马路口的miraale
When you were trying to figure out what to buy for the environmentalist on your holiday list, fur probably didn’t cross your mind. But some ecologists and fashion enthusiast are trying to bring back the market for fur made from nutria. 当你想给环保人士的假日购物清单增加些什么时，你可能不会想到皮毛。但是一些生态学家和时尚发烧友们正试图恢复海狸鼠皮毛的市场。 Unusual fashion shows in New Orleans and Brooklyn have showcased nutria fur made into clothes in different styles. “It sounds crazy to talk about guilt-free fur – unless you understand that the nutria are destroying vast wetlands every year,” says Cree McCree, project director of Righteous Fur. 新奥尔良和布鲁克林的不同寻常时装秀展示了海狸鼠皮毛制成的不同风格的服装。“谈论没有罪恶感的皮毛听起来很疯狂——除非你知道海狸鼠每年都在破坏大片湿地，”Righteous Fur（正义皮毛）项目总监克里·麦克里说。 Scientists in Louisiana were so concerned that they decided to pay hunters $5 a tail. Some of the fur ends up in the fashion shows like the one in Brooklyn last month. 路易斯安那州的科学家非常担心，他们决定付给猎人每尾5美元。一些皮毛最终出现在时装秀上，比如上个月布鲁克林的时装秀。 Nutria were brought there from Argentina by fur farmers and let go into the wild. “The ecosystem down there can’t handle this non-native species. It’s destroying the environment. It’s them or us,” says Michael Massimi, an expert in this field. 海狸鼠是皮毛农场主从阿根廷带到这里并放生的。“那里的生态系统无法应对这种非本土物种，它正在破坏环境”，这一领域的专家迈克尔·马西米说。 The fur trade kept nutria in check for decades, but when the market for nutria collapsed in the late 1980s, the cat-sized animals multiplied like crazy. 几十年来，皮毛贸易一直控制着海狸鼠数量，但是20世纪80年代末海狸鼠市场崩溃后，这些猫一样大小的动物疯狂繁殖。 Biologist Edmond Mouton runs the nutria control program for Louisiana. He says it’s not easy to convince people that people that nutria fur is green, but he has no doubt about it. Hunters bring in more than 300,000 nutria tails a year, so part of Mouton’s job these days is trying to promote fur. 生物学家埃德蒙·莫顿负责路易斯安那州的海狸鼠控制。他说要让人们相信海狸鼠皮是绿色的并不容易，但他对此毫无疑问。猎人们每年带来超过30万条海狸鼠尾巴，所以莫顿现在的部分工作就是推广皮毛。 Then there’s Righteous Fur and its unusual fashions. Model Paige Morgan says,“To give people a guilt-free option that they can wear without someone throwing paint on them – I think that’s going to be a massive thing, at least here in New York.” Designer Jennifer Anderson admits it took her a while to come around to the opinion that using nutria fur for her creations is morally acceptable. She’s trying to come up with a label to attach to nutria fashions to show it is eco-friendly. 还有Righteous Fur和它不同寻常的时尚。模特佩奇·摩根说，“给人们一个没有罪恶感的选择，让他们可以穿着，而不用被人往身上泼油漆——我认为这将是一件大事，至少在纽约是这样。”设计师詹妮弗·安德森承认，她花了一段时间才意识到，用海狸鼠皮制作作品在道德上是可以接受的。她正尝试给海狸鼠时尚贴上环保标签。
海鲜饭泡粥
Some parents will buy any high-tech toy if they think it will help their child, but researchers said puzzles help children with math-related skills. 一些家长只要认为对孩子有益，他们就会购买任何高科技玩具，但研究人员认为拼图有助于提高孩子们的数学相关技能。
Psychologist Susan Levine, an expert on mathematics development in young children the University of Chicago, found children who play with puzzles between ages 2 and 4 later develop better spatial skills. Puzzle play was found to be a significant predictor of cognition after controlling for differences in parents’ income, education and the amount of parent talk, Levine said. 芝加哥大学儿童数学发展专家心理学家苏珊·莱文发现，在2岁到4岁之间玩拼图游戏的孩子们随后会发展出更好的空间技能。莱文说，在避免了父母收入、教育程度和父母交谈量的差异后，拼图游戏被认为是认知能力的一个重要预测因素。
The researchers analyzed video recordings of 53 child-parent pairs during everyday activities at home and found children who play with puzzles between 26 and 46 months of age have better spatial skills when assessed at 54 months of age. 研究人员分析了53对父母与子女在家庭日常活动中的视频记录，发现26至46个月之间玩拼图游戏的孩子在54个月大时空间技能更好。
“The children who played with puzzles performed better than those who did not, on tasks that assessed their ability to rotate and translate shapes,” Levine said in a statement. “玩拼图游戏的孩子在评估他们旋转和变换形状能力要比没有玩拼图游戏的孩子好，”莱文在一份声明中说。
The parents were asked to interact with their children as they normally would, and about half of children in the study played with puzzles at one time. Higher-income parents tended to have children play with puzzles more frequently, and both boys and girls who played with puzzles had better spatial skills. However, boys tended to play with more complex puzzles than girls, and the parents of boys provided more spatial language and were more active during puzzle play than parents of girls. 研究人员要求父母像平时一样与孩子互动，研究中约有一半的孩子曾玩过拼图游戏。高收入的父母往往让孩子多玩些拼图，玩拼图的男孩和女孩都会有更好的空间技能。不过，男孩往往玩的拼图比女孩的更复杂，男孩的父母在玩拼图游戏时比女孩的父母提供了更多的空间语言，也更活跃。
The findings were published in the journal Developmental Science . 研究结果发表在《发展科学》杂志上。
