1 . For more than two decades, Elon Musk has focused SpaceX, his rocket company, on his lifelong goal of reaching Mars. Over the last year, he has also built up work on what will happen if he gets there.

Mr. Musk, 53, has directed SpaceX employees to drill into the design and details of a Martian city, according to five people with knowledge of the efforts and documents viewed by The New York Times. One team is drawing up plans for small dome habitats, including the materials that could be used to build them. Another is working on spacesuits to combat Mars's hostile environment, while a medical team is researching whether humans can have children there.

These initiatives, which are at their early stage, are a shift toward more concrete planning for life on Mars as Mr. Musk's timeline has hastened (加速). While he said in 2016 that it would take 40 to 100 years to have a self- sustaining civilization on the planet, Mr. Musk told SpaceX employees in April that he now expects one million people to be living there in about 20 years.

Mr. Musk has long tried to defy(违抗) the impossible and has often managed to beat tough odds. But his vision for life on Mars takes his seemingly limitless ambitions to their most extreme — and some might say absurdist — point. No one has ever set foot on the planet. NASA doesn't expect to land humans on Mars until the 2040s. And if people get there, they will be greeted by a barren terrain, icy temperatures, dust storms, and air that is impossible to breathe.

Yet Mr. Musk is so wedded (执着) to the idea of creating a civilization on Mars — he once said he plans to die there — that it has pushed nearly every business endeavor he has undertaken on Earth. His vision for Mars underlies most of the six companies that he leads or owns, each of which could potentially contribute to a space colony, according to the documents and the people with knowledge of the efforts.

The Boring Company, a private tunneling venture founded by Mr. Musk, was started in part to ready equipment to dig under Mars's surface, two of the people said. Mr. Musk has told people that he bought X, the social media platform, partly to help test how a citizen-led government that rules by consensus might work on Mars. He has also said that he envisions residents on the planet will drive a version of the steel-paneled Cybertrucks made by Tesla, his electric vehicle company.

2 . Babies playfully tease (戏弄) others as young as eight months of age. They tease their parents by playfully offering and withdrawing objects and breaking social rules. Since Language is not required for this behavior, similar kinds of playful teasing might be present in non-human animals. Now an international team of researchers has documented playful teasing in four species of great apes: orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobo s and gorillas.

The team analyzed great apes’ social interactions that appeared to be playful. During these interactions, the researchers observed the teaser’s actions, bodily movements, facial expressions, and how the targets of the teasing responded in turn. They identified 18 distinct teasing behaviors. Many of these behaviors appeared to be used to draw a response, or at least attract the target’s attention.

“It was common for teasers to repeatedly wave or swing a body part or object in the middle of the target’s field of vision, star e closely at their face, pull on their hair or perform other behaviors that were extremely difficult for the target to ignore,” explains Eric a Cartimill, senior author of the study.

Although playful teasing took many forms, the authors note that it differed from play. “Playful teasing in great apes very much comes from the teaser, often throughout the entire interaction and is rarely responded. The animals also rarely use play signals like the primate (灵长目动物) play face’ which is similar to what we would call a smile, or ＇hold ＇gestures that signal their intent to play,” explains Cartmill.

The researchers noted that other experts had mentioned similar behaviors happening in chimpanzees many years ago, but this new study was the first to systematically look at playful teasing. “We hope that our study will inspire other researchers to study playful teasing in more species in order to better understand this behavior. We also hope that this study raises awareness of the similarities we share with our closest relatives and the importance of protecting these endangered animals,” adds Cartmill.

3 . Upcoming Poetry Foundation Events in Chicago and Online

AR. Ammons: Watercolors

Thursday, May 9, 2024 — Wednesday, May 15, 2024 In-Person

Well-known as one of the most gifted and fruitful poets of the mode m era, A. R. Ammons was also an abundant painter. A.R.Ammons: Watercolors focuses on Ammons’s abstract watercolors painted during 1977 — 1979, a time of intense productivity. These abstract watercolors echo those found in Ammons’s poems and offer in expanded understanding of his art. No fees are required.

Let’s Talk About ART with HPAC

Wednesday, May 8, 2024 — Wednesday, May 22,2024 In-Person

Join us for a free four-week hybrid program exploring visual poetry in partnership with the Hyde Park Art Center’s 65+ Education program. Together, we will read, discuss, and compose visual poems, drawing inspiration from the exhibition Kara Walker: Back of Hand, currently an view at the Poetry Foundation.

*NOTE: This program is for adult participants 65 years and older.

Forms & Features Online: Haiku

Tuesday, May 21, 2024, 2:00 PM CT — 4:00 PM CT Online

Come and participate in our haiku exploration! Completely free of charge, the two-hour session offers an immersive journey into haiku, a Japanese verse form that in Western practice often presents a striking combination of images. The group will analyze a wide variety of poems and conclude with a guided creative writing workshop, where participants will compose original haiku.

*NOTE: This program is for adult participants, aged 18 and older.

Forms & Features with Hua XI

Wednesday, May 29, 2024, 11:00 AM CDT — 1:00 PM CDT Online

Poets have historically helped spread the myths of various places as well as popularize and explain commonplace names. The workshop, led by the 2022 Poct-to-Come Scholar HuaXi, invites participants to use poetry as a tool to reconsider the language in their landscape. During the workshop, students will create poems using maps, and in doing so rebuilding relationships between space, language and belonging.

