1 . There is growing interest in East Japan Railway Co. ltd, one of the six companies, created out of the privatized national railway system. In an industry lacking exciting growth ________, its plan to use real-estate assets in and around train stations ________ is drawing interest.

In a plan called “Station Renaissance” that it ________ in November, JR East said that it would ________ using its commercial spaces for shops and restaurants, extending them to ________ more suitable for the information age. It wants train stations as pick-up ________ for such goods as books, flowers and groceries ________ over the Inter. In a country where city ________ depend heavily on trains ________ commuting, about 16 million people a day go to its train stations anyway, the company ________. So, picking up commodities at train stations ________ consumers extra travel and missed home deliveries. JR East already has been using its station ________ stores for this purpose, but it plans to create ________ spaces for the delivery of Inter goods.

The company also plans to introduce ________ cards—known in Japan as IC cards because they use integrated circuit for ________ information ________ train tickets and muter passes ________ the magic ones used today, integrating them into a/an ________ pass. This will save the company money, because ________ for IC cards are much less expensive than magic systems. Increased use of IC cards should also ________ the space needed for ticket vending.

2 . The Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said that you can’t step into the same river twice, for you aren’t the same person at each visit and the water is ever flowing. It is a powerful way to show the reality that everything is always changing. Yet so many people have unpleasant relationships with change. We resist it or attempt to control it, the result of which is almost always some combination of stress, anxiety, and burnout. It doesn’t have to be that way.

No doubt, change can, and often does, hurt; but with the right mindset, it can also be a force for growth. A concept called allostasis can help. Developed in the late 1980s by neuroscientist Peter Sterling and biologist Joseph Eyer, allostasis is based on the idea that rather than being rigid, our healthy baseline is a moving target. Allostasis is defined as “stability through change”—the way to stay stable through the process of change is by changing.

From neuroscience to pain science and psychology, allostasis has become the dominant model for understanding change in the scientific community. The brain is at its best when it is constantly rewiring itself and making new connections. Overcoming pain is not about resistance or trying to get back to where you were but about balancing acceptance with problem-solving and moving forward to normal.

The time to start practicing is now. Over the past few years, the river of change has been flowing, and it shows no signs of letting up. Our ability to work with these changes is directly related to our life satisfaction. Given all this, simply creating a stable expectancy around change goes a long way. So does realizing that the allostasis mindset doesn’t ask us to do nothing. Rather, it asks us to partake in change by focusing on what we can control and trying to let go of what we can’t. When I catch myself resisting change, in my head I say the following: “This is what is happening right now. I’m doing the best that I can. What, if any, skillful actions can I take?” Do this repeatedly and finally you start to get better at it.

To thrive in our lifetime — and not just survive —we need to transform our relationship with change, leaving behind rigidity and resistance. We are always shaping and being shaped by change, often at the very same time.

3 . Scientists have designed a tiny, shape-shifting “spider-robot” that can passively use its body as it navigates its environment. The robot is a pioneer that could one day perform surgery or hunt for survivors in a disaster zone, its inventors say.

The robot, mCLARI, is 0.8 inch long, weighs less than 0.03 ounces and can scurry at a maximum speed of 2.4 inches per second, according to the research. The tiny robot is the smaller, faster successor to CLARI, which was designed by the same team. It also passively changes its shape in multiple dimensions to fit through gaps.

“In the long term, we believe such robots to be effective at navigating through human bodies and performing automated surgery such as clearing blocks in blood or removing a tumor (肿瘤). Because of the robot’s small size and the ability to shape change, we foresee applications of this technology in the following four major domains of socioeconomic importance.” Study lead author Kaushik Jayaram, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Colorado, told Live Science in an email. These include disaster response, high-value possession inspection, environmental monitoring and precision medicine.

