1 . Gratitude, which is a positive emotional state, can have a profound impact on our mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

Gratitude offers us a way of embracing (拥抱) all that makes our lives what they are.     1     It includes the willingness to expand our attention so that we perceive more of the goodness we are always receiving.

Robert Emmons is one of the world’s leading experts on the science of gratitude.     2     The first is an affirmation of goodness: People can learn to wake up to the good around them and notice the gifts they have received. The second part of gratitude is recognizing that the source of this goodness rests outside of oneself — we receive these gifts from other people, and sometimes from fate, or the natural world.     3    

In one study involving nearly 300 adults seeking counseling services at a university, one group wrote a gratitude letter each week for three weeks. The gratitude group reported significantly better mental health (compared to the control group), 12 weeks after the last writing exercise.     4     A study of this practice found that people who wrote down three things that had gone well in their day and identified the causes of those good things were significantly happier and less depressed.

    5     When you practice gratitude, you shift your thoughts away from negative emotions and uncomfortable sensations. Instead, you begin to focus on good things that you may have overlooked. Rather than focusing on the misfortune of having a flat tire, for example, you consider how your job has made it possible to pay for repairs. Or you shift your focus to how fortunate you are to have close friends who are willing to drive you home.

2 . The Ark

Shanghai International Dance Center Theater will present “The Ark” this weekend, a two-dance performance by Chinese and foreign female choreographers (编舞者).

“Build Beauty” by Chinese choreographer Gong Xingxing and “Last Man Standing” by German choreographer Sita Ostheimer, comprise “The Ark”. Artists from Xiexin Dance Theater will perform both works.

Time: December 23, 7:30 pm

Admission:180 — 580 yuan

Venue: Shanghai International Dance Center Theater

Belt and Road Initiative

The exhibition narrates the history of the ancient Silk Road and Shanghai’s modern development. It features over 250 documents, artifacts, photos and videos. About 80 percent of the exhibits are on display in Shanghai for the first time. Highlighted items include a tiny replica (模型) of the treasure ship of Zheng He and some historical documents.

Time: Through late April, 2024

Admission: Free

Venue: Shanghai Archives

Live in Love!

The Shanghai Rainbow Chamber Singers will lead audiences to welcome the New Year with a concert “Live in Love!”

Starting at 10:00 pm on Sunday, the concert features RCS’s original compositions covering the themes of love, memory, and farewells. The concert will end with the title song “Live in Love!” Audiences will be invited to stand up and set their emotions free together with the singers to welcome the New Year.

Time: December 31, 10:00 pm

Admission:180 — 1,080 yuan

Venue: Shanghai Oriental Art Center

Inside No. 9

The popular British TV series “Inside No. 9” has been adapted into an immersive (沉浸式的) live theater performance. Three “Inside No. 9” stories will be performed live for the audience. The specially designed seats and stages will provide audiences with a one-of-a-kind immersive theater experience.

Time: Through February 29, 2:50 pm/7:30 pm/8:20 pm

Admission:489 —   589 yuan

Venue: Shanghai Grand Theater

3 . Climate change causes tens of billions of dollars in economic damage in the United States every year. Climate change is expensive, deadly but preventable, according to the new National Climate Assessment, the most sweeping, sophisticated federal analysis of climate change compiled to date.

“Climate change affects us all, but it doesn’t affect us all equally,” says climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, one of the authors of the assessment.

“The research indicates that people with lower income have more trouble adapting to climate change, because adaptation comes at a cost,” says Solomon Hsiang, a climate economist at the University of California.

For example, one of the simplest ways to adapt to severe heat waves is to run your air conditioner more. But “if people can’t pay for it, then they can’t protect themselves,” explains Hsiang.

Weather-related disasters in the U. S. cause about $150 billion each year in direct losses, according to the report. That’s a lot of money and it’s only expected to go up as the Earth gets hotter. And the hotter it gets, the more profound the economic harm. Twice as much planetary warming leads to more than twice as much economic harm, the assessment warns.

