3 . COVID-19 changed a lot—how we socialized, where we went, and even what work looked like. A new study shows the pandemic (流行病) may have changed our personalities as well.

Psychologists have long believed that a person’s characters stayed pretty much the same, even in the wake of stressful events. But by looking at pre-pandemic levels of neuroticism (神经质), extraversion (外向), openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness (勤奋而细心) and comparing that to data collected in 2021 and 2022, researchers found clear personality changes among the United States population.

“The pandemic was an opportunity to see how a collective stressful event may impact personality,” said lead study author Angelina Sutin, a professor of medicine at Florida State University.

Extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness all declined in the US population in the years following the start of the pandemic, particularly in young adults, according to the study, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

Why were younger adults more impacted? We don’t know for sure, Sutin said, but there are theories. “Personality is less stable in young adults. Then at the same time, the pandemic disturbed what young adults are supposed to be doing. They’re supposed to be in school or starting their careers. Then, everything was changed. However, the results didn’t hold true for each person.”

Researchers examined the data through the five-factor model, which hypothesizes (提出假说) that the various personality characters can come down to five important qualities: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Over the entire population they examined, researchers found a declining trend in neuroticism in 2020, but the changes were small. Once they took 2021 and 2022 data into account, researchers saw a more significant decrease in extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Neuroticism also increased over this time. That is especially significant considering how important those characters are, Sutin said. For example, conscientiousness is important for academic and work outcomes, as well as relationship and physical health, she added.

4 . The coronavirus pandemic (大流行病) has changed many aspects of daily life around the world. One of the main changes for many people has been that they are now working 100% from home. While it is impossible for all jobs to be done from home, companies whose work can be carried out remotely have been working to set up systems for employees to do so. There have been some challenges to work out in the early stages but many workers are finding that they are able to do their jobs in almost exactly the same way as if they were in an office.

With the high-speed Internet, working from home has technically been possible. However, the vast majority of businesses have been averse to having employees not attend a physical workplace. Many business owners believe that their staff will not work as efficiently if they are working from home. There is a strong belief that workers won’t focus on work and will do other things if they are not being watched like they are in a physical workplace.

Businesses in multiple countries have been forced to close as countries lockdown and practice social distancing because of the coronavirus. As such, companies have been trying to find creative solutions to continue their regular work. Meetings are being held over apps like Zoom and Skype. In March, Zoom has been one of the most downloaded apps in the world.

The sudden shift to working from home has led many to question whether they can continue working from home after the Covid-19 situation is settled. Working from home has many benefits for workers who don’t have to commute (通勤) and can work how they like. Not all workers wish to continue working from home. For many people the social aspect of meeting coworkers in a workplace is important and some people struggle to work as efficiently in their own home. The question now is whether the working culture of the world has permanently changed. In the future, we could see a lot more people choosing to work either full or part-time from their own homes.

6 . In a study involving sweat samples from 335 people, trained dogs sniffed out 97 percent of the coronavirus cases that had been identified by PCR tests and all 31 COVID-19 cases among 192 people who didn’t have symptoms, researchers reported.

These findings are evidence that dogs could be effective for mass screening efforts at places such as airports or concerts and may provide friendly alternatives for testing people who fear the tests, says Dominique Grandjean in France.

Dogs’ noses also identified more COVID-19 cases than did antigen (抗原) tests, but sometimes mistook another virus for the coronavirus, Grandjean and colleagues found. What’s more, evidence suggests the dogs can pick up cases 48 hours before people test positive by PCR.

In the study, dogs were trained in coronavirus detection by rewarding them with toys—usually tennis balls. “It’s playtime for them,” Grandjean says. It takes about three to six weeks, depending on the dog’s experience with odor detection, to train a dog to pick out COVID-19 cases from sweat samples. For detection, the dogs sniffed used face masks or housing sweat samples collected from human volunteers’ underarms. Results showed that dogs perform as well as or even better than PCR tests for detecting the virus that causes COVID-19, Furton says. He and colleagues have used dogs at schools, a music festival and in a small trial screening airline employees for coronavirus infections.

One of the biggest advantages dogs have over other tests is their speed, Furton says. “Even with what we call a rapid test, you’re still going to have to wait tens of minutes or even hours, where the dog in a matter of seconds can make a response.” However, dogs take time to train and there currently aren’t even enough dogs trained to detect explosives, let alone diseases, Otto says.

