【推荐1】The pandemic has given a big push to all forms of digital communication. A workplace dominated by time on screens may seem bound to favor newer, faster and more visual ways of transmitting information. But an old form of communication — writing — is also flourishing (蓬勃).

The value of writing is highly valued in management thinking. “The discipline of writing something down is the first step towards making it happen, ” said Lee Iacocca, a giant of the American car industry. Jeff Bezos banned slides from meetings of senior Amazon executives (主管) back in 2004, in favor of well-structured memos (备忘录).

The move to remote working has strengthened the value of writing. When tasks are being handed off to colleagues in other locations, comprehensive documentation is crucial. When new employees start work on something, they want the back story. When old hands depart an organization, they should leave knowledge behind.

Software developers have already worked out the value of the written words. A research programme from Google into the ingredients of successful technology projects found that teams with high quality documentation deliver software faster and more reliably. Gitlab, a code hosting platform whose workforce is wholly remote, describes its secret of success as “textual communication”.

The deep thought and the discipline required by writing are helpful in other contexts, too. “Brain writing“ is a brain storming technique, used by Slack among others, in which participants are given time to put down their ideas before discussion begins.

Writing is not always the best way to communicate in the workplace. Video is more memorable; a phone call is quicker; even PowerPoint has its place. But for the structured thought it demands, and the ease with which it can be shared and edited, the written words are made for remote work and will flourish in the post-pandemic workplace.

【推荐3】“The comic waist challenge”, in which netizens try to imitate a comic character's pose with their legs on a chair and the upper body dropping to the ground, almost bending the waist in half, has become the latest craze to hit China's social media.

The topic has obtained hundreds of millions views on Weibo with many net users posting photos of the challenging pose to show how sexy and flexible they are.

Meanwhile some netizens argue that it is just an expansive gesture of yoga pose. So some people consult the doctors if the gesture is very dangerous. Medical experts have warned net users of the seemingly harmless yoga pose, as it may lead to damage to one's vertebrae by causing muscle strain and increasing the risk of lumbar degenerative disease.

The new challenge follows a series of similar controversial Chinese body image trends including the A4 waist challenge (measuring women's waists against a piece of A4 paper which is 21 centimeters wide), the belly button challenge (reaching one's belly button from behind), and the coin collarbone (balancing coins on people's collarbones for as long as they can) which faced heavy criticism worldwide on social media.

Women in China have long associated being beautiful with being skinny, but a desire to be thin is often taken to the extreme, with harmful effects on health and self-esteem - a situation not unique to China.

Although the opinions of the issue vary, maybe the change of the attitudes towards it is just over the horizon. Rejecting body anxiety is more than just a slogan. Many workout-obsessed women are increasingly realizing that no matter how hard they try, they won't be supermodels, and acknowledging that figures can vary due to a number of factors. This is an important step on their path to self-acceptance. Being healthy and maintaining the spiritual well-being have become the new pursuits for many.

【推荐1】You’ve stopped at a cafe on your way to work, and next thing you know, your latte foam is staring at you. You’ve had the same furniture for years, but today your cupboard looks sad. You’re lying in the park with your friends, and now Jesus is floating by in the clouds—are they seeing him too?!

Why do we see human faces everywhere?

Until now, it has been unclear as to why the brain processes visual signals and represents them in our mind as human faces. However, researchers from the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney have tried evaluating this phenomenon.

The facial recognition response happens fast, only taking a few hundred milliseconds. From an evolutionary perspective, the researchers suggest that the benefit of “never missing a face” outweighs(超过)the error where lifeless objects are seen as faces. Despite knowing that the object you are seeing is not a human face, the perception(知觉)of a face stays. This is known as “face pareidolia”.

Pareidolia refers to the tendency to impose a meaningful interpretation on an unclear stimulus(刺激物), making one see an object, pattern or meaning when there is none. Pareidolia was originally considered a symptom of mental disorder, but it is now viewed as a normal human tendency.

Pareidolia has been investigated by scientists and has been present in art and literature for a long period of time. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet demonstrates his supposed madness in his exchange with Polonius by telling him that he can see a camel in the sky.

The researchers set out to investigate whether a detected pareidolia face would be cast off as a false detection or be analysed for a facial expression. The study participants were presented series of faces and asked to rate each face expression on a scale from angry to happy. The series involved a mix of both real and pareidolia faces.

The researchers have found that pareidolia faces are not cast off as false detections, but rather undergo an internal “facial expression analysis”, in the same way a real face would. This is likely because humans are deeply social beings. Additionally, they found that biases(成见)often seen when judging human faces in the analysis of the pareidolia faces.

So, the next time that you see an angry tree, don’t be surprised and remember it’s not personal.

【推荐2】Shadows are often associated with darkness and uncertainty. Now, researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) are giving shadows a positive spin by demonstrating a way to harness this common but often overlooked optical (光学的) effect to generate electricity.

The team created a device called a shadow-effect energy generator (SEG), which makes use of the contrast in illumination (照明) between lit and shadowed areas to generate electricity. It’s made up of a series of thin strips of gold film on a silicon layer, which is then placed on a flexible plastic base.

“In conventional optoelectronics (光电子学) where a steady source of light is used to power devices, shadows are undesirable, since they degrade the performance of devices. In this work, we took advantage of the illumination contrast caused by shadows as an indirect source of power. The contrast in illumination causes a voltage (电压) difference between the shadow and illuminated sections, resulting in an electric current. This novel concept of harvesting energy in the presence of shadows is unprecedented.” explained research team leader Professor Tan Swee Ching.

Mobile electronic devices such as smart phones, smart glasses and e-watches require efficient and continuous power supply. As these devices are worn both indoors and outdoors, wearable power sources that could harness surrounding light can potentially improve the function of these devices. While commercially available solar cells can perform this role in an outdoor environment, their energy harvesting efficiency drops significantly under indoor conditions where shadows are persistent. This new approach to maximizing the efficiency of energy harvesting is both exciting and timely.

“When the whole SEG is under illumination or in shadow, the amount of electricity generated is very low or none at all. When a part of the SEG is illuminated, a significant electrical output is detected. We also found that the best surface area for electricity generation is when half of the SEG is illuminated and the other half in shadow, as this gives enough area for charge generation and collection respectively.” said co- team leader Professor Andrew Wee.

The NUS researchers are also looking at developing wearable SEGs attached to clothing to harvest energy during normal daily activities. Another promising area of research is the development of low- cost SEG for efficient harvesting of energy from indoor lighting.