Blue jeans go green

From Scholastic News:

Your favorite jeans may be blue, but chances are they aren’t very green (good for the environment)! The average pair of blue jeans goes through 919 gallons (3,478 liters) of water—from the time they’re made till the time they’re too worn out to wear. That’s enough water to fill 18 bathtubs. To make jeans more Earth-friendly, jeans maker Levi Strauss is working to reduce the amount of water it takes to make and care for jeans.

DRYER DENIM
The life cycle of a pair of jeans begins on cotton farms. Farmers grow the cotton used to make denim, the fabric jeans are made of. Cotton plants require a lot of water to grow. Levi’s is helping cotton farmers around the world develop new ways to irrigate, or water, their crops.

In the past, farmers sprayed water onto cotton plants. The new method—called drip irrigation—uses a network of plastic tubes that send water directly to the plants’ roots. The system puts water only where it is needed. It cuts down on the amount of water wasted through evaporation.

drip irrigation - the water goes directly to the plants

After the cotton is grown and harvested, it’s spun into yarn at a textile mill. The yarn is dyed blue in vats of chemicals. Then it’s woven into fabric (cloth). The fabric is washed to get a worn-in (used) look. Levi’s is working to reduce water consumption at this stage too. The company has created a line of jeans that get broken in by tumbling with rocks instead of water.

“We’ve produced 12 million pairs of jeans that, combined, have saved 156 million liters [41 million gallons] of water,” says Brianna Wolf of Levi’s.”

CLEAN JEANS
Nearly half of jeans’ water usage happens after they are made. At this stage, the people who buy them wash them over and over in water-guzzling (high water-use) washing machines. To help cut down on home water use, Levi’s is sewing tags into its jeans that suggest customers wash them less often.

Jeans are a type of clothing that doesn’t need as much scrubbing (washing) as other attire (clothing). In a recent study, 30 volunteers in Australia wore jeans five days a week for three months without washing them. At the end of the study, researchers put the jeans to the smell test. The result: They actually didn’t smell too bad.

Still worried about your jeans getting stinky between washes? Levi’s advice: Put them in the freezer! A quick blast of cold will kill the germs that cause them to smell, Levi’s says. Just remember to let the jeans warm up before you put them back on!

Students’ Experiments To Be Conducted In Space

Drawing of the inside of the space station

From Teaching Kids News:

Three students have won the chance to have science experiments they created carried out by astronauts in space.

The students won an international competition called the YouTube Space Lab Contest. Last October, students around the world aged 14 to 18 were invited to come up with ideas for experiments that could be performed on the International Space Station.

The space station is a satellite that orbits the Earth. It includes a research laboratory where astronauts from the United States, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada conduct experiments. Because there is no gravity on the space station, they are able to do experiments they could not do on Earth.

For the contest, students had to make a video explaining their hypothesis – the idea they wanted to test – and the method for doing the experiment. Then they posted the videos on YouTube. Winners were chosen by people voting on YouTube, and by a panel of judges that included scientists, teachers, astronauts and journalists.

The winners were announced in March. They are Amr Mohamed, 18, from Egypt, and Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma, both 16, from the United States.

Amr’s experiment will test the effects of zero gravity – or weightlessness – on zebra spiders. Zebra spiders catch food by leaping onto it. But without gravity, the spider would continue travelling in a straight line when it leaps, instead of landing on its prey. Amr wants to find out if the spiders can learn to hunt in a weightless environment.

Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma

Dorothy and Sara want to study a type of bacteria, called Bacillus subtilis, which kills fungus. They want to see whether feeding it certain nutrients in a zero-gravity environment will make it better at killing fungus on Earth. If it works, it could be used to help fight disease one day.

An astronaut will conduct the winning experiments on the space station sometime this summer and broadcast them live on YouTube.

As part of their prize, the winners also got to choose between a trip to Japan to watch their experiments being launched into space, or a week of cosmonaut training in Russia. Dorothy and Sara will go to Japan. Amr chose the cosmonaut training.

The contest was organized by YouTube, a website that lets users share videos, and Lenovo, a company that makes computers.

The long black panels provide solar power to the station

13-year-old hero saves school bus

He didn’t think he was “too young” to do something, and he didn’t wait for someone else to help – he just jumped into action.

Thirteen-year-old Jeremy Wuitschick is being hailed as a hero after he saved the schoolbus he was riding in and its passengers.

Wuitschick and about a dozen other kids were riding in the schoolbus on their way to Surprise Lake Middle School, in Milton, Washington (near Seattle). All of a sudden, the schoolbus driver had a seizure. In this case, a seizure is a medical condition that caused the bus driver to uncontrollably twist around in his seat. He lost control of the bus, which veered off the road, according to the Los Angeles Times news website.

A video camera on board the bus caught what happened next. As soon as the bus driver began to have his seizure, Jeremy Wuitschick leaped out of his seat and grabbed the steering wheel. He steered the bus safely to the side of the road and then turned the engine off. He even opened the doors so the other kids could leave the bus.

At that point, a passing motorist jumped on board and tried to help the bus driver, who was later taken to hospital. The bus driver is in serious condition in hospital, according to news service Associated Press (AP).

AP reported that the kids regularly receive training in emergency procedures so they will know what to do in case anything like this happens. And when it did, Wuitschick was able to remember his training and put it to good use.

Wuitschick said he wishes he could have done more. He said he wants to learn CPR (a life-saving technique that can help someone who has stopped breathing).

Texting while walking can be dangerous!

From Teen Ink:
 

We have all heard about the tragic (very sad) deaths caused by people who text while driving, but how about deaths from texting while walking? Like driving, walking while texting can be very dangerous. Has technology become so advanced and texting so addictive that these tragedies are now an accepted part of our culture? Some of the worst cases of walking while texting have led to death, injury, and humiliation (embarrassment).

The most tragic cases of walking while texting include the death of a 14-year-old boy from Florida in 2008. He was so focused on his phone that he stepped into oncoming traffic. Who's at fault? The distracted texting teen or the driver who hit him? These accidents warrant another look at the laws about texting.

This next video is not tragic, but funny. Cathy Cruz Marrero was texting while walking in a mall and fell into a water fountain. 

But her humiliation (embarrassment) didn't end there. A mall security camera caught the accident  and it soon appeared on YouTube. The video now has more than three million views. The company that provides security for the mall issued this statement: “The security officer responsible for sharing the video of this incident has been terminated and is no longer with the company.”

But is it fair that he lost his job for sharing a stupid mistake that occurred in public? 

Texting while walking can make you look stupid. A teen who was walking while texting stepped into an open manhole. City workers came to her rescue and apologized for the unmarked danger, but the 15-year-old's mother said she would sue (make the workers pay money for doing something wrong). It may sound crazy, but she may have a point. Under any circumstances, the manhole should have been marked to prevent accidents. But on the other hand, the teen who was texting while walking should have been alert enough to see the hazard and avoid it.

 
So, in order to save yourself from death, injury, or simple humiliation, don't text while walking. It may sound crazy, but walking while texting can be life threatening just like texting while driving. As addictive as technology can be, it can wait. My advice is to stay alert and keep your eyes on the sidewalk.