1 . Zea Tongeman, a 14-year-old student, who is crazy about the Internet, applied technology to create an application that encourages people to recycle while having fun.

Zea was really inspired when she attended “Little Miss Geek Day”, an event that aims at making technology more accessible and appealing to young women and inspiring them to consider technology careers. Soon after, she entered “Apps for Good”, a competition that encourages students to create positive change through technology. Teaming up with her friend, Jordan Stirbu, she laid the foundations for “Jazzy Recycling”.

The “Jazzy Recycling” application is designed to encourage young people to recycle more, which wins the favor of the youth. It turns waste disposal into a game and helps you find places to recycle. Then you scan what you need to recycle, share it, and get rewards such as shopping vouchers (代金券) and games to be unlocked for what you have recycled.

Tapping into the teen enthusiasm for sharing every little aspect of their daily life on social media like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, recycling efforts can be shared too as a fun game among friends, which makes more people take part in recycling activities.

Zea explains why she is addicted to the Internet and how technology has changed her ideas about the future, “I used to think technology was just fixing computers and using smartphones; I have become very tired from just using what is available. I have discovered another side to it and that I can make technology of my own.”

In fact, Zea Tongeman has taken the idea of recycling seriously and hopes all her fellow beings would give it a serious thought. This teen girl from the United Kingdom has made use of computer programming to create her own app that would encourage people to go recycling for a better world.

2 . Microplastics are “one of the greatest man-made disasters of our time”, according to the Natural History Museum. That’s bad news, given they are also everywhere: in tap water, the food you buy, the clothes you wear and the air you breathe.

The largest microplastics can be seen by the naked eye and are anything under half a cen- timetre in size. But many of them are small enough to act like spots of dust which we can unconsciously breathe in or eat in food. The smallest particles are called nanoplastics and they are small enough to get their way deep into the human body.

New findings from the University of Portsmouth show that there is so much synthetic material in our homes that we might be breathing in up to 7, 000 microplastic particles a day. Using special equipment, researchers measured a typical family home and found the highest concentration of it was in the bedroom of the eight-year-old daughter, whose room was decorated with plastic-based bedding, carpet and soft toys.

Although research is in its early stage, the risks of these plastics could be serious—some studies have linked high exposure to cancer risk and disrupting our hormones. In animal studies, the particles have been shown to affect metabolism, gut bacteria and the immune system, among other things.

It is not yet known what a healthy level of microplastics might look like, but Dr Sabine Donnai, CEO of the Viavi clinic, thinks that many people in the West are over the limit. In tests at her clinic, patients often come back with dangerously high levels of plastic in their bodies, she says.

3 . The world is going through a basic transformation,which is changing the way we live, work and think. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is bringing dramatic change and giving rise to a future filled with exciting opportunities and new challenges. Together, governments and businesses must find solutions to society's most pressing needs—from creating a carbon-free economy to tackling population growth and urbanization.

In any period of rapid change there is a trend to look for a simple method,to greet the new things and replace the old way of doing things. But a closer look at the facts tells a different story. Complex problems require many solutions working in harmony to enable positive change.

The challenge for scientists and engineers is to provide solutions in fact, data and today's realities. And while technologies offer new tools to help uncover solutions, the process also requires hard work, imagination and lots of improvement.

Success rests on performing practical, realistic, long- term solutions that make the world cleaner, safer and more sustainable(可持续的).

The environment is a case in point. Much of the public debate has centered on the central role of renewable power sources in realizing a low-carbon energy future. While the industry is fully behind developing renewables, today we understand that a low or zero-carbon future depends on adopting a multifaceted approach.

We cannot control sunshine levels or decide when the wind blows, which means solar power and wind power generators will produce too much or too little energy at times. The transition to renewables needs to take account of serious considerations.

Batteries have been much discussed as a means of storing extra energy, but there are other choices. Power-to- X technologies enable spare energy created by renewables to be stored and redistributed when and where it is needed.

5 . The tornadoes that recently struck the U.S. are some of the most destructive and deadly in history. The death in Kentucky, the hardest hit state, reached 80 on Monday, with dozens still unaccounted for. The scale of destruction and timing of the tornadoes so late in the year — most tornadoes occur in the spring and summer — is fueling discussion about how climate change may have influenced this deadly disaster.

