1 . What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is the largest of the five offshore plastic accumulation zones in the world’s oceans. It is located halfway between Hawaii and California.

PLASTIC __________

It is estimated that 1.15 to 2.41 million tonnes of plastic are entering the ocean each year from rivers. More than half of this plastic is less __________than the water, meaning that it will not sink once it encounters the sea.

The strong and floating plastics show resiliency(韧性) in the marine environment, allowing them to be transported over __________distances. They persist at the sea surface as they make their way off shore, transported by converging (汇聚的) currents and finally accumulating in the patch.

Once these plastics enter the gyre（环流）, they are unlikely to leave the area until they __________into smaller microplastics under the effects of sun, waves and marine life. As more and more plastics are discarded into the environment, microplastic __________in the GPGP will only continue to increase.

LOCATION

Due to seasonal and interannual variabilities of winds and currents, the GPGP’s location and shape are constantly changing. Only floating objects that are __________influenced by currents were likely to remain within the patch.

By simulating concentration levels in the North Pacific, the researchers were able to follow the location of the patch and found on average it orbits around 32°N and 145°W. However, the team observed seasonal __________from west to east and substantial variations in latitude（纬度）depending on the year.

IMPACT ON WILDLIFE

Plastic has increasingly become a very common substance in the ocean. Due to its size and color, animals __________the plastic for food, causing malnutrition; it poses entanglement（缠绕）risks and threatens their overall behavior, health, and existence.

Studies have shown that about 700 species have encountered marine debris, and 92% of these __________are with plastic. 17% of the species affected by plastic are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.

IMPACT ON HUMANS AND SOCIETY

Once plastic enters the marine food web, there is a possibility that it will contaminate the human food chain as well. Through a process called bioaccumulation, chemicals in plastics will enter the body of the animal __________on the plastic, and as the feeder becomes prey, the chemicals will pass to the __________—making their way up the food web that includes humans. These chemicals that affected the plastic feeders could then be __________within the human as well.

__________, yearly economic costs due to marine plastic are estimated to be between $6-19billion USD. The costs __________its impact on tourism, fisheries and aquaculture, and governmental cleanups. These costs do not include the impact on human health and the marine ecosystem due to __________research available.

2 . If economist are so smart, why ain’t they rich?

After I wrote a newsletter last month on how economists’ views differ from those of ordinary people, I got emails to the effect of, “If economists are so smart, why ain’t they rich?” I’m not an economist, so the question doesn’t _________ me. The possible explanations, _________, are interesting — sometimes funny, sometimes kind of deep. Here are five theories.

1. Economists aren’t trying to be rich. A lot of economists go to work for institutions of government and higher education. You don’t go to work for such employers because you _________ to vast riches. Nobody asks Trappist monks why they aren’t rich, because it’s understood that getting rich is not their aspiration. Economics likewise offers rewards beyond _________.

2. Economists are too good at economics. Learning a little economics is useful for a lot of _________ careers, from management to banking. Warren Buffett, Steven Cohen, Kenneth Griffin, Henry Kravis and Elon Musk are among the billionaires who have bachelor or master degrees in economics. The _________ is loving it so much that you get your doctorate and become an impoverished postdoc or assistant professor.

3. Economists aren’t actually smart. I don’t _________ this one. I think that economists are smart. But some — not the good ones — can be _________. They know their subspecialties well but are weak on others, such as economic history. These economists have _________ but not wisdom.

4. Economists are __________ by the “efficient market hypothesis”. There’s a joke about a young economist who bends down to pick up a $20 bill he sees on the sidewalk. An older colleague tells him not to __________ because if there were really a $20 bill there, someone would have picked it up already. Devotion to the efficient market hypothesis — which assumes that prices reflect all available information—__________ economists from trying to beat the market, and that’s why they never get rich.

5. Economists do think they can beat the market, but they’re wrong. A great __________ of this is Long-Term Capital Management, a heralded hedge fund (对冲基金) that included a pair of Nobel economics laureates, Robert Merton and Myron Scholes. It __________ in spectacular fashion in 1998.

Warren Buffett, despite earning a master of science degree in economics from Columbia University in 1951, told a CNBC interviewer in 2016, “I don’t pay any attention to what economists say, frankly.” He is __________ that economics isn’t an ideal way to make money as an investor. On the other hand, that’s not what it’s for. It’s a science of means and ends. Let economists be economists!

