1 . If you search the internet these days, you’ll likely run across some strange-looking, yet cheerful cartoon characters. These computer-generated people have small heads and exaggerated bodies.     1     The happy figures are often moving or doing something creative.

In 2017 Facebook paid a design team to develop a positive illustration system.     2     She worked to show human connection, motion, energy and joy in her drawings. She wanted to portray that sense of joy people feel when they’re sharing things together. The name which was given to the new art form when it was completed was very appropriate. They named it Alegria, which means joy in Spanish.

Why did Alegria art become popular so quickly? There are many reasons. As websites depended on illustrations to fill space, Alegria-type art became increasingly useful.     3     By comparison, more detailed art designs require extra time, skill and money to produce. Businesses also love the fact that Alegria’s characters celebrate diversity by featuring international cultural events. The illustrations convey good feelings. Those feelings help people believe they can trust the companies that feature them on their pages.

    4     These people think companies like Facebook have simply prepared over their problems with positive images. They’ve failed to address their real problems or make lasting changes.

For many, however, Alegria is a nice visual language that represents happiness. From children hugging to couples dancing, the images are all about positive energy.     5    

2 . It was a very hot day in late summer. I was a young dad working in a local wood mill. It was dangerous, back-breaking work that paid very little. In the year I worked there, only four other people hadn’t quit and been replaced with new faces. Those of us who stayed did so just because there was no other work to find to support our families.

On this day all of us were covered in sweat and dust. When I looked around, every face I saw looked angry and frustrated. Suddenly, a voice called out, “Hey! There’s a deer in here,” A lost little female deer had wandered through the open loading bay doors and was now cowering in between the huge stacks of wood. All of us stopped working immediately and went looking for her as she ran about looking for a way out.

Now most people where I live hunt deer for meat in the fall but also treat them with great kindness the rest of the year. Many will even buy 50 bags of corn to help feed them during the harsh winter months. It was no surprise then that all of us were soon quickly working together to free this little creature. By blocking off all the other routes, we were able to guide her search back to the open bay doors. We watched as she jumped out of the building and back into the woods. Then we walked back in to work. I noticed something, though. On every face there was a joyful smile. It was as if this one single act of kindness had energized us again and reminded us of what life is all about.

5 . Students’ Journey to Empower Rural Heritage

From Aug 18 to 22 a team of 15 Tsinghua University students, representing diverse backgrounds from China, South Korea, Malaysia, and Indonesia, set foot on an overseas research exploration focusing on rural revitalization (振兴) in Indonesian villages, particularly within Nusa Tenggara Barat (NTB).

With the diverse cultural heritage, Indonesia is home to over 83,000 villages, each radiating its own charm and character.     1    

The research mission took the students to Sukarara and Sade villages, two of NTB’s tourist destinations.     2    . Sukarara and Sade are a world apart from the busy cities to which most of the students are accustomed, but the villages are a living test to Indonesia’s rich culture and its devotion to preserving traditions. Revitalizing these villages goes beyond mere economic development.     3    . The weaving skills and architectural techniques of Sukarara and Sade villages are not only beautiful, but they are also an inseparable part to the identity of these communities. It’s essential that they strike a balance between progress and preservation.

    4    . They carried with them not only the memories of their experiences there, but also the responsibility to make a positive impact on these remarkable places.     5    . They were optimistic that Indonesian villages could experience meaningful development, ultimately leading to increased opportunities for employment and an improved quality of life.

6 . An era in which an Alzheimer’s (阿尔兹海默) diagnosis can begin in a doctor’s office is now arriving. Advances in technologies to detect early signs of disease from a blood sample are helping doctors to identify the memory-robbing disorder more accurately and to screen participants more quickly for trials of potential treatments for the more than five million people in the U.S. afflicted with Alzheimer’s. Estimates predict that, by 2030, there will be 76 million people worldwide who will receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s or other dementias.