But it also points out many successful efforts underway to adapt to the new reality and to prevent worse outcomes. “It’s not the message that if we don’t hit 1.5 degrees, we’re all going to die,” says Hayhoe. “It’s the message that everything we do matters. Every 10th of a degree of warming we avoid, there’s a benefit to that.”

There’s been a slight shift in the report’s perspective since the last one, says Candis Callison, a sociologist and author of the report. There’s now a clear acknowledgement, development, developed through years of rigorous research, that the fossil fuel-powered society the U. S. built over generations was profoundly unjust. “Climate change actually provides us with an opportunity to address some of those inequities (不公平) and injustices — and to respond to these impacts,” Callison says. “That’s really a powerful thing.”

4 . Do you believe that most people are greedy or generous? It is easy to come up with examples of stories that could support either conclusion if we are relying on our memories or on our guts (直觉).

Recently, a team of researchers sought to investigate this question in partnership with the TED organization. TED generously gave away $10,000 each to 200 lucky individuals (yes, you read that correctly), which essentially means these participants won a lottery. Besides, they were asked to spend all the money in three months rather than save it). These participants were from three low-income countries (Indonesia, Brazil, Kenya) and four high-income countries (Australia, Canada, UK, USA). Over the next three months, participants were asked to track their spending to examine how generously or selfishly this money was spent. They reported their spending to the researchers a few months later.

Of the $10,000 participants received, they spent $6,431 on other people. To be clear, this also included certain behaviors in which the participants themselves benefited personally (such as taking their friends out to dinner or paying for a family vacation). But still, people are very generous. Participants gave away $1,697 strictly to charity or nonprofit organizations.

The researchers expected that if people publicly shared how they spent their money, they would be more generous. To check if this was correct, they asked half of the participants to post on Twitter about how they spent the money. The other half were asked to keep their spending “private”.

Surprisingly, the researchers saw that “generous spending was similar” between Twitter and private groups. The mini lottery winners were no more or less generous depending on whether they posted their spending on Twitter or kept it to themselves. The authors admitted they expected the Twitter group to spend more generously, but this prediction was not supported by the data. People did not need to have their spending shown publicly to behave generously.

5 . This year, it was harder than ever to get into Harvard University. The prestigious college announced their lowest acceptance rate ever, welcoming only 1,968 of 57,435 first-year applicants into their hallowed halls. Thanks to Abigail Mack’s moving, insightful essay, she will be one of the lucky students to matriculate this fall.

The Massachusetts high school senior used TikTok to share a part of the essay that made her one of the 4 percent of applicants who made the cut. Her essay focused on an unusual theme: the letter “S.”

“I hate the letter ‘S’,” she read aloud on TikTok. “Of the 164,777 words with ‘S’, I only struggle with one. To condemn an entire letter because of its use 0.0006 percent of the time sounds statistically unreasonable, but that one case changed 100 percent of my life. I used to have two parents, but now I have one, and the ‘S’ in ‘parents’ isn’t going anywhere.”

“‘S’ follows me,” she continued. “I can’t get through a day without being reminded that while my friends went out to dinner with their parents, I ate with my parent. As I write this essay, there is a blue line under the word ‘parent’ telling me to check my grammar; even Grammarly assumes that I should have parents, but cancer doesn’t listen to edit suggestions.”

She went on to explain that she fled that dreaded letter by throwing herself into school activities. She joined clubs, sports, and performed in theatrical productions, all in an effort to lessen the pain of losing her mom. Eventually, she realized she was hiding from her pain and decided to face it head-on. She took over the “S” for her own purposes. Now, instead of thinking about the “S” in parents, she concentrates on the double “S” in passion.

Abigail’s essay earned her a spot at several top colleges and she has officially been accepted into the class of 2025 in Harvard. In the meantime, her essay has gone viral (走红) with over 16 million views!

7 . “There’s a little black woman walking, spraying (喷洒) stuff on the sidewalks and trees on Elizabeth and Florence...” he told the police. Her neighbor saw her spraying something on the sidewalks and trees and this made him worried. In the call to 911, he described the child as “a little black woman”.

