1 . Parents may fear that if their high school student isn’t motivated (有动力) to do well in classes, there’s nothing that will change that. But a new study found that students’ learning motivation often did change and usually for the better.

1,670 students from grades 9 to 11 took part in the study in two school years, during which they completed several surveys that assessed their motivation. After each survey, the students were placed into six different profiles (档案), from worst — those who were not motivated at all, to best — those who had an inner desire to learn.

The study found about 67 % students did change their profiles during the two years and there was an overall positive change in students’ motivation. For example, 8% of the students were in the best profile — autonomously motivated — in the first year, and that increased to 11.4% in the second year. The worst profile, the not motivated, described 2.8% of the students in the first year, dropping to 2.1% in the second year.

“The other good news in the study was that if we can find better ways to motivate students, if we can get them in a better profile, they tend to stay there,” said Kui Xie, lead author of the study and professor of educational studies at the Ohio State University.

Why did students move in a positive direction? One reason may be simply because they’re a year older and more mature (成熟).

But the study did find two factors that impacted how likely they were to become more motivated. One was the previous achievement. Students who had higher grade the first year were more likely to remain in better profiles in the second year of the study. The other factor was school belongingness, with students who felt they were more a part of their school in the first year being more likely to move to or stay in a better profile in the second year.

“This may be one area where we can help students become more motivated,” Xie said. “Belongingness is something schools can change. They can find ways to help students feel like they are part of the school community.”

4 . Henry Cavill: Bring Superman to Life

Henry Cavill knew that he wanted to be a star at 16 years of age, after a chance meeting with movie star Russell Crowe who inspired his passion for acting. But for the British-born actor, the bright lights and attraction of Hollywood were a long way away. Supported by his secretary mother and stockbroker father, he decided to study drama during high school. His journey to super star began.

Before gaining the international recognition he has now, Cavill tried out for roles in the Harry Potter and Twilight series but failed to get either. He would have to keep waiting for his big chance.

Determined as ever, Cavill took any acting jobs he could get his hands on and appeared in several low-budget horror movies and TV shows in hopes of getting noticed. It almost worked. In the early 2000s, at just 22 years old, he narrowly missed out on becoming the new James Bond. Finally, in 2007, his hard work paid off. He won a leading role as the first Duke of Suffolk in the period show The Tudors. The TV show was very popular and helped to raise Cavill's popularity in America.

In 2011, Cavil landed his breakout role, playing Superman in the DC Extended Universe. He hasn't looked back and has since starred in many hit films, such as Mission: Impossible- Fallout.

More recently, he stepped back on to the small screen. Since 2019, he has starred in the popular series The Witcher, adapted from the book series and video games of the same name. In the TV show, Cavill played a brave monster hunter named Geralt of Rivia, which was the perfect role for Cavill because he was a fan of the video games. Cavill also got a chance to play a classic English character — master detective Sherlock Holmes — in 2020's Enola Holmes.

However, Cavill isn't just a good guy on screen. His charity work also makes him a real-life hero. In 2014, he took part in the Ice Bucket Challenge while wearing his full Superman suit to support the ALS Association. Currently, he is an ambassador for the UK's Royal Marines Charity, which supports war veterans (退伍军人). Why does he do it? He love to make people feel good and bring smiles to people' faces. Indeed, Henry Cavill in living proof that you don't always need to wear a cape (斗篷) to act like a hero.

6 . Who is a genius? This question has greatly interested humankind for centuries.

Let’s state clearly: Einstein was a genius. His face is almost the international symbol for genius. But we want to go beyond one man and explore the nature of genius itself. Why is it that some people are so much more intelligent or creative than the rest of us? And who are they?

In the sciences and arts, those praised as geniuses were most often white men, of European origin. Perhaps this is not a surprise. It’s said that history is written by the victors, and those victors set the standards for admission to the genius club. When contributions were made by geniuses outside the club—women, or people of a different color or belief—they were unacknowledged and rejected by others.

