Mid-Atlantic Appalachians Backpacking & Environmental Service Leaders
Are you ready to take a journey that will change your life? You won't look at day-to-day drama the same way after you've reached the top of a high mountain. Joining the journey changes you. Your crew, your instructor, and your adventures will have a lasting impact on you as you rise to meet thrilling natural challenges in some of the country's wildest places.
____: Learn and practice wilderness, teamwork and leadership skills. Find connection with your crew-mates based on support and respect (and fun too), and in the thick of challenges, discover there is more in you than you know.
Value strengths and strengthen values: Uncover your unique character strengths, develop your leadership abilities and learn how to let compassion into everyday life by pushing your own limits and working alongside those of your age.
Show mastery: As you gain confidence in new skills, take on more decision-making responsibilities. Work together to achieve team goals, solve problems and succeed both as individuals and as a group.
What you'll learn: For high school students, the opportunities to carry more weight and make influential decisions with accompanying consequences fills the journey as you go through numerous trials and victories. It's all about independence.
After you come home, many of the character, leadership and service traits you uncovered on your journey stay with you, helping you plan and direct your daily life with more success.
START DATE: 07/06/2023
END DATE: 08/08/2023
AGE RANGE: 16-18
COST: $ 3,674 (Life insurance is optional.)
Apply now→
On September 5, 2020, almost 800,000 fans worldwide crowded into American magician and endurance artist David Blaine's YouTube channel to witness his first major live event since 2012. Called Ascension, the stunt(特技) involved Blaine strapping himself to 52 colorful helium balloons and flying into the clear blue skies above Arizona's Great Basin Desert.
"I want to go up and become a tiny dot in the sky." the adventurer told a reporter in the New York Post before the event.
The stuntman achieved his goal by soaring almost five miles before letting go of the balloons. Blaine then dropped down at a heart-stopping speed of over a hundred miles per hour before pulling the strings on his parachute. After skillfully steering back to Earth and making a picturing-perfect landing on his feet, a delighted Blaine said, "Wow! That was awesome."
Blaine, who announced his intention to perform the stunt on August 12, 2020, originally planed to use the helium balloons to float across the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York, on August 31, 2020. However, a severe storm in New York forced him to change both the performance date and the scheduled location.
Though the stuntman made the balloon "flight" look easy, he spent years preparing for the big event. This included becoming a hot air balloonist and skydiver and conducting over 500jumps before finally attempting the daring flight.
This is not the first time Blaine has impressed the world with his endurance stunts. His previous antics(荒唐行为) include wearing a Faraday bodysuit and helmet-—both designed to conduct electricity—and getting jolted by million-volt Tesla coils for three days! The adventurer has also put himself inside a block of ice for more than an hour, stood for 35 hours above a 100-foot-high, 22-inch pillar in New York's Bryant Park, and suspended himself in a box over London's River Thames for 44 days, with no food and only 4.5 liters of water!
Plastic remains one of the most-used materials for making many of the things we use in our everyday lives. Things made of plastic can be very strong and last a long time. They also do well in extreme heat and cold. Plastic is also much lighter than metal and can easily be formed into different shapes. This makes the material ideal for countless uses across many different industries.
But the widespread use of plastics across the world is causing major problems for the environment. Plastic material is flooding landfills and causing severe damage in the world's oceans. Plastics can take hundreds of years to break down on their own. It has been estimated that even the most reusable kinds of plastic can only be recycled at a rate of 20 to 30 percent. Even when recycling is possible, the process is costly, can use a lot of energy and, in many cases, produces poor-quality materials.
But a team of researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy says it has created a kind of plastic that could lead to products that are 100 percent recyclable. The team recently reported the discovery in a study in the journal Nature Chemistry. The researchers say the new material is a plastic polymer(聚合物) called polydiketoenamine, or PDK. The team reports that the material can be broken down in parts at the molecular level. It can then be built up again to form plastics of different shapes, textures, colors and more. The researchers say this process can be repeated over and over again—without the plastic material losing any performance or quality.
Brett Helms is a scientist who worked on the study. He said, "Then we would be able to more effectively divert plastic from landfills and the oceans." "This is an exciting time to start thinking about how to design both materials and recycling facilities to enable circular plastics." he added.
A number of people hold an optimistic attitude toward artificial intelligence's ability to reshape education nowadays. However, many feel such claims are overblown.
Kentaro Toyama, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Information, is one of those doubtful about the idea of using Al in the classroom.
Toyama mentioned a situation he encountered while working in an after-school programin digital literacy(数字技术素养). He said, "In trying to teach students to use technology, the greatest difficulty is the technology itself." As soon as he looked away from the students, they would "very quickly find the most fun games they could find on the computer and start playing them". That reveals the problem with putting too much faith in AI for teaching. "There is great potential for it to be a distraction." he said.
Toyama once surveyed a large group of people about their preference for the following educational situations: a school with no teachers but powerful AI, one with bad teachers but strong computers, one with good teachers but no computers, or one with great teachers and many computers. The result showed that nobody would send their children to a school with powerful AI but no teachers, or one with bad teachers but strong computers. Toyama concluded, "Good teachers are what matters; everything else is secondary compared to that."
Toyama is also concerned that AI and technology may widen the gap between disadvantaged schools and wealthier schools. He said, "In the case of schools, well-resourced schools will find the best ways to use technology. But if you're in a school district that is underfunded and parents are not involved, it doesn't make a difference how good the technology is, and it will not turn that situation around."
When asked when schools should adopt AI, Toyama suggested that they should wait until the basics are in place, teachers want it, and the technology is proved to have positive educational values.
According to a study done by University of Michigan researchers, shopping to relieve stress was up to 40 times more effective at giving people a sense of control and shoppers were three times less sad compared to those that only looked around for items.
