Zoey admits it was a little sad saying goodbye to her fish. 【小题1】Zoey’s class at Hawthorne Elementary School spent most of the school year raising the fish from time they were nothing more than little eggs with eyes.

The program the Hawthorne kids took part in is called” Trout in the classroom”.【小题2】 The kids at Wilson Middle School in Fishersville took part in the project, too.

“I got to feed them every morning and watch them grow up,” said seventh-grader Lauren Clayton. We have to protect them, or some of the fish could go extinct.” Lauren was right. 【小题3】But later, pollution, overfishing and loss of natural habitat have pushed some species to the danger of extinction.

Thanks to the kids in the program, trout are being reintroduced into rivers and streams across the country. And by doing that, the kids are helping to restore there local ecosystems-----the natural balance that existed before human disturbed it,

【小题4】Because the fish are in their classrooms, the kids are responsible for making sure there is cool, clean water, proper food and proper living conditions in the tanks.

By the middle of May, they were “as big as a finger.” That is, they are old enough to be released into Oneida Creek.” Remember to swim back here to meet us and eat the food we bring little trout”.【小题5】

On a cold and clear day in February, Wes, his brother Jeff, his assistant Jordan, and I were following the GPS from the bear’s collar( 项 圈 ) up a steep and into a red earth canyon. The temperature dropped to zero as we cleaned the snow, trying to locate the black bear’s entrance.

The radio signal was so weak that as the sun set, we considered turning back. Then a curtain of snow collapsed, revealing a sandstone cave. It narrowed to a dark tunnel, and the musky(麝香味)smell of wild animal steamed from within. Wes didn’t hesitate. Armed with an expandable six-foot stick with a tranquilizer syringe(镇定剂喷射器) on its tip, he dived in headfirst. His brother crawled after him.

Thirty seconds later, they came flying backward out of the tunnel. The bear they’d collared a year and a half ago now weighed about 350 pounds— and he was awake! Wes had managed to jab him with the syringe, so we waited for the drug to take effect. But when we rounded the tunnel bend, wide eyes flashed at us. He was STILL awake!! Wes told me not to move while he backed out and jabbed another dose of tranquilizer.

The bear started crawling toward us. We desperately blocked the exit with backpacks and sticks as Wes jabbed him again— but he powered through our barriers with groggy(头晕眼花的) steps and began to crawl down the snowy slope. Jeff and Jordan held his back paws, managing     to hold on to him; Wes jumped on his back and grabbed his collar. The bear pulled them down   the hillside together. The tranquilizer had taken effect— he was asleep. Wes and his brother changed the batteries of the collar and checked his health, but we had one more difficult task: getting a 350-pound bear up the snowy path and safely back to his cave before he awoke. We pushed and pulled with every muscle. Before the drug wore off, our effort paid off.

When spring came, signals from the bear’s new radio collar showed he’d continued his everyday life—avoiding any more contact, we hope, with humans.

Humans have always been working Earth’s land, and they also have always been studying and hoping to work the land of Mars one day.

Planetary scientist Abhilash Ramachandran at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference reported that Martian dirt may have all the necessary nutrients for growing rice, one of humankind’s most important foods. However, he emphasizes that the plant may need a bit of help to survive in perchlorate (高氯酸盐), a chemical that can be harmful to plants and has been detected on the surface of Mars.

Ramachandran says they want to send humans to Mars, but they cannot take everything there, especially food. He thinks it’s going to be expensive, but growing rice there would be ideal.

Ramachandran and his colleagues grew rice plants in a Martian soil simulant (模拟物). They also grew rice in pure potting mix as well as several mixtures of the potting mix and soil simulant. All pots were watered once or twice a day. The team found rice plants did grow in the artistic dirt of Mars. However, the plants developed slighter shoots and thinner roots than the plants that grew from the potting mix and hybrid soils. The researchers also tried growing rice in soil with added perchlorate. They sourced some rice varieties—modified to stand environmental stressors like drought—and grew them in Mars-like dirt with and without perchlorate. No rice plants grew in a concentration of 3 g of perchlorate per kilogram of soil. But when the concentration was just I g per kilogram, one of the rice varieties grew both a shoot and a root, while another managed to grow a root.

The findings are encouraging, suggesting that by changing to improve with one successful modified gene, humans might eventually be able to develop a rice cultivar suitable for Mars.