Get out and explore

With summer here, we all want to get out of the house and enjoy the weather. But maybe picnics and badminton are not exciting enough. Would you like to try something more challenging?

If so, this section (板块) is for you! Here, TEENS writers and readers share their personal experiences on a range of (一系列) outdoor activities, from snorkeling to climbing rock faces to exploring caves deep under the ground.

Outdoor activities are more than just a fun way to pass the time in summer. Most activities have clubs and organizations where you can learn and share your knowledge with others. As a teenager, I was in the Scouts (童子军). Not only did I get outside and have adventures, but I also made some lifelong friends.

Outdoor activities challenge your body, but also your mind. You’ll have to organize and make plans, as well as analyze (分析) your environment. You will need to learn skills－making fires, tying knots (打结) and testing the wind－things you can’t just learn from a book. You also learn emergency procedures (操作步骤). Once, in Scouts, I was asked to plan meals for a camping trip, but forgot to plan cooking equipment (装备). We had to improvise (即兴发挥), with Frisbees as dinner plates!

Maybe most importantly, these outdoor activities will give you confidence in yourself and your abilities. As you use your skills and gain experience, things that seemed impossible and scary become simple. You will start to trust yourself and your intuition (直觉).

The best part? You can do these outdoor activities almost anywhere in the world, with new challenges in new environments. Wherever you go, you will have the skills to explore.

How much do you know about expressions?

Every one of us has a “superpower”. A person doesn’t need to speak but we can tell if he or she is happy, angry or sad. We do so by looking at his or her face!

The human face has 43 muscles (肌肉). Together, they make thousands of expressions (表情). These expressions show our emotions (情绪) and help us socialize with others.

Some expressions last (持续) less than half a second (秒). They are called micro expressions (微表情). They can better show what people think and how they feel.

Read these micro expressions

Nervousness

Nervous people can have red cheeks. Blood (血液) goes to the cheeks when people are nervous.

Tell a lie

Liars usually raise their eyebrows (眉毛). They also blink (眨眼) a lot and close their eyes. Closing the eyes helps a liar to make up his or her story.

Fake smile

When a person has a fake (假的) smile, his or her eyes don’t change. A real smile often makes the eyes become smaller. This is because more muscles are used when a person is happy.

People around the world share 16 common expressions. They include (包括) anger, sadness and surprise.

Do animals have expressions?

Many mammals (哺乳动物) like dogs, cats and horses have expressions.

Puppy eyes

When the owner blames (责怪) the dog for its mistakes (错误), the dog shows this expression. Many people think the dog feels sorry. The truth is it is sad about being blamed.

Does it smile?

The horse shows its teeth. It looks like it is smiling. But in fact, it feels that its body aches and needs a rest.

Fun stuff for daily use

These things can make life easier and more interesting. Check them out!

Drink your potatoes

Here comes the world’s first potato milk. Swedish (瑞典的) company DUG made it. It’s made from potatoes. It’s more environmentally friendly than other drinks. The milk has 75 percent less carbon emissions (碳排放) than regular (普通的) milk. Compared with oat (燕麦) milk, it needs less land to grow potatoes. It also uses 56 times less water than almond (杏仁) milk.

DUG potato milk contains calcium (钙), vitamin D, vitamin B12 and other nutrients (营养). It’s healthy for our body. It’s also low in sugar. How much is it? On Taobao, a one-liter bottle of DUG potato milk costs 30 to 40 yuan.

Keep this straw in your bag

Nowadays, more and more bubble tea shops have decided to use paper straws (吸管) instead of plastic straws. Paper straws are more environmentally friendly. But many people don’t like the taste of them. Some people have also made reusable straws using stainless steel (不锈钢). But it may hit your teeth. People also worry that they are tough to clean.

Now, Hong Kong-based Icicle Straw has made a reusable straw. You can split (拆) it in half to clean it. The material it uses is safe and healthy. It tastes just as good as plastic straws and doesn’t hit the teeth. How much is it? It costs 79 yuan.

A mirror that looks at you

Fitness technology company FITURE has created Slim. It’s a mirror with a “fitness instructor (教练)” in it. 

