【推荐1】Desperately ill and seeking a miracle, David Bennett Sr. took the last bet on Jan. 7. when be became the first human to be successfully transplanted with the heart of a pig. “It creates the beat; it creates the pressure; it is his heart,” declared Bartley Griffith, director of the surgical team that performed the operation at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Bennett, 57, held on through 60 tomorrows, far longer than any previous patient who’d received a heart from another species. His remarkable run offered new hope that such procedures, known as xenotransplantation (异种移植), could help relieve the shortage of replacement organs, saving thousands of lives each year.

The earliest attempts at xenotransplantation of organs, involving kidneys from rabbits, goats, and other animals, occurred in the early 20th century, decades before the first successful human-to-human transplants. Rejection, which occurs when the recipient’s body system recognizes the donor organ as a foreign object and attacks it, followed within hours or days. Results improved after some special drugs arrived in the 1960s, but most recipients still died after a few weeks. The record for a heart xenotransplant was set in 1983, when an infant named Baby Fae survived for 20 days with an organ from a baboon (狒狒).

In recent years, however, advances in gene editing have opened a new possibility: re-edit some genes in animals to provide user-friendly spare parts. Pigs could be ideal for this purpose, because they’re easy to raise and reach adult human size in months. Some biotech companies. including Revivicor, are investing heavily in the field. The donor pig was offered by Revivicor from a line of animals in which 10 genes had been re-edited to improve the heart’s condition. Beyond that, the pig was raised in isolation and tested regularly for viruses that could infect humans or damage the organ itself.

This medical breakthrough provided an alternative for the 20% of patients on the heart transplant waiting list who die while waiting or become too sick to be a good candidate.

【推荐1】A meeting of The Washington Post employees was held on 5 August, 2013. Into the crowded hall entered the chairman Donald E. Graham, and his niece and publisher Katherine Weymouth. The air was thick. The newspaper was to get a new boss! Jeffrey P. Bezos of Amazon.com would buy the daily for $ 250 million in cash.

Both the uncle and the niece took turns in telling the news and answering their questions. Many of the audiences wept because they were unable to accept the news. “The rise of Internet and the change from print to digital technology have created a huge wave of competition for traditional news companies,” said Donald E. Graham.

In 2013, after struggling with the falling revenue(收益) for years, The New York Times(The NYT) sold its The Boston Globe newspaper for $70 million. The NYT bought the paper in 1993 for $1.1 billion. Just twenty years later, the company sold it for a cheaper price.

Nowadays, things seem to be worse than ever. Newspapers are reporting negative growth across US and Europe. Francis Gurry, the 4th Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization said that newspapers would disappear by 2040.

This may cause a lot of problems for media jobs. For example, layoffs(裁员) and salary cuts are very common now. Many of the journalists have already moved to different jobs where their writing and editing skills are of no use. A large number of former journalists work as marketing executives, or property developers. In Canada last year, Sun Media, the largest newspaper chain there, stopped its eight dailies, closing 360 jobs and slashing 500 positions.

The traditional media still send people out to collect stories. However, with the mobile phones today, everybody is a reporter. Therefore, the newspapers are forced to adapt in order to survive. That may be a revolution(革命), but at the cost of newspapers.

【推荐3】In need of some encouragement? Students at West Side Union Grade School in California are providing just that in recorded messages on a free telephone hotline.

Peptoc is an art project created by teachers Asherah Weiss and Jessica Martin of this school. Peptoc is how Martin’s son, a first-grader at the school, spelled “pep talk”, which refers to a speech attempting to input enthusiasm and determination in a team.

The project consists of student-made motivational flyers (海报), and a hotline with pre-recorded pep talks and life advice from kids aged 5 — 12.

Dial 707-998-8410 and you will be greeted with the following message: “If you’re feeling mad, depressed or nervous, press one. If you need words of encouragement and life advice, press two. If you need a pep talk from kindergarteners, press three. If you need to hear kids laughing with delight, press four.”

Since its launch last month, the hotline has been receiving up to 9,000 calls per hour. Martin said she had signed up for the cheapest hotline provider she could find, thinking the kids would be excited to hear 100 people had called in a month. “And then two days later, we’re getting 500 an hour, and now we’re getting 9,000 an hour.”

