【推荐3】Have you ever bought anything useful for the useless item you bought earlier? This cycle just goes on and on, and you will end up with tons of useless stuff. This is a phenomenon we call The Birdcage Effect.

You don’t feel like having a pet animal. One day, your friend sends you a birdcage as your birthday present, telling you to put it on your table. Of course, you agreed. Then multiple people pass by asking you where the pet bird is. After you answer no, people suggest you get one for the birdcage. Finally, you buy one bird, then bird treats, toys, and even clothes. You keep adding more items to the bird’s bill. Is there anything wrong?

As the name suggested — the birdcage effect holds back people’s ability to think from the outside of a birdcage. You buy a pet bird — which you never thought about having — because of the birdcage. This effect is mainly caused by you voluntarily assuming that the birdcage is part of your table; it acts as one of the conditions instead of a variable — which it is supposed to be. Therefore, you will end up spending the necessary money on something unnecessary. For example, buy 1 get 1 for free — the discount caged you so that you are getting something excess that is unneeded.

Now, it comes to how to avoid the birdcage effect. First, we need to be result-oriented: when dealing with a birdcage, telling yourself to consider the result before stepping on the path is a wise approach. Moreover, it’s significant to remember that less is typically better than more. When given a “birdcage”, throwing away the birdcage may seem ignorant and wasteful; however, it will stop you from getting a bird —or in other words, wasting more money on unnecessary things.

The birdcage effect is difficult to get rid of. However, it can be prevented if we properly control our unreasonable needs. Do not let an object lead your action, but let your logical mind guide your decision.

【推荐1】In 2007, when Felix Finkbeiner was nine, he had to give a report on climate change as a fourth grade school assignment. To his nine-year-old worldview, that meant danger for his favorite animal, the polar bear. As he researched his report, Felix learned about Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan woman who started the United Nations tree-planting program, the Billion Tree Campaign, and whose heroic campaign to recover barren land with trees resulted in the planting of 30 million trees.

“I realized it’s not really about the polar bear, it’s about saving humans.” Felix was inspired. He told his classmates, “Let’s plant a million trees in every country of the world!”. His tree-planting project, “Plant-for-the-Planet”, began.

Sharing the idea is almost as important as planting the trees. Felix went to other schools and encouraged them to plant trees. Plant-for-the-Planet also offers training for students. The group hopes the students will not just plant trees, but will also talk to adults in government and businesses to try and get even more trees planted.

Word of Felix’s project spread rapidly. He spoke to the European Parliament and attended UN conferences. By the time he delivered his speech at the UN in New York in 2011, at the age of 13, Germany had planted its millionth tree. At this time, Plant-for-the-Planet was officially launched. The project had a website and more people were willing to join it to be full time employees. By 2014, the environmental cause had expanded into a global network of children activists working to slow the Earth’s warming by reforesting the planet.

In 2015, Plant-for-the-Planet bought 52 square miles (135 square kilometers) of land in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Most of the trees there had been cut down. The group planted millions of new trees on the land.

Plant-for-the-Planet’s slogan has been, “Stop Talking. Start Planting.” They want to plant 1,000 billion trees, which could absorb an additional 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year.

【推荐3】A smoke bomb from a party started a major blaze (火焰) near Los Angeles in September,just one of many recent wildfires ignited (引燃) by people. Now, an analysis of satellite data shows human-caused blazes spread much faster and kill more trees than ones ignited by lightning.

Fire has always been a part of California’s natural history. But several centuries of human settlement have created new conditions that promote its spread.Studies have shown human ignition is to blame for 84% of all wildfires in the United States,and 97% of all those that threaten homes.

Human-caused fires always seemed more extreme, says Stijn Hantson,a fire ecologist at the University of California,Irvine,who led the new research. But measurements of how fast they spread and their impacts on ecosystems (生态系统) in California had not been explored, he notes.

To examine those differences, Hantson and his colleagues analyzed satellite data for 214 wildfires in California between 2012 and 2018.Human-caused fires typically spread about 1.83 kilometers per day, more than twice as fast as lightning-ignited burns,the team reports.The faster spreading fires also burned more violently and killed “double or triple” the trees as lightning-caused ones.

However, there is no fundamental difference in the chemistry of a human-caused blaze. “A fire is a fire” Hantson says. “It’s the surrounding things that matter.” Causes of fires ranging from improperly thrown cigarettes to sparking (冒火花) power lines could ignite a blaze on any given day, he says, while lightning strikes and dry thunderstorms only happen seasonally.

The researchers tracked meteorological data and found that human-caused fires were more likely to start on days with extreme weather conditions,and were more associated with drier,less-forested landscapes. This adds to scientists’ understanding of how humans are extending the fire season, says Nathan Mietkiewicz, an ecologist with the National Ecological Observation Network.

【推荐3】Teachers across America are struggling to decide whether to view artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT as friends or enemies in the classroom. Our study on whether AI affects student creativity shows that the answer isn’t always simple.

In the study, we asked college students to brainstorm — without technology — all the ways a paper clip can be used. A month later, we asked them to do the same, but using ChatGPT. We found that AI can be a useful brainstorming tool, quickly generating ideas that can spark creative exploration. But there are also potential negative effects on students’ creative thinking skills and self-confidence. While students reported that it was helpful to “have another brain”, they also felt that using AI was “the easy way out” and didn’t allow them to think on their own.

The results call for a thoughtful approach to using AI in classrooms and striking a balance that inspires students’ creativity while utilizing AI’s capabilities. The good news is that the students in our study generated more diverse and detailed ideas when using AI. They found that AI was useful for kick-starting brainstorming sessions.

When it comes to brainstorming with AI, some students voiced concerns about over-reliance on the technology, fearing it might hurt their own thoughts and, consequently, confidence in their creative abilities. Some students reported a “fixation of the mind”, meaning that once they saw the AI’s ideas, they had a hard time coming up with their own. Some students also questioned the originality of ideas generated by AI. Our research noted that while using ChatGPT improved students’ creative output individually, the AI’s ideas tended to be repetitive overall.

The study results indicate that allowing students to practice creativity independently first will strengthen their belief in themselves and their abilities. Once they complete this, AI can be useful in furthering their learning, much like teaching long division to students before introducing a calculator. That’s to say, teaching students to be creative thinkers rather than rely on AI for answers is the key to answering the question mentioned above.