【推荐1】The dramatic expansion of industrial agriculture has made it increasingly difficult for small family farmers in the US to stay in business.Instead, the food industry has become dominated by a handful of giant corporations which benefit from government policies that favor large­scale production.

Family farmers are being forced out of business at an alarming rate.According to Farm Aid, every week 330 farmers leave their land.As established family farms are shut down, they are not being replaced by new farms and young farmers.Once a family farm is forced out of business, the farmland is often sold for development, and the quality land for farming is lost.

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In addition to producing fresh, high­quality foods, small family farms provide a wealth of benefits for their local communities and regions.Perhaps most importantly, family farmers serve as responsible stewards (管理人) of the land.Unlike industrial agriculture operations, which pollute communities with chemical pesticides, smoke and manure (肥料), small family farmers live on or near their farms and try to protect the surrounding environment for future generations.

Independent family farms also play a vital role in rural economies.In addition to providing jobs for local people, family farmers also help support small businesses by purchasing goods and services within their communities.Meanwhile, industrial agriculture operations employ as few workers as possible and typically purchase supplies, equipment, and building materials from outside the local community.Rural areas are then left with high rates of unemployment and very little opportunity for economic growth.

What can you do?

Purchase food directly from your local family farmers at a farmers’ market, or through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) system.

Ask the manager of your grocery store to supply foods produced at local family farms.

Donate money to Farm Aid.Since 1985, this non­profit organization has worked to support America’s family farmers.

【推荐2】Energy independence．It has a nice ring to it．Doesn't it？If you think so，you're not alone，because energy independence has been the dream of American president for decades，and never more so than in the past few years，when the most recent oil price shock has been partly responsible for kicking off the great recession．

"Energy independence" and its rhetorical （修辞的） companion "energy security" are，however，slippery concepts that are rarely though through．What is it we want independence from，exactly？

Most people would probably say that they want to be independent from imported oil．But there are reasons that we buy all that old from elsewhere．

The first reason is that we need it to keep our economy running．Yes，there is a trickle（涓涓细流）of biofuels available，and more may become available，but most biofuels cause economic waste and environmental destruction．

Second，Americans have basically decided that they don't really want to produce all their own oil．They value the environmental quality they preserve over their oil imports from abroad．Vast areas of the United States are off-limits to oil exploration and production in the name of environmental protection．To what degree are Americans really willing to endure the environmental impacts of domestic energy production in order to cut back imports？

Third，there are benefits to trade．It allows for economic efficiency，and when we buy things from places that have lower production costs than we do，we benefit．And although you don't read about this much，the United States is also a large exporter of oil products，selling about 2million barrels of petroleum products per day to about 90countries．

There is no question that the United States imports a great deal of energy and，in fact，relies on that steady flow to maintain its economy．When that flow is interrupted，we feel the pain in short supplies and higher prices.At the same time，we get massive economic benefits when we buy the most affordable energy on the world market and when we engage in energy trade around the world．

【推荐3】Global finance is being changed as billionaires get richer and cut out the middlemen（中间商）by creating their own "family offices”，personal investment firms that look for opportunities in global markets. Largely unnoticed，family offices have become a force in investing，with up to S4 trillion of assets（资产）equal to 6%of the value of the world's stock markets. As they grow even bigger，family offices are sure to face uncomfortable questions about how they concentrate power and feed inequality.

These trends are unlikely to fade. The number of billionaires is still growing-199 newbies（新手）made the grade last year. Family offices' weight in the financial system，therefore，looks likely to rise further. As it does，some concerns about them will rise.

The first is that family offices could endanger the stability of the financial system. A $100 billion fund backed by the super-rich，blew up in 1998，almost bringing down Wall Street. Scores of wealthy people collapsed（崩溃）in 2008. Still，as things stand，family offices look like the next disaster waiting to happen. They have debt equal to 17%of their assets，making them among the least leveraged participants in global markets.