Patients at Johns Hopkins Medical Center had been regularly calling the hotline. Rima Meechan, the school’s principal, heard from a woman with cancer who called during her treatment. Weiss said she had seen the school’s office manager in tears on the phone with the administrator of an elder care facility, where most patients are over 90 years old. The administrator was calling to thank all of the kids, because he played it for everyone who was part of that facility, and he said, “I haven’t heard laughter like that from them in years.”

Weiss and Martin said it’s more than just the messages. “Adults support children, but we don’t really celebrate how much they support us,” Martin said, “And to be able to be consoled by them gives us great hope that maybe we’re all going to be okay.”

【推荐1】The Chinese Taipei delegation participating in the 19th Asian Games said that they were deeply touched by the warmth and kindness of local people, which made them feel “at home”.

In the women’s semi-final of kabaddi, Chinese Taipei beat Iran, securing a score of 35 to 24 to get a spot in the final. This achievement went beyond its previous best record of a bronze medal at the 2018 Asian Games.

In a post-match interview, Feng Hsiu-chen of Chinese Taipei’s kabaddi women’s team said that the exciting cheers from the audience left her with “a feeling of being at home”. “While competing, I could hear the cheers and calls of support from the stands,” Feng said. “Hearing the crowd encouraged me to persevere and never give up during the match.”

Another kabaddi athlete, Hu Yu-chen, expressed deep gratitude for the enthusiastic local fans cheering them on. “Having the crowd firmly in our corner provided enormous motivation,” Hu said, adding that her team was encouraged by the lively encouragement throughout the match.

Chinese Taipei gymnast Lee Chih-kai, who took gold in the men’s pommel horse, expressed his gratitude for the support. “I want to extend my heartfelt thanks for the audience’s continued cheering.”

Chinese Taipei table tennis player Chen Szu-Yu, who competed in a women’s doubles match, told the journalist that the local stadium is more spacious than where she had played before, allowing for a larger number of audience. The enthusiastic crowd created a really heated atmosphere, Chen said.

Hsiao Shu-feng, a sports researcher with the Chinese Taipei delegation, said that everyone she encountered, from volunteers to staff members and local residents, displayed a remarkable politeness. “Their warmth left a lasting impression on me,” Hsiao said.

Sun Jie, a 40-year-old science teacher from Xiaoshan, Zhejiang province, said he has been a long-time fan of Chinese Taipei’s kabaddi due to its past achievements in this sport and hoped “They can feel the support of their compatriots (同胞) for them.”

【推荐3】Newly released images of the Sun taken by the pace-based NASA High-resolution Coronal Imager telescope(高分辨率日冕成像仪望远镜) are the highest-resolution pictures of our star ever taken.

According to Scientists from the University of Central Lancashire and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, these pictures reveal that the sun's atmosphere is much more complex than first thought. Parts of the Sun's atmosphere, thought to be dark or mostly empty, are in fact filled with strands(缕)of hot electrified gases 311 miles wide. Each of those strands are up to 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, according to researchers. What exactly created these strands remains unclear, although it will now become a focus for researchers.

NASA's Hi-C telescope can pick out structures in the Sun's atmosphere as small as 43 miles in size---or about 0.01 per cent of the total size of the star. It was able to capture the incredibly tiny magnetic threads in the "dark areas". The Hi-C telescope is a unique astronomical telescope carried into space on a rocket flight. The telescope launches to the edge of space where it then captures images of the star every second before returning to Earth after five minutes.

Dr. Amy Winebarger, Hi-C principal investigator, stated: "These new Hi-C images give us a remarkable insight into the Sun's atmosphere. Along with ongoing missions, this fleet of space-based instrument in the near future will reveal the Sun's dynamic outer layer in a completely new light.

Scientists will debate why the strands are formed and how their presence helps us understand the eruption of solar flares (太阳耀斑) and solar storms. Those are events from the Sun that could directly affect life on Earth.

Tom Williams, a researcher who worked on the Hi-C data, said the images would help provide a greater understanding of how the Earth and Sun related to each other. “This is a fascinating discovery that could better inform our understanding of the flow of energy through the layers of the Sun and eventually down to Earth itself. This is so important if we are to model and predict the behavior of our life-giving star.” he said.