Last fall, a blood test developed by C2N Diagnostics in St Louis, Mo., became available to most of the U.S. as a routine lab test—regulated under the CMS Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) program. It has also received a CE mark as a diagnostic medical device in the European Union—indicating it has met safety, health and environmental protection standards for the region.

“The development of a blood-based test for Alzheimer’s disease is just phenomenal,” says Michelle Mielke, a neuroscientist and epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic. “The field has been thinking about this for a very long time. It’s really been in the last couple of years that the possibility has come to fruition.”

The C2N test, called PrecivityAD, uses an analytic technique known as mass spectrometry (质谱分析技术) to detect specific types of beta-amyloid (β-淀粉样蛋白), a protein fragment that is a pathological (病态的) hallmark of disease. Beta-amyloid proteins accumulate and form plaques (斑块) visible on brain scans two decades before a patient notices memory problems. As plaques build up in the brain, levels of beta-amyloid decline in the surrounding fluid.

Such changes can be measured in spinal (脊髓的) fluid samples—and now in blood, where beta-amyloid concentrations are significantly lower. PrecivityAD is the first blood test for Alzheimer’s to be cleared for widespread use and one of a new generation of such assays that could enable early detection of the leading neurodegenerative disease—perhaps decades before the onset of the first symptoms.

7 . In a major medical breakthrough, Tel Aviv University researchers have “printed” the world’s first 3D vascularized (有血管的) engineered heart using a patient’s own cells and biological materials. Their findings were published on April IS in a study in Advanced Science.

“This is the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart,”says Prof. Tal Dvir of Department of Materials Science and Engineering, who led the research for the study. “This heart is made from human cells and patient-specific biological materials. In our process, these materials serve as the bioinks, something made of sugars and proteins that can be used for 3D printing of complex tissue models,” Prof. Dvir says. “People managed to 3D print the structure of a heart in the past, but not with cells or with blood vessels (血管). Our results demonstrate the potential of our approach for engineering personalized tissue and organ replacement in the future.”

According to Prof. Dvir, the use of “native” patient-specific materials is important to successfully engineering tissues and organs.

The researchers are now planning on culturing the printed hearts in the lab and “teaching them to behave” like hearts, Prof. Dvir says. They then plan to transplant the 3D-printed heart in animal models.

“We need to develop the printed heart further,” he concludes. “The cells need to form a pumping ability; they can currently contract (收缩) , but we need them to work together. Our hope is that we will succeed and prove our method’s efficacy (功效) and usefulness. “Maybe, in ten years, there will be organ printers in the finest hospitals around the world, and these procedures will be conducted routinely.”

8 . Nowadays, the world is slowly becoming a high-tech society and we are now surrounded by technology. Facebook and Twitter are innovative tools; text messaging is still a somewhat existing phenomenon and even e-mail is only a flashing spot on the screen when compared with our long history of snail mail. Now we adopt these tools to the point of essentialness, and only rarely consider how we are more fundamentally affected by them.

Social media, texting and e-mail all make it much easier to communicate, gather and pass information. But they also present some dangers. By removing any real human engagement, they enable us to develop our abnormal self-love without the risk of disapproval or criticism theatrical metaphor (隐喻), these new forms of communication provide a stage on which we create our own characters, hidden behind a fourth wall of tweets, status updates and texts. This unreal state of unconcern can become addictive as we separate ourselves a safe distance from the cruelty of our fleshly lives, where we are imperfect, powerless and insignificant. In essence, we have been provided not only the means to be more free, but also to become new, to create and protect a more perfect self to the world. As we become more reliant on these tools, they become more a part of our daily routine and so we become more restricted in this fantasy.

So it is that we live in a cold era, where names and faces represent two different levels of closeness, where working relationships occur only through the magic of email and where love can start or end by text message. An environment such as this reduces interpersonal relationships to mere digital exchanges.

Would a celebrity have been so daring to do something dishonorable if he had had to do it in person? Doubtful. It seems he might have been lost in a fantasy world that ultimately convinced himself into believing the digital self could obey different rules and regulations, as if he could continually push the limits of what’s acceptable without facing the consequences of “real life.”