1 . People duck responsibility for reasons ranging from simple laziness or a fear of failure, through to a sense of feeling frightened by the scale of a problem or a situation. Whatever the reason, if people fail to take responsibility, they’ll fail in their jobs, they’ll fail their teams, and they’ll fail to grow as individuals. All of this makes it important to address the issue.

Signs of not being responsible

There are several signs to watch out for. These include:

Lacking interest in their work, and in the well-being of the team

Blaming others for mistakes and failures

Missing deadlines

Avoiding challenging tasks and projects, and not taking risks

Regularly complaining about unfair treatment by team leaders and members and engaging in self-pity

Avoiding being dependent on others for work, advice and instructions

Lacking trust in team members and leaders

Ways to encourage responsibility

Start by talking

Your first step is to talk to the individuals concerned. Are there circumstances that are contributing to the situation, or problems that you can deal with?

Communicate roles, responsibilities and objectives

Your people need to know clearly what their roles and responsibilities are. Ensure that you have an up-to-date job description for each team member, and be as detailed as possible about every responsibility that they have.

Re-engage people

Your people will be more engaged if their work is supported with their values. Talk to them to find out what they are. Then, illustrate how their daily tasks and responsibilities go with those values.

Give plenty of praise

Finally, be sure to give your people plenty of praise when they do take responsibility. And help them improve by providing them with regular, effective and fair feedback.

2 . Jennifer DeStefano answered a call from an unknown number only to hear a man threatening her 15-year-old daughter’s life and demanding money, as well as the sound of her daughter crying for help. But while she kept him on the phone, her friends managed to reach her daughter, discovering that she was, in fact, free and well on a skiing trip in Arizona. The voice used on the phone was cloned.

A brief sample (样本) of a voice can be used to train an AI model, which can then speak any given text sounding like that person. Now the dangers are starting to be talked aloud.

ElevenLabs, an AI start-up, offers users the chance to create their own clones in minutes and the results are disturbingly accurate. When generating a playback, the system allows users to choose between variability and stability (稳定性). Select “variability”, and the voice will have a lifelike intonation (语调), including pauses like “er...”. Choose “stability”, and it will come across more like a calm and unemotional newsreader. Taylor Jones, a linguist and consultant, took a careful look at the quality of ElevenLabs’s clone of his voice in a video. A low-tech test, a “conversation” with his own mother, fooled the woman who raised him.

For several years, customers have been able to identify themselves over the phone to their bank and other companies using their voice. This was a security upgrade, not a danger. Not even a gifted voice actor could fool the detection system. But now the banks are forced to change in order to prevent crime.

Creative industries could face trouble. Voice actors’ skills, trained over a lifetime, can be copied in seconds. But some actors may, in fact, find cloning congenial. One actor, who has lost much of his voice to throat cancer, was delighted to have his voice restored for his new movie. Others may be spared the trouble of heading for the studio for retakes. Another industry that will have to deal with the rise of clones is journalism. Secret recordings have long been the contributor to the big news. Now who will trust a story based on an audio clip (音频片段)?

3 . Oaks Farms is a combination of experiences that are designed to keep your students engaged in fun and exciting learning opportunities. We are truly a classroom without walls, offering educator-developed programs and field trips. We invite you here to explore sustainability (可持续发展), which includes not only the environment but also animal welfare, safety and our community.

The Pig Adventure

This program will help you learn all about pork and its benefits and discover the growth cycle of pigs from little babies to full grown-ups. Monitor the development of baby pigs and see how the farm works at the Pork Education Center. You will get first-hand knowledge about how our feeding system works.

The Dairy Adventure

This program encourages you to play as you learn, by opening up a fun space for dairy discovery including learning how to use a “real” station. Understand the nutrition of the animal products, and how robots are used in the Voluntary Milking System. You can start at the entrance to the adventure, and then stop by our Birthing Barn, which is an independent education center, and take a look inside.

The Crop Adventure

Explore the Crop Adventure program to learn about the importance of working to feed

8 billion people, the many uses of corn outside of consuming it, and how we can be sustainable with limited resources. See how a tractor (拖拉机) can tell you about the nutrients in the soil. Explore how technology assists farmers and the amazing biodiversity on the Farmer’s Garden.

The Pig Adventure ($3/student)

The Dairy Adventure ($5/student)

The Crop Adventure ($4/student)

Whole Adventures — include admission to the Pig Adventure, the Dairy Adventure, and the Crop Adventure ($7/student)

4 . The Art Institute of Chicago

Visitor Information

Museum Hours

Members: The first hour of every day, 10 a.m. —11 a.m., is reserved for member-only viewing.

Monday—Wednesday Closed

Thursday: 11 a.m.—8 p. m.

Friday—Sunday: 11 a.m.—5 p. m.

Audio guides can be rented at the admission counter, audio counter and outside some special exhibitions. The guide is free to visitors with visual or hearing disabilities.

With the digital interactive JourneyMaker, you can build custom family guides based on your child’s interests-from superheroes to strange and wild creatures. Start your museum journey in the Family Room of the Ryan Leaning Center, and make your visit to the Art Institute an adventure for the whole family.

