【推荐1】For much of my career, I have been a bit of a pioneer as a woman working in traditionally male operational roles.     1    And by 2001 I was working at headquarters（总部）as the Director of Customer Service Planning.

    2     However, that changed halfway on my way to work, when I learned an airplane had struck the World Trade Center. As soon as I arrived, I went to our Emergency Crisis Center, where great effort was made to get in touch with and land all of our flights.

I was not a big leader in the company, but I felt I had to make good use of my knowledge and experience.     3    Then I helped to send teams of co-workers to help the family members of Flights 93 and 175, the two American flights involved in the attacks. For most of the next week I remained at the Crisis Center， taking a nap（打个盹）when I could.

    4     I remained calm and went to work with colleagues to solve problems. With the nation and our airline under attack, we came together as a team. Nothing mattered but our passengers and their families， our colleagues coping with their own grief（悲伤）. I was communicating with airport leaders, and working with government departments.

The United States has gone through a lot of difficulties since then. And when things get tough, I turn up. When Hurricane Sandy was about to hit the East Coast, I was head of the Network Operations Center. My husband, seeing me off at the door on yet another Sunday, just smiled.     5    Before leaving, I turned to him and said, "I live for this."

【推荐2】I always dreamed of studying abroad, to learn at a world-class university while further exploring the grounds on which these nations achieved new milestones of development with each passing day.

To study abroad after my graduation, I could not stop seeking my dream. To take the first step, I did some brainstorming and explored opportunities on the Internet and finally decided to go for China. There were a number of reasons behind it - its advanced education system and thousands of centuries of rich culture inspired me to study there. The primary one was my curiosity how a nation has left many nations behind in a short time at its fast pace of development.

So just like that, I applied, along with some of my friends, for a master's degree program at Communication University of China. I was the only one who got selected in the said program and in addition, the Chinese Scholarship Council sponsored all of my expenses. This good news was welcomed by my family.

This is my seventh month in Beijing. In my experience so far, one thing that appeared to be missing was the internship (实习)which I tried to find because I want to work here after completion of my studies. After some struggles I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to work as an intern with the Center for China and Globalization (CCG). It' s very exciting to work on their team as a researcher. Now I can proudly say that my decision to choose China as a study destination was the best decision I have ever made.

【推荐1】Brain disease research could be sped up using a smartphone-controlled “plug-and-play” neural implant (神经植入管) invented by scientists from the USA and South Korea.

The researchers, who come primarily from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the University of Washington, designed the soft device to deliver drugs or coloured lights directly to targeted neurons (神经元), with the goal of accelerating discovery about addiction, depression and pain. The LEDs involved are smaller than a grain of salt, and the drugs are delivered by tiny channels with the thickness of a human hair.

For researchers, the main advantage of the new wireless implant is ease of use. The inventors describe its replaceable drug tube as “lego-like” and “plug-and-lay”, while set-up happens over an “elegant, simple” smartphone interface (界面).

For the subjects, in current testing — the small, soft device won’t impede movement and is safer to use over time.

Current devices used in this field are rigid, so they cause damages in soft brain tissue over time. With the new devices, scientists can now monitor one area of the brain over much longer periods, and with the test subjects moving freely.

“It allows us to better analyze the neural basis of behavior in various ways,” said Michael Bruchas, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine who heads the Bruchas Lab. “We are also eager to use the device to help us develop new treatments for pain, addiction and emotional disorders.”

The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, created the implant for laboratory use with animals but would like to develop the technology for clinical applications in the future, meaning one day a similar device could be tested on humans.

Their invention comes after three years of cooperation between the Jeong group at KAIST in Daejeon and the Bruchas Lab in Seattle. The former specializes in soft electronics for wearable and implantable devices, while the latter is a research laboratory focusing on stress, depression, addiction, pain and other diseases.

【推荐2】Roughly 2,000 years ago, Mount Vesuvius erupted, destroying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In 1752, workers digging in Herculaneum uncovered a home that had belonged to a rich person. Inside, workers discovered over 600 scrolls (卷轴) , most of which were made from papyrus — a paper-like material.

The heat from the volcano had burned the scrolls so much that they looked like chunks of charcoal (木炭块) . These scrolls were so fragile that just touching them could make them fall apart. So scientists have been looking for ways to read the scrolls without opening them. Brent Seales, a computer scientist at Kentucky University, has been working on this for over 20 years.

Dr. Seales has developed a method of using a CT scanner to take 3D X-ray images of a papyrus scroll. Then he uses a computer program to "unroll" the scroll, and gets pictures of what it looks like on the inside. In 2016, his team used this method to read a burned scroll found near the Dead Sea. But the ink in the scrolls from Herculaneum was made from charcoal and water and didn't show up well in CT scans. So he decided to train an AI program, hoping to find the writing on the scrolls by looking for places where the papyrus was rougher.

Though Dr. Seales was making progress, it was slow going. Then he encountered two businessmen, who had the idea of creating a contest for decoding (破译) the scrolls. The contest, called the Vesuvius Challenge, was announced in March. About 1,500 people have participated in the contest and they're sharing information as they make progress. In August, Casey Handmer found a pattern that revealed where the ink had been on the scrolls.

