【推荐1】Nuclear energy is one of the cleanest power on earth. It is cleaner than any energy source except wind. But that doesn’t necessarily mean nuclear is the long-term solution for the world because nuclear material is perhaps the most poisonous matter on earth. In addition, uranium, the element most commonly used in nuclear reactors, is not in limitless supply. But the biggest problem is nuclear waste.

How can we deal with nuclear waste? The answer is simple—put them somewhere where they can stay, undisturbed, isolated, forever. Finland is building just that. This region is largely lacking in natural disasters. It really doesn’t encounter any natural phenomenon that could damage a nuclear waste storage site, especially if it’s 1, 500 feet underground. Beneath an island on the Finnish Baltic Sea coast, the country is digging. They’ re building the very first permanent nuclear waste storage facility in the world in the stable bedrock 1,500 feet below.

Currently they’ re just finishing their dig down, then very soon they’ll start filling the facility with nuclear waste. They’ll dig long tunnels with small holes in which they’ll place nuclear waste then backfill the tunnels with clay to be left forever.

With this system, there’s near zero risk of nuclear material leaking out into the groundwater and, once it’s filled in the year 2120, it can just be left, forever. Because the material will be so far down and so difficult to get to, no human management will be necessary once completed.

No security, no maintenance, nothing which means it should be truly secure, but before leaving it, Finland needs to fight against one thing—human nature. As curious beings, it’s hard to fight a person’s urge of discovery. If someone finds a mysterious structure from thousands of years ago, it’d just be natural to want to open it up, and that’s a problem for nuclear waste sites.

We essentially did just that with the pyramids in Egypt. These structures were built as the final, permanent resting places and we opened them up because we were curious. Opening the nuclear storage facilities would release radiation into a future civilization, so we have to tell them to leave the sites alone, but that’s easier said than done.

【推荐2】“Find your passion!” When discussing future career options or selecting a major in college, your parents often say this. The very expression is meant to inspire. But is it good advice?

“Finding” a passion implies that it already exists and is simply waiting to be discovered. Unfortunately, this idea is not what science tells us.     1    

To study this, researchers use a framework of   “fixed” and “growth” mindsets.They argue that encouraging people to “find” their passion may cause them to eventually believe that interests and passions are inborn and relatively unchangeable.     2     In contrast, people who view interests and passions as developed have a growth mindset of interest.

Researchers have revealed that a fixed mindset of interest can decrease creativity. If people believe they are limited to only a few inborn interests and, in consequence, do not explore other areas, they may miss seeing important connections across domains.     3    

Evidently, people can do a lot to embrace a growth mindset of interest. First, realize that your interests and passions aren’t pre-existing. Take an active role in developing your passions. Second, practise positive self-talk. When you lack interest in a new task, pay attention to your inner dialogue.     4    For example, change “I’m not interested in this” to “I’m not interested in this yet, but I know that interest can develop with time and engagement.”

    5    But a growth mindset of interest will help you remain open and curious. The science tells us we should work toward loving what we do. We might become more creative and resilient as a result.

【推荐3】Digital reading appears to be destroying habits of “deep reading”. Astonishing numbers of people with years of schooling are in effect illiterate. This month’s Ljubljana Manifesto (宣言) explains: “The digital field may promote more reading than ever in history, but it also offers many temptations to read in a superficial and scattered (零散的) manner — or even not to read at all. This increasingly endangers higher-level reading.”

That’s frightening, because “higher-level reading” has been essential to civilization. It enabled the enlightenment and an international increase in empathy. Without it, we would suffer a lot. As the Ljubljana Manifesto notes, “as much as one-third of Europeans struggle even with lower-level reading skills.” More than one-fifth of adults in the US “fall into the illiterate/functionally illiterate category”. Separately, post-pandemic reading scores for American 13-year-olds are the lowest in decades. And the Washington-based Center for Global Development recently estimated that literacy in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa among those with five years of schooling has decreased by 10% this past half century.

Experts in the Ljubljana Manifesto record the demerits of digital reading: “Recent studies of various kinds indicate a decline of critical and conscious reading, slow reading, non-strategic reading and long-form reading.” When you read a book on paper, you can be entirely inside the experience, absorb hundreds of pages of details thoroughly and begin to capture the world’s complexity. Online, says Maryanne Wolf of UCLA, we are “skimming, scanning, scrolling”. The medium is the message: doing deep reading on your phone is as hard as playing tennis with your phone. Recently, a bright 11-year-old told me I was wasting time on books: he absorbed more information faster from Wikipedia. He had a point. But digital readers also absorb more misinformation and seldom absorb fine perspectives.

In short, as professors from Northwestern University foresaw in 2005, we are returning to the days when only an elite (精英) “reading class” consumes long texts, which is worrying.

【推荐1】Our world is full of unsung real-life heroes, who show up in times of disaster at great sacrifice to themselves, who raise funds to support those in need and who save lives. My sister never talks about the pain she bears, neither does she talk about her achievements. So today. I share this story, to praise my beautiful sister, an unsung hero.

Kim, my sister, was born with a growth hormone deficiency (激素缺乏). From an early age she received daily injections (注射) to help her grow. I didn’t know how she ended the pain. Doctors said her brain wouldn’t develop normally and she wouldn’t do something. But she proved them all wrong!

Kim’s volunteer work started at the age of nine in primary school. Every day Kim assisted the special needs class during her lunch breaks. She helped entertain, feed the students and continued her work with the children until she left primary school.

Because of her height, my sister would get pushed in the corridors (走廊), but that didn’t stop her from helping others. Kim later trained as a youth worker at the local church and eventually became a Sunday school teacher and the kids loved her.

As she grew into an adult, she continued to help people and even started a school holiday program for disabled children, which has been running for twenty years. She used her yearly leave to look after these children and refused to take money for it.

My sister constantly deals with hardships, reoccurring health problems and continuous pains due to her condition. Yet, every morning she gets up, she never says “What can I take from this world”. She says, “Thank you Lord. I am alive. I have air in my lungs — now how may I be of service.” This is how she lives.

【推荐3】In a new study of more than 50,000 Korean adolescents, those who used a smartphone for more than 4 hours per day had higher rates of adverse mental health and substance use. Jin Hwa Moon and Jong Ho Cha of Hanyang University Medical Center, Korea, and colleagues presented these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on December 6, 2023.

Previous research has shown that smartphone use among adolescents has increased in recent years, and that this usage may be associated with higher risk of adverse health, such as psychiatric disorders (精神紊乱), sleep issues, and eye-related problems.

However, growing evidence suggests that at least some daily internet usage may be associated with better physical and mental health for adolescents.

To deepen understanding of the relationship between adolescents ‘use of smartphones and health, Moon, Cha and colleagues analyzed data on more than 50,000 adolescent participants in 2017 and in 2020. The data included the approximate number of daily hours each participant spent on a smartphone as well as various health measures.

The researchers found that in 2020, the percentage of adolescents in the study who used a smartphone more than 2 hours per day was 85.7 percent — up from 64.3 percent in 2017. Adolescents who used a smartphone for more than 4 hours per day had higher rates of stress, thoughts of suicide, and substance use than those with usage below 4 hours per day. However, adolescents that used a smartphone 1-2 hours per day encountered fewer problems than adolescents who did not use a smartphone at all.

The authors note that this study does not confirm a causal relationship between smartphone use and adverse health outcomes. However, the findings could help inform usage guidelines for adolescents—especially if daily usage continues to rise.