More than half of the 1,000 respondents said they have impulsively shopped to deal with feelings of stress, anxiety or depression. In fact, shopping to reduce stress can actually help you live a healthier life by making sure that your blood pressure is lowered. Shopping to relieve stress is also called retail therapy as a form of regulating stress. For many, what starts out as a relatively harmless mood booster could possibly grow into a forced reaction that empties wallets and causes conflict, thus adding a significant amount of stress to a person's life.
In order not to be overwhelmed by retail therapy, you might refer to the following tips.
•
Whether you're purchasing Christmas presents or buying groceries, having the items you need written down will provide you with clarity and order while you're shopping. Reward yourself for sticking to your list and you'll be more likely to commit to it: buy a cup of coffee while shopping or plan a fun activity for when you return home.
• Think about what you struggle with most financially.
Do you spend too much money at the mall? Eating out? Vacations? For example, if you spend too much money on dining out on the weekends, stock your cupboard with groceries on Friday so you'll be more likely to stay in and cook.
• Give up the need to keep up with your neighbors, co-workers, and friends.
Everyone's financial situation is different and it's dependent upon a variety of factors, least of all being one's self worth. Appreciate what you currently have by practicing gratitude.
A. Prepare a list prior to shopping.
B. This may encourage consumerism and impulse buying.
C. However, the side effect of retail therapy cannot be overlooked.
D. More men tended to purchase alcohol when stressed than women.
E. 23% said they've maxed out(刷爆) a credit card in the past year.
F. Comparison leads to debt and dissatisfaction with what you already have.
G. Track down where your money is going and then try to avoid temptations.
I was informed that my four-grade daughter was not going to make it to the fifth grade. The teacher said, "She may not be1 what we're trying to accomplish." He was actually saying she didn't have the2 . I got mad because I knew she was smart, just as my father had known I was smart when I was3 in school. We had her tested and found that the trouble she was having was dyslexia-difficulty in reading, which was4 what I had had. By then I was a successful television writer, and had5 an Emmy Award for "The Rockford Files."
Writing and writing, I worked so hard in my late 20s and early 30s, 6 to hear people praise me, because I did badly in all my courses. Eventually, I did become successful, and people now say to me, "So you've7 dyslexia."
No. I don't overcome it, but just switch to something within my8 . Some easy things are very hard for me. Most people who go through college9 twice as fast as I do. I avoid10 a phone if I can, because I sometimes have to try three times to get the number right.
Despite my weaknesses I view dyslexia as a11 , not a misfortune. Many dyslexics are12 at right-brain, abstract thought, and that's what my kind of creative writing is. And I can write quickly, and can get up to 15 pages a day. Writing is my13 .
The real fear I have for dyslexic children is not that they14 in school, but that they will quit on themselves before they get out of school. Parents have to create15 for them, whether it's in music, sports or art. You can make your dyslexic child able to say, "Yeah, reading is hard. But I have other things I can do."
The FIFA World Cup 2022, kicked off on Sunday, has lured more than 1 million soccer fans to Qatar from across the globe. China failed to qualify for the FIFA World Cup finals soccer tournament now underway in Qatar, the country is making a huge contribution to the largest global sporting event.
In recent months, Luo Yang, a sales manager at the overseas business unit of Higer Bus Co, a bus and truck manufacturer (base) in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, (keep) a close eye on the 1,815 buses the company delivered to Qatar last year. A range of Chinese items are available at the tournament, (include) key rings, horns, flags, clothing and shoes from Yiwu, Zhejiang, and Jinjiang, Fujian province, as well as fireworks from Liuyang, Hunan province. Market observers said the (abundant) of such products is due to China's industrial upgrading boom, well-developed supply chains, and green transformation. Zhang Yongjun, researcher at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges in Beijing, said that amid the slowdown in (industry) chains because of the pandemic, geopolitical and geo-economic headwinds, China has accelerated its manufacturing industry upgrading and made positive contributions to global supply chain stability.
China's manufacture industry is taking a leading position in (innovate) and production. The small products made in China are popular in the world their higher quality and lower price.
"Hi! How are you?" The woman smiled as she took the seat beside me. She had to lower herself slowly, squeezing her body into the seat, filling all available space. Positioning herself comfortably, she dropped her enormous arm on our common armrest. Her giant body filled the space around us, shrinking me and my seat into insignificance. I shrank and moved a little towards the window.
She leaned towards me and repeated her greeting in a friendly voice. Her face towered above my head, forcing me to turn to look at her. "Hi." I replied with obvious disgust.
I turned away to stare out of the cabin window, annoyed about the long hours of discomfort I was going to experience with this monster" beside me. She nudged me with her meaty arm. "My name is Laura. I'm from Britain. How about you? Japan?" "Malaysia!" I barked. "I'm so sorry! Will you accept my heartfelt apology? Come, shake my hand. If we're going to spend six hours side-by-side on this flight, we'd better be friends, don't you think so?" A palm waved in front of my face. I shook the hand reluctantly, still silent.
Laura started a conversation with me, taking no notice of my unfriendly reactions. She talked excitedly about herself and her trip to New York to see her friends. She talked about a list of things she was going to buy for her students in the boarding school where she was teaching.
I gave her one-word answers to her questions about me. She nodded as she made appreciative comments to my answers. Her voice was warm and caring. She was considerate and obliging when we were served drinks and meals, making sure that I had room in my seat. "I don't want to offend you with my elephant size!" she said with sincerity.
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To my surprise, her face which bothered me hours before, now opened into extraordinary smiles, lively and calm at the same time.
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By the end of flight, almost half the cabin crew was standing near the aisle by us, laughing and joking with Laura.
