【推荐1】It's normal for teens to want to stay connected with friends and social circle, but what about that happening in the middle of the night? The Journal of Youth Studies recently published new research showing that one in five teens from 12 to 15 regularly wake to spend all night on social media. Not surprisingly, the research also showed that these social night owls were three times more likely than others to feel tired at school and that girls were more likely than boys to be called to office.

The blue light produced by cell phones and computers makes the brain to stay awake, so it's easy to see why teen might be up all night. A study in Psychological Science showed the same brain reaction: when teens saw large numbers “likes” on their posts, they stayed awake with excitement as if they had eaten chocolates or won money. Besides not catching up on sleep and interrupting their sleep cycle, teens may never fully enter deep sleep that may be responsible for brain development and learning.

Considering about 72 percent of children from 6 to 17 sleep with some electronic media in their bedrooms, parents need to set rules sooner rather than later.

“Providing access to social media is favor that children can earn and also lose,” Janie Feldman, an expert who treats sleep disorders, reminds parents, “The bad effect is clear. So teens and parents should discuss and agree on its use, timing and access. When teenagers agree to the rules, it's easier for parents to control how much time they spend on the phones or computers.”

【推荐1】Brian Hamilton's life changed in a prison when he went there with his friend, Reverend Robert J. Harris, who often went to local prisons to do ministry work. During the visit, Hamilton started talking to one of the prisoners and asked what he was going to do when he got out. “He said he was going to get a job,” Hamilton recalls. “I thought to myself, wow, that’s going to be difficult with a criminal background.”

The conversation made Hamilton consider how to help those who came out from prison. Finally in 2008, 16 years after that initial conversation, Hamilton created Inmates to Entrepreneurs, a nonprofit organization that helps people with criminal backgrounds start their own small businesses.

At the time, Hamilton was building his own company, a software technology company for the banking industry. As his company grew, so did Hamilton’s time devoted to giving lessons to prisoners. He averaged three to four courses a month at prisons throughout North Carolina.

Eventually, Hamilton decided to shift his focus to his true passion. In May 2019, he sold his company and focused on helping those who were imprisoned. His online courses will be set next year. “By March 1, 2022, anyone will be able to access the courses, either to become a certificated instructor or to access it for themselves as a prisoner or part of the general population,” Hamilton explained. In addition, he visits middle schools and presents the course to at-risk students as a preventative measure against crime.

The free course is funded by the recently established Brian Hamilton Foundation, which offers assistance to military members as they return to civilian life and provides loans o small businesses. “Starting up a business isn't for everyone, but if we make opportunities available, and let people know that other people care about them, it makes a difference.” Hamilton said.

【推荐2】Plato was upset about the invention of the alphabet(字母表)because, with this “technology”, learners would not use their memories and thus appear to be a know-it-all but actually know nothing. If Plato were alive today, what would he say about ChatGPT? ChatGPT, a conversational artificial intelligence program released recently by OpenAl, is a significant advancement that can produce articles comparable to good high school essays.

When I asked ChatGPT a range of simple questions, the answers were well-reasoned and clear. It’s also interactive: I could ask for more details or request changes. But then, on trickier topics or more complicated concepts, ChatGPT gave completely wrong answers.

However, that doesn’t mean ChatGPT can’t be a useful tool in education. Schools have already been dealing with the internet’s wealth of knowledge, along with its misleading essay factories. One way has been to change how they teach. Rather than listen to a lecture in class and then go home to research and write an essay, students listen to recorded lectures and do research at home, then write essays in class, with supervision, even cooperation with peers(同龄人) and teachers. This is called flipped(翻转的) classrooms, in which students wouldn’t use ChatGPT to create a whole essay. Instead, they’d use it as a tool to generate critically examined building blocks of essays.

Plato was wrong to think that memory itself is a goal, rather than a means for people to have facts so they can make better analyses and arguments. As Plato was wrong to fear the written word as the enemy, we would be wrong to think we should be against a process that allows us to gather information more easily.

The way forward is not just to feel regret for replaced skills, as Plato did, but also to recognize that as more complex skills become essential, our society must fairly educate people to develop them. And then it always goes back to the basics. Value people as people, not just as packs of skills. And that isn’t something ChatGPT can tell us how to do.

【推荐3】The moment the ground stops shaking after an earthquake, some people may wonder whether their pets — or wild animals for that matter — knew the disaster was coming. Heiko Woith, a seismologist (地震学家) at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GMZ), noted that the public often contacts the GMZ after strong earthquakes, and that people commonly ask “whether we can predict earthquakes or not, because there are so many reports on the Internet that an animal could do it.”

According to a new analysis of several other published studies (called a meta-analysis), it’s hard to say. Woith and his colleagues evaluated more than 700 published reports of unusual behavior among 130 species, including insects, birds, fish and mammals (mostly cats, dogs and cattle) from 160 earthquakes. The records included all kinds of behaviors, including a tiger that reportedly got depressed before an earthquake.

The researchers found that 90 percent of all reported cases happened within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of the epicenter (震中)and within 60 days of an earthquake. Then, they examined when and where foreshocks (前震) had happened in the region. “The space-time pattern of animal precursors (前兆) and foreshocks is strikingly similar,” Woith said. “From this, we concluded that the abnormal animal behavior might simply be related to foreshocks.” Very likely, not every abnormal animal behavior is related to an upcoming earthquake. Instead, it’s likely that these animals are reacting to foreshocks rather than predicting the earthquake itself.

“Despite the vast number of empirical research, good information was little and scientific evidence is lacking. A major surprise for us was that the large majority of the published claims were built on poor observational data meaning most people did not properly observe the animals before, during and after the earthquake, which did not stand as statistical scientific proof,” Woith said. “So, given that there’s no evidence yet showing that animals can predict quakes, people should call these claims into question.”

To better study whether animals can predict earthquakes, Woith and his colleagues suggested that researchers ask a number of yes-or-no questions in any upcoming experiments, including “Is the experimental setup and monitoring procedure clearly described and reproducible?” and “Is it proven that the animal behavior is really unusual?”

Meanwhile, humans are working on technologies that can detect earthquakes seconds before they hit. For instance, a smartphone application called Quake Alert helped warn people in Los Angeles that an earthquake was coming about half a minute before it struck on April 5, 2018. Hopefully, we will have reliable devices to tell people that the earthquake is coming.