Running is free, requiring no equipment and the scenery can be absolutely beautiful.【小题1】The number of recreational runners in Australia has doubled from 2006 to 2014. Now more than 1.35 million Australians run for fun and exercise.

【小题2】Past study has found running reduces the risk of obesity, high blood pressure, disability and heart disease. It also improves heart function, balance and metabolism. These are important components of your overall health status.

The recent research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine was based on data acquired by 14 earlier studies that studied the habits and longevity of six groups.【小题3】Running was associated with a 23 percent lower chance of death from cancer and a 27 percent less likely to die of any cause. Running just once a week, or for 50 minutes a week, reduces the risk of death at a given point in time.

However, research found no evidence that benefits increase with greater amounts of running.【小题4】Running is an ideal activity for them. But it shouldn't discourage those who enjoy running longer and more often. Even lasting running, for example every day or four hours a week, is beneficial to health.

Nor do the benefits necessarily increase by running at high speeds.【小题5】So running at your own “most comfortable pace” is the best for your health.

A slow death is creeping through Earth’s forests. As animals are killed by hunters or forced away by logging, the plants that depend on them to carry their seeds begin to disappear. Over time, trees and other plants may vanish. Climate change is accelerating this process, a new study suggests—and it may eventually harm biodiversity.

Many plants need help to move about the world. About half of all species rely on birds and mammals to eat or carry their fruits and nuts to new places. When these partners disappear, forests and plant communities can struggle to regenerate.

Climate change is making things worse. As temperatures warm and rainfall decreases, plant populations will have to extend their ranges by as much as tens of kilometers per year.

Ecologist Evan Fricke, wanted to know how well plants all across the planet might be able to move to new habitats. He and his colleagues gathered existing data from thousands of studies that looked at how birds and mammals spread seeds, including how far they travel and what percentage of the seeds actually get to grow. They focused on seeds that are dispersed more than 1 kilometer, a distance that is great enough to expand populations and help them recover from disturbances.

The average ability of plants to keep pace with climate change has already declined by 60%, the research found. “That should certainly be ringing alarm bells,” says Fricke, “We’re ‘forcing’ plants to move these great distances, but we’ve also significantly slowed their ability to do so.”

The loss of the ability is greater in temperate (温带) regions according to the research. That’s because these areas have lost many populations and species of large fruit-eating mammals, which can move seeds longer distances. Also, the challenge for plants is greater there, because when climate conditions change in relatively flat landscapes, species must move farther north to keep cool. In contrast, an alpine plant (高山植物) only has to move uphill to get to a cooler climate.

The situation could   get worse.   In   another   analysis, the researchers predicted what might happen if currently threatened and endangered seed-dispersing birds and mammals go extinct. This would reduce a plant’s ability to keep up with climate change by another 15%.

However, some of the damage can be repaired by connecting isolated habitats. That will better allow species to move in response to climate change. Reintroducing large animals to their former ranges could also help, because they can move seeds long distances.

“This is a very loud wake up call for urgent conservation efforts” of fruit-eating and seed-dispersing animals, says ecologist Rodolfo Dirzo. “What’s important,”he says, “is not just preventing extinction, but   keeping populations big enough to help many plants reproduce.”

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have been working on a fascinating new way to identify people: using the ways of their breath. This idea could change how we unlock our phones and access secure places.

The key to this technology lies in the way we breathe out. Every person has a unique way of breathing air, which creates specific turbulence (涡流) patterns. The IIT Madras team, led by Prof. Mahesh Panchagnula, has developed a method of catching these unique patterns and using them as a biometric (生物特征识别的) signature, similar to how fingerprints are used today.

They conducted tests with breath samples from 94 people and found that their system could correctly confirm the person’s identity with an impressive accuracy of 97%. However, when it came to identifying someone without knowing who they were beforehand, the accuracy was around 50%. This means the technology is great at confirming if someone is who they claim to be, but it still needs improvement in recognizing people without any prior information. What makes this research exciting is its potential beyond just unlocking phones. It could play a significant role in personalized medicine. Since the way we breathe can give insights into our health, this technology could help doctors tailor treatments to individual patients more effectively.

In a similar study at Kyushu University in Japan, researchers developed an artificial system that identifies people based on how their breath smells. This system showed a high accuracy rate of 97.8% in identifying individuals. However, this method currently requires people to fast (禁食) for six hours before testing, indicating that it still needs to be improved to be more practical for everyday use.

These advancements in using human breath for identification are not just about adding another cool feature to our smartphones. They represent a significant step forward in biometric technology, which could have far-reaching implications in security, medicine, and personal technology. This research at IIT Madras and Kyushu University is pioneering a new way of using the unique patterns of our breath for identification purposes, potentially revolutionizing (变革) how we interact with technology and receive medical care.