During summer days, warmer temperatures bring pests like mosquitoes. Mosquitoes can cause lots of trouble for people.【小题1】. They even can spread many serious diseases.

An easy way to protect yourself against mosquitoes is using repellents (驱虫剂). Joseph Conlon, an advisor of the American Mosquito Control Association, recommends using repellents that are registered with the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures that they actually do no harm to humans. 【小题2】. But some repellents can provide 4-6 hours of protection if the quality of them is excellent.

Mosquitoes are also very weak. A slight wind from a fan can help keep them away from you. It turns out that many mosquitoes are not very good fliers. 【小题3】.

Another way is to clear all the standing water (积水) every five days. Conlon explains that mosquitoes can produce young in water collected in areas as small as bottle caps. But they have a limited flight range, which means they can’t travel far. “The best way to avoid them is to not have them around in the first place.” he says. If you’ve got them in your backyard, it’s because you’re raising them in your backyard. 【小题4】. “If you can’t avoid the standing water around your house, I suggest raising fish that will eat mosquito larvae (幼虫).”

【小题5】. They’ve experimented with male mosquitoes containing some materials that stop females from producing larvae. “There are not a lot of companies producing new chemicals or treatments that we can use,” a researcher of the experiment adds. “We need new technologies and products to get rid of mosquitoes.”

If you have a dog, you probably spend a lot of time trying to figure out dog behavior. Like us, dogs are complex creatures, and it can be hard to know what’s behind your dog’s actions.

When you’re asking them to sit or giving them a treat, eye contact means that their attention is on you and that they’re ready to listen. But sometimes your pup will look at you aimlessly. There area few reasons why your dog might stare at you — even when you don’t call its name or do something to get its attention.

In general, dogs use eye contact to gain information and understand what humans want them to do, says Philip Tedeschi, professor and researcher on the human-animal bond. “Dogs use eye contact as reassurance and understanding in very similar ways that humans do, to ascertain interpersonal connection and reaction. This helps us connect with them as well,” he says.

Science confirms that dogs use eye contact to express love. How do you tell if a dog loves you? Well, if he stares at you, it’s a good sign! “Just like humans look into each other’s eyes to show love, so does your dog,” says Tedeschi. “In fact, one study showed that the ‘cuddle’ hormone oxytocin (拥抱荷尔蒙催产素) increases in both humans and dogs when they exchange a loving look.”

If the eye contact between a dog and a human is too long or too intense it might lead to discomfort in the dog — similar to the way two humans staring at each other for a longer period of time would make them uncomfortable, according to Tedeschi. So what do you do if your dog stares at you? Look back, but not for too long. Dogs get awkward, too!

Your dog might follow simple commands such as “sit”, or become uncontrollably excited at the mention of the word “out”, but when it comes to remembering the names of toys and other everyday items, most seem pretty absent-minded. But now a study of six “genius (天才) dogs” has found something new.

Hungarian researchers spent more than two years scouring the globe for dogs who could recognize the names of their various toys. Although most can learn commands to some degree, learning the names of items appears to be a very different task for most dogs. Six dogs across the world eventually stood out after proving they knew the names of more than 28 toys, with some knowing more than 100. They then took part in what was known as the Genius Dog Challenge.

“These gifted dogs can learn new names of toys at a remarkable speed,” said Dr. Claudia Fugazza at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. “In our previous study we found that they could learn a new toy name after hearing it only four times. But, with such short exposure, they did not form a long-term memory of it.”

To push the limits of the dogs' talents, the researchers asked their owners to teach them the names of 6, and then 12 new toys in a single week. “It turned out that this was not much of a challenge. They easily learned between 11 to 12 toys,” said Dr. Shany Dror from the same university. The dogs could also remember these names when they were tested two months later. The research was published in Royal Society Open Science.

“Dogs are good models for studying human behaviour as they evolve (进化) and develop in the human environment,” said one of the study's co-authors, Prof Adám Miklési. “With these talented dogs we have a unique opportunity to study how another species (物种) understands the human language, and how learning words influences the way we think about the world.”