Monarch butterflies(帝王蝶)are edging dangerously close to extinction despite a decision late last year to remove the orange-and-black insects from the endangered species list, a new study has found.

An annual survey led by the World Wildlife Fund(WWF)of the species wintering in central Mexico found the second-lowest number of monarch butterflies on record, meaning they took up just 2.2 acres of regional forests, 59% less than during the 2022—2023 winter season. The findings are troubling to scientists determined to protect the species.

Each year, monarch butterflies migrate(迁徙)thousands of miles from southern Canada and the northern and central US to the mountain forests of central Mexico. They require a large and healthy forest to protect them from winds, rain and low temperatures in the areas where they migrate for winter. Yet because of heat and drought brought on by climate change, scientists say, their natural habitat is quickly depleting. Scientists with the WWF considered this winter season’s findings serious and said they represented the second-smallest area taken up by monarch butterflies in Mexico since 1993.

What’s worse, in recent years, their breeding areas in Canada and the US have seen a reduction in milkweed leaves where female monarch butterflies lay their eggs. “Land-use changes in the United States, combined with the widespread use of chemicals, also contributed to the loss of milkweed and other plants that adult monarch butterflies feed on,” the WWF said.

Monarch butterflies play an important role in maintaining plant ecosystems and are also an important food source for birds, small animals and other insects, according to the National Park Service. It’s necessary that all governments, communities, scientists, and others continue to strengthen our protection efforts to support their unique migration.

The oddness of life in space never quite goes away. Here are some examples.

First consider something as simple as sleep. Its position presents its own challenges. The main question is whether you want your arms inside or outside the sleeping bag. If you leave your arms out, they float free in zero gravity, often giving a sleeping astronaut the look of a funny ballet（芭蕾）dancer. “I’m an inside guy,” Mike Hopkins says, who returned from a six-month tour on the International Space Station. “I like to be wrapped up.”

On the station, the ordinary becomes strange. The exercise bike for the American astronauts has no handlebars. It also has no seat. With no gravity, it’s just as easy to pedal violently. You can watch a movie while you pedal by floating a microcomputer anywhere you want. But station residents have to be careful about staying in one place too long. Without gravity to help circulate air, the carbon dioxide you exhale（呼气）has a tendency to form an invisible（隐形的）cloud around your head. You can end up with what astronauts call a carbon-dioxide headache.

Leroy Chiao, 54, an American retired astronaut after four flights, describes what happens even before you float out of your seat. “Your inner ear thinks you’re falling. Meanwhile your eyes are telling you you’re standing straight. That can be annoying－that’s why some people feel sick. “Within a couple of days truly terrible days for some－astronauts’ brains learn to ignore the panicky signals from the inner ear, and space sickness disappears.

Space travel can be so delightful but at the same time invisibly dangerous. For instance, astronauts lose bone mass’ That’s why exercise is considered so vital that National Aeronautics and Space Administration（NASA）puts it right on the workday schedule. The focus on fitness is as much about science and the future as it is about keeping any individual astronaut healthy. NASA is worried about two things: recovery time once astronauts return home, and, more importantly, how to maintain strength and fitness for the two and a half years or more that it would take to make a round-trip to Mars’

Earlier this year, the social media website Facebook announced that it would work with several news organizations — including The New York Times, The Guardian, and the BBC — to place news stories directly into users’ personal Facebook webpage.   Stories published using Facebook Instant will load more quickly and keep the style of the original publisher, who will keep all the advertising income the stories earn — at least for now. The deal shows how important social media has become to news organizations, and is a clear sign of how the world of news is changing — and has been for a while.

When Google News began in 2002, many saw it as the death of the newspaper. It had no human editor. Instead Google used, and still uses, a secret computer program that selects and displays news stories according to the reader’s personal interests. More recently, Associated Press and Yahoo! have been publishing computer-written articles. Both use special software to automatically produce stories about company financial results and sports reports — areas where the quality of writing is felt to be of secondary importance to the accuracy of the data.

Should we be worried about such developments? I think we should. One concern is that facebook, Google and other social media websites see journalism as a sideline, a way of putting people in front of advertisements. It isn’t their primary function — so if it stops making them lots of money, they're likely to stop doing it.

There’s also a concern that computer-written articles are not actually journalism at all, because what a human news team produces is actually quite complex. A well-written news story puts information in context, offers a voice to each side of an argument and brings the public new knowledge.

Though economics and speed of delivery mean readers will probably choose a computer-written story over a carefully shaped article — at least for daily news — I don't think the computers will be writing any in-depth articles for a while yet.