3 . Hurricane Harvey struck Texas over two years ago, and many communities continue to feel its effects today. The areas that were _________ most by Harvey were already facing many economic _________. After Harvey hit, the people who were _________ to meet their basic needs were faced with having to rebuild their lives and their homes as well. _________ Harvey and the affected communities, the East Harris County Recovery Project was created to help individuals and families that were hit particularly _________ by the hurricane and support them as they _________. Good360, a non-profit charity group, is _________ to partner with this organization to assist the _________ communities.

Good360 donated backpacks to East Harris County Empowerment Council for students returning to school this fall who _________ would not have been able to buy new backpacks. The weeks __________ the start of school are particularly hard for families. Parents are often forced to choose between having __________ on the dinner table, putting gas in the car, and buying school __________ for their children. The donation of backpacks allowed them to __________ meeting other needs.

One family in the county was especially impacted by this donation. When it came time to buy school items, the mother was __________ that she would not have enough money for her two children in school. Thanks to Good360’s __________, both children received brand new backpacks.

4 . Joe Whale is known worldwide for his black-and-white doodles (涂鸦) and all paintings. Nicknamed the “Doodle Boy”, he has more than 100,000 ________ on Instagram.

Joe, who is 12 years old, lives in England. He has been ________ art since he was a small child. “I always ________on the blackboard, which made my ________ angry, and brought me much ________. So now I just do a few in school.” Joe told me in a recent interview by video.

Fortunately, his parents recognized his ________ and signed him up for an art club. When the art club ________some of Joe’s doodles on Instagram, a local ________ asked Joe’s dad if he could doodle on their wall. It proved to be a real ________ to customers.

“I wasn’t really ________ painting on a tall ladder (梯子), so it took me about 12 hours to ________ do it all,” Joe said. He developed his painting further, as his ________ increased with every doodle he made.

Joe has some favorite ________ in his artwork, including aliens (外星人) and monsters. If he gets ________, he uses his surroundings for inspiration.

Joe ________ all kids to have fun with art. He thinks that it’s ________ to trust your own heart, even if you are ________ . “If you’re doodling, be creative,” Joe said. “Most importantly, have fun doing what you ________.”

Joe is the illustrator (插画家) of a new playful ________ by Eric Luper called Bad Food: Game of Scones. The book is ________ with Joe’s black-and-white doodles.

5 . In 1968, Walter Mischel set a challenge for a group of children aged three to five at the nursery school his daughters attended in California. A researcher offered each of them a marshmallow (棉花糖) and then left them alone in the room. If they could resist ________ the colorful sweet until researcher returned up to 15 minutes later, they would be given a second sweet. Some children ate the marshmallow straight away, but most would engage in unintentionally comic attempts to resist temptation. They pulled funny faces, played with their hair, picked up the marshmallow and just ________ to take a bite. If two children were doing the experiment together, they engaged in a conversation about how they could work together to reach the goal of ________ their pleasure.

What Mischel, a clinical psychologist, wanted was to understand how children learned to ________ temptation. Over the following years, the group of children remained friends. When Mischel chatted to his daughters about their former classmates, he began to notice an interesting ________: the children who had exhibited the most self-control in the ‘marshmallow test’ were doing better in life than their peers. He decided to investigate further. For more than 40 years, Mischel followed the lives of the nursery students. His findings were extraordinary. It turns out that being able to resist a treat at the age of five is a strong ________ of success in life: you are more likely to perform well at school and develop self-confidence and less likely to be overweight or develop addictions.

Mischel still teaches psychology at Columbia University and has just written The Marshmallow Test, a book summing up half a century of research. The conclusion he draws from his marshmallow research is ________: some people may be ________ disciplined but the ability to resist temptation is a skill that can also be taught. Teach children self-control early and you can improve their ________.

However, no single ________ —such as self-control—can explain success or failure. Some critics have pointed out that Mischel’s original subjects were themselves children of university professors and graduate students—not exactly a representative sample. Other scientists noted that ________ in home environment could account for differences: stable homes and one-child families encourage self-control, while in less stable homes and those with many children, if you don’t ________ a marshmallow now there won’t be any left in 15 minutes. Mischel answers these critics by noting that studies in a wide variety of schools found ________ results. He acknowledges that the environment ________ our ability to resist temptation and observes that genetics plays a role too. But he still believes that the ability to resist temptation can be ________ and encouraged.

6 . Group-Centered Societies Have Just as Much Creativity

What does culture have to do with creativity? The answer could be “a lot”. For decades, psychologists trying to understand the roots of creative imaginations have looked at the ways in which two different types of cultures can come to have an effect over its artistic and _________ output. Individualistic cultures encourage people to be unique and to _________ their own interests even if doing so comes at a cost to the group overall. Collectivistic cultures are based on relationships and duties to other people. These types of cultures often _________ the individual’s wants for the needs of those who are close to them or for those in their community.

