1 . The specific cultural values of a country may determine whether concern about environmental issues actually leads individuals to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors, according to research published in Psychological Science.

Kimin Eom, a psychological scientist of the University of California, Santa Barbara, was inspired to investigate the links between culture, environmental concern, and environmental action after noticing that both public discussion and academic research on environmental behavior typically focus on people from Western countries. It is worth noticing because Western countries tend to have cultural values that prioritize individuals’ own attitudes and beliefs and encourage expression of them.

“The theory seemed to be that once individuals are led to believe in the urgency of environmental issues and have stronger concerns about sustainability (持续性), they will change and act to address the issues,” explains Eom. But this relationship might not hold for individuals living in more collectivistic (集体主义的) societies, which place more emphasis on social harmony and uniformity than on self-expression, Eom and his team assumed.

To examine what drives environmental action in individualistic and collectivistic cultures, the researchers conducted a study with participants from the United States (an individualistic culture) and Japan (a collectivistic culture). They found environmental concern was closely connected with environmental behavior — in this case, choosing environmentally friendly products — but only among American participants. On the other hand, believing that a large percentage of people engage in environmentally friendly behaviors was associated with making eco-friendly choices among Japanese participants, but not American participants.

The findings suggest that personal concerns are more likely to motivate people to take environmental action if they live in individualistic countries, while social norms (准则) are more likely to drive people to engage in environmentally friendly behavior if they live in collectivistic countries.

“Getting citizens actively engaged is critical to addressing urgent social challenges, such as climate change,” says Eom. “Our research suggests that scientists, policymakers, and activists need to understand how culture shapes the psychological factors of action to develop policies, campaigns, and interventions (干预) that address important social issues.”

2 . An elephant was rescued in southern India after falling into a well. It ______ more than 12 hours, but the elephant in Tamil Nadu has been rescued after plunging into a well estimated at ______ 50-feet deep.

The elephant had ______ into the village of Dharmapuri from a nearby forest when it fell into the well. The well did not have a ______ and had been hidden by bushes.

Locals from the village alerted authorities about the ______ animal early on Thursday. They dropped banana leaves down the well for the elephant to ______, as rescuers worked throughout the night to ______ it.

Forest officials brought in a crane (吊车) to ______ the elephant. Footage of the rescue showed the elephant strapped in (系住) by belts and hanging upside down as the crane lifted it to ______. Doctors helped rescuers sedate (给……服镇静剂) the animal after it ______ pipes they were using to pump water out of the well.

The area where the rescue happened has had some ______ saving trapped elephants. Two other elephants have fallen down wells in the past year. ______ wells and ditches have caused a ______ to the animals. The animals need ______ land to survive as they look for food and water.

Open wells and ditches (壕沟) in elephant migratory ______ are huge problems for these animals. Since they are long ______ creatures, they migrate to long distances for food and water.

Least we can do is ______ such wells or keep safety wall. Imagine it was a 50 feet deep well. Authorities ______ the elephant for roughly three hours after the rescue. It was found to be ______ and active.

______ are also given to the elephant for her will.

3 . The ability of music to evoke (唤起) specific, often powerful feelings is no secret to anyone who has listened to Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 5”, Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child”, the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated”, Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” or any of the other countless compositions that have found their way onto Western playlists in the past few centuries.

The emotional effects of music are the point, of course. They are also the subject of a fast-growing field of research around the world in which scientists are exploring the nature of the many “subjective experiences”—such as joy, sadness, anxiety and calmness—that music evokes.

In a recent set of experiments, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and their colleagues sought to determine if the feelings that people experience when listening to music “show evidence of universality”. They compared and analyzed how more than 2,800 U.S. and Chinese study participants responded to 2,168 (mostly Western) samples of instrumental music. The team identified 13 distinct and very specific feelings that the Chinese and U.S. subjects shared when listening to music, despite their cultural differences.

The music used in the research, described in the paper as “the richest set of Western music samples ever studied,” included classical, pop, rock, indie, hip-hop, R&B, country, film soundtracks, and more. An additional 189 sample of traditional Chinese music was also used. In all, the researchers gathered 375,230 judgments of the samples from the study participants.

In the first experiment, subjects listened to Western music samples (each of which was just five seconds long) and reported on the specific feelings they evoked, choosing responses from a list of 28 “categories of subjective experience” provided by the researchers. Terms on the list included “victorious/heroic”, “sad/depressing”, “joyful/cheerful”, “awe-inspiring/amazing” and “dreamy”. The team then used data-driven statistical modeling to identify the 13 shared experiences. The second experiment, which included the Chinese music, involved broad evaluations of the samples by participants—such as whether the subjects liked or disliked them or found them exciting or not. A central finding of the study, the researchers write, is that specific feelings “drive the experience of music” more than the broader features.