The second worry is that family offices could expand the power of the wealthy over the economy. This is possible: were Bill Gates to invest in Turkey，he would own 65%of its stock market. But a healthy economy's aim is usually to diversify risk，not concentrate power，by taking capital（资本）from the original family business and putting it into a widely spread field.

It is the third danger that has most bite: family offices might have privileged（有特权的）access to information，deals and tax schemes，allowing them to perform better than ordinary investors. So far there is little evidence for this. If all this did lead to an unfair advantage，the effect，when combined over decades，would make wealth inequality disastrously worse.

Most authorities are beginners when it comes to dealing with family offices，but they need to ensure that rules on trading and the equal servicing are observed. And they should require family offices with assets of over，say，$10 billion to publish accounts detailing their workings. In return，they should be free to operate undisturbed. They may even have something to teach asset managers serving ordinary investors, many of whom may look at their monthly fees and wish that they, too, could get away from the middlemen.

【推荐1】We all have a tendency to fake laugh when others try to make a joke. Though it might feel rude not to laugh when your boss try to say something funny, pretending to do so might not be much better. It turns out people are pretty good at separating truly spirited laughs from fake ones. But how can they possible know the difference?

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles studied the differences between real and fake laughter, they found some of the sounds associated with genuine laughter is “really hard to fake.” In their study, the researchers determined that subjects were only fooled by 37 percent of fake laughter.

The most obvious factor telling real laughter from fake laughter is the number of breaths taken in between sounds. Seeing as it takes more effort and concentration to fake a laugh, people tend to pause more in between their “ha-ha’s” when they’re faking it. Evidently, that pausing is pretty noticeable.

“A fake laugh is basically an imitation of a real laugh, but produced with a slightly different set of vocal muscles controlled by a different part of our brain,” Greg Bryant, the lead UCLA researcher on the study, explained.

Carolyn McGettigan, a scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London, conducted a 2014 study that recorded participants’ brain responses as they listened to the same people produce genuine laughter as opposed to fake laughter. She found when participants heard a fake laugh, they activated regions of the brain associated with mentalizing in an attempt to understand the other person’s emotional and mental state.

So, while we may understand that certain social situations sometimes require fake laughter, most of the time, our emotional intelligence is just too smart to buy into them.

【推荐1】The meaning of silence varies among cultural groups.Silences may be thoughtful, or they may be empty when a person has nothing to say. A silence in a conversation may also show stubbornness, uneasiness, or worry. Silence may be viewed by some cultural groups as extremely uncomfortable; therefore attempts may be made to fill every gap(间隙) with conversation. Persons in other cultural groups value silence and view it as necessary for understanding a person's needs.

Many Native Americans value silence and feel it is a basic part of communicating among people, just as some traditional Chinese and Thai persons do. Therefore, when a person from one of these cultures is speaking and suddenly stops, what may be implied(暗示) is that the person wants the listener to consider what has been said before continuing.In these cultures, silence is a call for reflection.

Other cultures may use silence in other ways, particularly when dealing with conflicts among people or in relationships of people with different amounts of power. For example, Russian, French, and Spanish persons may use silence to show agreement between parties about the topic under discussion. However, Mexicans may use silence when instructions are given by a person in authority rather than be rude to that person by arguing with him or her. In still another use, persons in Asian cultures may view silence as a sign of respect, particularly to an elder or a person in authority.

Nurses and other care-givers need to be aware of the possible meanings of silence when they come across the personal anxiety their patients may be experiencing. Nurses should recognize their own personal and cultural construction of silence so that a patient’s silence is not interrupted too early or allowed to go on unnecessarily. A nurse who understands the healing(治愈) value of silence can use this understanding to assist in the care of patients from their own and from other cultures.

【推荐2】Donald Watson was a man who thought very much about the food he ate. He was born in Yorkshire, England, in September 1910. And he died in November 2005, at the age of 95. That is a very great age. Watson explained that it was because he never ate any food from animals.