5 . Maritime watchdogs (海事监管机构) have long relied on the Automatic Identification System (AIS) to track ships’ radio activity across the globe. AIS requirements differ between countries and ships, and it’s easy to simply turn off a ship’s transponder (应答器) when a crew wants to stay hidden. Hence the dark fleets.

Now, for the first time ever, researchers have created a global map of human activity in the oceans and on coastlines. By using satellite imagery, GPS data and artificial intelligence, the team uncovered unregulated activity on the high seas, including untracked dark fleets.

The newest findings showcase the troublingly larger impact of dark fleets around the world. “We had an idea that we were missing a big part of the activity happening in the ocean, but we didn’t know how much,” said Fernando Paolo, the lead author of the study. “And we found that it’s a lot more than we imagined.” For example, in the Mediterranean Sea, previous numbers had shown fishing on the European side to be ten times greater than that on the African side. But the new study suggests the amount of fishing on both sides is roughly the same.

But this data can do more than uncover possible illegal fishing. “Ship tracking could also transform environmental conservation efforts by revealing entry into protected areas,” writes machine learning researcher Konstantin Klemmer. More than 20 ships per week crossed into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and over the five per week entered the Galapagos Marine Reserve, according to the study.

It’s not all troubling revisions, however. According to the team’s findings, the number of green offshore energy projects doubled over the five- year period analyzed. As of 2021, wind turbines (涡轮机) officially outnumbered the world’s oil platforms, with China taking the lead by increasing its number of wind farms by 900 percent.

7 . If you have ever interacted with a playful puppy, a darling kitten, or any other adorable creature, chances are that you’ve experienced an overwhelming urge to pet, squeeze, or even pinch them.     1     It is a response that is likely linked to our innate drive to nurture and protect our young.

    2     A questionnaire to measure the levels of cute aggression experienced was given to the participants of the study. Researchers found that people tend to feel a stronger “cute aggression” response towards baby animals and pictures of digitally enhanced human babies with enlarged features. They also found that seeing cute things triggers the brain’s emotion and reward systems. Someone may feel so overwhelmed with emotions that they have become unmanageable. The brain’s strategy to regulate this imbalance is to express an “opposite” emotion to avoid excessive emotional exertion.    3     This phenomenon is called a dimorphous expression (二态表达) of emotion.

A second study also confirmed that cute aggression is a way of regulating emotions. When people are overwhelmed by a strong emotion, they develop distorted negative behavior called “duplicity”, in which what they do does not correspond to what they think. But cute aggression doesn’t equal abusive violence.    4    

Now that you know why you feel the urge to squeeze unbearably cute and fluffy things, there’s no need to worry about these aggressive tendencies.    5     If you feel the urge to pinch, bite, or even “grind your teeth” when you see cute animals, don’t worry — this is not “sadistic tendencies”, but the brain is trying to control itself.

8 . Kansas City International Airport Ground Transportation

Dropping Off and Picking Up Kansas City International Airport (KCI) offers several convenient options for dropping- off and picking- up passengers at the airport terminals.

Here are a few tips to help plan your trip:

●There are two terminals at KCI, with different airlines flying out of each. Please check the airlines section of the website to be sure you know which terminal to use.

●Strict security directives prohibit parked or unattended vehicles on the roadways in front of the terminals, even for a short time. You may pull shuttle services to the curb in front of a terminal only long enough to drop off or pick up a waiting traveler. When waiting to be picked up, the traveler must be waiting outside the terminal before you pull over; parking your vehicle at the curb while you wait for arriving travelers to emerge from the terminal is not allowed. Unattended vehicles may be ticketed.

Metro Bus Service

RideKC operates to and from KCI every day of the week. RideKC buses accept cash and 31- day bus passes. The regular one- way fare to or from KCI is $15. Fare for seniors, youths and persons with disabilities can be reduced by $5, and based on that, an additional 20% discount can be given to youths with student cards.

For routes, schedules and additional information please visit their website or contact RideKC directly at 816-221-0660.

9 . Reading fiction is an emotional experience. Feeling emotions — even negative emotions such as sadness — drives reading and helps us enjoy books. The emotions we feel when reading may even help us show empathy, understand that others have opinions, and encourage us to help others. The emotional experience of reading is both individually and socially beneficial.

Currently, however, the link between reading and emotions is largely missing from the reading experienced by young people in English literature lessons in England.

The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) English literature curriculum has been criticized. Examination questions in English literature are usually constructed impersonally. For instance, a recent GCSE paper asks students, "How does Priestley explore the importance of social class in An Inspector Calls?" Questions like this encourage students to consider the intention and style of the author without taking their personal response to the text into account.

The current approach to the English literature curriculum and its assessment is also in conflict with how teachers view the value of emotions in English teaching. In our recent study, we found that the teachers used the words "feel" and "feeling" frequently. These words often occurred within broader comments about engagement and a sense of closeness to both the themes and characters in the texts being studied. Some of the teachers we surveyed felt that this connection with a text had to be in place before any attempt to analyze language, structure and meaning. As one teacher said, "I find the easiest way of getting kids to analyze language is getting them to think about how it makes them feel and then to explore how the language is making that happen."

Teachers were also keen to promote the value of discussion in their classrooms. They viewed this as an important way in which learners developed as readers, through dialogue and by building on others' emotional responses. They felt such collective talk was important as a tool for enriching the classroom environment. It also, crucially, encouraged students to understand that any literary text can spark multiple and often very different interpretations.

School reading should be more closely aligned (使一致) to personal reading practices and those are very much driven by emotions.