1 . You're never too young to make contributions to your community.

Members of Gen Z are creative and responsible, making them perfectly ready to help handle the world's problems through volunteering.   

If you want to make a difference in your community, or be a part of something bigger than yourself, then this is the place to start. Here are a few organizations of Gen Z with volunteer opportunities for teens!

Habitat for Humanity

Everyone deserves to have a place they call home. By volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, you can play a role in building up your community. Their Habitat Youth Programs accept volunteers between the ages of 5 and 40.

Meals on Wheels

For those teens who just got their licenses (执照), here's a volunteer opportunity that will make driving worthwhile. 200 million meals have been delivered so far. You can connect with your local provider to get involved. Meals on Wheels is on a mission to meet the nutritional and social needs of the elderly.

Key Club

As the oldest service program for high school students, the Key Club has quite a history of helping teens get involved in volunteering. Because clubs are student-led, you get a direct say in the kinds of service projects you want to do. Chances are, there's already a chapter in your school, but if not, you can try taking the lead in one.

Best Buddies

Volunteer with Best Buddies to help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and you can make them connected with other people. Join a school chapter (or start your own) to use friendship as a tool to improve the sense of belonging in your community.

And don't worry. Even if you can't volunteer physically, there are also tons of online volunteer opportunities available! Find out more about joining a worthwhile volunteer organization at www. Gen Z.org.

Yours,

Li Hua

Can a robot really freestyle?

Engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, led by Gil Weinberg, have designed the first musical robot able to play music and even create it. His name is Shimon. Weinberg, who is a musician, engineer, and professor of musical technology, created it. He found himself losing the inspiration of being creative, and he decided to create a robot that could inspire him with new musical ideas. Shimon was trained of everything from rock to jazz to rap. His works really surprise human listeners.

Up until recent development, applications of AI (artificial intelligence) have mostly consisted of performing traditional tasks, but many are concerned that new technology like Shimon could result in lost jobs for millions of people, even those in creative industry.

While there is certain concern that humans are replaced by robots, a much more likely future is one in which robots will work alongside humans to improve their work. Experts say that AI will actually create jobs for humans, not destroy them. The Guardian recently reported that by 2037, AI will create more than 7 million new jobs in the healthcare, education, and science fields in the UK.

Shimon is showing us what can happen when robots don't just work for us, but with us. Instead of putting any of our favorite musicians out of work, robots will certainly be challenging and inspiring them in positive ways. The cooperation between humans and robots can produce new and attractive music, leading to new musical outcomes. Thanks to the innovation of Weinberg and his team, music may begin to look and act considerably different. What can happen when robots don't just work for us, but with us?

9 . The Case for Classics

Many high school students complain when they look at a course syllabus for Chinese and know they should read The Story of the Stone and other pieces of classic literature.     1     But there are some good reasons why reading the classics is an important part of a 21st century education.

    2     As students explore texts that were written hundreds of years before, they know the world as it was in those days. Being able to hear those voices from the past is a good chance young people should be grateful to have.

Furthermore, as students read classic works, they begin to see history in a new way. Living in the modern world, most teens don't think about that human civilization has been around for a longtime.     3     Yet the experiences of those people can help students deal with the challenge today. The wording and writing style may have changed, but the deep themes (love, loss, and courage) are as true today as they were for the authors of these early works.

One of the most important reasons to study classic literature, however, is to expand one's mind.     4     To prove this, a group of scientists gathered volunteers who agreed to have their brains canned while reading phrases from classic literature in both their original form and in modern translations. The result of the study showed a significant increase in the brain activity of people reading the original literature works.

    5     It connects students to history, helps them solve today's problems and improves their thinking. Therefore, if today's teens are going to grow as readers, writers, and critical thinkers, it is important that classic literature remains a part of their education.

10 . Plastic—Eating Worm

Humans produce more than 300 million tons of plastic every year. Almost half of that ends up in landfills(垃圾填埋场) , and up to 12 million tons pollute the oceans. So far there is no effective way to get rid of it, but a new study suggests an answer may lie in the stomachs of some hungry worms(幼虫).   

Researchers in Spain and England found that the worms of the greater wax moth(大蜡螟) can break down polyethylene(聚乙烯), which accounts for 40% of plastics.

That is to say, part of plastics can be consumed by this kind of worms. The team left 100 wax worms on a plastic shopping bag for 12 hours, and the worms consumed and broke down about 92 milligrams, or almost 3% of it. To confirm that the worms' chewing alone was not responsible for the polyethylene breakdown, the researchers made some worms into paste(糊状物)and applied it to plastic films. 14 hours later the films had lost 13% of their mass—apparently broken down by enzymes(酶)from the worms' stomachs. Their findings were published in Current Biology.

Federica Bertocchini, co—author of the study, says the worms' ability to break down their everyday food—beeswax—also allows them to break down plastic." Wax is a complex mixture, but the basic bond in polyethylene, the carbon—carbon bond, is there as well," she explains. "The wax worm developed a method or system to break this bond."

Jennifer Debruyn, a microbiologist at the University of Tennessee, who was not involved in the study, says it is not surprising that such worms can break down polyethylene. But compared with previous studies, she finds the speed of breaking down in this one exciting. The next step, DeBruyn says, will be to identify where the enzyme comes from. Is it an enzyme produced by the worm itself or by its gut microbes(肠道微生物)?

Bertocchini agrees and hopes her team's findings might one day help make use of the enzyme to break down plastics in landfills. But she expects using the chemical in some kind of industrial process—not simply "millions of worms thrown on top of the plastic."