When he was a boy, Watson stayed on a farm. He loved to see the animals. He said that they gave so much to people. And all the animals were so friendly. Then, one day, he saw a man killing a pig. He was very sad. From then on, Watson decided that he would never again eat meat. Twenty years later he decided that he wouldn’t eat anything from animals, such as milk, cheese or eggs. He became a vegan (素食主义者).

Watson formed a group called “The Vegan Society”. The Vegan Society thought it was terrible and wrong to eat food from animals. At first, there were not many people who agreed with him. They thought it was crazy to do it. Most people thought it was too difficult and unhealthy. However, over time, more and more people began to agree with Watson and The Vegan Society.

People become vegans for many reasons. Watson and his friends stopped eating because they loved animals. They believed that it was wrong to hurt another living thing.

Now, people also become vegans for environmental reasons. Keeping animals takes a lot of resources (资源), including water and food. Also, in some places, people are cutting down trees to create more land for cows. By avoiding food from animals, vegans hope to protect these forest areas.

Finally, just like Watson, some people believe that being a vegan is healthier. They believe that food from animals causes heart problems, a high body weight and many other health problems.

【推荐3】Across the United Kingdom, as the COVID-19 crisis has bitten deeper, its citizens have started a new practice: Emerging from self-isolation every Thursday night at 8 p.m. to clap, cheer, and bang pots and pans to show support for the country’s front-line doctors and nurses.

But as the death toll today hit a single-day U.K. record of 980-and with the peak death rate still estimated to be two weeks away-the crisis caused by the scale of the pandemic has been worsened here by a new degree of political uncertainty. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was admitted to the hospital on Sunday and has spent his days and nights in intensive care fighting the virus, surrounded by the doctors and nurses of the National Health Service.

The U.K. is not alone in showing new found public affection for key workers, nor in facing an unprecedented public health emergency that has, in Europe, especially affected Italy, Spain, and France. A recent U.K. government appeal for 250,000 volunteers to help the NHS (National Health Service) yielded an army of 750,000 would-be helpers.

But the pandemic finds the U.K. at a politically uncertain moment, as a nation finally emerging from three and a half years of political issue over its chaotic departure from the European Union. A December election that gave a decisive victory to Mr. Johnson and the ruling Conservative Party added clarity to a Brexit mandate and was seen by many as a potential first step in healing deep divisions in Britain’s political and social structure.

Acknowledging the impact of the coronavirus on daily lives, Queen Elizabeth II, in a rare address   on Sunday, praised the “national spirit” and thanked NHS and care workers, whose “every hour” of hard work “brings us closer to a return to a more normal time.” Calling on citizens to “remain united and resolute” to overcome the pandemic, she sought to provide comfort. “While we may have still more to endure, better days will return We will meet again,” she said.

【推荐1】We all know that music is a powerful influencer. A movie without a soundtrack doesn’t inspire the same emotional journey. A workout without a pump-up can feel very boring. But is there a way to quantify these reactions?

In a new paper, researchers at the University of Southern California mapped out how things like pitch, rhythm, and harmony trigger different types of activity,psychological reactions, and emotions and how machine learning could use those relationships to predict how people might respond to a new piece of music. The results, presented at a conference show how we may one day be able to engineer targeted music experiences for purposes ranging from therapy(医疗）to movies.

The research is part of the lab’s broader goal to understand how different forms of media, such as films and TV ads as well as music, affect people’s bodies and brains. “Once we understand how media can affect your various emotions, then we can try to productively use it for actually supporting or improve human experiences,” says Shrikanth Narayanan, a professor at USC and the chef researcher in the lab.

The research first searched music sites like Spotify for songs with very few plays, tagged either”happy” or “sad”. Through a series of human tests, 6o pieces for each emotion were narrowed down to a final list of three: two that reliably caused sadness and one that reliably caused happiness. One hundred participants who hadn’t heard the songs before split into two groups, listened to all three pieces, and either took an FMRI scan or wore pulse, heat, and eccentricity sensors on their skin and rated their emotions on a scale of 0 to 10.

