Niu Yu, 24, became a shining star at Shanghai Fashion Week for her confident and leisurely attitude while striding down the runway sporting a prosthetic leg. Niu's minute in the spotlight has acquired many

compliments (费扬) on social media-a punch in the nose for prejudice against disabled people.

When the other models appeared, the audience cheered and applauded; but when it was Niu's tum, the venue suddenly fell silent. Niu recalled that after four or five seconds, she clearly heard a female audience member next to the stage sigh in admiration, "So cool!"

Niu attended Shanghai Fashion Week at the imitation of a sports brand Pony. "I was touched by something they said and agreed. They said that traditional views have always connected sports with healthy legs, but sports should be a kind of spirit. Even if I do not have a leg, I still deeply love sports and will do so forever," Niu said.

Niu lost her right leg after she was trapped under debris for three days during the 2008 Wenchuan

Earthquake, when Niu was only 11 years old. This is not the first time that Niu has been in the public spotlight. She first grabbed the public's attention when she completed a marathon in 2018. The marathon was held in Wenchuan, Southwest China's Sichuan province, on May 12, 2018, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the devastating earthquake. The day was also Niu's 21th birthday.

Niu works as a photographer and often uploads video clips from her life on short video platforms such as Douyin, where she has more than 850,000 flowers." China had 85 million disabled people with licenses in 2020, and we have no idea about the number of those who do not have licenses. However, it is rare for disabled people to be seen on the streets. I always thought about the reasons for this and then I realized it's because they hide themselves."

In 1983,thousands of runners from all over the world gathered in Australia to take part in the West field Sydney-Melbourne Ultramarathon—a distance of 875 kilometers. The first man to win this race was 61-year-old potato farmer Cliff Young.

When Cliff showed up in the race, he stuck out like a sore thumb. While all the other participants wore professional running equipment, Cliff was dressed as if he had just retumed from the field. Wearing his everyday clothes and work boots, he quickly attracted the attention of reportlers present,

"I grew up on a farm where we couldn't afford horses or tractors(拖拉机).Whenever the storms would roll in, I'd have to go out and round up the sheep," Clif told reporters."Sometimes I'd have to run those 2,000 sheep on 2,000 acres for two or three days.It took a long time, but I'd always catch them. I believe I can run this race. "No one actually believed him. Most competitors were in their 20s and early 30s,with years of training and marathon experience.

On the first day, Cliff was left far behind. But he had one advantage that no one had expected. All the other runners had been training to run for 18 hours a day and then stop and sleep for the other six, but he didn't stop until he reached the finish line. Although running at a slow pace, he simply didn't stop running, which helped him maintain the lead for the whole five and a half day. Upon being handed a $10,000 check as a prize for winning the race, Clif decided to keep none of it for himself and instead divided it evenly among the other five runners, who eventually managed to finish the race.

Cliff continued to run. In 1997,he set out to raise funds for homeless kids by running all 16,000 kilometers of the Australian coastline. In 2000,Cliff achieved a world age record in a six-day race in Victoria

The world is getting greener, according to a new study published in Nature this week.

Chi Chen, lead author of the study, and his colleagues have been mining data collected by an orbiting NASA camera that monitors green vegetation on Earth's surface, day by day. Even more interesting: They are able to show the exact causes of increasing or decreasing leaf cover in particular areas.

In some cold places, increase in leaf cover apparently resulted from global warming. Since the climate is becoming more and more temperate and the growing season is getting longer and longer, the plants are growing bigger and leafier there.

"One large area of Brazil lost vegetation. I personally checked the data, and that's because of lack of rain," Chen said.

The most striking changes, though, were the result of human decisions in China and India. Both countries have been getting a lot greener.

The greening of India, Chen says, comes from a huge expansion of irrigated agriculture. "Instead of having just crops when it's raining, they also have a whole six months of cropping and greenness when it's not raining," he saves. "This version of greening isn't really so great for the environment, though. The irrigation drains groundwater, vegetation is wiped away at harvest time and the extra chemicals farmers use produce greenhouse gases. "

In China, though, about half of the new leaf cover that Chen detected appears to be the result of a massive reforestation effort. It's a government-supported attempt to prevent disastrous dust storms that resulted from earlier deforestation. "They are really doing a good job," Chen says. "They have a large and comprehensive tree planting program. Those trees will stay in place，capturing(捕捉) dust and also CO2，the greenhouse gas.  They'll store it in wood, roots and soil, doing their part to slow global warming. "