【推荐2】Learning in a classroom with teachers, friends and textbooks is of course one way to learn, but it is not the only way.     1     Whether you wander around the streets of Paris or spend a sunny afternoon on the Caribbean beaches, travelling will never fail you as a teacher.

    2     If you are thinking of some personal development courses, you don’t need to do so. Travelling will change that as things like talking to complete strangers or asking them a favor are not an option but a necessity during your travels. Travel your way to a wonderful place somewhere and you’ll grow much better than through such courses.

Travelling will teach you how to control your fate if you have spent your life always being reactive (被动反应的).     3     This is even more the case when you travel on your own. There’s no choice but to make decisions and take initiatives completely by yourself as you don’t have anyone to tell you what to do.

As you travel, you can better understand how the cultures around the world vary and where the common ground lies. Differences exist in cuisines, manners and lifestyles across different cultures. But in spite of the differences, you can find so many commonalities like a shared love for art and nature that bind all the different cultures together.     4    

Perhaps the most important aspect of the education that comes with traveling is what you know about yourself.     5     Without travelling, you may even be completely unaware of your real character. If you haven’t really decided what you are going to do or what you want to be in the future, travelling extensively and preferably is one of the best ways to help you make a decision.

【推荐3】Why volunteer with STA Travel?

It’s a sad truth that many well-intentioned volunteer projects can be mismanaged for profit rather than helping. We will only work with projects that have a positive impact, satisfying the needs of the host communities while also meeting the desires of travellers to make real contributions, train their mind to think creatively, and gain skills for future study and work.

We support projects in more than 30 countries. Whether you’re looking to teach English, work with communities, animals or clean up our planet, there’s something for everyone.

Our featured voluntourism projects

Teach Children in Nepal

Join the project lasting over three weeks to assist with English lessons and homework and choose to stay at a shared volunteer house. Optional activities include a trip to Pokhara, the second largest city in the country and cooking demonstrations.

Thai Elephant Conservation

Experience one of our best-selling volunteer projects which offer a peaceful home to more than 30 neglected and previously abused elephants — with options ranging from seven days to four weeks. Play an important role by preparing food, feeding them and assisting in maintenance of the park.

Make a Difference in Indonesia

Work alongside local communities to arrange beach clean-ups and monitor and nurse newborn animals in their living areas for four weeks. There are also two-month options including teaching in local schools and community visit opportunities.

Experience Borne o & Conserve Orang-utans

This one-month project is designed for volunteers to experience and help with rehabilitation (复兴) of orang-utans in Sarawak, which are large arboreal animals and the only great apes in Asia. What’s more, take part in a long adventurous walk into the rainforest to meet the Iban and experience a unique stay in traditional longhouses.

【推荐1】Imagine wearing high-tech body armour that makes you super strong and tireless. Such technology, more specifically called an exoskeleton, sounds like the preserve of the Iron Man series of superhero movies.

Yet the equipment is increasingly being worn in real life around the world. And one manufacturer---California’s SuitX---expects it to go mainstream. “There is no doubt in my mind that these devices will eventually be sold at hardware stores,” says SuitX’s founder Homayoon Kazerooni. In simple explanation, an exoskeleton is an external device that supports, covers and protects its user, giving greater levels of strength and endurance. Sometimes also referred to as “wearable robots”, they can be battery-powered and computer-operated, incorporating motors and hydraulics. Or they can be more simple, passive designs that use springs and dampeners.

“Integrating machines with humans opens up a new realm of opportunity,” says Adrian Spragg, an expert on the technology at management consultancy Accenture. “Many of the early applications have been focused on military and medical applications, but in the last several years there’s been an explosion of use in a range of cases.” This expansion, which has come together with rapid advances in the technology, has seen exoskeletons increasingly used by manufacturing workers. Versions for consumers are also now being developed to help people more easily do everything from DIY, to walking, climbing stairs, and other daily activities.

