Kids News - Articles for Grade 8

On Sunday, November 3, 2019, most North Americans will mark the end of Daylight Saving Time (DST) by moving their clocks back an hour. This simple action will not only add an extra 60 minutes to their weekend, but also shift daylight back into the morning hours, making it a little less painful to wake up for school and work during the shorter winter days....

Though there are more than 100 Indian festivals observed annually, few are as anticipated or as popular as Diwali. Also known as Deepavali, or the Festival of Lights, the five-day celebration extends across many cultures and beliefs and is commemorated by almost a billion people worldwide. Though Diwali always falls between October and November, the festival's exact date changes in accordance with the Hindu lunar calendar....

In 1893, Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen deliberately lodged his wooden ship in the sea ice north of Siberia, hoping that its natural drift would take him to the North Pole. Though the Norwegian scientist failed to reach his desired destination, his three-year-long, 2,000-kilometer journey into the North Atlantic Ocean revealed important data about the then-mysterious Arctic Ocean. Now, an international team of researchers have embarked on a similar journey for a groundbreaking climate change study of the Arctic....

Boyan Slat has been dreaming of cleaning up the world's oceans ever since he was a teenager. On October 2, 2019, the now 25-year-old announced that System 001/B, an autonomous retrieval system developed by his non-profit Ocean Cleanup, had successfully trapped plastic debris floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Located between Hawaii and California, the approximately 617,763 square-mile mass of waste is the largest accumulation of ocean plastic in the world....

Sleep, considered a luxury by many, is essential for a person's wellbeing. Researchers have found that insufficient sleep increases a person's risk of developing severe medical conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Now, a new study by Boston's Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found that getting sufficient sleep is also the key to improving academic performance....

Bees are essential for the pollination of flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Sadly, over the past 15 years, the global population of the industrious insects has been declining at alarming rates. Bee Informed Partnership, a collaboration of American insect experts, estimates that between April 1, 2018, and April 1, 2019, the country's managed bee population decreased by 40.7 percent. The numbers are as dire worldwide. Now, some cities in the Netherlands are coming up with innovative ideas to help stem the population decline of these all-important insects....

Sending a distress message in a bottle would not typically be considered a sensible strategy. However, it miraculously worked for three hikers from Morro Bay, California, who found themselves stranded atop a 40-foot waterfall at the Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park on California's Central Coast....

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, home to over 1,500 fish species and countless other marine animals, is in trouble. Rising ocean temperatures, attributed to climate change, have destroyed about half of its coral since 1998. On August 30, 2019, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority downgraded the ecosystem's condition from "poor" to "very poor" and warned that the window of opportunity to save it was rapidly closing. Now, some scientists are hoping that a gigantic piece of pumice stone currently floating towards Australia will aid in the recovery of the world's largest coral reef system....

Though Bianca Andreescu was expected to be a formidable opponent, it was Serena Williams who was favored to win the US Open Tennis Championships finals in New York City on September 7, 2019. The 37-year-old US tennis phenom is after all an experienced veteran, with 23 Grand Slam titles to her name. Meanwhile, prior to 2019, her 19-year-old challenger had never even reached the finals of the four prestigious tournaments — the US Open, the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the French Open — that comprise the Grand Slam. But in a true-life underdog story, Bianca managed to oust Serena with a resounding 6-3, 7-5 victory in less than two hours....