1 . On the evening of April 8, Dunhuang Academy and Huawei jointly launched a brand-new technology-driven tour experience at the Mogao Grottoes (莫高窟). Using Huawei’s newly-released Hetu AI platform, coupled with the output of the Digital Dunhuang project, visitors to the Mogao Grottoes can enjoy a fantasy experience prior to entering the attraction.

Zhao Shengliang, director of the Dunhuang Academy, said that it has been cooperating with Huawei since March 2019. Using Huawei’s latest Hetu technology, visitors are able to see the detailed contents of the Dunhuang Art Murals (壁画) outside the caves, through their Huawei mobile phones. This will reduce the time tourists spend inside the cave, aiding the protection of the cultural relics, while at the same time helping to increase the amount of information visitors can obtain. It is also considered to be a new way of promoting Dunhuang Art.

The Dunhuang Academy has used digital technology to preserve the research and exploration of Dunhuang Grottoes since the early 1990s. It has collected a wealth of data and has realized the goal of sharing of digital Dunhuang globally. It has played an important role in the protection and research of cultural site, as well as promoting the development and progress of related work.

The Huawei Hetu platform unites Dunhuang’s study findings, high-resolution images of the site’s murals and virtual, three-dimensional models with the real Mogao Grottoes. It has not only re-created the real tour of the scenic spot, but also developed a new way of digitally experiencing the grottoes. When people visit the site, they not only have the experience of seeing the real grottoes, but they can appreciate the admirable artworks more clearly and in greater detail.

In the future, Dunhuang Academy will continue to cooperate with Huawei to create more colorful virtual content to enrich the experience of Mogao Art on the platform, helping people around the world get to know Dunhuang Art better.

2 . If you’re putting together a team for a project, you might tend to pick people with cheerful, optimistic character and flexible thinking. But a new management study indicates your team might also benefit from people who are exactly the opposite.

The study, co-authored by Jing Zhou, the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Management and Psychology, investigates the effects of “team affective (情感的) diversity” on team creativity. The paper published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior is among the first research to reveal how, why and under what condition teams’ affective diversity promotes team creativity.

Team members with what researchers call “negative affect” exhibit critical and persistent thinking that allows them to identify problems needing solutions, as well as to search out and critically evaluate relevant information. On the other hand, team members with “positive affect” engage in broad and flexible thinking that expands their range of information and helps them see unusual and creative connections, the researchers say.

“At any given point in time, some team members may experience positive affect such as joy and inspiration, whereas others may experience negative affect such as frustration and worry,” Zhou said. “Instead of trying to homogenize (使...同类化) team members’ affect, teams should accept affective heterogeneity (异质性).”

When a team experiences a high level of this ‘‘affective heterogeneity,” what Zhou describes as “dual-tuning” leads to greater creativity.

The researchers tested their ideas among 59 teams working on a semester-long project in an undergraduate management course at a university in Hong Kong. Each team developed a business plan, which involved designing a new product and distinguishing it from potential competitors in the market.

Zhou stresses that a team’s “affective heterogeneity” can serve as a resource for team creativity. This unique type of diversity boosts team creativity, if the teams have a strong so-called “transactive (交互) memory system.” “Our study suggest that teams may be aided in using their affect heterogeneity via interventions (干预) that focus on building the team’s transactive memory system, which can be accelerated when team members spend time together, share goals, receive information about member specializations and train on the task together,” Zhou said.

3 . A method to transform a commonly thrown-away plastic to a resin (树脂) used in 3D printing could allow for making better use of plastic waste. A team of Washington State University researchers developed a simple and efficient way to transform polylactic acid (PLA)(聚乳酸), a bio-based plastic used in products such as filament, plastic silverware and food packaging to a high-quality resin.

“We found a way to immediately turn this into something that’s stronger and better, and we hope that will provide people the inspiration to upcycle this stuff instead of just throw it away,” said Yu-Chung Chang, a postdoctoral researcher in the WSU School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and a co-corresponding author on the work. “We made stronger materials just straight out of trash. We believe this could be a great opportunity.”

Although it’s bio-based, PLA, which is categorized as a number 7 plastic, doesn’t break down easily. It can float in fresh or salt water for a year without degrading (降解). It is also rarely recycled because like many plastics, when it’s melted down and re-formed, it doesn’t perform as well as the original version and becomes less valuable.