Individualism has long been thought to have a creative _________. Individualists _________ social convention, the logic goes, and that pushback supports innovation. For instance, around the world, individualistic cultures have more patents than collectivistic cultures do. _________, a new study suggests that these ideas about culture and creativity could be off base. People in collectivistic cultures actually do better with a particular type of creative thinking than those in individualistic cultures. And the findings overall reveal the shortcomings of thinking about innovation too _________.

The new work comes from comparing communities in different parts of China. Though it scores high, as a nation, on measures of cultural _________, China’s 1.4 billion people are more than just a single culture. People from areas north of the Yangtze River tend to be more _________, open to strangers and self-confident, whereas people along the river and farther south are often more inter-dependent, partial to friends over strangers and likely to try harder to __________.

In the new creativity study, researchers investigated innovation with these two groups in mind. The team used a drawing test that had been created by psychologists. They gave kids a sheet of paper with just a few basic elements printed on it: some dots here, squiggles (弯曲的线条) there, and a rectangle that suggested a drawing frame. The children got 15 minutes to use the elements already on the page to draw whatever they wanted. They could get “adaptive creativity” points for doodling in ways that connected the squiggles and lines into an original and __________ image. In addition, a judge checked whether the children chose to incorporate a small shape that could be found just outside the rectangular. This element was easy to __________, so those who included this outside-the-box detail could get points for “boundary-breaking creativity.”

The researchers gave the test to 683 middle school students from north and south of the Yangtze River. When the scientists got the scores back, they discovered that there were no differences in the children’s overall creativity. When they broke down the results into components, they found that students from collectivistic regions scored __________ in adaptive creativity while those from individualistic areas did better in boundary-breaking creativity.

The findings are also a warning against cultural chauvinism (极端民族主义). Western countries have tended to lead the way in innovation — at least as defined by the metrics (指标) we Westerners have created. Perhaps we have been __________ China’s adaptive creativity. For example, while the country may not have invented the assembly line, it is largely thanks to the __________ its people have made to this system that the country has such a thriving manufacturing sector today.

7 . ‘Small Data’ Are Also Crucial for Machine Learning

Many people relate “artificial intelligence” with “big data.” There’s a reason for that: some of the most prominent AI breakthroughs in the past decade have relied on enormous data sets. Image _________ made great progress in the 2010s thanks to the development of ImageNet, a data set containing millions of images hand sorted into thousands of categories. More recently, GPT-3, a language model, was trained on _________ online texts to produce humanlike text in Jan, 2021. So it is not surprising to see AI being tightly connected with “big data” in the _________ imagination. But AI is not only about large data sets, and research in “small data” approaches has grown extensively over the past decade. The so-called transfer learning serves as an especially _________ example.

Also known as “fine-tuning,” transfer learning is helpful in settings where you have _________ data on the task of interest but abundant data on a related problem. You need to first train a model using a big data set and then retrain slightly using a smaller one related to your _________ problem. A research team working on German-language speech recognition, _________, showed that they could improve their results by starting with an English-language speech model trained on a larger data set. Then, they used transfer learning to _________ that model for a smaller data set of German-language audio.

Small data approaches such as transfer learning are more _________ than more data-intensive methods. They can promote progress in areas where little or no data exist, such as in forecasting natural hazards that occur relatively __________. In this context, small data approaches will become increasingly important as more organizations look to diversify AI application areas and invest in previously __________ fields.

Despite the progress in research, transfer learning has received relatively little __________. While many machine learning experts are likely familiar with it at this point, the existence of techniques such as transfer learning does not seem to have reached the awareness of the broader space of policymakers in positions of making important decisions about AI funding and __________.

As long as the success of small data technique like transfer learning is __________, resources can be allocated to support their widespread use. In that case, we can help correct the popular __________ regarding the role of data in AI and foster innovation in new directions.

8 . The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that adults do at least 150 minutes of moderate to higher-intensity physical activity each week, and it should be in ________ of at least 10 minutes each for substantial health benefits, which has led many to ________ about the inefficacy of brief activities. Why people take two minutes going up the stairs if more than 10 minutes is ________ to make it worthwhile for health?

But now a study suggests something else: go ahead, take the stairs! Every minute ________ toward reaching the 150-minute goal, whether it’s part of a 10-minute period of activity or not. The purpose of the study conducted at the University of Utah was to see if moderate to vigorous physical activity in less than 10-minute episodes was ________ to weight outcomes. The study, published in the American Journal of Health Promotion, found that each minute spent ________ in some kind of moderate to vigorous physical activity — be it walking the dog, vacuuming, or taking the stairs — was associated with lower BMI and lower weight.

