July is a month of fun-filled activities for kids and teens as long as you know where to find them. When you want some fun activities for July, consider these ideas happening in this month.

    Kids are natural scientists. That may be why they ask so many questions.

    Younger kids take up science and math with amazing enthusiasm, yet as they get older they often lose their excitement. Children look on scientific exploration as play, but as they get older they start to connect it with big heavy books, long worksheets and a lot of really confusing words.

    What a tragedy! We had their attention, they were listening, they were participating, they were learning and then we lost it to boredom.

    We need our kids to play more. More play brings up basic scientific concepts(概念). Being familiar with basic scientific concepts brings about exploration which leads to research. Once they are researching, they are completely into the learning.

    My boys built a small 9­hole golf course next to our driveway one day. It was a great product of science. They dug out the holes and channels to guide the golf ball. They played with architecture(建筑学)with a series of pipes they had found in the garage. They tested speed and momentum(动量)by creating one of the holes across the driveway. They experienced biology when deciding which front yard plants could be used as a part of the course and which needed to be pulled up.

    If I had sent them out to the yard to build a 9­hole golf course, it would have never happened. It was because it was their idea that it worked. I try to tell them some of the concepts after the fact. When they ask about something, I try to relate it back to something they have built, experienced, or felt. I try to give them a vocabulary around what they already know.

    An afternoon can change the way kids look at the world. Not bad for a day of play.

    For centuries, medical pioneers have refined a variety of methods and medicines to treat sickness, injury, and disability, enabling people to live longer and healthier lives.

    “A salamander (a small lizard-like animal) can grow back its leg. Why can't a human do the same?” asked Peruvian-born surgeon Dr. Anthony Atala in a recent interview. The question, a reference to work aiming to grow new limbs for wounded soldiers, captures the inventive spirit of regenerative medicine. This innovative field seeks to provide patients with replacement body parts.

These parts are not made of steel; they are the real things — living cells, tissue, and even organs.

    Regenerative medicine is still mostly experimental, with clinical applications limited to procedures such as growing sheets of skin on burns and wounds. One of its most significant advances took place in 1999，when a research group at North Carolina's Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine conducted a successful organ replacement with a laboratory-grown bladder. Since then, the team, led by Dr. Atala, has continued to generate a variety of other tissues and organs—from kidneys to ears.

    The field of regenerative medicine builds on work conducted in the early twentieth century with the first successful transplants of donated human soft tissue and bone. However, donor organs are not always the best option. First of all, they are in short supply, and many people die while waiting for an available organ; in the United States alone, more than 100,000 people are waiting for organ transplants. Secondly, a patient's body may ultimately reject the transplanted donor organ. An advantage of regenerative medicine is that the tissues are grown from a patient's own cells and will not be rejected by the body's immune system.

    Today, several labs are working to create bioartificial body parts. Scientists at Columbia and Yale Universities have grown a jawbone and a lung. At the University of Minnesota, Doris Taylor has created a beating bioartificial rat heart. Dr. Atala's medical team has reported long-term success with bioengineered bladders implanted into young patients with spina bifida (a birth defect that involves the incomplete development of the spinal cord). And at the University of Michigan, H. David Humes has created an artificial kidney.

    So far, the kidney procedure has only been used successfully with sheep, but there is hope that one day similar kidney will be implantable in a human patient. The continuing research of scientists such as these may eventually make donor organs unnecessary and, as a result, significantly increase individuals' chances of survival.

    How would you like an easy way to earn $2,500? All you have to do is to sit around and wait for your meals. There's a catch, however. You have to stay in a chicken cage with a stranger for a whole week. There are no books or television or radio for a whole week. There are no books or television or radio for amusement. You can't leave until the week is up. And a camera will be recording your every move.

    Two people actually took the job. The idea came from Rob Thompson, a video artist. He wanted to make a film about the way animals are treated. His goal was to raise people's awareness of the living conditions of animals that are raised for food. He decided to pay $5,000 out of his own savings to two people who were willing to live like chickens for a week.