Slim has an AI engine that captures (捕捉) human movements and gives feedback. Based on the user’s movement, it will make a scientific fitness plan.

For example, when you take a class, the AI instructor will tell you to correct your squatting (下蹲) if you don’t do it low enough. When you get it right, it gives you praise.

With Slim, we don’t have to spend a lot of time and money going to the gym. It’s fun to work out at home. How much is it? It costs around 8,000 yuan.

One tough umbrella

Umbrellas are a real hassle (麻烦). They never fold (折叠) up like when they were new. Now there’s a faster fix. The PiF umbrella takes just three seconds to fold up. It won double gold medals in Geneva Invention Exhibition (日内瓦发明展双金奖).

The secret of PiF umbrella is that it uses special memory cloth. The cloth can “remember” the folds and close easily. The umbrella is small, but it can protect against the sun and rain. It has a strong umbrella frame (骨架). It can withstand (承受) the wind force (力) of class 6 and 10m/s. How much is it? It costs 149 yuan.

New tech will change our future

With every year that passes, a new technology comes along to improve our lives and change the way we do things. Scientific American has chosen 10 emerging (新兴的) technologies. Some of them might be the “next big thing”. Let’s have a look at three of them.

Quantum sensors 量子传感器

Everything in the universe has some amount of gravity (引力)—even you. And now, scientists are designing sensors that can find these tiny gravitational fields (引力场) and detect (探测) things more accurately (精确地) and safely.

These quantum sensors, as they’re called, can pick up tiny changes in gravitational, electric, and magnetic (磁的) fields. They are more accurate than other sensors, as they can detect changes at the atomic (原子的) level.

For example, they can be used to detect cables (电缆) underground without digging for them. They could also be used to detect earthquakes before they happen or even keep track of someone’s brain activity.

Virtual patient 虚拟患者

It has often been pointed out that computers and robots might one day take the place of human doctors. But what if computers were used to replace patients instead? This is called “in-silico (电子模拟的) medicine”—testing medicine and treatment methods (疗法) on virtual organs (器官) or even full bodies produced (制造) by computers. There might be a great risk when testing new drugs or treatments on live patients—as well as great cost. But with virtual patients, we can test these things more cheaply and without risking anyone’s life.

Green hydrogen 绿色氢

When we burn hydrogen for energy, the only by-product (副产品) is water. It’s safe for the environment. But we need fossil fuels (化石燃料) to produce hydrogen, which is bad for the environment. Luckily, we now have “green” hydrogen. Green hydrogen is produced by using machines to split (分开) water into its two most basic elements (元素)—hydrogen and oxygen (氧气). In the past, this process (过程) used too much electricity. But now, we have more efficient (有效率的) machines.

Stressful lives

Gan Xiaolin, 18, only gets half a day off school every week since the Hubei student started senior high school.

Every day, he takes core courses from 7:10 am to 10:30 pm. Sometimes, Gan feels extremely stressed from the heavy workload. But he hopes that his three years of hard work toward the college entrance examination will change his life for the better.

Gan is a typical Chinese student, as shown in a recently released survey. The new survey, which was conducted by the China Youth and Children Research Center and other foreign institutions, polled about 4,000 high school and vocational school students in China, Japan, the United States and South Korea.

The five biggest frustrations listed by all the young people were: an over-busy school life, an empty personal life, dissatisfaction with their appearance, a lack of time for exercise and friends, and no spare money.

Although some of the teenage problems were universal, there were big differences between the students when it came to the time they spent on schoolwork.

For example, Chinese students spent the most time at school and on homework. Nearly 80 percent of them spent at least eight hours a week in school, and 56.7 percent spent two or more hours on their homework. By contrast (相比), only about 25 percent of US students, 20.5 percent of Japanese students, and 15 percent of Korean students had more than two hours of homework each night.

The responses from the Chinese students also differed significantly from their peers in the other three countries when asked about their life goals.

Only 16.7 percent of Chinese students said that they didn’t care much about their future, while the figure for that category was 72.4 percent for US students, 59.1 percent for the Japanese and 58.2 percent for the South Koreans. The survey found that Chinese students were more motivated than the other students to work hard for a better life.

