Living among trees, plants and flowers can fill your life with beauty. And if you are a woman, it can also help you live longer.

Women who live in homes surrounded by plants appear to have lower death rates than women who live in areas with less green plants, according to a research.

Peter James and his team looked at information from one of the largest and oldest investigations of women’s health: the Nurses’ Health Study.

For the new study, the team looked at the death rates of more than 100,000 women between the years 2008 and 2015.Then the researchers compared the death rates of these women to the green plants around their homes. To determine the amount of trees and other vegetation (植被),researchers examined satellite images.

To make it more believable, the researchers considered other risk factors — things such as the age of the women, their economic status, and race. They also looked at whether or not the women smoked.

Peter James says he and his team were surprised to find such a strong link between high vegetation levels and low death rates. He adds they were also surprised to find how high levels of plant life can affect a woman’s mental health.

The study suggests that living among vegetation lowered levels of depression. Researchers say women in greener areas spent more time with other people, exercised more and were less exposed to air pollution.

One of the biggest effects of greenery appeared to be a lowered risk of cancer. Here are some numbers. The study found that women living in the greenest areas had a 13 percent lower rate of dying from cancer.

James says that it is common knowledge that vegetation helps the environment in many ways. But, he adds, the new findings suggest ways for city planners, landscape architects and policymakers to grow even healthier living areas.

Nara is a popular destination for visitors to Japan and it is home to around 1, 000 blessed deer, which are officially considered as a national natural treasure in Japan and the image of the city. Many tourists like them and feed them treats. In July 2019, however, nine deer were found dead with plastic bags in their stomachs. Locals called on visitors not to throw away plastic bags in the park.

Hidetoshi Matsukawa, who works at tourism, wanted to come up with a different way to deal with the problem, and teamed up with a local paper maker and a design firm to work on the project.

They developed “Shikagami”, or deer paper, which is made from rice bran (糠) and milk boxes. They learned rice bran is mostly wasted in the processing of rice and this paper helps to reduce that waste as well.

Matsukawa has had the deer paper bags tested and says they are safe for human use. “We do not have the data to support that this paper is not harmful to deer, but this is safe for them as well as for human beings,” he said, laughing.

The bags have since been tested at local banks and the Todaiji temple, Nara’s main tourist attraction. The temple and banks bought 4, 000—5, 000 of the bags for 100 yen (around 95 cents) each as part of the pilot project. The price will fall if more businesses sign up to use the bags, said Matsukawa, who dreams of replacing plastic bags across the city to prevent more deer from dying after eating them.

“The news about the death of deer by plastic bags creates a bad influence, as though the park is a cemetery (墓地) for deer,” he said. “The paper bags can protect deer, as well as the image of Nara with deer.”

For their nick-of-time acts, Toby, a 2-year-old dog, and Winnie, a cute cat, were named Dog and Cat of the Year by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

As Amy Paul choked on a piece of apple at her home, her dog jumped up, landing hard on her chest and forcing the piece in her throat out. When the Keesling family of Indiana was about to be killed by carbon monoxide (一氧化碳), their cat clawed at the wife Cathy’s hair until she woke up and called for help. No one could explain their timely heroics.

Both pets were rescued by their owners in infancy—Toby as a 4-week-old thrown into a dustbin to die, and Winnie as a week-old orphan hiding under a barn, so helpless that Cathy’s husband, Eric, had to feed her milk with a special tool.

As the Keeslings recalled it, a gas-driven pump being used broke down, spreading carbon monoxide through the house. By the time Winnie went to rescue, the couple’s 14-year-old son was already unconscious.“Winnie jumped on the bed and was clawing at me, with a kind of angry sound,” Cathy Keesling said. The state police responding to her 911 call said the family was only minutes from death, judging by the amount of poisonous gas in the house.

Amy Paul’s husband was at his job when she took a midday break from making jewelry and bit into an apple. “Normally I peel (削皮) them, but I read in Good Housekeeping Magazine that the skin has all the nutrients, so I ate the skin, and that’s what caused me to choke,” she recalled. “I couldn’t breathe and I was in panic (惊慌) when Toby jumped on me. He never does that, but he did, and saved my life.”

Both Toby and Winnie accompanied their owners to the awards lunch.