A study recently published by Science found that as young as age six, girls are less likely than boys to say that members of their gender(性别)are “really, really smart.” Even worse, the study found that girls act on that belief: Around age six they start to avoid activities said to be for children who are “really, really smart.” Can our planet afford to have any great thinkers become discouraged and give up? It doesn’t take a genius to know the answer: absolutely not.

Here’s the good news. In a wired world with constant global communication, we’re all positioned to see flashes of genius wherever they appear. And the more we look, the more we will see that social factors(因素)like gender, race, and class do not determine the appearance of genius. As a writer says, future geniuses come from those with “intelligence, creativity, perseverance(毅力), and simple good fortune, who are able to change the world.”

7 . In 1953, when visiting his daughter’s maths class, the Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner found every pupil learning the same topic in the same way at the same speed. Later, he built his first “teaching machine”, which let children tackle questions at their own pace. Since then, education technology (edtech) has repeated the cycle of hype and flop (炒作和失败), even as computers have reshaped almost every other part of life.

Softwares to “personalize” learning can help hundreds of millions of children stuck in miserable classes—but only if edtech supporters can resist the temptation to revive harmful ideas about how children learn. Alternatives have so far failed to teach so many children as efficiently as the conventional model of schooling, where classrooms, hierarchical year-groups, standardized curriculums and fixed timetables are still the typical pattern for most of the world’s nearly 1.5 billion schoolchildren. Under this pattern, too many do not reach their potential. That condition remained almost unchanged over the past 15 years, though billions have been spent on IT in schools during that period.

What really matters then? The answer is how edtech is used. One way it can help is through tailor-made instruction. Reformers think edtech can put individual attention within reach of all pupils. The other way edtech can aid learning is by making schools more productive. In California schools, instead of textbooks, pupils have “playlists”, which they use to access online lessons and take tests. The software assesses children’s progress, lightening teachers’ marking load and allowing them to focus on other tasks. A study suggested that children in early adopters of this model score better in tests than their peers at other schools.

Such innovation is welcome. But making the best of edtech means getting several things right. First, “personalized learning” must follow the evidence on how children learn. It must not be an excuse to revive pseudoscientific ideas such as “learning styles”: the theory that each child has a particular way of taking in information. This theory gave rise to government-sponsored schemes like Brain Gym, which claimed that some pupils should stretch or bend while doing sums. A less consequential falsehood is that technology means children do not need to learn facts or learn from a teacher—instead they can just use Google. Some educationalists go further, arguing that facts get in the way of skills such as creativity. Actually, the opposite is true. According to studies, most effective ways of boosting learning nearly all relied on the craft of a teacher.

Second, edtech must narrow, rather than widen, inequalities in education. Here there are grounds for optimism. Some of the pioneering schools are private ones in Silicon Valley. But many more are run by charter-school groups teaching mostly poor pupils, where laggards (成绩落后者) make the most progress relative to their peers in normal classes. A similar pattern can be observed outside America.

Third, the potential for edtech will be realized only if teachers embrace it. They are right to ask for evidence that products work. But skepticism should not turn into irrational opposition. Given what edtech promises today, closed-mindedness has no place in the classroom.

8 . A new research published in Nature Machine Intelligence suggests that teaching materials science, mechanical engineering, computer science, biology and chemistry as a combined discipline (综合学科) could help students develop the skills they need to create lifelike artificially intelligent (AI) robots as researchers.

Known as Physical AI, these robots will be designed to look and behave like humans or other animals. At the same time, they will own intelligence (智力) normally connected with biological organisms (生物有机体). These robots could in future help humans at work and in daily living, performing tasks that are dangerous for humans and helping with medicine, caregiving, security, building and industry.

However, today's robots and biological beings exist separately and the intelligence of the two have not yet been combined. Co-lead author Professor Mirko Kovac said, "The development of robot 'bodies' has greatly fallen behind the development of robot 'brains' . Unlike digital AI, which has been studied deeply in the last few decades, breathing physical intelligence into robots has remained relatively unexplored."