Another drawback is that people don’t think of them as high-tech, though they’re one of the highest-tech devices we have.

8 . Scientists developed vaccines (疫苗)against a new disease in less than 12 months. And yet，18 months after the first of these vaccines, against COVID-19, were put on the market, just 15% of people in developing countries have been fully vaccinated. Such unfairness costs lives and uncovers a long-standing problem that some countries have been forced to depend on others for life-saving science and technology. It is unacceptable, for example, that in Africa, a continent of 54 independent countries and 1.2 billion people, 99% of vaccines are from other countries.

The World Health Organization (WHO)is searching for a way to get vaccines to more people more easily.Last year, the WHO started a program called the mRNA vaccine technology center. The goal of the program is to develop and produce mRNA vaccines and treatments(for COVID-19 and other diseases) in developing countries from the technology used in developed countries highly successful COVID-19 vaccines.

More importantly，the cooperation (合作)between universities and companies based in developing countries is needed to realize the goal. On July 8th,the USA National Institutes of Health, where much of the research on mRNA vaccines was carried out, joined this program to help build vaccine technology centers in developing countries.

Besides the necessity of fairness, outbreaks would end sooner if every country could depend on its own defence. As Larry Brilliant，a scientist of the US National Institutes of Health who helps wipe out smallpox(天花)，told Nature，“Fairness is often thought of as a burden(负担)，but it is a strategic need in the battle against COVID-19.”

9 . It’s uncertain when many offices may reopen, but it’s clear the virtual work revolution that began with the pandemic isn’t going away.

Alexia Cambon,research director at Gartner, says finding the right combination of in-person and virtual work will take creativity and experimentation. Managing director Deborah Lovich stresses that companies should consider that flexibility is not only about location, but also about the hours employees work.

Alexia also points out the importance of finding solutions for a whole team. “What COVID-19 taught us is that flex work cannot be for an individual. It has to be for the team,” she says. “When the whole team is together online versus a whole team together in person,it works.”

Progressive organizations are also reconsidering their workplace culture. “They’re thinking about changing culture and leadership to be much more trust-based, impact-based, instead of input-based,like,I see you,so I think you’re productive,’ compared to, ‘Wow, I see what you’ve accomplished,and I know you’ve been productive,””Lovich says.

Lovich sees remote work as a “win-win” for cmployees who get more flexibility and employers who can hire people from anywhere in the country or even the world. She views it as creating equality in terms of allowing small towns to attract talent and offering more opportunity for women to climb the corporate ladder without having to relocate their families, something that she says often takes a back seat in a dual-career houschold.

Companies that require a return to a fully on-site model could lose one in three employees.Lovich agrees that employers need to be careful. “It’s an employee’s market right now. The world is short of workers,and because of that we should really think about what we need and feel confident and courageous to speak up. And a lot of companies are getting that, and so it’s a real opportunity to either shape the place you work to be the place it needs to be or go someplace else that does,”Lovich says.“For decades,we’ve been contorting(扭曲)our lives to fit around work， and COVID-19 forced work to fit around lives．”

10 . How to stop glasses fogging up with a face mask

Wearing a mask keeps you safe during the pandemic, but it come with its own set of challenges. And, one of the biggest drawbacks of wearing a mask is how much your glasses fog up and affect your vision. Taking off your glasses to wipe them clean each time it fogs up is not only frustrating, but it can also increase the risk of infection.     1     Here are some tricks to stop it.

Twist your mask strings.

From the side, once you twist it, the strings will look like the figure eight. This is great for stopping fogging because it redirects your breath by putting slight downward pressure on the top part of the mask.     2     This may leave you infected by virus.

    3    

If you wash your glasses with soap, this creates a thin film on your lenses which limits fogging. Use a fragrance-free soap and mix it with warm water. Put your glasses in it and let it air dry. When you wear your glasses next, soap molecules on your lenses should block fogging.

Use tissues.

You can put a tissue under the top part of the mask.     4     To do this DIY trick properly, you should fold a tissue in half and place the straight edge along the bridge of your nose.

Change the position of your masks and glasses.

    5     But if you do this there are a few things to keep in mind. Firstly, you need to make sure that your mask still covers your chin(下巴)after you pull it up. And, if your prescription is stronger, this trick could impact your vision and cause increased blurriness.