“It’s biodegradable and compostable, but once you look into it, it turns out that it can take up to 100 years for it to rot away in a landfill,” Chang said. “In reality, it still creates a lot of pollution. We want to make sure that when we do start producing PLA on the milliontons scale, we will know how to deal with it.”

While the researchers focused on PLA for the study, they hope to apply the work to poly-ethylene terephthalate (PET) (涤纶树脂), which is more common than PLA and has a similar chemical structure and presents a bigger waste problem. They have filed a temporary patent and are working to further optimize (优化) the process. The researchers are also looking into other applications for the upcycling method.

4 . Darlene Leeson was in hotel isolation (隔离) after returning to Australia from a trip to Hawaii. She was calling a friend, joking about the idea of putting a sign on her hotel window as it faced offices across the road. Getting the gentle _________ of her friend, Leeson wrote some notes: “Day 4 isolation needs _________. Room 623” and then stuck them up.

The first _________ from those in the outside world was laughter. She got a few _________ and waves from office workers and workers on a nearby rooftop. “It was more done to _________ myself during the boring isolation,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking anyone would take it _________.”

Then her hotel room phone rang. “I thought it was the hotel ringing to tell me to tear them off. It was the wife of one of the rooftop workers who had rung reception asking to get _________ to my room,” she said. “The wife then asked what chocolate I _________.”

Leeson said she was in _________ when she received the call. “We chatted and she said she could ______________ an Uber delivery for me.” Within an hour, the chocolate arrived. Soon, TimTams (a brand of chocolate) arrived for her at reception. Leeson later ______________ a woman in a nearby office building made the chocolate delivery. More chocolate had arrived, and a group of workers had all ______________.

“Being in hotel isolation, I can’t ______________ my room where there are only a few short minutes when the sun can ______________,” Leeson said. “Though, the kindness of these ______________ brightened my day beyond any amount of sunshine possible.”

My wife is addicted to shopping on the Internet.     1     seems that she can’t stop herself from clicking with the mouse. Let me tell you what happened last night. It was the     2     (three) time that she had shopped online for hours. I had already asked her     3     (think) twice before buying anything,     4     my wife ignored what I said and replied     5     (confident), “With the Chinese New Year     6     (approach), preparation is necessary. Besides, I haven’t bought things on the Internet     7     a whole week.” Hearing her words, I was really speechless.

In most cases, the things she bought     8     (be) not good value for money. Maybe she just enjoys the process of buying online.

With the development of technology, online shopping is becoming more and more convenient. In the meanwhile, it causes a range of     9     (problem). People are easily attracted by the discount. So how to keep a good state of mind in front of temptation is     10     important lesson many people need to learn.

10 . We’ve all heard the stories of an actor’s struggles before a career breakthrough: living a hard life, working part-time, being a couch potato before getting that major role. Shelby, the star of “A Dog’s Way Home”, has an unfortunate tale that could top them all. Before her big break, she was living in a landfill, rooting through garbage for her next meal.

Shelby’s big break came in April 2017, when animal-control officer Megan Buhler was driving in Cheatham County, Tennessee. Out on an unrelated call, Buhler spotted and approached what she recalled was a noticeably scared puppy emerging from the dump. “I knelt down and just said, ‘Oh, come here, baby,’” said Buhler. “She was so scared, but she came right up to me, and I was able to put her in my truck.” They headed to the county animal shelter, where the staff began calling the new resident Baby Girl.

Buhler and others didn’t know that 3,200 kilometers away, Hollywood was looking for a dog to play Bella in a film written by Cathryn Michon. The find-a-Bella job went to freelance trainer Teresa Ann Miller. Her mission was to search shelters nationwide for a dog that could play Bella. One day, Miller spotted Baby Girl’s adoption photo. “Honestly, it was a really good picture, and she was flat-out smiling,” Miller said. Then she met Baby Girl, and assessed her on personality and the ability to respond to simple commands. After assessment, she adopted Baby Girl from the shelter, renamed her Shelby and took her to California for training. Miller and Shelby had trained for just over three months before filming began. Then they were together each day on the set.

Most of the film’s reviews have praised Shelby’s performance. Variety made the comments “an amazing dog, perfect performance!”

Shelby has come a long way from the garbage dump. But Buhler said when she saw Shelby recently she just needed only a second to compare the movie star with the dog she found from piles of trash. “She’s exactly the same,” Buhler said.