The connection between people and plants has long been the subject of scientific research. Recent studies have found positive effects. A study in Youngstown, Ohio, discovered that greener areas of the city experienced less crime(犯罪). In another, workers were shown to be 15% more effective when their workplaces were beautified with houseplants.

The engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) have taken it a step further changing the actual composition(成分) of plants in order to get them to perform differently, even unusual useful things that they do. These include plants that have sensors(传感器) printed onto their leaves to show when they’re short of water and a plant that can discover harmful chemicals in groundwater.

“We’re thinking about how we can engineer plants to replace some of the things that we use every day, “explained Michael Strano, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT.

One of his latest projects has been to make plants glow(发光) in experiments using some common vegetables. Strano’s team found that they could create a weak light for three-and-a-half hours. The light, about one-thousandth of the amount needed to read by, is just a start. The technology, Strano said, could one day be used to light the rooms or even to turn trees into self-powered street lamps.

In the future, the team hopes to develop the technology and invent something that can be sprayed onto plant leaves in a one-off treatment that would last the plant’s lifetime. The engineers are also trying to develop an on and off “switch” where the glow would disappear gradually when daylight appeared.

Lighting accounts for about 7% of the total electricity used up in the US. Since lighting is often far removed from the power source—such as the distance from a power plant to street lamps on a highway far away—a lot of energy is lost during sending.

Glowing plants could shorten this distance and as a result, help save energy.

【推荐2】People have long thought that AI will soon enough take jobs with repetitive labour (重复性劳动), such as truck drivers, cleaners, but cannot copy the creativity only human brains can produce. Truck drivers, retail cashiers and warehouse workers would all lose their jobs to robots, they said, while workers in creative fields like art, entertainment and media would be safe.

Well, an unexpected thing has happened recently: AI has entered the creative class.

In the past few months, AI-based image generators (图像生成器) like DALL-E 2, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion have made it possible for anyone to create unique, hyper-realistic (超现实) images just by typing a few words into a text box. These apps, though new, are already surprisingly popular. DALL-E 2, has more than 1.5 million users generating more than two million images every day, while Midjourney has more than three million members.

It’s still too early to tell whether this new wave of apps will end up costing artists and illustrators their jobs. What seems clear, though, is that these tools are already being put to use in creative industries.

A few months ago, Sarah Drummond, a designer in London started using AI-generated images. Instead of spending hours creating sketches by hand, Ms. Drummond, now types what she wants into DALL-E 2 or Midjourney.

“All of a sudden, I can take like 15 seconds and go, ‘Woman at restaurant, black-and-white sketch,’ and get something back that’s really professional (专业的),” she said.

Ms. Drummond added that AI image generators had limitations. They aren’t good at more difficult sketches, for example, or creating different images with the same character. And like the other creative artists, she said she didn’t think AI designers would replace human illustrators completely.

“Would I use it for final output? No. I would hire someone to fully make what we wanted to realize,” she said. “But the throwaway work that you do when you’re any kind of designer, whether it’s visual, architectural, urban planner—you’re sketching, sketching sketching. And so this is a sketch tool.”

【推荐3】With all the traditional media channels, including newspapers, magazines and television shows, shrinking (缩水), advertisers are worrying about how they can reach customers. Banner (横幅) ads for our devices are ugly and disturbing. To overcome various digital problems, the ad industry has been serving up a sneaky solution-making ads look less like ads and more like the articles, videos and posts.

This trend, called native advertising, has taken over the Internet; even the websites such as www.nytimes.com and Wall-Street.com are using it. On Facebook and Twitter, one in ten items is an ad; only the small subtitle “Sponsored (赞助的)” appearing in light grey type tells you which posts are ads.

Won’t these ads made to look like reported articles mislead people? Sometimes, yes. A study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau found that only 41 percent of general news readers could tell such ads from real news stories. And it’s getting worse. Advertisers worry that the “Sponsored” label discourages readers from clicking, so some websites are makíng the labels smaller and less noticeable. Sometimes the labels disappear entirely.

At a recent talk about the difficulty of advertising in the new, small-screen world, I heard an ad manager tell an impressive story. She had gotten a musical performance-paid for by her soft drink customer-perfectly inserted (插入) into a TV award show, without any moment of blackness before or after. “It looked just like part of the real show!” She said happily.

Look, it is great that native advertising works. But if advertisers truly believe in their material, they should have no problem labeling it as advertising.

For now native ads continue to be a fashion-with no laws governing them and no labeling standards. But that could change-the Federal Trade Commission has begun considering regulations. If the now generation of digital advertisers clean up their act according to the regulations, native ads might become more acceptable.

【推荐3】In some places around the world, the day after Christmas is called Boxing Day. In Britain, Australia, Canada and other places, Boxing Day is a national holiday.

There are several thoughts on how the holiday became known as Boxing Day. The most widely held understanding of the origins (起源) of Boxing Day comes from a tradition among rich people. They would give a “Christmas Box” to their servants and other workers. The box would have money and gifts. The AP story says the start of Boxing Day may even date back to the times of taken up by churches. Churches would put boxes outside their doors to collect money for the poor.

Boxing Day is still celebrated today in many countries around the world. However, the United States is not one of them. But the Christmas holiday, which takes place the day before, is often filled with boxes. Boxes are useful for storing all kinds of things—especially gifts! It is fun to shake a gift box and try to guess what is inside. But an empty box can be just as much fun. Just ask any child… or any cat, for that matter.

A child can enjoy the box their gift came in as much as, if not more than, the gift itself. An empty box can lead to imaginative play. It can become anything! It can be a secret house in the forest or a boat on the open sea. That’s because children are masters at “thinking outside the box”. Someone who thinks outside the box is not controlled by rules or tradition. Instead, he or she always thinks about ideas and considers solutions that are creative and unusual.

These are something about Boxing Day. Though plenty of families and businesses still celebrate Boxing Day by helping the less lucky, Boxing Day is now also celebrated with friends and family.

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