However, the survey also suggests that many Chinese high school students may feel unhappy under the pressure to succeed. Only 5.9 percent of the Chinese students—the lowest level—said they worried little in their daily life.

The power of music

No one could say that Katy Perry is an ordinary artist. Her songs are not just about sweet romance and heartbreaks, but usually have bigger and more empowering themes. Take the songs Firework (2010) and Roar (2013) for example, where Perry sings about being our own master and discovering our true value.

But actually, these themes are not daring enough, at least not for Perry. Earlier this year, she announced her new album Witness, together with a new idea for pop music. Perry calls her new style “purposeful pop”, meaning pop with a social and political message. It seems that Perry has become tired of simply encouraging people. Now, she wants to educate them politically as well.

Part of her inspiration came during the 2016 US presidential election between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. Perry was a very public supporter of Clinton because Trump was a candidate with a record of disrespectful behavior toward women.

The best example of Perry’s purposeful pop is probably the song Chained to the Rhythm, in which Perry criticizes people’s obsession with their own ideas and the fact they are unwilling to think more critically about the world. As the song’s lyrics say, “Aren’t you lonely? Up there in utopia. Where nothing will ever be enough. Happily numb. So comfortable, we’re living in a bubble, bubble. So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, trouble.”

Even though the election is long over and Trump won, Perry’s political message seems to be continuing.

But when it comes to the concept of purposeful pop, it is, in fact, something a lot of pop stars have been doing for a while. Beyonce’s 2016 song Formation, for example, deals with various social problems such as the dispute between white policemen and black citizens in the US, hoping to create change through music.

“Formation isn’t just about police brutality—it’s about the entirety of the black experience in America in 2016, which includes standards of beauty, disempowerment, culture and the shared parts of our history,” wrote Jenna Wortham in The New York Times.

To singers like Perry and Beyonce, songs are not just entertainment, but part of a movement. It may have seemed strange when this concept was first introduced, but it’s on its way to becoming normal.

“The truth is, not speaking up in 2017 means you’re part of the problem. It’s no longer OK to be quiet and complacent,” wrote Shannon Carlin on entertainment news website Bustle.

Wild land of romance

What are the best words to describe Latin America? It could be called a “wild” and “happy” land.

Latin America has a lot of natural beauty. There are volcanoes, high mountains and large grasslands in Latin America. It also has the world’s biggest rainforest － the Amazon. The rainforest is home to many of the world’s strangest plants and animals. There are books and movies that tell exciting stories about the Amazon.

People in Latin America have open and romantic hearts. They are usually easy-going. They like to happily sing and dance.

Dances like the samba, rumba, cha cha and tango all come from Latin America. The music is cheerful and the dancers hold each other tightly. People become closer to each other by dancing together.

Singing is also a talent for many Latin Americans. Many singers there are internationally famous. Shakira from Colombia and Rihanna from Barbados are famous Latin American musicians. Their music usually has strong rhythms, which is a tradition in Latin music.

Would you like to go to Latin America and enjoy its sights and sounds?

Carnivals

Latin Americans know how to have fun. They hold world-famous carnivals. From late January to early March is the carnival season. People dress in colorful clothes, hold parades, and have a good time. Brazil’s Carnival is the biggest carnival in the world. Lots of people join it every year.

Xi in Latin America

From Nov 30 to Dec 1, the 13th Group of 20 summit took place in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Argentina and took part in the summit. Later, he went to Panama, another country in Latin America.

Xi spoke highly of the rich culture of Latin America. He encouraged Chinese teenagers to go to Argentina for soccer training. He also said that he hopes China, Argentina and Panama can work together more in the future.

Quick facts

Latin America includes more than 30 countries and areas. They are all in the south of the United States in the American continent. Latin America starts from Mexico in North America. Then, it goes through the Caribbean and down into South America.

Many people in Latin America are mixed-blood. Natives, Africans and Europeans have lived together in Latin America for more than 400 years.

Most Latin American countries speak Spanish, but people in Brazil speak Portuguese. A few of the smaller countries speak some other languages as well.