【推荐3】How to Set Goals

Whether you have small dreams or high expectations, setting goals allows you to plan how you want to move through life.    1    

Find out your life goals. Ask yourself some important questions about what you want for your life. What do you want to achieve today, in a year, and in your lifetime? The answers to this question can be as general as “I want to be happy” or “I want to help people” .    2       

Set specific (具体的) goals. Be specific and realistic about what it is that you want to achieve. Research shows that setting a specific goal makes you more likely to achieve it.    3     For example, “Be healthier” is too big and vague to be a helpful goal. “I want to eat more vegetables, and I want to run a marathon” is better.

Write out your goals. Be detailed, be clear, and include your steps.    4    Keep your list in a place where you can get informed frequently. This will help keep you motivated.

    5    You may find yourself set in your ways concerning broad life goals, but take the time to reevaluate your smaller goals. Are you accomplishing them according to your timeline?Are they still necessary to keep you on track towards your larger life goals? Allow yourself the flexibility (灵活性) to make some small changes to your goals.

【推荐1】Finding a mask which offers you a high protection level is crucial to filtering (过滤) out any particles for a long time. However, after a few hours, the mask becomes contaminated (污染) by the particles and you need to replace it with a new one. See, you have to get a mask offering active protection in addition to passive filtration.

The first rule of a mask offering you any kind of protection is that it needs to fit well. The mask also needs to be comfortable and allow you to breathe easily for you to be able to keep it on for as many hours as you need.

During long hours of wear, food and dirt may remain on the inside of your mask. All the hours spent in a place with less-than-ideal conditions for human health are wonderful news for bacteria that thrive on food particles and muck left behind on the inside of your mask. This growth opportunity for bacteria could not just be dangerous but could also cause a bad smell. So you’d better have a kind that kills off the smell-causing bacteria, leaving your mask smelling fresh.

You should look for cloth masks that have multiple layers of breathable fabric that is tightly woven, include a robust (结实的) nose wire for you to adjust the mask to the shape of your face and prevent air escaping from around your nose, do not have gaps around the nose or sides of the face and that block out the light if you hold the mask up to a bright light source. It is good for the mask to come with your choice of either head straps or ear straps, both adjustable. It is also good if the mask has different sizes ranging from kids to adults to ensure everyone stays protected.

【推荐2】The sales advertisements tempt (诱惑): Blue-light-blocking glasses are supposed to protect eyes from the effects of short-wave length light emitting from our smartphones, computer screens and LED lights. Given how much time we spend on our devices, this sounds like a smart investment, right? After all, eye strain (疲劳) is a real issue and can lead to poor sleep and even eye diseases. The glasses can cost $15 all the way up to several hundred dollars. But do they work?

Elizabeth Esparaz, an ophthalmologist (眼科专家) based in Cleveland, Ohio, says the science that manufacturers share as they promote these glasses can be confusing. For starters, blue light is not just about tech devices, and it’s not always bad. “The sun emits a much higher intensity of blue light than human-made devices, which helps our mood, alertness and sleep-wake cycle,” says Dr. Esparaz.

The problem is blue light at night: It contains the release of melatonin. “Melatonin helps regulate our circadian rhythms (生理节奏) and makes us sleepy,” says Dr. Esparaz.

So, in theory, wearing blue-light-blocking glasses should help people who watch movies in bed or read from a tablet at night avoid sleeplessness. A review study from the University of Oklahoma that looked al 24 previous studies found that people affected by sleep disorders, jet lag and shift work fell asleep faster after using these glasses.

As for eye strain, a 2021 Australian study showed that those wearing the glasses did not experience less eye strain than those using clear glasses. And a 2018 review study, also by Australian researchers found insufficient evidence that they prevent certain eye diseases.

“These glasses aren’t going to be harmful,” says Dr. Esparaz, But, she adds, a lack of standardization in the industry means there’s no way to know if one pair is better than another. A more reliable solution: Turn on the blue-light-filtering function on your devices and limit screen time before bed. To help with eye strain, Dr. Esparaz suggests taking breaks and using lubricating eye drops.

【推荐3】There is an old saying in English: "Laughter is the best medicine." Until recently, few people took the saying very seriously. Now, however, doctors have begun to investigate laughter and the effects it has on the human body. They have found evidence that laughter really can improve people's health.

