【推荐3】As COVID-19 spread around the globe this spring, people sought comfort in music. That they have used music to connect, comfort, and lift spirits during these unsettling times comes as no surprise to David Silbersweig, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry (精神病学) at Brigham and his partner, Haddad.

Silbersweig and Haddad are both musicians with lasting interests in how music excites the brain — and how it can be used to improve health. They found when people are dealing with very stressful situations, music is universally accepted as something helpful during these periods.

Silbersweig explained that the process by which they recognize a series of sounds as music is incredibly complex. It starts with sound waves entering the ear, striking the eardrum, and causing vibrations (振动) that are transformed into electric signals. These signals travel to the brainstem, then they spread to activate different parts of the brain. It is noteworthy that different parts of the brain are activated, depending on the type of music and whether we are listening, playing, learning, or composing music.

Music can change brain structure and function, both after being heard immediately and repeatedly, according to the research. These changes in brain connectivity suggest opportunities to activate certain regions to promote recovery. Silbersweig and Haddad look forward to using cutting-edge brain research to build on what’s already known about the amazing power of music to help patients. The pair find people with short-term memory loss from Alzheimer’s disease often recognize familiar songs like “Happy Birthday” because they have been stored into their brain’s long-term memory.

Haddad witnessed this response while performing for patients in hospitals. She noted, “There are many patients who are essentially seated, lying down, eyes closed, not able to communicate. But when you play a song that they recognize from their youth, their eyes light up. They’re sitting up and smiling, too. It’s just incredible.”

【推荐1】Lauren Ribordy has several theories as to why women are not regarded as representatives in the field of computer science. And the 18-year-old senior at Glenbrook South High School in Illinois is trying her best to change that.

In November, Ribordy competed alongside five undergraduate students (大学本科学生) — all men — from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) as part of a team in the SC14 Student Cluster Competition in New Orleans. It is a computing event that brings students together from all over the world.

Ribordy was the only high school student in that competition, said loan Raicu, an assistant professor at IIT and the coach of Ribordy’s team. In fact, according to the organizers of the event, she was the only female high school student to ever compete in the two-day event.

Ribordy and the five IIT students competed on eight computers. They put together advanced hardware to run a set of applications using a limited amount of power.

Ribordy was tasked with building a device (装置) that would show how much power the team was using at any given time. She made the device with LED strips she programmed herself and it took weeks of her time.

“She was bright and smart...and she did very well,” Raicu said.

Ribordy was also the state winner and national runner-up (亚军) for the National Center for Women & Information Technology in computing in her junior year.

Apart from devoting herself to computing, Rihordy was also trying her best to get more women interested in computer science.

“I developed a club specifically for those women interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math),” she said, “Up to now, we have 40 members.”

Ultimately, Ribordy said she and her fellow club members hoped to get students involved with computer science when the students are in middle school.

Both Raicu and Ribordy said a lack of experience with computer science at a young age may be one of the reasons why few women work in the field.

But Ribordy is becoming more and more hopeful. Her sister, Anne Ribordy, who is in the 6th grade, has received computing training in school-something Lauren Ribordy never had in middle school.

【推荐3】Teachers often can fall into the trap of teaching content, paying no attention to children. Many of us have the attitude that “we will put the information out there, and if they don’t get it, they are to blame.”

Several years ago, I had a student named Jeremy in 12th - grade English, in which British literature was taught. I struggled to find ways to make the content interesting. Jeremy didn’t care. Though Jeremy was classified as. gifted, he slept in class every day. I began to get really frustrated. I even began to dislike him.

High school teachers sometimes develop a hands-off attitude. I thought, “OK, Jeremy, if you want to fail my class, fine. I’ve tried everything.” As time went on, I ignored Jeremy. I didn’t ask him questions, or even make eye contact with him.

