【推荐1】Imagine a world where you move around in front of a personal computer in your own sound space. You listen to your favorite songs, play loud computer games or watch a movie—all without other people hearing the sound. That is the possibility presented by “sound beaming,” a new technology from Noveto Systems, an Israeli company.

On Friday, the company presented a desktop device that sends sound directly to a listener without the need for headphones or a special receiver. Noveto Systems gave The Associated Press (AP) a chance to test its Sound Beamer 1.0 before its debut. The AP’s Louise Dixon writes that listening to the device is like something from a science fiction movie. The sound seems so close it feels like it is inside your ears while also in front, above and behind them.

Noveto expects the device will have many uses. Office workers could listen to music or conference calls without others hearing. People could play a game, a movie or music without waking up others in the same room. Because the device does not use headphones, it is possible to hear other sounds in the room clearly.

The device uses a 3-D technology that finds and follows the ear position of the listener. It sends ultrasonic waves to create sound pockets by the user’s ears. Sound can be heard in stereo or 3-D. The 3-D method creates sound on all sides of the listener The demo version of the device included nature videos of birds on a lake, bees flying and a quiet waterway. By changing a setting, the sound can follow a listener around when they move their head. It also is possible to move out sound beam’s path and hear nothing at all.

While the idea of sound beaming is not new, Noveto was the first to launch the technology. Its chief executive officer Christophe Ramstein said a smaller version of the device will be ready for release to consumers next year.

【推荐2】Every woman dreams of receiving a huge, sparkling and priceless diamond. Now scientists have discovered the largest diamond in the universe.

But it’s well beyond the reach of the most lovestruck men — 50 light years to be precise. Space scientists revealed that they had discovered a ten billion trillion trillion carat gem. Measuring 2,500 miles across and weighing five million trillion trillion pounds, the rock was found on Valentine's Day buried in the core of a white dwarf star in the constellation Centaurus.

“It’s the mother of all diamonds,” said Travis Metcalfe, who led the team of researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in America.

“You would need a jeweller’s loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond.” Named Lucy, after the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, the rock has sent a ripple of excitement through the scientific world.

The largest diamond found on earth was the 3,106-carat Cullinan. It was cut into nine major stones, including the 530-carat Star of Africa, now a part of the Crown Jewels. Diamonds were first discovered in India more than 2,800 years ago. The Ancient Romans believed that the stones were splinters of stars that had tumbled to earth.

In Ancient Egypt, diamonds were symbols of eternity and were used in funeral rites. In the Middle Ages, men wore them to symbolize their courage and virility. The tradition of giving them as love tokens dates from 1477, when Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave a diamond ring to Mary of Burgundy.

【推荐3】Jac Grimes plays Santa in Greensboro, North Carolina. He gave up home visits which make up about a third of his business. He did it not just for his own health, but to prevent passing the virus from one family to the next. At a farmer's market where he works every year, Grimes dresses up as Santa and sits in a parking area. He talks to children who remain inside their cars.

The virus has many Santas and parents turning to online visits. Those visits have led many Santas to turn to their children and others for help in learning new computer skills. "It has been a challenge （挑战），" said Christopher Saunders, a Santa performer in Tool, a small town near Dallas, Texas. But Saunders and others say that instead of in-person visits, online visits are good, if imperfect.

Even Santas with the best jobs are hurt. Howard Graham has played Santa for eight years at New York's Radio City Music Hall. The place is known for its famous Christmas show with the Rockettes, a dance group. This year, he is making online visits and working five days with a historic railroad in Pennsylvania. “I love what I do... bringing them （children） a little bit of smile and hope," said Graham.

Brad Six first played Santa 35 years ago. He recently sat on Santa's chair for three hours at a shop in Miami. As families sat in front of a glass barrier（屏障）for photos, Six turned his head so that his face protection did not reflect （反射）the camera's light. He happily waved at children around the barrier so they could tell him their wish lists-from a distance about 1.8 meters away.

Six said the situation was a little easier physically on Santa's back because he didn't have to pick anybody up, but it was not as enjoyable because Santa didn't get the interaction （互动）he normally gets. This was definitely different, but the kids were excited and that was what mattered.

【推荐1】What if “looking your age” refers not to your face, but to your chest? Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have developed an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) model that uses chest radiographs (胸片) to accurately estimate a patient’s chronological (按时间计算的) age. More importantly, when there is a difference, it can signal a correlation with chronic (慢性) disease.

The research team, led by graduate student Yasuhito Mitsuyama and Dr. Daiju Ueda from the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at the Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka Metropolitan University, first constructed a deep learning-based AI model to estimate age from chest radiographs of healthy individuals. They then applied the model to radiographs of patients with known diseases to analyze the relationship between AI-estimated age and each disease. Given that AI trained on a single dataset is easy to overfitting (过度拟合), the researchers collected data from multiple institutions.

For the development, training, internal and external testing of the AI model for age estimation, a total of 67,099 chest radiographs were obtained between 2008 and 2021 from 36,051 healthy individuals who underwent health check-ups at three facilities. The developed model showed a correlation coefficient (系数) of 0.95 between the AI-estimated age and chronological age. Generally, a correlation coefficient of 0.9 or higher is considered to be very strong.

To confirm the usefulness of AI-estimated age using chest radiographs as a bio-marker (生物指标), an additional 34,197 chest radiographs were gathered from 34,197 patients with known diseases from two other institutions. The results revealed that the difference between AI-estimated age and the patient’s chronological age was positively correlated with a variety of chronic diseases, like high blood pressure. In other words, the higher the AI-estimated age compared to the chronological age, the more likely individuals were to have these diseases.

“Chronological age is one of the most critical factors in medicine,” stated Mitsuyama. “Our results suggest that chest radiography-based apparent age may accurately reflect health conditions beyond chronological age. We aim to further develop this research and apply it to estimate the severity of chronic diseases, to predict life expectancy, and to forecast possible surgical complications.”

【推荐3】A robot called Bina48 has successfully taken a course in the philosophy of love at Notre Dame de Namur University (NDNU), in California. According to course instructor William Barry associate professor at NDNU.

Bina48 is the world’s first socially advanced robot to complete a college course, an achievement he described as “remarkable.” The robot took part in class discussions, gave a presentation with a student partner and participated in a debate with students from another institution.

Before becoming a student, Bina48 spearedasa guest speaks in Barry’s classes for several years. One day when addressing in Barry’s class, Bina48 expressed a desire to go to college, a desire that Barry and his students enthusiastically supported. Rather than enroll Bina48 in his Robot Ethics: Philosophy of Emerging Technologies course, Barry suggested that Bina48 should take his course Philosophy of Love instead. Love is a concept Bina48 doesn’t understand, said Barry. Therefore the challenge would be for Barry and his students to teach Bina48 what love is.

“Some interesting things happened in the class,” said Barry. He said that his students thought it would be straightforward to teach Bina48 about love, which, after all, is “fairly simple — it’s a feeling,” said Barry. But the reality was different. Bina48 ended up learning “31 different versions of love,” said Barry, highlighting some of the challenges humans may face when working with artificial intelligence in future. Bina48 participated in class discussions via Skype and also took part in a class debate about love and conflict with students from West Point. Bina48’s contribution to the debate was filmed and posted on YouTube. It was judged that Bina48 and NDNU classmates were the winners of this debate.

In the next decade, Barry hopes Bina48 might become complex enough to teach a class, though he says he foresees robots being used to better the teaching and learning experience, rather than replacing instructors completely.