Tests were carried out to study the effects of laughter on the body. People watched funny films, while doctors checked their heart rate, blood pressure, breathing and muscles. It was found that laughter has similar effects to physical exercise. It increases blood pressure, the heart rate and the rate of breathing; it also works several groups of muscles in the face, the stomach, and even the feet. If laughter exercises the body, it must be beneficial.

Other tests have shown that laughter appears to be capable of reducing the effect of pain on the body. In one experiment doctors produced pain in groups of students who listened to different radio programs. The group, which tolerated the pain for the longest time, was the group, which listened to a funny program. The reason why laughter can reduce pain seems to be that it helps to produce endorphins(内啡肽) in the brain. These are natural chemicals that diminish both stress and pain.

There is also some evidence to suggest that laughter helps the body's immune(免疫的) system, that is, the system which fights infection. In an experiment, one group of students watched a funny video while another group served as the control group—in other words, a group with which to compare the first group. Doctors checked the blood of the students in both groups and found that the people in the group that watched the video had an increase in the activity of their blood cells, that is, the cells which fight infection.

As a result of these discoveries, some doctors and psychiatrists(精神病学家) in the United States now hold laughter clinics, in which they try to improve their patients' conditions by encouraging them to laugh. They have found that even if their patients do not really feel like laughing, making them smile is enough to produce beneficial effects similar to those caused by laughter.

【推荐1】A computer programme can identify breast cancer from routine scans with greater accuracy than human experts, some researchers said. They hoped what they developed could prove a breakthrough in the fight against the global killer.

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in women, with more than 2 million new diagnoses last year alone. Regular screening is vital in detecting the earliest signs of the disease in patients who show no obvious symptoms.

In Britain, women over 50 are advised to get an examination of a breast every three years, the results of which are analyzed by two independent experts. But interpreting the scans leaves room for error, and a small percentage of all mammograms(乳房X光检查) either return a false positive—misdiagnosing a healthy patient as having cancer—or false negative—missing the disease as it spreads.

Now researchers at Google Health have trained an artificial intelligence model to detect cancer in breast scans from thousands of women in Britain and the United States. The images had already been reviewed by doctors in real life but unlike in a clinical setting, the machine had no patient history to inform its diagnoses. The team found that their AI model could predict breast cancer from the scans with a similar accuracy level to expert radiographers.

Further, the AI showed a reduction in the proportion of cases where cancer was incorrectly identified—5.7 percent in the US and 1.2 percent in Britain, respectively. It also reduced the percentage of missed diagnoses by 9.4 percent among US patients and by 2.7 percent in Britain.

“The earlier you identify a breast cancer, the better it is for the patient,” Dominic King, UK lead at Google Health, told AFP. “We think about this technology in a way that supports and enables an expert, or a patient ultimately, to get the best outcome from whatever diagnostics they’ve had.”

【推荐2】This was a major week in AI (Artificial Intelligence), with some of the largest companies announced their most updated and leading models: GPT-4 from OpenAI’s made its first show to the public, while Google put out its Med-PaLM 2, a new-and-improved medical model etc. Meanwhile, Company Anthropic introduced its lighter and cheaper Claude API, which is a ChatGPT competitor. And in China, Tsinghua launched ChatGLM, a chat-based Chinese-English model, in somewhat as a reminder of ChatGPT. In this AI spring, much awaits for customers.

Designs are on the rise. November’s release ChatGPT turned AI a breaking news. Two months later, it increased to 100 million monthly active users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. Earlier this month, OpenAI came to market for the first time—the ChatGPT, with its models still advancing. Finally, both Google and Microsoft put out AI plans as well.

Funds are flooding. Recent attention turns to a large amount of investment on Microsoft’s $10 billion OpenAI. The past few months have witnessed a “gold rush” for new AI model startups (新企业). Some outstanding ones: Adept raised $350 million, Google dropped another $300 million into Anthropic, Character AI raised $200 million from Andreesen Horowitz, Perplexity raised $25 million, and Salesforce Ventures launched a $250 million fund.

Demands for policy. As foundation models change rapidly, the demand for AI policy grows as well, which catches the attention of top policymakers across the world, attempting to ensure AI security. In the U.S., Congressman Ted Lieu presented a report calling for AI regulation that was written by ChatGPT, accompanied by a column (专栏) in the New York Times.

“AI is no longer a matter of science fiction, nor is it a technology confined or restricted to research labs. AI will dramatically change our lives. Jobs like journalists, lawyers and doctors are facing challenges. AI is a technology that is already being highly concerned.”