two hundred thirty-one centimeters-tall even for a Dinka, some of Africa's tallest people. His father, a tribal chief, did not think basketball was "good work for a Dinka". But the teenager chose it over herding his family's cattle.
He did not have much luck, though, when he first went up to dunk（扣篮）the ball. As he once told The Washington Post, "When I came down I hurt my teeth in the net. "
In the NBA, Manute Bol averaged less than three points a game on offense（进攻）. But on defense, he became one of the most feared shot-blockers in the league. Former player Rory Sparrow says he was not afraid of anyone--not even Michael Jordan. "He just laughed and said, 'What Michael Jordan? Why should I be afraid of Michael Jordan? I kill lion. He comes in, I block his shot. ' And sure enough, he blocked his shot. Michael made a couple of dunks. But hey, Manute stood his ground. "
He finished his career as the fourteenth best shot-blocker in NBA history. He enjoyed his fame. But he never forgot his people. Years of civil war left southern Sudan in ruins. He helped raise money for refugees. Reports say he donated nearly all of the estimated six million dollars he made playing basketball. Before his death, he was working with the Sudan Sunrise group to help bring the country together. His goal was to build forty-one schools.
For the past weeks, melting snow and heavy spring rains have caused the Missouri River to rise above normal levels, flooding parts of Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and South Dakota. Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate their homes to escape the flood.
The Missouri River is the second longest river in the United States. It is the longest river that feeds into the Mississippi River. Residents（居民）in areas along the Missouri River have been building temporary levees（堤）along the river. They hope that the levees will prevent the river water from overflowing. On Monday morning, however, several levees in northern Missouri broke.
Because of the broken levees, the Missouri River came close to forcing the shutdown of nuclear power plant（核电站）in Brownville, Nebraska. There, the river rose to 900. 5 feet. If it rose 18 more inches, officials would have been forced to close the plant for safety reasons. This nuclear plant had been preparing for possible flooding since May 30th. Workers used over 5,000 tons of sand to construct barricades around the plant. Luckily, the river stopped rising in time and the plant remains open. "We knew the river was going to rise for some time," Nebraska Public Power District spokesman Mark Becker said. "It was just a matter of when."
Engineers and weather forecasters predict that the river will rise as much as five to seven feet above flood level in Nebraska and Iowa and up to ten feet above the level in Missouri. They think the river will stay high until August. The U. S. government has agreed to give $1 billion in emergency money to repair broken levees and areas damaged by the flooding along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.
Eleven of the world's languages have at least one hundred million native speakers. The biggest are Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic and Hindi. Next come Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese, French and German. The United Nations says these eleven languages are the mother tongues of half the world's population.
Bud Lane works with linguist Gregory Anderson to record words for a talking dictionary. But the world has close to seven thousand languages. Linguists predict that quite a lot of these may be at risk of disappearing by the end of this century. That would mean another language dies every two weeks.
Members of the Siletz Indian tribe in the northwestern state of Oregon take pride in their language. Their language, they say, "is as old as time itself." But today very few people can speak it fluently. In fact, you can count the number of fluent speakers on one hand. Bud Lane is one of them. Several National Geographic fellows helped him record fourteen thousand words and phrases in his native tongue. More than ten thousand entries can be found in the Siletz Online Talking Dictionary, first launched in two thousand seven. Smartphone apps, YouTube videos and Facebook pages have all become digital tools for language activists and experts.
In Canada's far north, the Inuit people are struggling to preserve their native language, Inuktitut. Part of the effort involves Microsoft. The company is translating terms in its Windows operating system and Office software into Inuktitut. Microsoft has also worked with language activists in New Zealand, Spain and Wales to translate its software into Maori, Basque, Catalan and Welsh.
In Oregon, Bud Lane says technology alone cannot save endangered languages. He points to one sign of progress: young members of the tribe are now texting each other in tribal language.
An indoor garden has a positive impact on your life if you take care of them properly. However, if you fail to plan before starting one on your own, you may end up with a few problems.
Plants need an ample amount of sunlight for them to grow properly. . Before starting an urban garden, make sure you've conducted a few weeks' worth of observations about how sunlight behaves inside your home at different times of the day. This will give you an idea as to where your urban garden is.
Obviously, the sun conditions would be useless if you don't have enough space for the garden. That said, consider where the sunlight lands. You must also determine whether you can place a garden there. Do it in such a way that you get to accommodate your plants' sunlight needs while also maximizing the space of your home for other things.