Your personal, pocket-sized guide to the collection, this new iOS app features podcast-style audio tours, location-aware technology, access to the digital member card, and so much more. Download it today from the App Store.

We encourage you to take pictures of the collection and special exhibitions for personal use. Signs indicate the few works that are not allowed to be photographed due to a lender requirement.

You are welcome to use your phone to take pictures, text, and use the museum’s app-anything that does not disturb other visitors. If you need to make a phone call, please do so in a non-gallery space.

Art Institute visitors can drop off their cars at the Modern Wing entrance (159 East Monroe Street) and walk right into the museum. The valet service is available daily from 10:30 a. m. until one-half hour after closing.

Adult: $ 32

Student: $ 26

Child (aged 13 and under): Free

Help us protect the collection-please do not touch the art.

5 . Hem an Bekele is not your typical high school student．Rather than spending his free time playing video games or staring at his phone, this 14 year-old from Fairfax, Virginia was calling professors and conducting experiments, all to create a soap that could treat skin cancer, and to make it affordable for everyone who needs it．His work won him the grand prize in this year’s 3M Young Scientist’s Challenge, a competition that encourages kids to think of unique ways to solve everyday problems.

Growing up in Ethiopia, Bekele found in pity that people working outside were likely to end up getting skin cancer．Skin cancer did have cures and was treatable in most cases．However, the average price of skin cancer treatment globally was almost $40,000．Those shocking statistics really inspired him to create a more accessible solution．He started doing experiments and working on different things, and that turned into his bar of soap as a project.

A lot of his research and development started in his family’s kitchen and in his basement．But as he reached the final of the competition, he realized that he did need to do a little bit more outside of just his house．So he reached out to people at University of Virginia and people at Georgetown, and he got a lot of assistance．The number one person would be Deborah Isabelle, who helped him organize and structure his ideas during the finalist competition．Bekele said that he definitely couldn’t have done that all by himself.

Bekele’s award-winning soap is a compound based bar of soap and it’s charged with different cancer fighting chemicals．The color of the soap is a bit of a dark type of white and it has a rough surface, which could be a good exfoliant（去角质剂）．It does have a strong medicine smell and feel a bit stickier．The whole point of it is that even once you wash off the soaps, the medicinal parts will stay on your skin．It can activate the body’s immune cells to defend cancer.

Bekele won 25,000 prize money and he was going to use it to continue research．He said, “I still need a lot of resources to be able to conduct this research, so this money will definitely help me achieve it.”

7 . Four Unmissable Cultural Attractions in Cambridge

Set on the east bank of the River Cam, Cambridge is surely one of England’s most traditional and famous cities, where there is a world-famous university and great writers, thinkers and scholars. It comes as no surprise that this age-old centre of learning is home to a variety of splendid museums.

Fitzwilliam Museum

The Fitzwilliam, a museum at the University of Cambridge, houses about half a million artworks worldwide. Highlights include masterpieces by Titian and Canaletto, Anglo-Saxon jewelry (珠宝), and a wide range of priceless china, to name just a few. The museum is closed on Mondays.

Polar Museum

This small museum is based in the university’s Scott Polar Research Institute, set up by a surviving member of Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition (探险) to Antarctica. It’s packed with all manner of objects relating to polar exploration; sleeping bags, Inuit artworks and expedition diaries. The museum is open from Wednesdays to Saturdays; check the latest times before visiting.

Museum of Zoology

Celebrate the diversity of animal life at this university museum, which has some of the best natural history collections in the world. It’s home to a variety of impressive exhibits, from an almost-70-foot fin whale to an African elephant. The specimens (标本) on display cover the whole animal kingdom. It is open from Tuesdays to Sundays.

Centre for Computing History

With a focus on the social and cultural impact of technology, this museum explores the incredible advances made in computing over the past few decades, as well as during the earlier days of the Information Age. It’s a great day out with children, with mobile phones, calculators, game players and old-fashioned computers all on show. The museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

9 . Major Sports Leagues in the US

NFL

Formed in 1920, the National Football League has a religious following in the US and around the world. It’s one of the most profitable leagues in the whole world. The NFL consists of 32 teams, which are sub-divided into NFC and AFC, which compete against each other every year to win the Super Bowl, the halftime show of which features major hit musicians.

NBA

Initially formed in 1946 as the BAA (Basketball Association of America), it merged (合并) with National Basketball League in 1949 and changed its name to NBA. The National Basketball Association might not be the biggest sports league financially, but it has a larger international following than other leagues. The keyword “NBA” was among the most googled keywords in 2021, which indicates how popular it is in the world.

MLB

Baseball is considered to be the national pastime activity of the US and the Major League Baseball is its highest level in the country. The MLB might not be popular as NFL in other parts of the world, but international supporters still make a large portion of the total fanbase. Formed in 1903, the MLB is the oldest US sports league and now has 30 teams, which was a merger between the National League and the American League.

NHL

Founded in 1917, the National Hockey League is the second-oldest sports league in the US and Canada and consists of a total of 32 teams. Three of the best performing teams from each division make it to the playoffs plus two wild card teams. All teams compete to win the prestigious Stanley Cup. Most of NHL’s revenue comes from TV and gate receipts with hockey-crazed Canadians being the primary market.