1 . On January 7, David Bennett went into the operating room at the University of Maryland Medical Center for a surgical procedure never performed before on a human. The 57-year-old Maryland resident had been hospitalized for months due to a life threatening disease. His heart was failing him and he needed a new one.

Bennett’s condition left him unresponsive to treatment and ineligible (不合格) for the transplant list or an artificial heart pump. The physician-scientists at the center, however, had another-also risky- option: transplant (移植) a heart from a genetically-modified pig.

“It was either die or do this transplant,” Bennett had told surgeons a day before the operation. “I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s also my last choice.”

It took the medical team eight hours to finish the operation, making Bennett the first human to successfully receive a pig’s heart. “It’s working and it looks normal. We are thrilled, but we don’t know what tomorrow will bring us. This has never been done before,” Barkley Griffith, who led the transplant team, told the New York Times.

While it’s only been five days since the operation, the surgeons say that Bennett’s new pig heart was, so far, functioning as expected and his body wasn’t rejecting (排斥) the organ. They are still monitoring his condition closely.

“I think it’s extremely exciting,” says Robert Montgomery, transplant surgeon and director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, who was not involved in Bennett’s operation. The result of the procedure was also personally meaningful for Montgomery, who received a heart transplant in 2018 due to a genetic disease that may also affect members of his family in the future. “It’s still in the early days, but still the heart seems to be functioning. And that in and of itself is an extraordinary thing. Up to now most experimental heart transplant procedures have been done between pigs and other animals. This is the first time that surgeons have taken it into a living human.”

2 . At my first lesson in Chinese calligraphy, my teacher told me plainly: “Now I will teach you how to write your name. And to make it beautiful.” I felt my breath catch. I was curious.

Growing up in Singapore, I had an unusual relationship with my Chinese name. My parents are ethnically Chinese, so they asked fortune tellers to decide my name, aiming for maximum luck. As a result, I ended up with a nonsense and embarrassing name: Chen Yiwen, meaning, roughly, “old”, “barley (薏米)” and “warm”.

When I arrived in America for college at 18, I put on an American accent and abandoned my Chinese name. When I moved to Hong Kong in 2021, after 14 years in the States, I decided to learn calligraphy. Why not get back in touch with my heritage? I thought.

In calligraphy, the idea is to copy the old masters’ techniques, thereby refining your own. Every week, though, my teacher would give uncomfortably on-the-nose assessments of my person. “You need to be braver,” he once observed. “Have confidence. Try to produce a bold stroke(笔画).” For years, I had prided myself on presenting an image of confidence, but my writing betrayed me.

I was trying to make sense of this practice. You must visualize the word as it is to be written and leave a trace of yourself in it. As a bodily practice, calligraphy could go beyond its own cultural restrictions. Could it help me go beyond mine? My teacher once said to me, “When you look at the word, you see the body. Though a word on the page is two-dimensional, it contains multitudes, conveying the force you’ve applied, the energy of your grip, the arch of your spine.” I had been learning calligraphy to get in touch with my cultural roots, but what I was really seeking was a return to myself. Now I have sensed that the pleasure out of calligraphy allows me to know myself more fully.

During a recent lesson, my teacher pointed at the word I had just finished, telling me: “This word is much better. I can see the choices you made, your calculations, your flow. Trust yourself. This word is yours.” He might as well have said, “This word is you.”

3 .

16th iPhone Photography AWARDS Call for Entries

●Categories

Abstract, Animals, Architecture, Children, City life/Cityscape, Landscape, Lifestyle, Nature, People, Portrait, Series (3 images), Still Life, Travel, Other.

●Requirements

Entries are open worldwide to photographers using an iPhone or iPad. Photos should not be published previously anywhere. The posts on personal accounts (Facebook, Instagram etc.) are suitable. The photos should not be changed in any desktop image processing program such as Photoshop. It is OK to use any IOS apps.

The submissions must be in the original size or not smaller than 1000 pixels in either height or width.

●Prizes

All photographers compete for the 4 IPPAWARDS Photographers of the Year. Grand Prize, 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.

Grand Prizes: All entries compete for the famous IPPA Photographer of the Year Award title.

14 Gold Bars: The 1st place winner of the 14 categories will win a Gold Bar from the most recognizable private gold mint in the world.

14 Platinum Bars: The 2nd and 3rd place winners of the 14 categories will win a Platinum Bar from the most recognizable private gold mint in the world.

Certificates in all Categories: All 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners from each categories will receive a IPPAWARDS certificate.

Honorable Mentions: IPPAWARDS judges will award several Honorable Mention to entries to acknowledge talent as they consider fit.

●How to Enter:

1. Select how many images you want to enter.

2. Follow the check-out process to pay the entry fee.

3. Select your images and upload; click here to start.

If possible, please name each image with your name and the category you are submitting like this:

“FirstName-LastName-Category. jpg”

●Deadline: March 31, 2023

7 . Outdoor Football @ Braywick

Tue, Mar 8, 9: 00 P. M.

A friendly kick about, open to all levels. Different players each week. Newcomers welcome.

We book the pitch (球场) when we hit the minimum of 8 “yes” RSVPs (回复), which we need to do by the day before.

The cost is £ 4 to £ 6 each, depending on how many sign up (£ 50 for the pitch, divided by the number of players)

DONT BE LATE! We need to be there, changed and ready for kick - off at 9: 00 P. M. If the game is ever cancelled, we will let those who have already RSVP “yes” know.

