Another Way

The train ran smoothly on a spring afternoon. At one station, the doors opened, and came in a man. He wore laborer’s clothing, big, drunk and dirty. Screaming, he swung at an elderly couple. Terrified, the couple jumped up and quickly walked away. The laborer aimed a kick at the back of the old woman but missed. The passengers froze with fear.

I’ve been putting in a solid eight hours of martial arts (武术) training nearly every day for the past three years. “We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it,” my teacher had said again and again. I listened to his words. In my heart, however, I wanted to save the innocent by destroying the guilty.

“This is it!” I said to myself as I got to my feet. Seeing me stand up, the drunk recognized a chance to focus his rage (怒火). His fists upraised, he gathered himself for a rush at me. A second before he could move, someone shouted “Hey!”

I remembered the strangely joyous quality of the voice. We both stared down at a little old man. “Come here and talk with me,” the old man said in an easy voice. He waved his hands lightly. The big man followed, as if on a string. He planted his feet in front of the old gentleman, “Why should I talk to you?” The old man continued, “What have you been drinking?” “Beer,” the laborer replied, “and it’s none of your business!”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” the old man said with interest. “You see, I love beer, too. Every night, my wife and I take beer out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench. We look to see how our persimmon (柿子) tree is doing. We worry about whether it will recover from those ice storms we had last winter. Our tree has done better than I expected, though, especially when you consider the poor quality of the soil.”

As the laborer struggled to follow the old man, his face began to soften.

I turned my head for one last look before getting off the train.

5 . Phonetic (语音) information—the smallest sound elements of speech - is considered by researchers to be the basis of language. Babies are thought to learn these small sound elements and add them together to make words. But a new study suggests that phonetic information is learnt too late and slowly for this to be the case. Instead, rhythmic (有韵律的) speech helps babies learn language and is effective even in the first few months of life.

Researchers from the Trinity College Dublin investigated babies’ ability to process phonetic information during their first year. Their study, published in the journal Nature Communications. found that phonetic information wasn’t successfully encoded (编码) until seven months old, and did not occur very often at 11 months old when babies began to say their first words. From then individual speech sounds are still added in very slowly—too slowly to form the basis of language.

The researchers recorded patterns of brain activity in 50 babies at four, seven, and eleven months old as they watched a video of a primary school teacher singing 18 nursery rhymes (童谣) to a baby. They found that phonetic encoding in babies appeared inchmeal over the first year of life, beginning with labial sounds (e.g. “d” for “daddy”) and nasal sounds (e.g. “m” for “mummy”), with the “read out” progressively looking more like that of adults.

“The reason why we use nursery rhymes is because that is the best way for babies to discover and connect sounds with language, so we are teaching them how to speak,” said Giovanni Di Liberto, lead author of the study at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. “Parents should talk and sing to their babies as much as possible or use baby-directed speech because it will make a difference to language outcome,” she added.

I should not have dressed up. Obviously, no other fifth grader had felt driven to celebrate the first day of school via fancy clothing. So I stood out not just as a newcomer, but as an awkwardly dressed one. Scratching at black tights with the toe of my sneaker, I paused uncertainly in the doorway of the Writing Room.

Pausing uncertainly, however, was not the way of the world of Mr. Matthews. This red-haired, red-beard, red-faced man seemed to call wildly to me to enter. I walked over to a seat and in three minutes of casual observation I was convinced that I had never known an adult like him. He laughed from his belly, moved his ears on request, and his face then turned even redder. His students loved him; it was evident from the way they greeted him to the way they relaxed when they entered his room.

On the contrary, I was not relaxed. I was uninterested in writing. My only previous writing experience had been in cloth-covered books with more room for pictures than print. I had no idea what to expect from a class that was just called "Writing", but I was certain I wasn't going to like it.

Yet Mr. Matthews spent that first class entertaining us.

That night, despite having dealt with a word processor all of twice in my life, I wrote with passion.

It was last summer that Anna reached retirement age and left the job she loved. She spent most of her working life teaching Chinese in a high school. A good teacher must know how to deal with children. She received many honours, including outstanding teachers in the town.

Her husband had passed away earlier and her children are all abroad. She was alone guarding a large house, so her friends advised her to enter a local nursing home. However, she loved being around people and was used to dealing with young people. Fortunately, there stood a library near her home, so she often visited it.

