1 . Weekend Visitor Engagement Volunteers—Museum of Zoology

Our wonderful team of Visitor Engagement Volunteers help us make the Museum a friendly, accessible and safe place to visit. We need extra help at weekends when we are at our busiest. This role will suit anyone who is keen to take on a public facing role. Knowledge of the Museum or the collections is not a necessity, but much enthusiasm and willingness to learn is all that is needed. We are looking for a minimum commitment of two shifts per month, which is approximately 7 hours in total.

Visitor Engagement Volunteers provide a friendly welcome and interact with visitors. They supply information about the exhibitions and displays, and answer questions from visitors or direct them to members of staff. You will be acting as the face of the Museum so we’d like you to welcome visitors and be aware of their needs.

Visitor Engagement Volunteers play a valuable role in maintaining museum security during opening hours by supervising visitors in the galleries, and supporting the front of house staff.

Shift times

Tuesdays to Saturdays—10 a. m. to 1:15 p. m. or 1:15 p. m. to 4:30 p. m.

Sundays—12 p. m. to 2 p. m. or 2 p. m. to 4:30 p. m.

How to Get Involved?

Step 1: Log in or create a Volunteer Makers account and accept the challenge.

Step 2: Await a response from the team who will be in touch with further information.

2 . There is a mountain of great ski opportunities not too far from Boston. Road-trip to one of these fantastic ski mountains this winter.

Blue Hills Ski Area

A ski day trip doesn’t get any easier than the Blue Hills Ski Area. It is the only snow sports facility in the metro area. Skiing and snowboarding are spread over its 60 skiable acres, 90% of which are equipped for snowmaking. The vertical drop is 309 feet and there are four lifts serving the 16 trails, most of which are for advanced skiers. There are lessons for kids and adults to help you get there.

Crochet Mountain Resort

It’s famous for signature “Midnight Madness” events and daily night skiing. It has an 875-foot vertical drop and 23 trails across 75 skiable acres. A great mountain for skiers, half its terrain is graded for intermediates with the rest being split between advanced and beginner terrain.

Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort

It’s the only one of ski resorts to be 100% powered by renewable energy sources. Skiers will find a 1,150-foot vertical drop, 45 trails, 3 terrain parks and 9 lifts across 167 skiable acres. The whole family can take lessons, enjoy dining or buy a ticket and go for a ride on the 3,600-foot Mountain Coaster!

Smugglers’ Notch

Smugglers’ Notch has a 2,564-foot vertical drop, 78 trails, 5 terrain parks and 8 lifts spread across 1,000 skiable acres. Known as a full-service family-oriented resort, it offers plenty to do off mountain like ice skating, arts and crafts workshops and an indoor swimming pool!

3 . While Instagram’s impact on teenage girls’ body image made the news recently, few have thought about its effect on teenage boys and young men. The masculine (男子汉的) body ideal has become increasingly large and more muscular in recent years. Given these pressures, a third of teenage boys report trying to bulk up (增肌).

Social media use is linked to muscle and height dissatisfaction in young men. Boys using social media are more likely to think about using harmful muscle-enhancing products. The pressure to become muscular can lead to muscle dysmorphia (健身成瘾症), which is when individuals become absorbed in the idea that their bodies are too small and not muscular enough. Like common eating disorders among teenagers, muscle dysmorphia can significantly worsen a teen’s physical and mental health.

Because of social media, boys’ bodies are on display now more than ever, especially through influencers’ accounts. Compared to female selfies (自拍照) which are more likely to feature faces, male selfies are more likely to be full-body photos: An analysis of 1,000 male full-body Instagram posts showed that a majority portrayed muscularity, and that images featuring this body type received significantly more likes and comments. Boys who view or post content related to fitness or muscularity on social media are subsequently flooded with other images of bulking teens, leading to an unhealthy cycle of constantly comparing their body with others and possible social media addiction.

While lawmakers debate potential government regulation of social media, concerned parents can start having conversations with their teens and discourage content that makes teens feel worse about themselves. They can also help relieve social media addiction by encouraging their kids to turn off updates, by having social media-free time (such as during family meals) and by having teens keep phones away from their beds while sleeping. Boys suffering from body image anxiety often experience delays in diagnosis and treatment. Parents need to be aware that the negative impact of social media isn’t only impacting their daughters but their sons as well.

