Enveloped by history, style and culture, the City of Light has more than enough to draw visitors all year around. But there are certain times of year when a trip to Paris can be extra-special.

Paris Fashion Week

When: Men June/July; women March and September/October

In 1943 the world’s first “fashion week” took place in New York. The idea? To offer the Big Apple’s fashion buyers alternatives to the French dresses they were missing out on during the war. Today Paris can claim to be the world’s style capital, with people pouring to its annual fashion weeks. Wear your best dress around the Tuileries Garden and a street-style photographer may even stop you for a shot.

Music Festival

When: June

The streets of Paris come alive with the sound of music every June as free parties and concerts ring throughout the city. The Arab World Institute, the Louvre and Place Denfert-Rochereau are among the best party spots-though we recommend simply wandering. Expect surprises around every corner.

Bastille Day

When: July

On July 14 France marks the storming of the Bastille prison — a turning point in the French Revolution. In the morning crowds gather to watch a military parade along the Champs Elysees. Come evening, up to a million people gather as fireworks are set off from the base of the Eiffel Tower. Advantageous position? The top of the Belville Park. Get down early and bring a picnic chair.

Grape Harvest Festival

When: October

You may have dropped by the Montmartre Museum. But what about the private grape plantation around the back of Paris’s hilliest neighborhood? Every year locals come together to celebrate the distinctive grape wine produced here. There’s a charity wine sale, dance parties and, of course, plenty of tasting.

In the late 1930s, people could donate blood, but very few hospitals could store it for later use. Whole blood breaks down quickly, and there were no methods at the time for safely preserving it. As a result, hospitals often did not have the appropriate blood type when patients needed it. Charles Drew, a Black surgeon and researcher, helped solve this monumental problem for medicine, earning him the title “Father of the Blood Bank.”

In 1938, while obtaining his doctorate in medicine, Drew became a fellow at Columbia University’s Presbyterian Hospital in New York. He studied the storage and distribution of blood, including the separation of its components, and applied his findings to an experimental blood bank at the hospital.

As Drew was finishing his degree at Columbia, World War II was erupting in Europe. Great Britain was asking the United States for desperately needed plasma (血浆) to help victims. Given his expertise, Drew was selected to be the medical director for the Blood for Britain campaign. Using Presbyterian Hospital’s blood bank as a model, Drew established uniform procedures and standards for collecting blood and processing blood plasma from nine New York hospitals. The five-month campaign collected donations from 15,000 Americans and was considered a success. His discoveries and his leadership saved countless lives.

With the increasing likelihood that the nation would be drawn into war, the United States wanted to capitalize on what Drew had learned from the campaign. He was appointed as the assistant director of a three-month pilot program to mass-produce dried plasma in New York, which became the model for the first Red Cross blood bank. His innovations for this program included mobile blood donation stations, later called bloodmobiles.

Her face is framed by wavy brown hair extensions, her filled lips pursed towards the viewer. It could be a description of an Instagram post, but the touched-up (修改过的) beauty is Diana Cecil, an English noblewoman who belongs to a powerful family at the Jacobean court. Experts at English Heritage have discovered that her portrait had been altered by restorers to enhance certain features, suggesting that our modern beauty standards might not be so modern after all.

The great-grand-daughter of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, one of Elizabeth I’s closest advisers, Diana was considered one of the great beauties of her age. Yet it seems a later artist had other ideas. A restorer, probably in the 19th century, worked on the painting after it was damaged from being rolled sideways. It seems they also took the opportunity to alter the noblewoman’s face, enlarging her lips and lowering her hairline to reduce the size of her forehead.

Now, following careful conservation work, Cecil’s original appearance has been restored, with the full-length portrait-painted by Cornelius Johnson when Cecil was about 31. The conservation team discovered the changes made to the Johnson painting after removing a yellowing layer of oily liquid that had covered its original, more vivid colors. They also surprisedly found the artist’s signature, and a date that had been signed in the portrait’s curtain suggesting it was finished in1634 and not 1638 as previously thought.

According to Alice Tate-Harte, a conservator at English Heritage, it was not uncommon for people to ‘sweeten’ old paintings in the 19th and early 20th centuries. ”Conservation wasn’t a profession, they weren’t working in institutions with salaries,” she said. “They were artist restorers and they had a bit more flexibility to prettify and beautify, whereas we have a lot more ethics today. we must keep our retouching to a minimum. I hope I’ve done Diana justice by removing those additions and presenting her natural face to the world.”

When middle school math teachers completed an online professional development (PD) program that uses artificial intelligence to improve their math knowledge and teaching skills, their students’ math performance improved.

This online professional development program relies on a virtual facilitator to present problems and provide feedback, aiming to enhance teachers’ mastery of knowledge and skills required. It covers why mathematical rules and procedures work and focuses on helping students employ instructional tools and strategies to overcome common struggles.

An experiment was conducted in which 53 middle school math teachers were randomly assigned to either this Al-based professional development or no additional training. On average, teachers spent 11 hours to complete the program. We then gave 1,727 of their students a math test. While students of these two groups of teachers started off with no difference in their math performance, the students taught by teachers who completed the program increased their mathematics performance by 0.18 points on average. This is a statistically significant gain that is equal to the average math performance difference between sixth and seventh graders in the study.

Teachers often have limited access to high-quality PD programs to improve their knowledge and teaching skills. Time conflicts or living in rural areas that are far from in-person professional development programs can prevent teachers from receiving the support they need. Additionally, many existing in-person professional development programs for teachers have little impact on student achievement. AI-based PD programs include opportunities for teachers to observe teaching practices. Teachers also receive real-time support from the program facilitators. The Al-supported virtual facilitator acting as a human instructor gives teachers authentic teaching activities to work on, asks questions and provides real-time feedback and guidance.

Advancements in AI technologies will allow researchers to develop more interactive, personalized learning environments for teachers. More importantly, AI-based PD programs can collect rich, real-time interaction data, which help make programs more effective. Despite billions of dollars being spent each year on professional development for teachers, research suggests that how teachers learn through professional development is not yet well understood.