2 . South Korea has the highest rate of Internet addiction in the world and it is increasingly the country’s children who are spending every waking moment immersing themselves in fantasy role plays or gaming. In the remote mountains of South Korea, teenage Internet addicts are turning up for a 12-day boot camp.

Kyle Won’s addiction is out of control. He spends 10 hours a day on the Internet. Now Kyle’s smartphone is taken away. The teachers here do what they can to get them socializing again; for many, the only friends they have had are online. “I have relationships on the Internet and a real distance has grown with my real-life friends and I know it’s not good,” Kyle said. The teachers show them other possibilities and bring back dreams and hopes that have been buried by their addictions. “We teach them methods of managing their desire to use the Internet so that they can continue to use it when they go back home,” Shim Yong-chool, a teacher here, said. After just two days Kyle said it was helpful. He’s set a good example to others though he hasn’t reached the goal completely.

South Korean psychiatrists (精神病专家) are urging more action as they are finding evidence that too much screen time is a barrier to the developing minds. Professor Kang Seak Young from Dankook University said the addiction was damaging critical thinking. “It affects the frontal lobes (额叶) which are important to critical analysis,” Professor Kang said. “Reading a book and guessing what happens in the story next show activity in frontal lobes but playing popular computer games for a long time shows no activity.”

South Korea is one of the most wired nations on Earth, but it does have a cost. One in every ten kids is an addict, so the country is now learning how to manage its high-tech future to avoid more serious consequences.

3 . My Biggest Challenge

As a writer on an adventure sports magazine, I’d always fought shy of doing the adventurous stuff myself, preferring instead to observe the experts from a safe distance and relay their experiences to readers in the form of written language. Thus, when I was challenged to take part in a mountain climb in aid of raising money for charity — and to write about it afterwards — I was unwilling, to say the least.

I was lucky enough to have a brilliant climbing coach called Keith, who put me through my paces after my daily work. He gave me knowledge about everything from the importance of building muscle groups to how to avoid tiredness through nutrition. It quickly became apparent that the mechanics of climbing were more complex than I had imagined. There was the equipment and techniques I’d never even heard of, all of which would come in handy on the snow-capped peak I’d be climbing.

Aware of the challenge, Keith made a detailed action plan and I forced myself to stick to it, doing a daily workout at the gym and going on hikes with a heavy pack. I perfected my technique on the climbing wall and even went to climb the mountains to get vital experience. My self-belief increased alongside my muscle power and I became confident about finishing the climb.

All too soon I was on a plane to my destination. On that day, when I looked up at the mountain, I thought of abandoning it. But then I remembered all the hard work I’d done and how disappointed Keith would be if I gave up at the last minute-not to mention letting down the charity and the sense of failure I’d experience myself. With a deep breath I gathered my equipment and headed out into the sunshine to meet the rest of the group.

And as I sit here now, tapping away on my laptop, I’m amazed at the details in which I can recall every second of the climb: the burning muscles, the tiredness, the minor problems along the way. Could I have been better prepared? Possibly. Would I be back for another go? Thankfully not. The feeling of being excited when I stood on top of the world is a never-to-be-repeated experience but one I will enjoy forever nevertheless.

4 . The idea of billions of people going through a few masks a week during this pandemic definitely rings alarm bells, but a team of researchers in Melbourne may have the solution.

They’ve discovered that adding millions of discarded face masks to road-paving (铺路) mixtures would actually lower the cost of the road, while preventing billions of them from landfills. Just one kilometer of road would need three million masks, and the polypropylene (聚丙烯) plastic used to make single-use surgical face masks also increased the flexibility and durability of the road.

The new material is a mixture of about 2% torn masks, with recycled concrete aggregate (RCA)—a material obtained from waste concrete and other minerals from destroyed buildings. This recycled material was found in the study to be ideal for two of the four layers generally required to create roadways. Paving a kilometer of two-way road with the RCA and three million face masks would result in a change of 93 tons of waste from landfills.

The final product then is more resistant to wear than asphalt (沥青), as well as being cheaper too, provided there was a method for collecting masks. The research team did a cost-analysis and found that, at $26 per ton, the RCA was about half the cost of mining raw materials, and as much as a third of the cost of shipping the used masks to a landfill.

The widespread application would be ideal for large infrastructure (基础设施) projects. For example, Washington has the 11th worst roads in terms of unaddressed repairs in the U.S. If the damaged roads in Washington state were repaired with the RCA/mask mixture, it would reuse nearly 10 billion masks, sparing American landfills hundreds of millions of tons of trash.