4 . In 2009, Kevin Pearce was at the height of his professional snowboarding career and bound for the Winter Olympics. But in an instant, it came to an end. During training, he struck his head on the edge of a pipe, resulting in a traumatic (创伤的) brain injury. It changed the course of the then-22-year-old’s life.

He had to relearn how to walk and talk and essentially start over. His older brother Adam quit his job and moved across the country to help him through rehab.

He eventually started doing yoga, and his family saw how it transformed him and gave him a sense of hope: “It was the first time I remember so clearly coming out of a class with him and just seeing in his face this new expression, this new person.” Adam Pearce said, “We were like, ‘We need to figure out why and how that just happened.’”

Wanting to bring hope and healing to others through yoga and meditation (冥想). Adain and Kevin co-founded the Love YourBrain Foundation in 2014. The nonprofit offers week-long meditations and community-based yoga classes across the United States for people who are living with long-term brain-related disabilities. “I think people feel isolated after brain injury because they don’t feel able, and when you don’t feel able, you generally retreat back inside.” Adam said, “At these retreats, people are given the space to lean into those deep challenges and express them and talk about them.”

Ultimately, the organization aims to create a safe space and supportive community where people with brain-related disabilities can heal together. “Connection happens quickly because there’s such a shared common understanding among the group.” Adam said. “Once someone sees someone be vulnerable, it instantly allows the next person (to be). By the end, people start to see vulnerability as a superpower.”

5 . The Zero Energy Building in Singapore, which has been entirely powered by sunlight since it began operating in 2009, is the first of its kind in Southeast Asia. Transformed from a former workshop, the three- story building may hold the key to the island’s effort to reduce its dependence on imported fuel.

Generally, green building strategies can be categorized into passive and active solutions. Active solutions involve improving lighting and the HVAC(Heating, Ventilation (通风) and Air-conditioning)systems that consume most of the energy in buildings. Passive solutions aim to provide more energy-efficient architectural improvements (such as building envelopes and roofs) to reduce the reliance on active solutions. Research has shown that passive strategies are much less costly compared to active solutions. Therefore, passive design is recommended in many green and sustainable design guidelines.

“However, passive solutions, such as daylight and natural ventilation, are sensitive to climatic and outdoor conditions and therefore have their limitations of application,” said project officer Letchimi Palanisamy. “For example, buildings in the tropics (热带) usually have a North-South direction to avoid facing the sun directly. But the Zero Energy Building has an East-West orientation, which made the task more challenging.”

Innovations that are being tested at the Zero Energy Building include personalized ventilation and a new air-conditioning system patented by the National University of Singapore (NUS). Different plants have also been planted on the roofs and along the walls of the building to reduce heat absorption, yet allow maximum natural ventilation and daylight into the building to lower the need for air-conditioning and artificial lighting. The biggest improvement is the addition of a new roof that can turn sunlight into 500,000KWH of electricity each year.

“The Zero Energy Building is a test bed for the green building technologies in the tropics,” Letchimi Palanisamy said. “If they are successfully commercialized, they will help Singapore cut its energy consumption in the buildings by 50%.”

6 . Tourists at the Acropolis this holiday season can walk around the ancient Greek site to see how it looked like 2,500 years ago. They will even see a collection of sculptures that were removed from the site more than 200 years ago and are now on display at the British Museum in London. All they need is a smartphone and an app called Chronos.

They can just point their phones at the Parthenon, and then the sculptures housed in London will app ear back on the temple. Other less widely known features also appear: Many of the sculptures on the Acropolis are painted in striking colors. A statue of Athena in the main hall also stands over a shallow pool of water.

“The only time I’ve seen this kind of technology before was at the dentist,” Shriya Parsotam Chitnavis, a tourist from London, said after checking out the app on a hot afternoon at the hilltop Acropolis. “I’m more of a visual person, so this app has really helped me appreciate it.”

The app employs augmented reality (AR) to place the ancient impression of the site onto the screen, matching the real-world view as you walk around the temple. The app also covers three other monuments at the Acropolis, a neighboring Roman theater and parts of the Acropolis Museum built at the foot of the hill.

Greece’s Culture Ministry is enthusiastic to adopt the AR technology. Another company, Microsoft, partnered with the ministry two years ago to launch a digital tour at ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games in southern Greece.