The researchers say that the reason for this gap might be that no systematic educational method has yet been developed for teaching students and researchers to create robot bodies and brains combined as whole units.

This new research suggests a way of overcoming the gap by combining scientific disciplines to help future researchers create lifelike robots with abilities such as developing bodily control, autonomy and sensing at the same time.

Professor Kovac said, "We picture Physical AI robots being developed in the lab by using unusual materials and research methods. Cross-disciplinary cooperation and partnerships will be very important."

The researchers also advise strengthening research activities in Physical AI by supporting teachers on both the institutional and community level. They suggest hiring and supporting university educators whose priority (重点) will be cross-disciplinary Physical AI research. "Creating lifelike robots has been an impossible task so far, but it could be made possible by including Physical Al in the high education system," Kovac said.

We hope that the researchers' work will encourage active discussion of the topic and will lead to combination of Physical Al disciplines in the educational mainstream. The researchers intend to carry out the Physical AI methodology in their research and education activities to help build human-robot ecosystems.

9 . Raising just one child can be a tough job for any parent, which is why this woman is being honored for taking in more than 600 children over the course of five decades. 75-year-old Linda Herring from Johnson County. Iowa has been tirelessly providing food, clothing, love» and medical care to hundreds of adopted kids since the 1970s.

When Herring first began adopting kids, she was also running a home daycare and working as a night custodian（监护人）in a local high school. Additionally, she volunteered as a first responder for 50 years of her life.

Out of the hundreds of adopted kids that Herring has taken under her wing, many of them experienced a range of medical conditions and special needs-but that never prevented Herring. Linda mostly adopted young children and children with special medical needs and kept boxes of clothes in her garage, piled to the ceiling, labeled by size and gender. No one had to worry about a child going without clothes at Linda’s, even if they arrived with nothing but what they were wearing.

Anthony Herring, who was just 3 years old when he was adopted into Linda’s family, described his mother like this： "It’s hard to say in words her impact. She was always available and ready for a child in need. " These kids were usually taken from a traumatic（受到创伤的） situation and she’d take them in, providing a warm bed, clean clothes» warm meals, and love. She also worked hard to keep families together. Helping biological parents make the changes needed to be able to keep their children. She always makes sure a new child in her home was given a professional photograph that was placed on the wall in the living room. "That seems like a small thing, but it helps them feel like they’re at home.”

10 . My Biggest Challenge

As a writer on an adventure sports magazine, I’d always fought shy of doing the adventurous stuff myself, preferring instead to observe the experts from a safe distance and relay their experiences to readers in the form of written language. Thus, when I was challenged to take part in a mountain climb in aid of raising money for charity — and to write about it afterwards — I was unwilling, to say the least.

I was lucky enough to have a brilliant climbing coach called Keith, who put me through my paces after my daily work. He gave me knowledge about everything from the importance of building muscle groups to how to avoid tiredness through nutrition. It quickly became apparent that the mechanics of climbing were more complex than I had imagined. There was the equipment and techniques I’d never even heard of, all of which would come in handy on the snow-capped peak I’d be climbing.

Aware of the challenge, Keith made a detailed action plan and I forced myself to stick to it, doing a daily workout at the gym and going on hikes with a heavy pack. I perfected my technique on the climbing wall and even went to climb the mountains to get vital experience. My self-belief increased alongside my muscle power and I became confident about finishing the climb.

All too soon I was on a plane to my destination. On that day, when I looked up at the mountain, I thought of abandoning it. But then I remembered all the hard work I’d done and how disappointed Keith would be if I gave up at the last minute-not to mention letting down the charity and the sense of failure I’d experience myself. With a deep breath I gathered my equipment and headed out into the sunshine to meet the rest of the group.

And as I sit here now, tapping away on my laptop, I’m amazed at the details in which I can recall every second of the climb: the burning muscles, the tiredness, the minor problems along the way. Could I have been better prepared? Possibly. Would I be back for another go? Thankfully not. The feeling of being excited when I stood on top of the world is a never-to-be-repeated experience but one I will enjoy forever nevertheless.