The library is both an invaluable resource and a beautiful space. Anna always appreciates the helpful staff and broad collection of books. “Studying from home gets lonely, so just to be around other people is very helpful,” she told her friends.

However, she still felt that there was room for energy in her heart and always thought about doing something more meaningful.

One day, the sign on the librarian’s desk read: “Readers Wanted for Project Read Aloud.” Anna looked at it as the librarian handed the book that she had chosen.

“What is Project Read Aloud?” Anna asked, bursting (满怀) with curiosity.

“Here’s the brochure about it. There’s a form inside to fill out if you want to become a reader. There is no pay, by the way,” the librarian said with a smile.

She loved to sit in one of the reading chairs in the reading room with the smell of books all around her and lose herself in a book. Once home, she sat down to read the brochure, which said, “Project Read Aloud aims to provide the opportunity of hearing stories read aloud in a comfortable setting.” That was a fine goal, she thought.

Anna filled out the form.

Soon, the audience began to walk in and find their seats.

8 . Cities, covering less than 2% of the Earth’s surface, are major contributors to climate change, consuming almost 80% of the world’s energy and producing more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. Fortunately, net zero emissions (净零排放) by 2050, a target set at the COP26 conference, could be achieved faster using digital twins cities, according to a recent research.

Looking and behaving identically in their real-world physical environments, digital twins can help track, manage and reduce environmental damage rapidly. These replicas (复制品) link to networks of sensors that collect data from buildings, transport, air quality, and energy use, to see where emissions can be cut and efficiency improved. Similar technologies have been in use since NASA’s Apollo moon mission in 1969, where computers and machine replicas were used to test and monitor spacecraft.

Research shows that digital twins can save cities more than $ 280 billion globally by 2030 through more efficient urban planning. Digital twin provider Cityzenith believes that net zero deadlines could be achieved 15 years earlier if the world’s 100 biggest cities use the technology to decarbonize. “They are the perfect tool for managing and speeding up the energy transformation,” said CEO Michael Jansen. “We could get to net zero globally by 2035.”

Over the past decades, big tech companies around the world, including GE Digital and Siemens, have developed software for replicating cities, including a district of Berlin, the island nation of Singapore, and the entire city of Shanghai in China. In the US, the Digital Twin Consortium is working to standardize how digital twins are built and share data. Technology company MX3D built the world’s first 3D-printed stainless steel bridge and co-created its digital twin. CEO Gijs van der Velden believes twins will give us precise control over the built environment.

Recently, OpenAI also made advances in this field. On February 15, the company revealed its latest groundbreaking tech—Sora to the world. Sora is a text-to-video generative AI model. It can generate videos that matches the text prompt (文本提示) given to it in a few seconds. Experts believe Sora is likely to be applied in science and national defence in the future.

I was having a hard weekend. My husband left two days ago for a business trip, and it was our first separation in ten years of marriage. I slept through my alarm after a rough night’s sleep, and the first thing I saw upon looking at my phone was that the cast list was just posted for a community musical I recently auditioned (试镜) for, and I was not on it. All told, I was starting my day lonely and discouraged.

In addition, I was behind on my work-from-home job—even more so now that I’d overslept—so I put in a Meituan order, which included a drink, a piece of bread, and four cake pops from a coffee shop before sitting down in my home office to work.

I live in a gated community, which ensures the safety and privacy of its residents. Given this, whenever I place an order for delivery, I provide detailed instructions to ensure smooth access for the deliveryman. Therefore, in the delivery instructions that accompany every order I place, I make sure to include the gate code for entrance. Moreover, I provide specific instructions on how to make the exit gate work, as some drivers have found it difficult.

About ten minutes after putting in my order, I received a message from the delivery driver who was picking up my order.

Driver: “Hi, Ms Jennet! I just picked up your order at the Coffee Shop, and I’m on my way! I delivered something to you a few days ago, so don’t worry. I know the way and the instructions! I will be there as soon as possible!”

I responded, “Awesome! Drive safe!”

Less than five minutes later, I got another message from the driver, “Just delivered! Enjoy your meal and have a great day!”

I headed for my front door and found a bag with my order as well as a little bag of candy.

As I enjoyed the candy, I couldn’t help but feel grateful and decided to pay it forward.