“The software will offer tourists a more immersive experience, allowing them to share photos and videos from museums and other sources as more content becomes digitized,” said Maria Engberg, co-author of the book Reality Media.

7 . In spring 1955, Rosalynn Carter was doing what she had been avoiding since she married Jimmy Carter: keeping house and raising children in the same tiny town where they grew up.

But her husband called for help from his family’s farm one day and said that he couldn’t manage the farm on his own. So Rosalynn Carter gathered their sons and returned to the tiny town. Soon she was managing finances and handling customers. “Finally, I got used to our new life and knew more about the business than he did, and he would take my advice about things,” Rosalynn Carter told The Associated Press in 2021.

Their marriage was almost a decade old when she went to the farm, but that was perhaps the true beginning of a partnership that helped Jimmy Carter win the Georgia governor’s office in 1970 and then the White House in 1976. Six years later, they co-founded The Carter Center and committed themselves to charity work for four decades in more than 145 countries, where many children, now adults, were named Jimmy or Rosalynn or Carter. Along that path was a small-town love story that included 77 years of marriage and two decades of family friendship before that. Their shared journey ended on November 19, 2023, with Rosalynn’s death at the age of 96.

“It’s hard to think of one of them without the other,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend who saw the couple often during Rosalynn Carter’s last months. “When Jimmy was president. she even attended all White House meetings and discussed what she heard with him at home. They had nightly phone calls when they traveled separately.”

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished.” Jimmy Carter said in a statement released upon her death. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

8 . Here are trips near Beijing for every age, taste, and budget.

Badachu

Badachu takes its name from the eight temples that make up the area’s main attraction. Its history as a religious site goes all the way back to the Tang Dynasty（618-907AD).   The first of the eight temples, Chang’an Si, is actually located right outside the park. The second temple, Lingguang Si, is Badachu’s main attraction and the only one that still has monks inside. Take the nearby chairlift（RMB 30）or continue exploring the other temples on foot.

Admission: RMB 10.

Longqing Gorge

Longqing Gorge is known for the Longqing Gorge Ice Sculpture Festival in winter and peaceful mountain views in summer. Often compared to the Yangtze River’s famous Three Gorges, Longqing Gorge also ranks favorably with Guilin’s mountain and water views. Besides sightseeing, tourists can go boating, rock climbing and horseback riding here. Baihua Dong is best avoided, as the only signs of “flowers” are made with plastics.

Admission: RMB 40.

Shang Fang Shan

As a national forest park, Shang Fang Shan is known for its diversity of plants and ancient trees that are over a thousand years old. There are nine caves in the mountain. The best-known one is called Yunshui Cave, meaning “the cave of clouds and water”.

Admission: RMB 40.

Huanghuacheng

If your idea of relaxation is losing yourself in hiking along the wild Great Wall, then Huanghuacheng, which is named after the yellow flowers that blanket the site in summer, is for you. Here you can explore the Great Wall at any time for free. The exploration starts at Jintang Lake and the moon-shaped Huanghuacheng Reservoir, which breaks the Great Wall into three sections. Huanghuacheng is also known as “Water Great Wall” because part of the wall is underwater.

9 . How to charge an electric vehicle (EV) is one of the biggest concerns people have when working out whether going electric is right for them.

It is true that sometimes gaining access to reliable charging can seem a bit tricky.     1    

First, download an app with a comprehensive map of the public charging points showing their locations, how powerful they are, and whether they’re working. All this is vital information because, even if you have public charging points nearby, you will need alternatives in case they’re in use.    2    

A growing number of property owners are renting out their charging points and drive ways to other local EV drivers when they’re not using them.    3     Thus, your car gets charged, the owners make money, and emissions are reduced.

    4       For example, when your car is running out of juice, you’d just pull up to a battery-change station from your car brand and sit in the car while a fully charged unit is changed in. The Chinese EV brand Nio does this, but isn’t available in the UK as yet.

For now, if charging access remains difficult for you, it’s still possible to go electric-in part.    5     Many hybrid (混合) cars are now good for 50 miles of electric running before you need to use the engine. So, if most of your driving is local, you might only need to find a charger once or twice a week, while you have the backup of a fuel engine for long journeys.