【推荐2】As winter approaches, warm-blooded animals choose to handle the cold in a social way: crowding together in bunches. From mice to Himalayan rabbits, individuals in a group will gather together to share the heat from their bodies and avoid the risk of dying from cold.

While humans may not physically crowd together, our ancestors would have been relying on the support of others for food, fuel and shelter, and this would have been especially important when it was cold. Thus, they might be very sensitive to others when the temperature dropped. They were likely to seek out other sources of warmth, if they felt that they could no longer rely on the group for support.

Psychologist Geoffrey was the first to investigate that. He turned to a video game called Cyberball, which attempts to recreate the kind of social rejection that many of us might have experience din the playground. Each participant is seemingly placed in a group of three and asked to play virtual catch with two other people, hidden out of sight. In fact, two of the players are controlled by a computer. In the beginning, these computerized players are designed to throw the ball to the participant, but after a while they begin to avoid the participant as programmed, so that the participant no longer feels involved in the game. Having been excluded by the other players, the participant reports feeling rejected. And the participants have the tendency to look for sources of warmth as comfort.

Like all psychological discoveries,it may be of significance to human’s mental health. It’s said that patients with depression often report feeling cold. A deeper understanding of the psychological mechanism might suggest new treatments for this disorder. More immediately, with fuel bills increasing, the emotional effects of the cold this winter need to be considered. Clearly, practical solutions to the fuel crisis must come first,but we might also look for ways to connect more with those around us like animals crowding together both physically and socially.

【推荐1】Last weekend was terrible for awards ceremonies. The BAFTAS,defined by a painful monologue（独角戏）from Joanna Lumley, was watched by 500,000 fewer people than last year. Meanwhile,the number of 18﹣to 49-year-olds watching the Grammys has reached an all-time low.

Don't expect the Oscars to fare any better；they have lost millions of viewers since 2014. Add to the fact that comparatively few people have watched most of the nominated films and you have got a ratings time bomb.

Viewers are deserting awards shows in groups and something needs to be done. But what？Reorganize them to celebrate really popular work？That's what the Oscars put forward last year when it suggested a best popular film category﹣and it was swiftly booed（喝倒彩）out of town.

Another option would be to shorten the length of the ceremonies, but this won't work either. The Oscars recently announced plans to hide several categories in ad breaks,and the anger in some quarters（the cinematographers, makeup artists and editors who this year won't get their moment on the small screen）has been obvious.

What else can they do？ Fewer songs？ Shorter speeches？ An In Memoriam section that consists of the words： "People die： get over it"？

Fortunately, I have the perfect solution： don't televise awards shows. Just don't do it. Awards shows are the opposite of good television. They're too long and too boring because of regular and repeated patterns and too self﹣important. And by God, we should have learned by now not to give celebrities any more attention than they already have. It just makes them think that we want to hear them giving out half﹣baked opinions about Donald Trump and Brexit.

I'm not suggesting that the awards shows shouldn't happen. I'm just saying that the awards should be announced in the form of a press release at the end of the ceremony, followed by a handful of You Tube clips showing some nice outfits and a couple of speeches. That's how most of us consume them now anyway.

【推荐2】A remarkable new study on how whales behaved when attacked by humans in the 19th century has implications for the way they react to changes caused by humans in the 2Ist century.

The paper is authored by Whitehead and Rendellt at Dalhousie University and their research addresses an age- -old question: if whales are so smart, why did they hang around to be killed? The answer? They didn't. Using newly digitised   (数字化的) logbooks detailing the hunting of whales in the north Pacific, the authors discovered that within just a few years, the strike rate of the whalers’ harpoons(捕鲸者的鱼叉) fell by 58%. This simple fact leads to an astonishing conclusion: that information about what was happening to them was being collectively shared among the whales, who made vital changes to their behaviour. They learned quickly from their mistakes.

“Sperm whales have a traditional way of reacting to attacks from orca (杀人鲸),” notes Whitehead. Before humans, orca were their only predators (捕食者), against whom sperm whales form defensive circles, their powerful taills held outwards to keep predators at bay, “But such techniques just made it easier for the whalers to kill them,” says Whitehead.

Sperm whales are highly socialised animals, able to communicate over great distances. Information about the new dangers may have been passed on in the same way they share knowledge about feeding grounds. They also possess the largest brain on the planet. It is not hard to imagine that they understood what was happening to them.

The hunters themselves realised the whales’efforts to escape. They saw that the animals appeared to communicate the threat within their attacked groups. Abandoning their usual defensive formations, the whales swam upwind to escape the hunters, ships, themselves wind-powered.

Now, just as whales are beginning to recover from the industrial destruction by 20th-century whaling fleets, whose steamships and grenade harpoons no whale could escape from, they face new threats created by our technology. “They’re having to learn not to get hit by ships, cope with the depredations (劫掠) of long line fishing, the changing source of their food due to climate change,”Whitehead says. “The same sort of urgent social learning the animals experienced in the whale wars of two centuries ago is reflected in the way they negotiate today's uncertain world.”

【推荐3】China’s first group of e-sports major graduates will emerge in the summer of 2021,with data showing that even though this major has been underestimated by the public, the future appears promising as there are hundreds of thousands of related jobs available.

After the Ministry of Education decided that “electronic sports and management” should be listed in colleges’ major departments in September 2016, around 30 Chinese universities kicked off their e-sports major courses in the same year, to meet the needs of the rise of e-sports related industries in the Chinese market.

“The major is designed to meet the demand,”said Zheng Duo,co-founder of Tianjin Hero Sports Management and a visiting professor from the Communication University of China(CUC).

Chinese passion for e-sports is not in doubt, with more than 18,000 e-sports companies registered as of 2021, according to corporate database Qichacha.The number of e-sports users in China reached 500 million in 2021, and the market had a value of more than 145 billion yuan as of 2020, according to Chinese consulting group iResearch. Meanwhile,the industry chain is becoming more complete.

Jobs in areas such as supervision and content production require talent and training. The number of available jobs is estimated at 500,000,and could reach 3.5 million in the next five years, according to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

Well-known universities such as CUC and the Shanghai Theatre Academy have responded to the country’s call and are preparing graduates for the e-sports market.Yet not every major graduate is qualified for the positions available, as the jobs normally require practical experience,which is something a lot of graduates lack.

Industry insiders have indicated that e-sports is an industry with rapid iteration(迭代), and some companies prefer to hire people with experience instead of spending time training recruits.

Roughly half of the graduates will enter the gaming industry, said Xiao Pi, an e-sports major graduate from CUC. “Some of the rest will pursue further studies for their master’s degree.”

“Even though e-sports majors have advantages in finding jobs, students need practical experience to better suit the different positions,” said Gu Liming, president of Perfect World Games.