Following Mr. Handmer's lead, Luke Farritor, a 21-year-old student at Nebraska University, created an AI program that found a whole word: “”, or “porphyras” which means “purple”. This was the first word ever read from these ancient scrolls. For his efforts, Mr. Handmer won $10,000.

“Now it is time to explore these words,” Dr. Seales says.

【推荐1】The “Father of Science Fiction,” Jules Verne, lived in the era of steamships and telegraphs, but was able to imagine technologies that wouldn’t be invented for over a century.

Verne isn’t the only science fiction writer to envision inventions and cultural changes long before they became a part of everyday life. Aldous Huxley predicted antidepressants in his novel Brave New World, published in 1932. John Brunner predicted electric cars in his book, Stand on Zanzibar, published in 1968.

But really, reading up on Verne’s novels made me wonder how he was able to predict so much and write so technically when he wasn’t a trained scientist, physicist or engineer. How did he do it?

Like a lot of people, Verne’s parents had their own ideas about his career. They had their hearts set on Verne becoming a lawyer. He knew he wanted to be a writer, but played along and went to school to become a lawyer like his father.

Really, Verne was mostly pretending to study law in Paris while holing up in the National Library of France and poring over (钻研) articles on discoveries in geology and science. Eventually, he came clean with his family that he wanted to write in a new genre (风格) that combined travel and science.

While he studied scientific journals and let all of the age’s cutting-edge discoveries feed the fires of his imagination, Verne surrounded himself with people who could be useful for his writing.

His brother was a naval officer, and Verne would often ask him to double-check what he had written about ships and maritime travel. He also asked his cousin, a math professor, to look at his equations (等式) and a mining engineer friend to help him with physics, according to author Walter James Miller, who wrote annotations (评注) to Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

“He predicted a lot of things that have happened, but that’s because he was reading a lot and talking with people who knew what was going on in the world around him, so why should we be surprised?” according to Rosalind Williams, a historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “It wasn’t magic. He was just paying attention to things,” she said.

【推荐2】Edward O. Wilson, known as “ant man”, was born on June 10, 1929, in Birmingham, Alabama. His parents divorced when he was young, and he was moved frequently throughout his childhood. Wilson grew up exploring the forests and wildlife. One of these adventures left him partly blind, but they also set off his lifelong fascination with ants and their social structures.

Wilson earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Alabama. In 1955, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard and worked there until retirement.

Wilson’s early study of ants led to his first major discovery in 1959: how ants communicate through the release of chemical signals.

Later, in 1990, Wilson and German biologist Bert Hölldobler published their Pulitzer-winning The Ants. It detailed the insects’ social structure that was both valued by scholars and accessible to general readers.

Another of Wilson’s major works started in the early 1960s when he teamed up with Robert MacArthur. The pair published The Theory of Island Biogeography, where they sought to explain why different places have different numbers of species.

What many consider to be Wilson’s most important contributions to evolutionary biology came in 1975 when he published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. The work explored the genetic roots of animal behavior and argued that genes shaped human behavior. Wilson faced accusations for these ideas but his work finally largely proved true. In 1978, his ideas on the role biology plays in human culture peaked in On Human Nature, which won him a Pulitzer in 1979.

Wilson published more than 400 scientific papers and 20 books. These achievements offered him a type of superstar status, but friends and colleagues say the polite Southerner remained down to earth. “Professor Wilson really listened and engaged with whomever he was interacting with,” said Corrie S. Moreau, who was one of Wilson’s final advisees.

【推荐3】For the past five years, Paula Smith, a historian of science, has devoted herself to re-creating long-forgotten techniques. While doing research for her new book, she came across a 16th-century French manuscript（手稿）consisting of nearly 1,000 sets of instructions, covering subjects from tool making to finding the best sand.

The author's intention remains as mysterious（神秘）as his name; he may have been simply taking notes for his own records. But Smith was struck mainly by the fact that she didn't truly grasp any of the skills the author described. "You simply can't get an understanding of that handwork by reading about it," she says.

Though Smith did get her hands on the best sand, doing things the old-fashioned way isn't just about playing around with French mud. Reconstructing the work of the craftsmen（工匠）who lived centuries ago can reveal how they viewed the world, what objects filled their homes, and what went on in the workshops that produced them. It can even help solve present-day problems: In 2015, scientists discovered that a 10th-century English medicine for eve problems could kill a drug-resistant virus.

The work has also brought insights for museums, Smith says. One must know how an object was made in order to preserve it. What's more, reconstructions might be the only way to know what treasures looked like before time wore them down. Scholars have seen this idea in practice with ancient Greek and Roman statues. These sculptures were painted a rainbow of striking colours. We can't appreciate these kinds of details without seeing works of art as they originally appeared-something Smith believes you can do only when you have a road map.

Smith has put the manuscript's ideas into practice. Her final goal is to link the worlds of art and science back together: She believes that bringing the old recipes to life can help develop a kind of learning that highlights experimentation, teamwork, and problem solving.

Back when science—then called “the new philosophy”—took shape, academics looked to craftsmen for help in understanding the natural world. Microscopes and telescopes were invented by way of artistic tinkering（修补）, as craftsmen experimented with glass to better bend light.

If we can rediscover the values of hands-on experience and craftwork, Smith says, we can marry the best of our modern insights with the handiness of our ancestors.