Officials say climate change is starving Alaska’s salmon

Alaska’s Yukon River has faced major salmon shortages in recent years. 【小题1】 Officials say record-high temperatures last year killed most salmon in the 3,200-kilometre river before the fish were able to reproduce.

【小题2】 Fishing experts say young salmon are likely filling up on nutrient-poor food like jellyfish because warmer waters drive away healthier organisms they normally feed on. “In my opinion, the salmon are starving with climate change,” said Brooke Woods. She is with the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission in the Athabascan village of Rampart.

The collapsed Yukon River salmon harvests caused major financial losses to private fishing companies in the area. In 2020, fishing companies on the Yukon River earned a combined $51,480. 【小题3】 The die-offs also hurt native communities, which traditionally store the fish as a year-round food supply.

The losses led both Alaska and Canada to halt their salmon harvests in 2021 in order to make sure that enough fish survived to reproduce for another year. Alaska has sent emergency fish shipments to areas affected by the salmon shortages.

The effects of climate change on freshwater environments have also been studied. Vanessa von Biela is a US Geological Survey research biologist who looked at the rivers, streams and lakes where salmon spend early and late periods of the lives. 【小题4】 They start dying above 20 Celsius.

“Salmon will find a way,” said biologist von Biela. “But it is going to be hard for communities that are in places where there might not be salmon any more.”

Not long ago, people thought babies were not able to learn things until they were five or six months old. Yet doctors in the United States say babies begin learning on their first day of life. Scientists note that babies are strongly influenced by their environment. They say a baby will smile if her mother does something the baby likes. A baby learns to get the best care possible by smiling to please her mother or other caregivers. This is how babies learn to connect and communicate with other human beings. One study shows that babies can learn before they are born. The researchers placed a tape recorder on the stomach of a pregnant woman. Then, they played a recording of a short story. On the day the baby was born, the researchers attempted to find if he knew the sounds of the story repeated while in his mother. They did this by placing a device in the mouth of the newborn baby.

The baby would hear the story if he moved his mouth one way. If the baby moved his mouth the other way, he would hear a different story. The researchers say the baby clearly liked the story he heard before he was born. They say the baby would move his mouth so he could hear the story again and again.

Another study shows how mothers can strongly influence social development and language skills in their children. Researchers studied the children from the age of one month to three years. The researchers attempted to measure the sensitivity of the mothers. The women were considered sensitive if they supported their children’s activities and did not interfere(干预) unnecessarily. They tested the children for thinking and language development when they were three years old. Also, the researchers observed the women for signs of depression. The children of depressed women did not do as well in tests as the children of women who did not suffer from depression. The children of depressed women did poorly in tests of language skills and understanding what they hear.

These children also were less cooperative and had more problems dealing with other people. The researchers noted that the sensitivity of the mothers was important to the intelligence development of their children. Children did better when their mothers were caring, even when they suffered from depression.

A recent study found that only eight percent of people actually end up achieving their new year’s resolution. Here’s a couple of tips and tricks on how to do just that.

【小题1】.

No one has ever said “oh, I’m going to be healthier this year” and the next day woke up healthy. There has to be a plan, goals, and action that need to be taken. So you can say something like “I’m going to go to the gym every other day this year.”

Choose resolutions wisely.

【小题2】. The majority of resolutions involve some sort of habit change, and habit changes have a huge consumption on your body’s willpower. Willpower is like a battery that needs to be charged every night. When you have too many resolutions, the burden on this battery causes it to run out before you have a chance to charge it.

Write your resolutions down.

This makes the resolution feel like a contract. 【小题3】. You can write down every resolution for the entire year. Every time you look at it, you will feel a tremendous amount of pressure to make sure that you continue to keep your resolution.

Don’t tell anyone about your new year’s resolution.

Usually, when you talk about something that you haven’t accomplished, you will trick their brains into visualizing a situation where you have accomplished it.【小题4】

Find yourself an accountability buddy.

An accountability buddy is somebody who makes sure that you’re going out there every single day, and doing the things that you promised yourself that you would do. 【小题5】. At the same time, you help them keep themselves in lines too!