With mCLARI, Jayaram’s team is inching closer to creating robots that can navigate complex environments — just like the organic creatures they’re inspired by. mCLARI robot has four leg modules that can move in two different dimensions. The robot can move in tight spaces by switching between running forward and side-to-side and can adopt multiple poses and rushing speeds. Its legs fasten to its body through passive joints, which enables mCLARI to alter its body shape based on the environment it encounters. For instance, its legs can stretch up to 50% in certain spaces.

As follow-up work, the scientists want to give mCLARI more power and sensing ability. “We are also excited about understanding the effect of shape change on enhancing motion ability,” Jayaram said.

5 . People solve some new problems readily without any special training or practice by comparing them to familiar problems and extending the solutions to the new problems. That process, known as analogical reasoning (类比推理), has long been thought to be an ability only humans have. But now people might have to make room for a new kid on the block.

Psychologists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) claim that, astonishingly, the artificial intelligence (AI) language model GPT-3 performs about as well as college undergraduates when asked to solve the sort of reasoning problems that typically appear on intelligence tests and standardized tests.

But the psychologists raise the question: Is GPT-3 copying human reasoning as a by-product of its massive language training data set or using a fundamentally new kind of cognitive (认知的) process? They also say that although GPT-3 performs far better than they expected at some reasoning tasks, the popular AI tool still fails completely at others. “It can do analogical reasoning, but it can’t do things that are very easy for people, such as using tools to solve a physical task,” says Taylor Webb, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher in psychology.

Webb and his colleagues tested GPT-3’s ability to solve a set of problems inspired by a test known as Raven’s Progressive Matrices, which ask the subject to predict the next image in a complicated arrangement of shapes. To enable GPT-3 to “see” the shapes, and make sure that the AI tool had never met the questions before, Webb transformed the images into a text format that GPT-3 could process.

The psychologists asked 40 UCLA undergraduate students to solve the same problems. Surprisingly, not only did GPT-3 do about as well as humans but it made similar mistakes as well. GPT-3 solved 80% of the problems correctly — well above the human subjects’ average score of just below 60%, but within the range of the highest human scores.

6 . I spoke to my parents last night and for a moment I forgot I wasn’t really speaking to them, but to their digital replicas (复制品). They live inside an app as voice assistants constructed by the company HereAfter AI.

In fact, my parents are still alive and well; their virtual versions were made to help me understand the technology. Grief tech, which lets you “talk” with the people you’ve loved and lost, has been appearing in science fiction. But now it’s becoming a reality. Although the thought of it makes some frightened, it’s not hard to see the appeal that people might turn to digital replicas for comfort.

However, there is one major limitation. These replicas may sound like someone you love, but they know nothing about you. Anyone can talk to them, and get the same reply in the same tone. “The biggest issue with the technology is the idea that you can generate a single universal person,” says Justin Harrison, founder of a technological service.

Creating a virtual avatar you can have more conversation with contributes to your feeling connected to someone you loved and lost, says Erin Thompson, a clinical psychologist. But a grieving person needs to know that these bots can only capture a small part of someone rather than replace healthy, functional human relationships.

And there are other risks. Any service that allows you to create a digital replica of someone without that person’s participation raises complex moral issues. While some might argue that permission is less important with someone who is dead, can’t you also argue that the person who generated the other side of the conversation should have a say too? And what if that person is not, in fact, dead?

If digital replicas become mainstream, there will inevitably need to be new regulations around what we leave behind online. And we’ll be better off if we cope with the possibility of these replicas’ misuse before, not after, they reach mass adoption.

Anyway, I feel lucky to still have the precious opportunity to spend more time with my parents, face to face, no technology involved.

7 . According to a study published this week, habitual napping (打盹) appears to be associated with a large brain volume in adults although experts stressed that further research was needed. It reduces the cost caused from the lost time and the fatigue-related errors. The work followed previous studies that suggested a brief doze could improve people’s ability to learn.

Arianna Huffington, a co-founder of Huff Post and the founder and chief executive of Thrive Global, said, “Given the latest science on the effectiveness of napping and the clear link between employees feeling well rested and their productivity, it’s long past time that businesses embrace short naps at work.”