One report says sales are now due to rocket as a result. Global exoskeleton revenues are expected to rise from $392m in 2020 to $6.8bn in 2030, according to a study by ABI Research. SuitX’s “suits” are now being tested by car manufacturers General Motors and Fiat. Prof Kazerooni, who is also the director of the University of California’s Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory, says that the primary benefit of the firm’s exoskeletons is to prevent muscle fatigue. “We’ve shown that muscle activity in the back, shoulder and knees drops by 50%,” he says. “If muscle activities drop, that means the risk of muscle injury is less. This means that factory or plant managers get more productivity, their insurance costs are lower, and there are less workdays lost to injury. There’s less cost and more productivity.”

General Motors is also looking at a battery-powered exoskeleton glove developed by Bioservo. This glove, called the Iron Hand, has sensors and motors in each finger, which automatically respond to the level of force that the wearer applies to his or her hand when lifting or gripping something. The glove therefore takes up some of the strain. BioServo says it can increase the wearer’s hand strength by 20% for extended periods.

【推荐3】Which is better for Earth: an electric or gas-powered vehicle? The answer to this question might seem blindingly obvious. Of course electric cars must be better for the environment, because they don’t give off greenhouse gases as people drive. However, electric vehicles (EVs) aren’t perfect, and they come with their own set of polluting problems. Their batteries require a large amount of energy to produce.

Battery production is just one part of an electric car’s life span. A study looked at the entire life cycle of an EV’s emissions(排放)，from mining the metals for the batteries to producing the electricity needed to power them, and then compared this with the average emissions of a gas-powered vehicle. The team found that when EVs are charged with coal-powered electricity, they’re actually worse for the environment than gas-powered cars.

“Only when connected to the clean energy do EVs have an advantage over the gas-powered cars on a greenhouse gas basis,” said Colin Sheppard, an expert in energy and transportation systems. That’s why more and more countries are decreasing the power supply from coal. In China, the national grid is improving with more efforts in renewable energy. For example, it has twice as much wind energy capacity as the U.S. and it builds more solar panels per year than any other countries.

Sheppard has modelled a future in which all cars are electric. “We want to understand what it might be like if all passenger vehicles were electrified.” The model suggests that if all vehicles in the U.S. were electric, greenhouse-gas emissions would be 46% less every year. This reduction could be increased even further if those vehicles were using a technique known as “smart charging” in which cars are recharged at chosen times (often at night) to reduce the cost of electricity.

In short, it’s far easier to argue for buying an EV than a gas-powered vehicle. But what about the cost? Aren’t electric vehicles too expensive for most people?

【推荐3】For the first time, astronomers have caught a star in the act of eating a planet. The star known as ZTF SLRN-2020, exists approximately 12,000 light years away in our galaxy.

“For decades, we’ve been able to see the before and after,” says study leader Kishalay De. “Before, when the planets are still orbiting very close to their star, and after, when a planet has already been swallowed up, and the star is giant. What we were missing was catching the star in the act, where you have a planet going through this fate in real time. That’s what makes this discovery really exciting.”

In 2020, De was studying data, hoping to find evidence of two stars combining with each other. This usually results in bursts of light thousands of times brighter than the stars themselves. But one shining star De discovered was much dimmer (黯淡的), only 100 times brighter. Also, the crash of two stars usually produces hot gas. However, this one was surrounded by dust molecules (分子). De wondered if he had detected a star swallowing a planet.

He and his team spent the next two years examining similar data. NASA provided the final piece of evidence they needed. The images allowed them to confirm that the molecules were traces of a star eating its planet. The scientists said that as the planet was being swallowed, it displaced hot gas from the star. The gas then cooled and created dust. Pieces of the planet also blew away from the star, producing more dust.

Some scientists believe Earth will also be consumed by the Sun in about five billion years. But Mansi Kasliwal, a professor, says humans will not be around then. The increasing heat from the expanding Sun will evaporate (使蒸发) all the water from Earth long before it gets close enough to swallow it, making it uninhabitable. Smadar Naoz, an astronomer, agrees that the Earth’s water sources will dry up. “Whether or not the Sun will swallow the Earth is quite controversial,” she says. “But it wouldn’t matter because it will no longer be our beautiful Earth with an atmosphere and oceans.”