Richard Turere walks through his family's farm just outside Nairobi National Park in Kenya. Goats, cows, and sheep eat grass peacefully on the farm while in the park nearby, lions wander leisurely, living in peaceful coexistence with the livestock. An extraordinary picture! How do livestock manage to live safely near these huge lions? It's all due to this young man's brilliant invention, Lion Lights.

Livestock is his family's entire livelihood—which is why whenever lions attacked their goats, sheep, or cattle, it was disastrous. There seemed to be no good solution to the problem until Richard began working on it. After a lion killed his family's only bull, Richard started experimenting with ways to scare off the lions. His first two attempts—fire and then a scarecrow—were unsuccessful. But one night in 2011, when he was walking around with a flashlight, he noticed that lions stayed away. That's when he realized: these big cats were afraid of moving lights!

Then Richard—who'd taken apart and studied machines since he was very small—began experimenting. Despite his lack of any formal training in electrical engineering, he fitted a system of flashing LED lights on poles around the farm. The flashing lights, which he made from vehicle indicator flashers, car batteries, and a solar panel, tricked the lions into thinking the grounds were guarded, keeping the lions away.

The word got out about the brilliant "lion-lights boy". Soon Richard was fixing the Lion Lights system for neighbors. Later, his invention won him a scholarship to Kenya's well-known Brookhouse International School. And when Richard was 13, he was invited to California to speak about his invention at a TED conference. These days, Richard still lives on his family's farm, and fixes the Lion Lights system for people all over Kenya, which functions efficiently. He dreams of becoming an airplane engineer and pilot, but he also works to arouse people's awareness about the need to support young Kenyan inventors like himself.

Ways to Help the Troubled Monarch Butterflies

The monarch butterfly (帝王蝶) is considered an endangered species. Scientists say the dropping number of monarchs is due to climate change, loss of living places and the use of pesticides — chemicals that kill insects — and herbicides — chemicals that kill plants. 【小题1】

One of the quickest and best ways to help is to plant milkweed on your land. Milkweed is a kind of plant that has white juice. Monarch butterflies eat milkweed and lay their eggs there. 【小题2】 However, not all milkweed is the same. It is important to choose the right kind of milkweed. Planting tropical milkweed in the United States is a problem because it is not native to the country. It blooms or flowers for longer periods of time. This can make it harder for monarchs to know when it is time to migrate (迁徙).

Other plants, especially those with flowers that have honey, can be helpful to adult monarchs. These plants can be good-quality food for the butterflies. 【小题3】 Invasive plants can do more harm than good to monarchs. It is a good idea to include plants that flower late in the growing season. These plants can help give monarchs the energy they need for their yearly migration in autumn.

【小题4】 Chemicals can harm insects, including monarchs. They can also harm birds. Natural or organic poisons may also be harmful. Use them after dark, when butterflies are not as active. When the morning arrives, the product will be dry and not as effective. The butterflies will be safe.

Another way to help monarchs is to create a butterfly water feeding area. Add water to sand in a sunny area. 【小题5】 Butterflies can rest on the stone, take in the sun and drink the water from the pool. And you can sit and enjoy the beautiful monarchs.

The moment the ground stops shaking after an earthquake, some people may wonder whether their pets — or wild animals for that matter — knew the disaster was coming.

To get to the bottom of this question, Heiko Woith, a scientist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences, and his colleagues evaluated more than 700 published reports of unusual behavior among 130 species, including insects, birds, fish, cats, dogs and cattle from 160 earthquakes. The records included all kinds of behaviors, including a tiger that reportedly got depressed before an earthquake.

The researchers found that 90 percent of all reported cases happened within 62 miles of the epicenter (震中) and within 60 days of an earthquake. Then, they examined when and where foreshocks had happened in the region and concluded that it was hard to say these animals could predict the earthquake itself. They were just responding to foreshocks.

“The space-time pattern of animal precursors (预兆) and foreshocks is strikingly similar,” Woith said. “From this, we concluded that the abnormal animal behavior might simply be related to foreshocks. These animals are just responding to foreshocks rather than predicting the earthquake. They don’t have super power.”

Despite the vast number of incidences, good information was little and scientific evidence is lacking. “A major surprise for us was that the large majority of the published claims were built on poor observational data, which did not stand as statistical scientific proof,” Woith said.

To better study whether animals can predict earthquakes, Woith and his colleagues suggested that researchers ask a number of yes-or-no questions in any upcoming experiments, including “Is the experimental setup and monitoring procedure clearly described and reproducible?” and “Is it proven that the animal behavior is really unusual?”

Meanwhile, humans are working on technologies that can detect earthquakes seconds before they hit. Hopefully, we will have such devices to warn people that the earthquake is coming.