It’s said that the team is looking for private industry partners or governments willing to give their plastic mask road an opportunity for a large-scale test.

6 . Jamie Wardley is a special kind of artist—an ice sculptor. He first trained as a sand sculptor. Later,he learnt about ice sculpture. Now he does sand sculpture in the summer. And in the winter, he sculpts ice.

When sculpting ice,Wardley has to work in cold temperatures. If the weather is cold enough, he can work outside. But winter in the United Kingdom is not always very cold. So often he works in a large freezer where the temperature is about -12℃.

Wardley enjoys sculpting ice outside in the winter. When he sculpts in the open air, people can watch. They can be part of the creative process.

Wardley makes ice sculpting sound simple. But the tools Wardley uses are sharp and dangerous. And the ice is very heavy. Each block of ice weighs 120 kilos. And some larger sculptures are made from several combined blocks of ice. Sometimes ice sculptures can be as big as buildings. In Kemi, Finland there is an ice hotel called the Snow Castle. Each year, Wardley helps build the Snow Castle.

Inside the Snow Castle, the temperature is -50℃. Even the dining tables are made of ice. So you have to wear winter clothes when eating and wear a hat when sleeping. “The ice hotel is built every year in January. Then it melts in April. Each year we rebuild it and create a new design,” Wardley said.

The Snow Castle is a large and amazing work of ice, but Wardley's smaller ice sculptures are special too. One winter, in the city of Bradford, the UK,Wardley created several small sculptures. He used the sculptures to tell a story which contained an important message about goodwill and understanding.

Ice sculptures are temporary works of art. When the temperature rises, they will melt. But that does not mean that their beauty is lost. The sculptures from that day in Bradford have now melted away, but their message of goodwill, understanding, and acceptance remains.

7 . Have you ever loved a destination but couldn’t figure out why — or even a way ——to express your feelings? That’s my dilemma with Morocco.

In August, I traveled in a country that had long been, on my wish list. I rode a camel, got lost in Medinas, and ate more couscous (粗麦粉) than was humanly possible.

I loved the trip. Our friendly guide introduced us to the helpful locals. I made friends with my tour mates and my roommate (which, on a tour, is a huge blessing). I loved being lost in the smell of different spices, and the chaos of millions of people and the dark red of the Sahara were all I wanted them to be.

There were many moments when I felt like a fish out of water and things didn’t go my way. But I take pleasure in those moments because it’s when you are pushed out of your comfort zone that you grow. Morocco lived up to all my expectations, but for some reason, my experience has been hard to express. Why?

One constant in my travels is that of a touchstone, one defining point where the trip all comes together and acts as a prism (三棱镜) for everything the journey represented . In Costa Rica，it was getting lost in a jungle. In Thailand, it was meeting those five people who changed my life.

I’m so inconsistent about Morocco because I lack that touchstone. There’s no “whoa” moment. But I have thousands of little ones - staring at a million stars in the blackness of the desert, discovering new foods with some amazing Australians on my tour, and befriending the fish sellers.

8 . An 85-year-old primary school constructed in 1935 in Shanghai has been lifted off the ground in its entirety and relocated using new technology called the “walking machine.” The project marks the first time this “walking machine” method has been used in Shanghai to relocate a historical building.

Urbanization（都市化）has continued to significantly threaten architectural heritage. In the capital Beijing, for instance, more than 1,000 acres of its historic hutongs and traditional courtyard homes were destroyed between 1990 and 2010.

In the early 2000s, cities including Nanjing and Bejjing-due to the critics’ protest about the loss of old neighborhoods-drew up long-term plans to preserve what was left of their historic sites, with protections introduced to safeguard buildings and restrict developers.

These conservation efforts have taken different forms. In Beijing, a near-ruined temple was transformed into a restaurant and gallery, while in Nanjing, a cinema from the 1930s was restored to its original form, with some additions providing it for modern use. In 2019, Shanghai welcomed Tank Shanghai, an arts center built in renovated（重修的）oil tanks.

“Relocation is not the first choice, but better than destroying,” said Lan, the Shanghai primary school’s project supervisor. “I’d rather not touch the historical buildings at all.” Building relocations he said however, are “a workable option.” “The central government is putting more emphasis on the protection of historical buildings. I’m happy to see that progress in recent years.”

Shanghai has arguably been China’s most progressive city when it comes to heritage preservation. The survival of a number of 1930s buildings and 19th-century “shikumen” （or “stone gate”） house have offered examples of how to give old buildings new life.

“We have to preserve the historical building no matter what, ” Lan said. “The relocation has challenges, but in general, it is cheaper than destroying and then rebuilding something in a new location.”