By accident, I found that Jeremy was capable of much more. One day, I went to the broadcasting classroom to edit a video. On this day, several students were working on an assignment. Then I heard a voice I recognized. I looked up and saw Jeremy was teaching his classmates energetically how to film. My first thought was that Jeremy must have a twin! Suddenly he realized I was sitting in the corner.

Our eyes met. “Mrs. Duff?” he asked with surprise. “You know how to edit video?”

“Yes. I had no idea you were a videographer!” At this, he smiled with pride and explained the project his group was working on. It was clear he had earned his classmates’ respect. And it was suddenly clear to me that I had not really made an effort to know Jeremy at all.

What happened next was amazing. In class, Jeremy stayed awake and completed his work. He passed my class with a B.

What happened? When Jeremy encountered me outside English class, it changed his perspective of me. He realized I wasn’t just some odd lady trying to force him to learn British poetry. Equally important, my perspective about him changed. He wasn’t just the kid who slept in my class.

I’m not proud that I didn’t make a better effort to know Jeremy before the encounter in the broadcast room. I told myself I had tried everything, but I had not stepped outside of my little English world at all.

【推荐1】Workers at the National Galleries of Scotland recently experienced quite a surprise after they X-rayed a painting by Vincent van Gogh. Hidden on the back of the painting Head of a Peasant Woman, which Van Gogh completed in 1885, was a self-portrait (自画像) of the Dutch painter. No one had ever found it.

The hidden self-portrait had been covered by glue and cardboard that had been attached to the back of the painting. “It was absolutely exciting,” Lesley Stevenson, the museum’s worker, said about the discovery. “We weren’t expecting much of the little painting when we performed the scans,” she said. But museum experts quickly changed their expectations when they looked at the X-rays. “We didn’t see much of the peasant woman, but we saw the lead white that Van Gogh used for his face showing up after the X-ray went through the cardboard,” she added.

Van Gogh painted Head of a Peasant Woman as part of a series of works focused on the working-class residents of Nuenen, a small farming community in the southern part of the Netherlands where he lived briefly in the 1880s. The woman in the painting is Gordina de Groot, a farm worker. She wears a white headpiece. In a letter that Van Gogh penned about the series in 1885 to Anton Kerssemakers, a friend, he described his excitement at his working-class subjects. “I’m working with great pleasure these days, for I would rather paint people than paint anything else,” he wrote.

Van Gogh also loved creating self-portraits, producing about 20 paintings of himself by the end of his life while he was living in Paris. Recreating his own image was a cheap way for him to practice portraiture as he didn’t have to spend money hiring models, according to a report.

Art historians at the National Galleries hope that the hidden self-portrait may help us understand the life of the artist. The museum is currently considering how to best remove the unwanted protective materials without harming the painting.

【推荐3】The painter Georgia O’Keeffe was born in Wisconsin in 1887 and grew up on her family’s farm. At seventeen she decided to be an artist and left the farm for schools in Chicago and New York, but she never lost her contact with the land. Like most painters,O’Keeffe painted the things that were most important to her, and nearly all her works are simplified portrayals (描绘) of nature.

O’Keeffe became famous when her paintings were discovered and exhibited in New York by the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, whom she married in 1924. During a visit to New Mexico in 1929, O’Keeffe was so moved by the bleak (荒凉的) landscape and broad skies of the western desert that she began to paint its images. Cows’ skulls and other bleached bones found in the desert figured prominently in her paintings. When her husband died in 1946, she moved to New Mexico permanently and used the horizon lines of the desert, colourful flowers, rocks, barren hills, and the sky as subjects for her paintings. Although O’Keeffe painted her best-known works in the 1920s,1930s and 1940s, she continued to produce tributes to the western desert until her death in 1986.

O’Keeffe is widely considered to have been a pioneering American modernist painter. While most early modern American artists were strongly influenced by European art, O’Keeffe’s position was more independent. She created her own vision and preferred to view her painting as a private effort. Almost from the beginning, her work was more identifiably (可识别地) American than other painters in its special treatment of colour,light,space and natural forms.