A university scientist investigates how one thing can consume another while still serving other purposes. “We are all aware that plastic waste is a major issue in the environment, particularly in the marine environment,” the scientist said. “We discovered that mealworms, these tiny, innocuous insects found pretty much everywhere, can eat and degrade a variety of plastics.”

In 2015, the ability of these worms to consume polystyrene was discovered, sparking an entirely new field of study. The scientist’s initial discovery was that mealworms chomp down on polyethylene. The mealworms are chasing the energy produced by dissolving the polymer bonds in the plastic because it contains no nutrition. They achieve this by using a potent bacteria in their intestines that converts most plastic into only hydrogen and carbon. However, two ingredients used in the production of plastics, stabilizers and plasticizers, are difficult to degrade.

The scientist is currently attempting to understand how a mealworm accomplishes its tasks. “You can throw your plastic in, and hopefully it’ll all break down,” she says.

This is my friend, Matt. Matt is an active boy. He likes sports. He is good at soccer. He lives here with his parents. His brother and sister live in Australia. He misses playing soccer with his brother. He is good at soccer, too!

There are around 6,000 languages that are still spoken today, and at least half of them could go extinct. In fact, Professor Steve Sutherland of the University of East Anglia says that languages are more in danger of extinction than animals like birds and mammals.

According to Joseph Poth, head of UNESCO’s languages department, we should all speak our mother tongue, a “neighbor” language, and an international language. He also says that even teaching a language that is under serious threat in schools creates a rescue system.

For languages with few remaining speakers, it might already be too late. These speakers are typically elderly, rarely use their native tongue, and have lost many of the words they once knew. But at last, the importance of these languages is finally being recognized, and multilingualism may be one of the keys to their survival.

The Jomon people created many artifacts. The five dogu are one of them. “Jomon Venus” represents a pregnant woman. “Jomon Goddess” looks very modern. Some believe that the dogu in prayer is praying for a healthy baby. The other two are unique in design. The first one has a triangular mask, and the last one has a heart-shaped mask.

Maybe the Jomon people were obsessed with dogu. After all, people have found more than 18,000 dogu throughout Japan. Researchers are trying to figure out the true reason behind the creation of dogu. Maybe they were used for rituals. Or maybe they were just toys. We do not know what the purpose of dogu is. But we know that they were important to the Jomon people.

The Jomon culture still has a great influence on us today. A well-known Japanese artist created a tower inspired by the dogu with a heart-shaped face. A movie director also spent five years visiting 100 Jomon sites before filming a movie about the Jomon culture.

Children can pick up language skills, while a young child who is deaf must learn words in a slow, frequently painful way.

Some ideas were not clear to me, and my vocabulary was limited, but as my understanding of things grew and I picked up more words, my interest grew, and I went back to the same topic again and again, wanting more information.

When I first asked my teacher what love was, she did not answer me clearly. I was puzzled because at that time I could not understand anything other than what I could touch with my hands.

But when she taught me to think, I understood what it meant. This was my first perception of an abstract idea other than what I could touch.