1 . Yesterday, after a day of Zoom (视频会议软件) meetings in my living room, I stepped out for a walk leaving my teen son bored on the couch. Bleecker Street, usually packed with people, was sprinkled with only the occasional pedestrians. Bars and restaurants lining the street were dark. Stores with bright neon lights, doors open, beckoned for the rare passers-by to enter. After just a week of the Covid-19 pandemic, an afternoon walk in Greenwich Village neighborhood felt surreal.

But then I noticed a row of daffodils(水仙)reaching for the sun in the small triangle-shaped park by Minetta Lane. On the windows of a locked restaurant, in bright yellow paint, were the words “We love you, West Village. Take care of each other. ” My phone buzzed—a colleague sent a picture of her newborn baby just home from the hospital. I arrived home to find my son animated on the couch playing a video game virtually with his friends. Life, love, play, and human connection persist, even though our world has been tuned upside down.

In my welcome note to the new students in the Fall, I wrote that this year is about our college’s core values of inclusion, innovation, and impact and emphasized the power of interconnection. Today, these core values persist, with interconnection taking on even greater significance. Our collaborative spirit has always given us an advantage—academically, creatively, culturally, and now, remotely.

A wise person once told me that getting through a crisis is like being given a new hand of cards in the middle of a game. We are halfway through the semester, with new hands to play, but the game hasn’t changed. We will find new ways to continue to work, teach, create and learn. Let’s also continue the informal interactions that make us a community—the study groups, coffee dates, drop-ins just to say hello. In doing so, we will remain connected.

We will come together, from spaces around the world, to meet this new reality. This is who we are. Nothing—not space, nor time—can keep us from moving forward, together.

2 . 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．”

3 . 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.

5 . Researchers has investigated the impact of Covid-19 related social isolation (隔离) measures on 2,200 young kids between 8 and 36 months of age. Their findings provide insights into the effects of lockdown on language learning and screen time in the generation of youngsters growing up during this extraordinary period.

Shortly after lockdown began in early March 2020 across 13 countries, parents were asked to complete an online questionnaire containing questions on the child’s age, exposure to different languages, number of siblings (兄弟姐妹) and vocabulary development. Parents were then contacted again at the end of the lockdown (for that family or in that area, in general). They were asked about the activities they undertook with their child during lockdown, the amount of time their child had access to screens both during lockdown and before, as well as questions on how much screen time they had themselves and their attitudes towards children’s screen time. Parents were also asked to complete a standardized vocabulary checklist indicating the number of words their child understood and/or said at the beginning, and again, at the end of lockdown so that an increase in the number of words gained over lockdown could be calculated.

The studies find that, during lockdown, children who were read to more frequently were reported to have learned more words, relative to their peers who were read to less frequently. However, children with increased exposure to screens learned to say fewer words, relative to their peers with less screen time. Besides, while children were exposed to more screen time during lockdown than before, overall, children were reported to have gained more words than expected during lockdown, relative to pre-pandemic levels. The increase in screen time during lockdown was greater if lockdown was longer, and in families with fewer years of education, and where parents reported using screens for longer themselves.

“While this suggests that the relatively short isolation did not detrimentally impact language in young children, we should be cautious in assuming this would apply during normal times or to longer lockdowns, given the extraordinary circumstances children and their parents faced during this time,” says Associate Professor Natalia Kartushina, University of Oslo.

6 . Loneliness is bad for your health. So, in these days of COVID-19, when enforced solitude (独处) is the order of the day in many places, how to stop solitude turning into loneliness is a pressing medical question.

One part of the answer is to try to understand the physiology (生理) of the change.

Steven Cole of the University of California, Los Angeles, began his work with John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago. They addressed that question by repeatedly observing social isolation in individual volunteers, while simultaneously tracking from blood samples, their gene-expression patterns and other changes in their physiology.

They found that, initially, volunteers’ feelings of isolation are related to an increase in their inflammation genes(炎症基因) activity which are also known to travel into the brain and promote anxiety. They also noted that increased levels in this kind of brain activity in turn improve inflammation and cause behaviors such as social withdrawal, feelings of suspicion towards the outside world and a tendency to act more defensively by making decisions that involve few risks. That, of course, promotes further feelings of loneliness. It seems, therefore, that though loneliness starts with solitude, it can quickly take on a physiological life of its own.

Therefore, dealing with the loneliness caused by enforced isolation will not be a simple matter of allowing people to socialise once again. In search of that, Dr. Cole carried out a series of experiments that encouraged lonely people to direct simple acts of kindness towards their fellow creatures: things like buying groceries for an elderly neighbour or helping a colleague. Those directed to show kindness had precisely the opposite inflammation genes activity to that previously seen in the lonely by Dr. Cole.

They found that in the case of loneliness, the saying: being more blessed to give than to receive is true.

8 . September is upon us, which means one thing for parents and children alike: term time after the lockdown of COVID-19 pandemic(疫情). No Isolation collected responses from 1,005 parents and carers of 1,477 children of primary and secondary school.     1    

Loneliness is difficult to describe and talk about for adults.     2     To help children understand that their feelings are normal and acceptable, parents need to open up a dialogue around what loneliness is, explaining that feeling lonely is completely normal and a topic that is safe to talk about.

Another way that we can deal with social isolation(孤独) is through the use of technology, especially video calls. Video calls have been common during the pandemic.     3     Because it can be hard to know how or when to speak up or interact. As a result, having a talk over a video conference can be very difficult for some children, making the feelings of loneliness more serious.

Are you worried about how your child might be struggling, or concerned that a more digital life could be leaving them isolated     4     Now, more than ever, we should be listening to children and helping to make sure they are heard in these difficult times. They are facing the same pandemic that we are.     5    

While many people have made videos to cheer on those working on the front lines of the fight since the latest COVID-19 outbreak in Shanghai, Chien Meishuang     1     (spend) her time in lockdown at home, painting simple heartwarming works.

The paintings are part of her Journal of the Pandemic Lockdown,     2     project she started two years ago. “We are all facing a difficult time     3     we are trapped at home,” Chien tells China Daily. “I     4     (simple) wanted to let others know that there is a silver lining amid the dark clouds.”

The Taiwan native, who lives in Shanghai, is being on the receiving end of her neighbors’ kindness.     5     (document) her experience, the artist created a painting, titled Good Neighbors in China, marking the first new     6     (add) to her project this year. Other     7     (scene) shown in her latest works include delivery men having a quick lunch and her neighbors     8     (welcome) a 70-year-old man who returned from hospital after recovering from COVID-19.

“It is because of the pandemic     9     I have made friends from all walks of life in the area where I live. These individuals have provided infinite inspiration and stories     10     my works,” she adds. “As long as an artwork can touch people’s hearts, I believe it is good art. It doesn't matter how simple it is.”