Each year the Pritzker Architecture Prize (普立兹克建筑奖) goes to a star designer with a long list of attractive buildings around the world. This year's winner is a little different.

    Shigeru Ban has designed museums, homes and concert halls. But Ban is best known for a more simple kind of work: the temporary (暂时的) buildings for people who became homeless after disasters.

    Ban may be the only designer in the world who makes buildings out of paper — cardboard paper tubes (管). Ban actually tested the strength of cardboard tubes, and said he was surprised by what he had discovered. He has used them to build temporary buildings in Japan, Haiti, China and elsewhere.

    “After a disaster, the building material is going to be more expensive,” Ban explains. “But the paper tube is actually not a building material. It is cheap and plentiful. We can get the material easily anywhere. And unlike costs for traditional building materials, the price of paper tubes doesn't jump after an earthquake or flood. The tubes are also lightweight, so you don't need heavy machines to work with them.”

    Ban started using cardboard paper tubes in the 1980s. At that time he had just graduated from the architecture school, and he was looking for a cheap substitute for wood. So he started reusing the paper cardboard tubes that were left over from rolls of paper in his office.

    Ban was born in Tokyo and studied architecture in the U.S. before moving back to Japan to start his practice. Some of Ban's temporary buildings have become permanent (永久的), like the paper church he built after the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan.

    An Israeli law banning too skinny models went into effect with the start of 2013. The law, approved last March in Israel, requires models to prove they have maintained a Body Mass Index (BMI) of at least 18.5 for three months before a fashion show. That means a woman who is 68 inches tall can weigh no less than 119 pounds.

    "This law is another step in the war against eating disorders," said physician Adatto. "Underweight models," he explained, "can no longer serve as role models for innocent young people who copy their false image of being skinny."

    But some critics in this country say it is misguided, focusing on weight instead of health. They also say the Israeli ban is bound to fail because of the strong power of the fashion industry. "I think it's an approach that isn't going to work." said eating disorder expert Susan Ice, who worked with an organization which creates a healthy working environment for models.

    But Adatto told the reporter that he began to concern the issue after meeting an ambitious model who looked like she needed to be hospitalized. He said. "I realized that only legislation(立法) can change the situation. There was no time to waste; so many girls were dieting to death."

    However, the efforts to regulate models' weight in Spain and Italy have not resulted in significant changes in part because of difficulties in determining reliable methods of measuring weight and health.

    Still, folks including Ice say there's no denying that images from Hollywood and the fashion industry can be difficult for young women to deal with. "Certainly I don't believe the modeling industry has caused the rise in eating disorders, but it makes it harder," she says. "It's a difficult recovery environment, worshiping thinness as the beauty ideal."

    Scientists think that growing garden grass could be the secret to solving our energy needs, and we may soon be able to replace our gasoline with "grassoline".

    The team, including experts from Cardiff University in Wales, has shown that hydrogen can be taken from grass in useful amounts with the help of sunlight and a cheap catalyst(催化剂) —something that speeds up a chemical reaction without being used up.

    It is the first time that this has been shown and it could lead to a sustainable(可持续的) way of making hydrogen, reported Asian News International. This could be an important kind of renewable energy because it is high in energy and it does not give out harmful gases when it is burned.

    Study co-author Michael Bowker said, "This is really a green source of energy. Hydrogen is seen as an important future energy carrier as the world moves from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and our research has shown that even garden grass could be a good way of getting it."

    Cellulose(纤维素), which is a key part of plants and the biopolymer(生物聚合物) found in the largest numbers on the earth, could be a great source of hydrogen.

In its study, the team looked at the possibility of getting hydrogen from cellulose using sunlight and a simple catalyst.

    This is called photocatalysis(光催化作用) and in it, the sunlight starts the catalyst, which then makes cellulose and water into hydrogen. The researchers studied the effectiveness of three metal-based catalysts, of which nickel(镍) especially interested the researchers, as it is a much more common metal than gold and palladium(钯) and it saves more money.

    According to Bowker, producing hydrogen from cellulose using photocatalysis has not been studied in detail. The team's research shows that large amounts of hydrogen can be produced using this method with the help of a bit of sunlight and a cheap catalyst.

    The study shows that it is effective to use real grass taken from a garden. "This is important as it avoids the need to separate and clean up cellulose, which can be both difficult and costly," said Bowker.

    Downloading music over the Internet is pretty common among high school and college students. However, when students download and share copyrighted music without permission, they are against the law.

    A survey of young people's music ownership has found that teenagers and college students have an average of more than 800 illegally copied songs each on their digital music players．Half of those surveyed share all the music on their hard drive (硬盘), enabling others to copy hundreds of songs at any one time. Some students were found to have randomly linked their personal blogs to music sites, so as to allow free trial listening of copyrighted songs for blog visitors, or adopted some of the songs as the background music for their blogs. Such practices may be easy and free, but there are consequences.

    Sandra Dowd, a student of Central Michigan University, was fined US $7,500 for downloading 501 files from Lime Wire, a peer-to-peer file sharing program. Sandra claimed that she was unaware that her downloads were illegal until she was contacted by authorities. Similarly, Mike Lewinski paid US $4,000 to settle a lawsuit（起诉）against him for copyright violation (违反). Mike expressed shock and couldn't believe that this was happening to him. "I just wanted to save some money and I always thought the threat was just a scare tactic(战术)." "You know, everyone does it," added Mike.

    The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), the organization that files lawsuits against illegal downloaders, states that suing (控告) students was by no means their first choice. Unfortunately, without the threat of consequences, students are just not changing their behavior. Education alone is not enough to stop the extraordinary growth of the illegal downloading practice.

    Many kids help out around the house with chores such as emptying the dishwasher, putting laundry away, and taking out the trash. In exchange, some kids get allowances or other rewards such as extra computer time.

    But some people do not think that kids should get rewards for doing chores. Susie Walton, a parenting educator and family coach, believes that by rewarding kids, parents are sending a message that work isn't worth doing unless you get something in return. "Running any kind of household is a team effort, Susie said. "A home is a living space for everyone in the family. It's important for kids to see that we all have responsibilities in the house, and that families decide together how they want their home to look, and how they are going to keep it looking like everyone wants it to look."

    Other people believe that getting a cash allowance or other rewards motivates kids to do chores, and it also teaches them real world lessons about how we need to work to earn money. There are also new applications that give kids points and digital gifts that can be redeemed (兑取) either online or in the real world. With the ChoreMonster app, kids earn digital points by completing chores that they can turn in for real-life rewards such as extra Xbox time or a trip to the mall. "Our goal is to encourage kids to earn rewards," says Chris Bergman, founder of ChoreMonster. "Kids need positive reinforcement to help motivate them."

    What do you think? Should kids be rewarded for doing chores? Or should kids help out around their homes without getting anything in return?

    Write a 200-word response. Send it to tfkasks4you@timeforkids.com. Your response may be published in a future issue of Time For Kids. Please include your grade and contact information of your parent or teacher if you want your response to be published. The deadline for responding is February 18.