LOCATION: Toby Carvery Stafferton Lodge

PLEASE BRING:

• Suitable boots for the outdoor 3G pitches. Artificial grass (AG) football boots are strongly recommended as the best option for the surface.

• Some cash — up to £ 6, as explained above.

RSVPTERMS AND CONDITIONS!

• When you RSVP “Yes”, we book a spot on the pitch for you. The organizer is charged for the pitch unless they cancel it at least 48 hours before the game.

• If you change your RSVP to “No” less than 48 hours before play or you are a “No Show” and nobody is able to take your spot, you will be asked to pay the price as if you took part.

BRINGING GUESTS:

You are more than welcome to bring 1 or 2 friends to play (but only if you add “+1” or “+2” to your RSVP, so that we don’t end up with too many players).

8 . Set on a sloped plot (山坡) above Prague in the city’s Troja district, Villa Sophia has no keys, no light switches and a piano that can play by itself. The house can close the windows when it rains and read aloud materials it has selected from the Internet, based on the owners’ interests.

“The house is like a brain,” said Michaela Pankova, who shares the home with her husband, Karel Panek, and their daughters. “It makes decisions for you based on previous experience.” The home, designed by the Prague-based firm Coll Coll, is intended to go beyond automated to autonomous. “As we say, if we have to control it ourselves, it’s not smart enough,” said Mr. Panek, a computer scientist.

The couple wanted no compromises in quality and efficiency. When they couldn’t find a technology that met their standards, Mr. Panek, the brain behind his home’s brain, designed his own system. While family members go about their daily lives, the system collects data and evaluates that data in real time, then comes up with solutions and implements (实施) them. It can accept deliveries when the family isn’t he, thanks to individual door from afar and valuation of the home’s external context. It can preheat the driveway to clear snow and ice(but only if it predicts its use, saving energy otherwise)and lock the doors.

Put energy home security and convenience aside, the system’s benefit is that in developing beyond a smart home system to a smart home it free the homeowner from the burden of constant control.

Mr. Panek calls himself a technology optimist, and Mrs. Pankova said it took her some time to wram up to the system. “In the beginning I wasn’t into the idea of living in an AI house,” she said. “During the time of the preparation and later the construction, I slowly started to be open to the idea.”

9 . My friend and I recently took an art class together through our town’s community education program. Our classmates were a mix of ages, stages of life, and experience with making art. We stood out in the class—not for our artistic talent, but for our consistent encouragement of ourselves, each other, and the group. It got me thinking how encouragement had become a routine.

It became something of a joke between the two of us to compliment(赞美) each other, offer a positive comment when another student showed his or her work, and generally chat around the table about how fun our project was going. But reflecting back, our positivist was anything but a joke. It was a bright light in my week, a space where I knew I could be surrounded with kindness, gentleness, and positivist.

Here’s the most special thing about it; my friend’s and my positive conversation wasn’t just encouraging, it was true. We didn’t go for cheap or false compliments like, “This painting should be in a museum!” Instead, we went for authentic(真实的) expressions of support and encouragement, like, “I love how you did that cloud!”

Over time, the class became something of a sacred space, because we had made a habit of using encouraging, supportive language. Sentence-starters like, “I like,” “I appreciate,” “I want to try”,   kept us present, positive, and honest.

The encouragement also kept us engaged in the work of making art. I feel sure that I learned more—and practiced more at home—because the activity was shown in such consistently positive terms, grounded in a growth mindset, self-acceptance, and encouragement.

Having a friend to share an encouragement habit is fantastic, but you can practice it on your own as well. Compliment yourself in the mirror every morning. Keep a running “great work.” list of thing? you are doing well today. Trust in your ability to find something loving—and true-to comment today and every day.

10 . Schools in the US and elsewhere are announcing bans on the recently released AI — powered ChatGPT out of fear that students could use the technology to complete their assignments. However, bans may be practically impossible given how difficult it is to detect when text is composed by ChatGPT. Is it instead time to rethink how students are taught and evaluated?

Educators are starting to question what it means to assess student learning if an AI can write an essay or paper similar to, or even better than, a student would — and the teacher can’t tell the difference. Many teachers believe the time-honored learning tradition will be destroyed from the ground up by Chat GPT. The Los Angeles Unified School District in California first blocked the use of ChatGPT on networks and devices in December 2022.

However, removing technology from the classroom can mean undesirable consequences, such as creating more obstacles for students with disabilities, says Trust. Additionally, restricting the use of ChatGPT on school networks and devices can’t stop students from using ChatGPT at home and in libraries.

It is also unclear if anti-cheating software can reliably detect AI-assisted writing. OpenAI is working to develop a digital watermark that can help teachers and academics spot students who are using ChatGPT to write essays. Open AI’s attempts to watermark AI text, however, hit limits.

Instead of worrying about how ChatGPT could enable cheating, educators should ask what motivates students to cheat in the first place and work on developing relationships of trust, says Jesse Stommel at the University of Denver in Colorado.

“Talk to students really frankly about what ChatGPT’s capable of, what it’s not,” says Stommel. “Have students use it to write an essay about Jane Austen and gender dynamics, and then have them read that essay and peer review it and think about what ChatGPT gets right and wrong.”