【推荐1】The U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA） has approved a debatable Alzheimer's treatment, the first that promises to slow the disease's destruction in the brain.

The drug, aducanumab, is also the first new Alzheimer's treatment approved since 2003.However, in 2019, aducanumab was nearly abandoned after it appeared unlikely to succeed in two clinical trials. But after reanalyzing more data, the drug's developer Biogen saw signs indicating the drug might work, and decided to pursue FDA approval.

Still, today's decision concerns some doctors and scientists because they aren't convinced that the drug actually works. Approving a drug that's not effective would offer patients false hope, those experts argue. “This is a great day for Biogen but a dark day for the field of Alzheimer's research,” says Michael Greicius, a neurologist at Stanford. Pushing forward on the “illusion of progress,” he says, “will come at a cost to genuine progress in finding an effective treatment for this destructive disease.”

Others disagree that the evidence is slim, and are excited about having a new tool to fight a disease that has escaped an effective treatment for so long. “We have been waiting decades for this,” says Maria Carrillo, an expert at the Alzheimer's Association. A drug that delays decline due to Alzheimer's promises patients “to sustain independence and to hold onto memories longer,” she says.

The drug targets the sticky protein—A-beta（淀粉样蛋白). Some researchers suspect that in Alzheimer's, A-beta confuses connections between nerve cells and damages brain tissue, ultimately causing Alzheimer's symptoms. But that idea is still unsettled. Brain scans reveal that aducanumab is effective at reducing A-beta in the brain. What's less clear is whether this reduction comes with consistent improvements in people's quality of life.

【推荐1】Superman，the first American superhero，appeared in 1938 with his cape (斗篷) and an “S” on his chest. Shortly after his appearance in comics, moviemakers began trying to bring superheroes to the big screen. In the early 1940s, they made their first attempts to bring comic books to life.    1    Instead, they were made as 5 to 10 minutes episodes that would play at movie theaters before the main feature. Unlike today’s superhero films, these serials were aimed mainly at children.

This pattern changed in 1978 when Richard Donner made his first Superman film. First of all, it was aimed at an adult audience.    2    Second, the film's special effects were very sophisticated（复杂的）for that time. Finally, the Superman film was a departure from earlier superhero films in that it used talented and famous Hollywood actors.     3    

Yet another revolution in superhero movies came in the 1990’s and 2000’s, when Computer-Generated Image technology made it possible to recreate even more fantastic landscapes and more monstrous（可怕的）creatures.    4    These films were similar to Donners Superman in that they targeted an adult audience Watchmen (2009), for instance, was released with an R rating, meaning that it was not intended for children under the age of 17.

    5    Their success at the box office continues to attract big-name Hollywood actors and directors and higher production budgets, so lovers of action and adventure should have plenty of reasons to go to the movies for years to come.

【推荐2】Studies have shown that to cultivate (培养) gratitude can increase an individual’s happiness, reduce one’s sadness, and give strength to a person. Those who consciously express and cultivate gratitude have been reported to have much higher self-esteem (自尊) compared to those who do not. They are also more willing to help others.     1    

Wondering how you yourself can cultivate gratitude more and more every single day? Below are some wonderful tips to follow.

A board on the wall is a great boost, especially in work environments.     2     Remember that it is very important to acknowledge what to appreciate, especially when you don’t really feel grateful. It can change your mood for the better right away.

    3     Another way to cultivate gratitude in your life, whether at home or in the workplace, is gratitude cards. Give them to your colleagues or your clients. You can show your appreciation by saying what you’re actually grateful for on the cards.

Give heart-felt thanks. It’s not your casual thank you, like saying “hi” without really thinking about it. We’re talking about good quality, deeply grateful, heartfelt thanks. When someone goes out of their way to do something really important for you, you should make them know how grateful you are to them.     4     If possible，do it in person. This will have a bigger impact if you say it rather than just emailing them.

    5     Cultivating gratitude will not only help you keep going in a challenging work environment, but also make you have a positive attitude to do an amazing job or to accomplish a difficult task.

【推荐3】The release of ChatGPT has caused more than a little worry about its ability to produce credible pieces of writing. “The College Essay Is Dead, ” some people declared. That’s unlikely. There are obvious workarounds. For example, students wouldn’t benefit from ChatGPT if they were required to write out essays by hand.

A return to handwritten essays could benefit students in a way. For instance, neuroscience research has revealed that the act of handwriting is very different from punching letters on a keyboard. Handwriting requires precise motor skills that stimulate greater activity in a broader group of brain regions when compared with typing and engage the brain in ways that researchers have linked to learning and memory improvements. Handwriting forces those areas responsible for memory and learning to communicate with each other, which helps form networks that facilitate the recall and acquisition of new information.

Much of the research has focused on children or younger students. But there’s evidence that, even for older students and adults, completing assignments in longhand is a more cognitively (认知地) involved process, leading to better processing of ideas and more original work. Meanwhile, research on foreign-language learners has found that handwriting is associated with improvements in some measure of accuracy and comprehension. Handwriting requires you to put a filter on what you’re producing in a way that typing doesn’t. When you’re writing by hand, you need to know what you want to say before you begin. If you don’t, you’ll have to cross things out or start over. Typing on a computer requires far less forethought. It is less challenging for the brain-and challenging the brain is central to education itself.

A return to handwritten essays wouldn’t be easy on teachers, who might have to reduce the length of assignments or allocate (分配) extra class time for completion. They’d also have the burden of reading text that wasn’t neatly turned out by a word processor. But some might find all that preferable to being constantly suspicious (猜疑的) that they’re being outsmarted by a computer program.

When health issues forced the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to abandon his pen in favor of a typewriter, a change occurred in his writing style, which one scholar later described as a departure from “sustained argument and prolonged reflection” to a “telegram style. ” Our writing tools work on our thoughts. Ensuring that today’s students have more than one writing tool might pay off in ways experts are only beginning to grasp. ChatGPT and other AI-powered technologies will win only if we agree to play on their home territory.