Well, the “little black woman” was actually 9-year-old Bobbi Wilson, a young scientist. The fourth-grader had created her own insecticide (杀虫剂) to fight spotted lanternflies (斑衣蜡蝉). She came across the recipe on TikTok and had recently learned that the harmful species damages trees because they feed on their sap (树液). Bobbi was simply testing out her invention in her neighborhood when the police call was made.

“That’s her thing,” her mother Monique Joseph said. “She’s going to kill the lanternflies, especially if they’re on a tree. That’s what she’s going to do.” Bobbi’s 13-year-old sister, Hayden Wilson, also defended her, noting that Bobbi “was not only doing something amazing for our environment, but she was also doing something that made her feel like a hero”. Luckily, what happened didn’t influence Bobbi’s spirit and has led to some positive experiences for her.

She has since been recognized by several organizations for her environmental efforts. She has also been invited on special tours. One took place at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Another was given by the United States Department of Agriculture of New Jersey at a plant where they discussed lanternflies. But that’s not where her recognition ends! The Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions (ANJEC) honored Bobbi with their Sustainability Award for her work to save trees and fight lanternflies.

“We were excited that she was doing that,” Ann Marchioni of the ANJEC said. Ann added that the organization praises volunteers for being “hands-on” in their community. In addition to the award, she and her family got to visit with a group of black female scientists at Yale University. They showed her various labs and even invited her to donate lanternfly specimens (标本) for the university’s work.

9 . A few months ago, a friend gifted me a robot sweeper that’s programmed to move around a room and clean as it goes.

When the box arrived, I was afraid the device would detect me and suck up (汲取) data along with the dog hair and dust. But the instructions were easy, and I finally decided not to care.

I powered up the sweeper, watched it leave its docking station to work, and quickly fell in love with my newly shiny floors. I kept shooting its working videos. “I think you’re giving more attention to it than to us,” joked my son.

One day, I returned home and discovered that our front door had blown open and the robot rolled into the yard, trying to clean the flower beds. Even when its brushes were blocked with leaves, bugs and mud, its little wheels bravely kept turning.

The robot acted properly as it was programmed to clean “dirty” things. In a kitchen, dirt can be garden debris (碎片) such as leaves and mud. In a garden, this kind of dirt does not need to be removed. The context is important. The problem for robots is that reading this context is difficult.

This accident inspired me to think more about AI (artificial intelligence). As far as I am concerned, AI is simply well trained and reproduces what it has learned. And it is undeniable that robots are increasingly being given powerful intelligence. Some experts even predict that we will soon see not only AI-enabled robots designed to solve problems according to their instructions, but also those with the ability to judge how they should respond when they are in a different setting.

Maybe this will happen in the near future.

10 . Public Speaking Courses

Complete Public Speaking Masterclass for Every Occasion (Udemy)

If you’re struggling to put yourself out in front of audiences, then joining this Udemy course will be a good decision. In this course, you will be instructed to feel calm and comfortable on stage in front of any number of people while speaking and conveying your message. The comprehensive guide by TJ Walker will help you impress your audience and influence them.

Dynamic Public Speaking Certification (证明) by University of Washington (Coursera)

Available on Coursera, this online course is perfect for people who want to be excellent dynamic speakers. You will be taught by Dr. Matt McGarrity - a principal lecturer at UW Department of Communication. Designed for beginners, it will help you gain many skills, for instance, public speaking, speech, presentation, and communication.

How to Become a World-class Speaker (Mindvalley)

This Mindvalley course is aimed at training people who have no experience of public speaking and just start to set foot in this area. It has already assisted a lot of people in becoming skillful at speaking and spreading their voice. Lisa Nicholas, your communication coach, is regarded as one of the best speechmakers in the world. Within less than two days, you will get insights into how she masters this art.

Effective Communication: Writing, Design, and Presentation (University of Colorado Boulder)

With the help of this course, you can get better at business communication, including presenting your ideas to your coworkers, handling client (客户) calls, and so on. You’ll also learn how to write effective business emails, along with reports and draft presentations. This course is very popular among people who want to quickly fit in with the workplace.