The research then fed the data, along with 74 features for each song into several machine-learning algorithms(算法）and examined which features were the strongest predictors of responses. They found, for example, that the brightness of a song and the strength of its beat were both among the best predictors of how a song would affect a listener’s hart rate and brain activity.

The research is still in very early stages, and it will be a while before more powerful machine-learning models will be able to predict your mental and physical reactions to a song with any precision. But the researchers are excited about how such modes could be applied: to design music for specific individuals, to help patients with mental health challenges stimulate(刺激） specific part of their brain. The lab is already working with addiction treatment clinics to see how other forms of media could help patients.

More simply, the research could be use to general playlists. “ You wouldn’t want to listen to a song that’s gonna make your heart rate speed up right before bedtime, but maybe you do if your ‘r going on a long drive and you haven’t had much coffee,” says Greer.

【推荐2】Japanese businessman Katsuo Inoue chose Italy for his summer vacation this year. He enjoyed the views of Florence and Rome-without ever leaving Japan.

Inoue and his wife “flew” to Italy on First Airlines, a company known for entertainment （娱乐），not transportation. The Tokyo-based new company entered the fast growing online tourism early this year as many countries have stopped accepting foreign tourists.

“I often go to other countries on business, but I haven't been to Italy,” Inoue said. "My impression was really good because I got a sense of actually seeing things there. First Airlines even gave us life jackets and oxygen masks（氧气罩）！”

The “passengers” on First Airlines sit in the first — or business-class areas of an airplane model. Workers serve meals and drinks as large screens show passing clouds and other views outside the airplane. The “travelers“ then receive glasses that provide virtual reality（虚拟现实 的）tours of places like Paris, New York, Hawaii and Rome.

The country's biggest airline, ANA Holdings, said that the numbers of passengers flying to foreign countries fell by 96 percent since June when Japan has stopped most travel in and out of the country. The International Air Transport Association （lAIA ） and The International Tourism Association （ITA） said last month that international travels wouldn't be able to recover until 2024. But they said the online travels have been growing very fast.

The president, Hiroaki Abe, said, “Since we started our online tour this year, our business has been increasing by 50 percent each month. Most of our customers usually travel to other countries every year and they can now experience some of that here when they are unable to go to the real attractions.”

【推荐3】Artificial intelligence products are not new. However, researchers have been working to improve the technology. Now virtual assistants, like Siri and Alexa, can have short conversations with us. AlphaGo taught itself to play Go and became better than the top human players.

Now an AI system has been tasked with passing a multiple-choice exam. The goal is to improve machines’ language understanding and logic with so-called computer vision.

A system named Aristo was developed by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a lab in the United States city of Seattle. It recently passed an eighth-grade science exam taken by many US students, The New York Times reported. It correctly answered more than 90 percent of the questions. Then it was given a twelfth-grade exam. It scored more than 80 percent.

It’s an example of the progress in AI development. Four years ago, 700 computer scientists tried to develop AI systems that could pass these kinds of exams. None scored higher than 60 percent.

Aristo was able to pass the exams because it can not only understand language but also use logical thinking to solve difficult problems. For example, it can understand what a forest fire is and how it could endanger animals like squirrels or decrease the food supply they need.

The system used BERT, a kind of neural （神经的）network technology developed by Google, to answer the questions. BERT has “read” thousands of English articles If it looks at a sentence with a missing word, it can correctly guess what the word is With BERT’s help, Aristo “read” many multiple-choice questions and answers. Over time, it was able to find logical patterns on its own.

It may still be in the earliest stages, said Jingjing Liu, a Microsoft researcher who has been working on similar technologies “We can’t compare this technology to real human students and their ability to reason.”

However, Aristo’s success means that AI systems are getting better at understanding users, and we might see improved search engines and hospital databases （数据库）in the near future.