“In my 40 years as a meteorologist (气象学家), this was one of the most shocking weather events I’ve ever witnessed,” says Jeff Masters, at Yale Climate Connections. “Watching these storms on Friday night, my thought was, ‘Is no season safe?’ Extreme tornadoes in December. That was mind blowing to me.”

Unlike heat waves and floods, the link between a wanning world and tornadoes is complex and uncertain. Scientists have several theories about how tornado behavior may change. Tornadoes in December are possible. But it remains to be seen whether climate change will strengthen or increase the frequency of tornadoes.

According to NOAA’s data, there has been a recorded increase in the number of observed tornadoes since 1950, which experts believe is largely due to better technology such as Doppler radar. There’s been no observed increase in the frequency of major tornadoes over time. For example, 59 of the most severe F5 tornadoes in the U.S. have occurred since 1950. But if the storm that destroyed Kentucky turns out to have been an F5, it will have been the first since 2013 — bringing to an end the longest recorded period so far.

Nevertheless, “given the general influence of global warming on the atmosphere, it makes sense that it should be having an impact on tornadoes too,” says Victor Gensini, an extreme weather expert at Northern Illinois University. “Instead of asking: ‘Did climate change cause this tornado?’ It’s better to operate under the assumption that climate change did play a role,” he says.

While the science on climate change and tornadoes isn’t clear, meteorologists are predicting that conditions benefiting tornadoes will continue this month. “I’m worried about the rest of the year to be honest. I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet.” Gensini says.

6 . Nashville-based helicopter pilot Joel Boyers had just finished his job on Saturday morning and was heading home when he received a call for help from a woman in Pennsylvania. Her brother Johnson’s home in Waverly, Tennessee, was underwater and he was trapped on a roof with his daughters. Could Boyers help?“I thought how I would feel if I told her I was not even going to try?” he said in a Thursday interview. “She just so happened to call the right person,   because I’m the only person crazy enough to even try to do that.”

The weather was terrible and Boyers had to deal with hills and power lines on the way to Waverly, a small city about 60 miles west of Nashville. Just before reaching the town, he found the Internet was down, making it impossible to locate the house he was looking for. He flew on anyway.

“When I arrived, it was nothing but raging water below me,” he said. A few people were out in boats, rescuing the trapped. Boyers was alone in the sky. He started flying up and down the flooded area, grabbing anyone he could.

Boyers said he ended up rescuing 17 people that day. He was proud of that, but said he was the one who should be thanking them. “I literally prayed just days before this that I would be given some meaning in my life, and then I end up getting this call,” he said. He had flown over disasters before including floods, but “The police are usually there, and my hands are tied. This time there isn’t any,” he said.

To perform the rescues, Boyers had to carefully avoid power lines, balance his skids (打滑) on sloped rooftops, and fly over flood waters. It took all the skills learned over 16 years of flying, including for a television news station, for documentaries and for country music stars. “I don’t want to lie,” he said. “It was almost a little fun for me.”

10 . “How many of us as children have stared up at a church-like top of a giant tree and climbed it in wonder, which is a rally special part of our lives?” asks Bill Laurance, a tropical ecologist at James Cook University. “The leaves of big trees in forests are spreading out in all directions. We’re faced with organisms that have evolved for long periods of ecological stability.”

“There’s a lot to discuss on the issue,” says David Lindenmayer, a conservation ecologist at the Australian National University. “Climate change will mean that, in some forests, big trees won’t reach the same sizes they used to.” The effects of climate change, including long droughts, more invasive species and so on increase the simple physical challenges that big trees face in pulling water from their roots to their leaves and withstanding windstorms.

Lindenmayer and Laurance define “large, old trees” as the largest five percent mature trees within a species. The flexible definition means that in some forests, the large, old trees might be only 20 meters tall and 100 years old.

These large, old trees control the surrounding plant communities, affect water and nutrient distribution, and provide food and shelter for wildlife. “They’re really the breadbaskets of the forest,” says Laurance. “This is a very environmentally and ecologically important group of organisms, and they need special care and handling.” Determining the distribution and habitat requirements for large, old trees in the landscape is the first step towards ensuring their survival, “We have to ensure that what we’re thinking is long-term, to match the way these trees have existed for hundreds or even thousands of years,” says Laurance. “It’s going to be a real challenge to keep some places where there is still wildlife and the big church-like trees that we all really care about.”