5 . Traditionally, the number of meaningful social relationships one can maintain is around 150. This concept finds its roots in the natural development of the human brain. However, in the digital age, where our social connections extend far beyond the geographical boundaries (界限), we easily create more connections with the help of the rising online platforms. Then, a question arises: Does the digital age rewrite the rules of social connection?

A study published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking explored the effect of social media usage on the size of social circles and the closeness of relationships. The researchers found that more time spent on social media made for a larger number of online “friends,” but not a larger number of offline friends. Further, the findings were not linked to feelings of closeness towards online or offline friends.

Another study from the European Journal of Information Systems studied the link between social media usage and “social overload” — the feeling that too much of the energy for socializing is being used up by online relationships. The authors found that social media usage directly contributed to the experience of social overload, related to digital tiredness and dissatisfaction with social media.

With social media platforms rising, one’s ability to connect with people challenges the traditional concept. The brain, used to manage a limited number of relationships, now fights against the difficulties of dealing with a large number of digital connections, leading to a less attention and feeling investment (投入) in a relationship. And the online shallow connections can not develop meaningful, lasting relationships that stand the test of digital distance.

Therefore, in the digital age’s social whirlwind, instead of drowning (淹没) in a sea of weak interaction (互动), choose to engage in meaningful conversations and focus on the handful of relationships that truly fit your heart. Hug the beauty of face-to-face connections, allowing the richness of human interaction to flower beyond the digital world. By doing so, we create digital and physical spaces that truly improve our well-being.

7 . Imagine you need milk, so you go to the grocery store to pick some up, only to find there are dozens of options. These days, you have to make a decision on not only the percentage of fat you want, but also what source you want your milk to be coming from: cows, soybeans... You have no idea what milk to pick. There are so many choices that you are confused.

This phenomenon is known as the paradox (悖论) of choice and it is becoming a concern in the modern world, where more and more options are becoming easily available to us. While we might believe that being presented with multiple options actually makes it easier to choose one that we are happy with, and thus increases consumer satisfaction, having too many options actually requires more effort to make a decision and can leave us feeling unsatisfied with our choice.

The idea was popularized by American psychologist Barry Schwartz when he published his book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. Schwartz, who has long studied the ways in which economics and psychology intersect (交叉), became interested in seeing the way that choices were affecting the happiness of citizens in Western societies. He identified that the range of choices that we have available to us these days is far greater than that people had in the past; however, consumer satisfaction has not increased as much as traditional economics theories might expect.

Schwartz identified that the paradox of choice carries the most consequence for people that are maximizers. Maximizers, unlike satisficers, are concerned with making the best choice instead of simply making a choice that they are happy with. When there are many options available to maximizers, it becomes harder for them to determine which is the best, which can cause them to feel a great deal of regret after they have made a choice.

Instead of believing that freedom of choice is unlimited, Schwartz advocates that the role of psychology and behavioral economics should be to find the kind of limitations on freedom that can lead to the greatest level of happiness within society.

9 . While Huawei’s official website does not call Mate 60 Pro a 5G smartphone, the phone’s wideband capabilities are on par with other 5G smartphones, raising a related question: As a leader in 5G technology, has Huawei managed to develop a 5G smartphone on its own?

The answer is not simple. Huawei, as a pioneer in global 5G communication equipment, has played a leading role in the commercialization of 5G technology, with its strong system design and fields such as baseband chips (基带芯片), baseband processors and 5G modems.

However, basebands and modems are not the only aspects that define 5G wireless communication. The stability and high-quality signals of a 5G smartphone also depend on other critical components such as RF transceivers (射频收发器) and RF front ends and antennas (天线) . These components are largely dominated by four US high-tech giants—Qualcomm, Avago Technologies, Ansem and Qorvo—which account for a surprising global market share.

Huawei has faced significant challenges in getting critical components because of the sanctions imposed by the United States which are primarily responsible for the inability of the Chinese company to launch 5G smartphones in the past three years. However, Mate 60 Pro, despite not being labeled a 5G device, exhibits mobile network speeds comparable to Apple’s latest 5G-enabled devices, offering a stable communication experience. This suggests Huawei has, over the past three years, overcome the 5G development and production limits due to the US sanctions by cooperating with domestic partners, and establishing an independent and controllable stable supply chain.

Considering that Huawei has not explicitly marketed this device as a 5G smartphone, it is possible that it is yet to fully overcome some key core technological and componential shortcomings. For the time being, we can consider Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro as 4.99G. But when combined with the satellite communication capabilities of Mate 60 Pro, it is clear Huawei has been trying to find more advanced wireless communication solutions for smartphones and making significant progress in this attempt. This should be recognized as a remarkable endeavor, even a breakthrough.