Cats are often considered to be colder especially when compared with dogs. But if you find your cat friend is a little hard to get close to, maybe you’re just not speaking their language.

Research shows that it’s actually not so difficult. You just need to smile at them more. Not smile in the human’s way, by showing your teeth, but the cat’s way: by narrowing your eyes and blinking (眨眼睛) slowly. It’s similar to how human eyes narrow when they are smiling, and usually occurs when cats are relaxed and content. The expression is explained as a kind of cat smile.

Jackson Galaxy, a cat behavior expert, says there are some pretty strong feelings behind the cat’s slow blink. He calls it “I Love You Blink”. Galaxy says the cat will blink slowly when cats and people are completely opening up to one another in sharing affection.

Researchers carried out two experiments. In the first experiment, owners slow-blinked at 21 cats from 14 different families. Once the cat was settled and comfortable in one spot in their home environment, the owners were asked to sit about a meter away and slow-blink when the cat was looking at them. The second experiment included 24 cats from 8 different families. This time, it wasn’t the owners doing the blinking but the researchers, who’d had no earlier contact with the cats. They found that not only were the cats more likely to blink back, but that they were more likely to reach the human’s hand after the human had blinked.

Dr Tasmin Humphrey, the first author of the study from the University of Sussex, said: “Understanding positive ways in which cats and humans interact can increase public understanding of cats, improve its welfare, and tell us more about the socio-cognitive (社会认知) abilities of this species.”

Are you interested in science? How do you think scientists usually make new discoveries? The world produces millions of Ions of plastic wastes every year. What do you think the best way to deal with plastic pollution is? Why?

Caterpillars(毛虫)are often used as food for fishing. However, they are now set to join the war on plastic wastes.

Federical Bertocchini is a scientist with the Spanish National Research Council. When she's not working in her lab, Bertocchini keeps bees. One day, when she looked at her beehives(蜂箱),she found lots of caterpillars which were called waxworms(蜡虫). They are often used to feed fish. In the wild, however, they live in beehives, feeding on the wax that bees use to build their houses. Bertocchini picked out the caterpillars and put them in a plastic bag. Surprisingly, when she returned to the bag after cleaning out the hives, she found it full of holes. The worms had eaten their way out.

Bertocchini doesn't study plastic. However, you can't keep a good scientist away from an interesting question: Were the waxworms digesting the plastic?

Bertocchini got in touch with Paolo Bombeli and Christopher Howe at the university of Cambridge. According to their paper, some chemicals within the insects can really break down plastic.

Other scientists have also discovered plastic-eating species. In 2016, for example, a Japanese team found a bacterium. The bacterium has to spend more than six months eating a layer of plastic bag. However, Bertocchini and her partners discovered that it took a waxworm about 12 hours to eat a layer of plastic bag.

But the scientists reminded that it would be at least several years before they set free waxworms into the environment. They want to know if the waxworms are using the plastic as a food, or just they want to run away. If they just want to run away they are going to get fed very soon. But if they want to eat it as food, it's a completely different game.

"It's certainly not going to be the case that within six months we've solved the world's plastic problem, said Howe. "I wouldn't want people to think that within a few months, they can start throwing away plastic bags without worrying about it. "