Some businesses, including Thrive Global, have already introduced facilities for employees to take naps. Google introduced sleep pods as far back as 2014 and companies like Nike and Ben & Jerry’s introduced nap rooms. The practice has even been adopted by the NHS, with a growing number of hospitals introducing sleep pods for staff in an effort to help them get more rest. Employees, it seems, are enthusiastic. Sean Greenwood, of Ben & Jerry’s, said, “If a quick nap gets employees more involved and creative, we’re happy to provide that for our team members.”

Unfortunately, the practice of napping still suffers from our collective concept that sleep equals weakness and laziness. However, the performance-enhancing benefits of naps have been no secret to many leaders throughout history. It also gives the higher-ups the chance to acknowledge the 24/7 culture and come up with top-down   solutions that encourage workers to take care of themselves in and out of work.

While sleep experts stressed that a daytime doze could be beneficial, they said it was crucial to get enough shut-eye at the end of a day. It is the late stage of sleep, sometimes missed by early risers, that strengthens the nerve circuits that make for learning and memory, allowing the brain to make and consolidate new neutral connections. Additionally, prioritizing sufficient sleep during the regular nightly sleep period is essential for overall well-being.

8 . A new method of lie detection shows that lie tellers who are made to multi-task while being interviewed are easier to spot. The extra brain power needed to concentrate on a secondary task other than lying was particularly challenging.

Professor Aldert Vriji from the University of Portsmouth designed an experiment to identify lie tellers. The 164 participants in the experiment were first asked to give their levels of support or opposition about various societal topics that were in the news. They were then given a truth or lie condition by chance and interviewed about the three topics that they felt most strongly about. Truth tellers were instructed to report their true opinions while lie tellers were instructed to lie about their opinions during the interviews.

For the secondary task, participants were given a seven-digit (数字) car number and instructed to recall it back to the interviewer. Half of them received additional instructions that if they could not remember the car number during the interview, they may be asked to write down their opinions after the interview.

Participants were given the opportunity to prepare themselves for the interview and were told it was important to come across as convincing as possible during the interviews — which was incentivized by being entered into a prize draw.

The results showed that lie tellers’ stories sounded less reasonable and less clear than truth tellers’ stories, particularly when lie tellers were given the secondary task and told that it was important.

“The pattern of result suggests that the introduction of secondary tasks in an interview could help lie detection but such tasks need to be introduced carefully. It seems that a secondary task will only be effective if lie tellers do not neglect it. This can be achieved by either telling interviewees that the secondary task is important, or by introducing one that cannot be neglected,’’ said Professor Vriji.

9 . If you want to tell the history of the whole world, a history that does not privilege one part of humanity, you cannot do it through texts alone, because only some of the world has ever had texts, while most of the world, for most of the time, has not. Writing is one of humanity’s later achievements, and until fairly recently even many literate (有文字的) societies recorded their concerns not only in writing but in things.

Ideally a history would bring together texts and objects, and some chapters of this book are able to do just that, but in many cases we simply can’t. The clearest example of this between literate and non-literate history is perhaps the first conflict, at Botany Bay, between Captain Cook’s voyage and the Australian Aboriginals. From the English side, we have scientific reports and the captain’s record of that terrible day. From the Australian side, we have only a wooden shield (盾) dropped by a man in flight after his first experience of gunshot. If we want to reconstruct what was actually going on that day, the shield must be questioned and interpreted as deeply and strictly as the written reports.

In addition to the problem of miscomprehension from both sides, there are victories accidentally or deliberately twisted, especially when only the victors know how to write. Those who are on the losing side often have only their things to tell their stories. The Caribbean Taino, the Australian Aboriginals, the African people of Benin and the Incas, all of whom appear in this book, can speak to us now of their past achievements most powerfully through the objects they made: a history told through things gives them back a voice. When we consider contact (联系) between literate and non-literate societies such as these, all our first-hand accounts are necessarily twisted, only one half of a dialogue. If we are to find the other half of that conversation, we have to read not just the texts, but the objects.