【推荐2】The world is lucky when our most brilliant minds choose to work for the common good. Young Ryan Honary is among one of the brilliant minds.

Shocked by the deaths in the 2018 Camp Fire, California’s frightening wildfire, Honary turned his attention to how to decrease future disasters. In 2019, Honary won a $10,000 prize in the Ignite Innovation Student Challenge for his early wildfire detection (检测) network, which provides app technology for firefighters. He was only in fifth grade at the time.

Turning 14 years old and going into the eighth grade this year, Honary is busy working in SensoRy AI, the company he set up. With the help of his father and a team of experts, the company has received a lot of attention.

Honary started creating websites when he was in third grade. He learned Python and JavaScript in a local after-school program. At the same time, he was interested in animals and the environment. He became worried as he saw how much the environment was under pressure.

When wildfires started ruining the air quality, destroying homes and killing some people, Honary thought about how AI can be used to solve environmental problems such as wildfires. In order to get data to train the machine learning models on his fire detectors, he collected real-world data from Google Earth about the Camp Fire of 2018 in California. Once a fire is detected by a fire detector, the information can be sent to the app he created. Also, machine learning can be used to predict where the fires are going.

Honary is hoping to attract more people from his generation to his company. He believes the environment is going to be a big responsibility for all of us.

【推荐3】Natural disasters can cause people’s fears at any age.     1    , but you do have lots of influence on how your children may face the possible disasters. Let’s see how to talk to your children about natural disasters correctly.

● Be honest

When there is information about natural disasters, try not to hide it.     2    . They may want to know more about where the natural disaster is and the path that it is on. Give proper explanations or even check books out from the library.

●    3    

Ask your children what they are nervous about so that you can solve their concerns. Deal with any of their fears, big or small, and provide some kind of comfort. Whether these disasters are happening far away or close to home, they need to know that you will keep them safe.

● Make a plan for your family

There is no place on Earth that is free from possibly suffering some type of natural disaster. All families should have a disaster plan and emergency supplies at home. Create a family safety plan, and share it with your children.     4    .

● Talk about the helpers

    5    . The idea that firefighters, paramedics (护理人员), and other disaster service workers will be there to help in case of an emergency helps children take away some of the anxiety.

【推荐2】Imagine you're out in a foreign city to find a restaurant for dinner. Dozens of restaurants string together, all with appetizing menus and similar prices.

How to pick the best place for a refreshment? If you're like most people, a simple cue (提示) is likely to affect your choice. You will look for the busiest restaurant with the most diners because its popularity is bound to reflect on the quality of food and service. But is this true? In fact, bigger crowds could have come about at random, and here's why.

Early diners with no meaningful cues as to which restaurant to choose may have picked the restaurant casually, for example selecting the place with the nicest name or the prettiest environment. Later passers-by may have misinterpreted their choice as a well-informed decision and blindly followed their example. This could have resulted in a snow-balling effect, creating a false impression of popularity. In this case, following the example of theirs couldn't be an ideal dinner choice.

Copying other people's choices or simply going with the crowd is often referred to as“herd behaviour”. It is a frequent occurrence among humans as well as many other animals, a common example being sheep. Indeed, the so particularly obedient her d animals even inspired the creation of the term “sheeple”, which combines the words “sheep”and“people” for individuals who tend to follow others. Herding can appear to make a lot of sense.

I discussed previously the so-called “wisdom of crowds” often outperforms individual choices. Furthermore, following the crowd appears to offer protection and comfort. Finally, following the herd reduces the effort needed to make a decision.

Herd behaviors, while common and easy to explain, hold significant dangers. Contrary to the so-called “wisdom of crowds”, herd behaviors typically rely on so-called“information cascades (倾泄)”, where people take on others' beliefs or copy their choices without critically considering the hidden reasons. This frequently leads to the imitation of unreasonable or simply stupid behaviors.

【推荐3】How does our memory work, and how can we use it to the best of our ability on a daily basis? This question is at the heart of many neuroscience (神经系统科学) research projects, and now the reward system is at the center of investigations.

By examining brain activity in healthy human subjects, scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have highlighted the lasting positive effect of a monetary (钱的) reward on individuals’ ability to store a variety of information.

“The positive influence of a reward on memory is a well-known phenomenon,” said Sophie Schwartz, professor at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, who led this work. However, the experiment addressed two questions: Does the effect last over time, and what role does the accumulation (累积) of reward play?

Using magnetic resonance imaging — an imaging technique that allows real-time observation of the brain in action — 30 healthy subjects were asked to remember associations between objects and people. Each correct answer earned points, and incorrect answers lost points. Participants were then asked to retrieve these associations to earn additional points. They were given monetary rewards based on their total number of points. Critically, the average number of points that could be gained varied over the course of the experiment.

Kristofer Aberg, the study’s first author, stated: “The best results were not associated with the highest accumulation of rewards.”

Schwartz added, “Our brain needs rewards to motivate us, but also challenges. If the task is too easy, motivation decreases as quickly as if it is too difficult.”

The hippocampus primarily manages memory, but when a reward is involved, the ventral tegmental area (腹侧盖膜区) of the brain releases dopamine (多巴胺): the hormone (荷尔蒙) related to satisfaction.“ It is the dialogue between these two brain areas that helps maintain motivation, improve learning, and consolidate (巩固) memories, even over time,” explained Aberg.