That's a fact. This shouldn't bother you, though. That's because, in the long run, urban gardens are actually money-savers. The money you spent on gardening essentials will return in the form of not having to buy certain things in the market because you have one at home. Before starting an urban garden, consider the budget you want for the garden. This will determine the containers and types of plants you can cultivate.
The world will always present us with many problems that can affect us physically, mentally and emotionally. One great method for achieving a healthy lifestyle is by growing a garden. Thanks to urban gardening, you can have a slice of paradise in the city.
A. If not, you can try rearranging your home.
B. You also need to consider watering your plants.
C. To avoid that, you need to consider a few things.
D. Without enough sunlight, all living things wouldn't survive.
E. That means you should consider the availability of sunlight.
F. Living in the city is not a problem for new gardeners anymore.
G. You will spend a few dollars if you want to start an urban garden.
Never criticize someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. During the past twenty-five years, I've often found that the message used to be on my fridge has helped me see1from a different view.
Once I was on my way to a party with several 2. As we were leaving the office, we met another colleague, Wendy, who had3 planned to attend the event. We asked her to go together, but she4 our invitation roughly（粗暴地）. My other colleagues were quite annoyed and clearly 5with Wendy's behaviour.
6 how tired Wendy appeared, I commented that perhaps we should forgive her. She was 7 having a bad day, and it wasn't worth holding a grudge（怨恨）against her if we weren't8of what led to her unusual behaviour. A week later, I 9 that Wendy had a serious illness. Wendy wasn't being 10to us but she had just received very bad news.
Whether it's a family member who let me 11, a friend who betrayed（背叛）my12 , or a difficult colleague, the words 13 me. Although it's not always easy to 14, I've been able to get rid of a lot of 15 over the years by focusing on my magical sentence.
Cholera used to be one of the most feared diseases in the world, caused millions of people to die, until a British doctor, John Snow, (show) how it could be overcome. In 1854, he began to investigate. By marking on a map exact places where all those died had lived in Broad Street, Snow suspected the water pump was (blame). What's more, a woman and her daughter who had the water from the pump delivered to her house after moving away from the street also died from cholera. a result of this evidence, Snow announced that the pump water carried cholera (germ). Accordingly, he had the handle of the pump (remove) so that it could not be used. Through Snow's (tire) efforts, water companies started selling clean water. Finally, King Cholera was defeated. Thanks to the work of Snow, cholera is much (easy) to be treated than before. For this reason, Snow (consider) the father of modern epidemiology.
It started out as a normal spring morning. Fern was busy setting the table for breakfast when her father had been to the hog house（猪圈）with an ax. Fern, who was only eight, just wondered why he needed an ax. Curiosity drove her to ask her mom.
"Well," replied Mrs Arable, "some pigs were born last night but one of the pigs is a weakling（虚弱的猪）. It is very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So your father has decided to do away with it. "
Fern trembled with anger, unable to believe what she had heard. Noticing Fern's reaction, Mrs Arable continued to explain, "Your father is right. The pig would probably die anyway."
Fern pushed a chair out of the way and stormed outdoors. The grass was wet and the earth smelled of springtime. Fern's sneakers were sopping（浸湿）by the time she caught up with her father. Desperately, she begged her father not to kill the pig, sobbing it was unfair. "Fern," Mr Arable turned to his little girl and said gently, "you will have to learn to control yourself."
"Control myself?" yelled Fern. "This is a matter of life and death, and you talk about controlling myself." With tears streaming down her cheeks, she reached out for the ax and tried to pull it out of her father's hand.
However, Mr Arable took no notice of her words, thinking it was another mischie（胡闹）and went on with what he had been doing. Anxious but determined, Fern cried out, "The pig couldn't help being born small, could it? If I had been very small at birth, would you have killed me?"
Saying a firm "No" as an answer, Mr Arable smiled in great amazement and looked down at his daughter with love. "This is different. A little girl is one thing, a weak pig is another." It seemed he didn't intend to change his mind. Fern would not give in either, still hanging on to the ax. "This is the most terrible case of injustice I've ever heard of!"
注意：
1. 所续写短文的词数应为150左右；
2. 续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好；
Paragraph 1:
A complicated look came over Mr Arable's face.
Paragraph 2:
Fern loved the little pig more than anything.