“The idea here is, you can do a minute at a time and that’s not a problem,” Jessie Fan, lead author of the new paper and a family and consumer studies professor at the University of Utah, told Today.

For the women who participated in the study, each minute spent in higher-intensity activity was associated with a 0.7 drop in body mass index (BMI). For a 5'4" woman, that means a ________ of nearly half a pound, which may not sound like much, but that’s just for one minute. Little by little, they add up.

The authors concluded that the current 10-minute ________ guideline was based on health benefits other than weight outcomes and that their findings showed that for weight gain ________, accumulated higher-intensity physical activity bouts of less than 10 minutes are quite ________, supporting the message that “every minute counts.”

When it comes to your brain, it also rings true. An April 2019 study in Jama Network Open looked at how exercise affected the brain, and even short bursts ________ 22% greater brain volume.

“Our study results don’t ________ moderate or vigorous physical activity as being important for healthy ageing. We are just adding to the science, ________ that light-intensity physical activity might be important too, especially for the brain,” Dr. Nicole Spartarno, first author of the study from Boston University said.

“I think it’s easier for people to ________ that message,” Fan says. “Otherwise, if they don’t have a block of time they might be ________, and they don’t do anything.”

9 . It was thought that Microbes (细菌) in sediments — solid material that settles at the bottom of a liquid beneath the seafloor died above 80°C, but scientists have found some that can survive up to 120°C and possibly higher temperatures. The discovery shows that life in seafloor sediments can survive higher temperatures than previously thought.

“I would think that wherever there’s energy that can be exploited by microorganisms, _________ find(s) a way.” says Tina Treude at the University of California, Los Angeles. It is possible that there is life at even higher temperatures. “The only way to find out is to go back and _________ deeper,” she says, though in lab experiments so far, no microbes have been found to grow above 122°C.       

The researchers were also able to _________ out and count cells using a special device. Together, the findings show that relatively few cells survive at these temperatures, but those that do have very high metabolic (新陈代谢的) rates. “It was astonishingly high,” says Treude.   

This surprised the team because it is the _________ of what has been found in shallower sediments, where it is much colder. Microbes are _________ there, but their metabolisms are extremely slow and individual microbes might live for millions of years. At 120°C, the heat is doing a lot of damage to cells, so microbes may need high metabolisms to generate enough energy to repair this damage. It is a(n) _________ to stay alive, says Treude.

It isn’t clear what these heat-loving, or thermophilic, microbes are, as the team was unable to _________ their DNA. Nor is it clear how they came to be in the sediments, given that this would have been a very cold environment for a long time after the sediments that the samples came from were first _________.               

However, a few thermophilic microbes would have been present when the sediments were deposited, and they may have somehow _________ until temperatures began to rise due to being __________ under more material, says team member Felix Beulig at Aarhus University in Denmark.

As the temperatures rose, all the microbes that weren’t __________ of heat would gradually have died off, says team member Florian Schubert at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam. “The microbes that cannot __________, they just die,” he says.

Patrick Forterre at the Pasteur Institute in Paris says that while there are __________ results showing microbe growth at 106°C, nobody has been able to exactly copy the two lab studies claiming growth at 122°C. “It’s very difficult to __________ the upper temperature limit,” he says.

He is therefore __________ of the idea of microbes living normally at 120°C, but he does think it is possible that they could somehow survive and became active again at lower temperatures.

10 . My early twenties were rough. I was housebound with a severe panic disorder that left me afraid of _______ home. After four years, I got _______, but there were still things I was avoiding. One day, I heard about a man who continued _______ himself to get past his anxiety. The man lit a fire under me: “If he can go to Sweden by himself, I can _______ to Florida with my family.”

I was terrified. There was no _______ if I did have a panic attack. But I used positive thinking to get myself _______. First, I had to _______with all my worries and then I told myself, “I can and I am. ” Those five words were _______over and over. No matter what _______ cropped up in my mind, I would answer them with that: my shorthand ________of “I can do it, and I am doing it.”

During the flight, I did have a panic attack, but I ________thinking positive: “The hard part will be over soon.” I was right: the hard part ended as soon as we ________, and I had a great vacation. Taking that trip ________ the door for what was to come next. I took more flights and finally ________ my panic disorder.

Whenever I face a challenge now, I remember the ________of those five words and how far I’ve come: I can and I am.