    To Rob's surprise, quite a few people answered his advertisement. He had interviews and selected Eric, a 24-year-old restaurant worker, and Pam, a 27-year-old chemist. The plan was for them to spend seven days together in a chicken cage that was six feet long and three feet wide. A camera would record their experience, which would take place in an art museum.

    The week was long and difficult. They slept on a hard wooden floor. They couldn't stand up without banging their heads. They ate mash(a kind of food for animals) and drink water from a garden hose-pipe(软管). Their only privacy was a toilet surrounded by a curtain. There were no sinks, mirrors, or toothbrushes in the cage. Their only inspiration was the two framed checks that hung on the wall outside the cage. Visitors who came here were warned, “Do not feed the humans.”

    Finally it was over, and Pam and Eric came out of the cage. They had survived the week, and they each had a $2,500 check in their hands. When Rob Thompson opened the cage, Eric came out, changed into clean clothes, and ate a chocolate bar right away. “It's great for me to be able to stand up.” he said. Pam just changed her clothes and left. After a week of visitors and reporters watching her, she didn't want to talk to anyone.

    The annual World Economic Forum (经济论坛) took place in Davos, Switzerland, in Jan. 23-26, 2018. What did Chinese entrepreneurs (企业家) speak in the forum? Are there some quotable quotes for you?

    Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group

    "I think globalization cannot be stopped — no one can stop globalization, no one can stop trade. If trade stops, the world stops. Trade is the way to dissolve (溶解，结束) the war not cause the war," said Ma in Davos, "Google, Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba — we are the luckiest companies of this century. But we have the responsibility to have a good heart, and do something good."

★Richard Liu, founder and chief executive officer of JD

    "Business is not only a way to make money but also a way to contribute yourself, to help people," Liu said in a speech in Davos. "How can we face the fractured (分化的)world? That's the topics of the Davos this year. I think a very important thing in business is cooperation. If we can unite, work together, if we work very closely, I think we can bring more hope to the people and we can build more trust between the people, countries and companies and partners," he said.

    Jane Sun, CEO of Ctrip

    "Tourism is a sunrise industry. Since I entered Ctrip, every year there are new comers, which, first of all, shows that tourism is booming." Sun told Sina.com in Davos. "We invested heavily in ABC. A refers to AI, B is big data, and C is cloud computing. As we continue to expand overseas, these three will be very good weapons for us. So we think those mean opportunity," she said.

★Hu Xiaoming, president of Aliyun

    "In 2018, people will see the development in various countries more closely connected with cloud computing. More manufacturing enterprises and financial institutions will start to use „cloud', and cloud computing will increase the efficiency of technology and finance," Hu told Xinhua in Davos.

    Global warming is the process of earth's atmosphere heating up. Over the last 100 years, the average temperature of earth's atmosphere has gone up 1 Fahrenheit. The weather has not changed exactly the same way in every area of the planet. But scientists think that the rise in average temperature is already affecting the earth, s climate.

    Many scientists now believe that global warming is caused by cutting down trees, producing more trash, and polluting the environment are some of the reasons that the temperature has gone up. Many scientists believe that the biggest causes of global warming are new human technologies that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

    The greenhouse effect is not new. Certain gases in the atmosphere, like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane, prevent heat energy from escaping back into space. In the past, the climate didn't change much because nature produced just the right amount of greenhouse gases to deal with it.

    Today, most scientists are pretty sure that the rising temperature can't be blamed on nature. Ever since the industrial revolution in the 1700s, humans have relied on machines for daily life. And many of those machines give off a lot of greenhouse gases. An increase in the release of greenhouse gases from human activities is throwing nature off balance.

    The climate is a very complicated thing, but many scientists agree that the rising atmospheric temperature has already damaged the environment. Sheets of ice, called glaciers, are melting in Antarctica and other parts of the globe. As glaciers break off and melt into the oceans, they are adding warm water to the oceans and causing the sea level to rise.

    Over the past last 100 years, the sea level has risen 6-8 inches around the world. That means land along the coasts is beginning to disappear under water. Bigger and warmer oceans are also adding to other weather problems caused by pollution in the atmosphere. Some places have received more rain, others have had bigger storms and a few areas in the world have experienced unusual droughts.