1 . America’s youth is turning its back on tobacco. According to a study recently published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cigarette smoking among US high school students is at an all-time low. One in 5 US high school students in 2016 reported using a tobacco product within the past 30 days, an improvement from 1 in 4 students just one year before.

“These findings show the importance of continuing to implement the evidence-based strategies that we now work to reduce all forms of tobacco product use, including e-cigarettes, among our nation’s youth,” says Brian King, of the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health and senior author of the study.

And it’s not just tobacco: Drug use among US teens is down across the board. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has published annual reports on US teens’ drug use since 1996, and the 2016 survey shows the lowest rates of illegal drug and alcohol use. Marijuana (大麻) use remained “mostly steady”. “It is encouraging to see more young people making healthy choices not to use illegal substances,” says former National Drug Control Policy Director Michael Botticelli.

All individual forms of tobacco such as cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars, and smoke-less tobacco saw declines in usage in 2016. Experts are especially encouraged by the decline in cigarettes, the most popular tobacco product among teens. In 2016, 11.3 percent of high school students reported using e-cigarettes, down from 16 percent in 2015.

Dr. King says adaptation is key to the decline of e-cigarettes. “We have over a half-century of science telling students about the harmful effects of tobacco use and what works best to prevent it,” says King. “E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product among our nation’s youth, and it’s critical that our proven strategies are modernized to keep pace with the changing tobacco product landscape.”

3 . A major emergency can create hundreds of thousands of refugees (难民) overnight. The most immediate way in which organizations like UNHCR and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) can help these refugees is by setting up refugee camps. Refugee camps are designed to be temporary, but they often remain in place for decades. In some parts of the world, children have grown up and had children of their own without ever leaving their camp.

Critics argue that they force refugees to be entirely dependent on donations. One journalist who visited the Nyadeou camp in the south of the Republic of Guinea A (Africa) in 2001, described how normally peaceful people were reduced to fighting with each other when the food truck arrived.

Refugees camps can easily become dirty, overcrowded and are overrun with disease or crime. In many camps, drug dealers hide themselves among the majority of innocent refugees.

One alternative for refugees is to settle in a town or village, making them become part of the local population. This is known as the “self-settlement”. Several aid agencies argue that the self-settlement is a better option in many cases than refugee camps. They say that self-settled refugees can start to rebuild their lives straight away, and are freer and safer than refugees in camps. Oxfam, the ICRC and many other international aid agencies support programs in which refugees are helped to self-settle.

Representatives of UNHCR argue that refugee camps are the best way of saving the greatest possible numbers of lives. They point out that it is much easier to help people if they are all gathered in one place. This is certainly true of emergency relief, for example the distribution of food, water, shelters and medical supplies. It is also true that long-term aid programs, such as family tracing, orphan support and, perhaps most importantly, education, can all be carried out much more easily when refugees are all living together in one place.

Why Students Should Learn to Cook

9 . Facing the growing digital economy and new positions incubated (孵化) in the sector such as deliverymen and live-streaming hosts, young people, especially those born after 2000, are expressing a stronger willingness for flexible work relations with companies, and also wish to become “digital workers” with flexible work locations and schedules.

A report from Peking University’s National School of Development released on Wednesday said that nearly 66 percent of surveyed employees born after 2000 prefer to work from home. The number is higher than surveyed people born after 1970, with about 54. 4 percent of them preferring the new way.

“The Internet can do anything for me. I check emails from my clients and submit my proposals through WeChat, then we discuss plans via teleconference. I love working from home actually,” said Mi Lu, a 28-year-old new media operator in Beijing. “It’s a much more convenient and cooler thing. We work everywhere, perhaps in a cafe, or on a bullet train or even on the table of a restaurant.”

Hu Jiayin, an associate professor in Peking University’s National School of Development, concluded that their survey shows that young people desire freedom in their jobs, but also wish for stability in their careers because of uncertainties brought by the fast-changing digital economy.

“But the development of the digital economy also brings great uncertainties and a sense of insecurity to the working population, so we’ve found some interesting things during our surveys that over 30 percent of job seekers we’ve surveyed wish to have a stable job at state-owned companies,” she added.

Li Qiang, vice-president of Zhaopin, said that the greatest risk to those seeking flexible work is whether the company pays the salary fully and on time. “It’s necessary for job seekers to set up a long-term development plan, rather than be shortsighted.” He added that companies may bear risks that flexible employees can’t deliver high-quality work in a limited time period, which requires the companies to establish a sound work delivery standard to help evaluate employee performance.

10 . Food waste is a serious problem. In 2010, nearly 133 billion pounds worth of food was transported to U.S. landfills. Food waste is truly a waste to all of humanity. That’s because when you throw out a rotten apple or a moldy container of leftovers, you’re not just throwing away the food, but all the resources that went into producing it.

Water plays a major role in food production, and as a result, food waste translates to a large amount of water wastage. All foods have a water footprint, the direct and indirect water that goes into producing a certain food, although some footprints are larger than others. In general, meats tend to need the most water for production, primarily because of the amount of food the animal needs. Also, larger animals aren’t as efficient in terms of meat production as smaller animals like chickens or turkeys, and the bigger beasts therefore have a larger water footprint.

Food waste has environmental impacts, too. “If you put all the food waste into one country, it would be the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter,” says Brian Lipinski, an associate in the World Resource Institute’s Food Program. Decomposing (分解) food that makes its way into landfills releases methane (甲烷), which is significantly more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide.

All is not lost, however. There are many efforts underway to cut food loss at every level. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency recently called for a 50 percent reduction in food waste by 2030. Meanwhile, Portland launched a citywide composting (堆制肥料) program a few years ago. And at the retail (零售) level, the former president of Trader Joe’s recently opened a store near Boston that sells surplus food donated by grocery stores at low prices.

Still, waste can’t be avoided. There’s never going to be some ideal or perfect way to eliminate it all. Fortunately, change at any level, whether it’s as a supplier, retailer or consumer, will help ease the impact of food waste on natural resources.