1 . J. K. Rowling frequently shows there is magic every day. Her Harry Potter series has helped people through times of stress and depression and she is always there to deliver wise words of encouragement.

She is one celebrity who is very active on Twitter. So when a single dad named Matt Burke sent her a message thanking her for the series, she noticed. Her series had helped strengthen his relationship with his 9­year­old daughter Bailey.

He included a link to his article titled Being a Broke Parent. He explained how he hadn’t found a level of financial stability that allowed him to pay bills on time and take his daughter on more activities and events. The family also doesn’t have the Internet or TV, which means there’s no “digital babysitter” and he has to rely on his own creative ways to bond with his daughter. Since he received the series, the main thing that has occupied them these days is reading books together.

Burke admits that he thought he was “too cool” for the books when they first came out and he was in his twenties, but he’s loving reading them now. “We switch off chapter by chapter reading them out loud，“Burke explains.” This not only allows her to get more used to reading aloud in front of someone, but it gets me directly involved in something she loves, and it gives me the chance to be very dramatic when I read my chapters and bring myself into the characters in the book, which has proven to be a ton of fun.”

After hearing Burke’s story, Rowling said how honored she was when Harry Potter was a part of his family’s life and offered Burke more books. Besides, people are also offering to send Burke more books as gifts. For Burke, this experience, far more than gifts, will be what he treasures.

2 . Most online fraud (诈骗) involves identity theft. Passwords help. But many can be guessed. Newer phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers often have strengthened security with fingerprint and facial recognition. But these can be imitated. That is why a new approach, behavioural biometrics (行为生物识别) is gaining ground.

It relies on the wealth of measurements made by today’s devices. These include data from sensors that reveal how people hold their phones when using them, how they carry them and even the way they walk. Touchscreens, keyboards and mice can be monitored to show the unique ways in which someone’s fingers and hands move. These features can then be used to determine whether someone attempting to make a deal is likely to be the device’s habitual user.

“Behavioural biometrics make it possible to identify an individual’s unique motion fingerprint,” says John Whaley, head of Unifyid, a firm in Silicon Valley that is involved in the field. When coupled with information about a user’s finger pressure and speed on the touchscreen, as well as a device’s regular places of use-as revealed by its GPS unit — that user’s identity can be pretty well determined.

Used wisely, behavioural biometrics could be a great benefit. In fact, Unifyid and an unnamed car company are even developing a system that unlocks the doors of a vehicle once the pace of the driver, as measured by his phone, is recognized. Used unwisely, however, the system would become yet another electronic spy on people’s privacy, permitting complete strangers to monitor your every action, from the moment you reach for your phone in the morning, to when you throw it on the floor at night.

3 . If you have the strange feeling that you’ve read this before, don’t be alarmed. It’s probably just déjà vu. Déjà vu is the strange feeling that you’ve experienced something before, while at the same time knowing that you haven’t. You visit a friend’s apartment and have the overwhelming sense you’ve been here before, but that can’t be the case. This is the first time you’ve ever visited this city. Still, the feeling may be so real that you almost know what you’ll find when you walk into the kitchen.

Experts estimate roughly two out of three people have had the experience at least once. The experience typically lasts no more than a few seconds and there’s no warning of when it’s about to happen, making it extremely difficult to study. Much that is known about déjà vu is based on surveys. Still, researchers have come up with novel ways to study it in the wild.

Anne Cleary, professor of cognitive psychology and memory researcher, used virtual reality (VR) to trigger (引发) déjà vu. Cleary and her team took subjects through a series of scenes in the video game, carefully designed so that the spatial layout (空间布局) of one scene was similar to another, even though the actual images were quite different. The subjects experienced déjà vu when a scene was similar to one they’d seen before, suggesting that a similarity in spatial layout between two places might lead to a déjà vu-like sense of familiarity in a novel place.

“There may be many different reasons that could all be true for why déjà vu can happen,” Cleary says. Though no one has yet explained what causes déjà vu, it’s a good thing that science finally got serious about studying the strange phenomenon. “I think déjà vu research has been shedding light on processes that are helping us to understand memory better at a wider level than just trying to understand déjà vu,” says Cleary.

4 . As we continue to explore farther out into our solar system and beyond, the question of humans living on other planets often comes up. Manned bases on the Moon or Mars for example, have long been a dream of many. There is a natural curiosity to explore as far as we can go, and also to make human existence permanent (永久的). In order to do this, however, it is necessary to adapt to different extreme environments. On the Moon for example, a settlement must be self-supporting and protect its inhabitants from the airless, severe environment outside.

Mars, though, is different. While future bases could adapt to the Martian environment over time there is also the possibility of modifying (改造) the surrounding environment instead of just co-existing with it. This is the process of terraforming — adjusting Mars’ atmosphere and environment to make it more Earth-like. But the bigger question is, should we?

One of the main issues is whether Mars has any native life or not and if it does, should it be preserved as much as possible? If the answer is yes, then large-scale human settlements on Mars should be completely off-limits. Small settlement might be fine, but living on Mars should not be at the cost of any native habitats, if they exist. If Mars is home to any indigenous life, then terraforming should be a non-issue; it simply should not be done.

What if Mars is lifeless? Even if no life exists there, that untouched and unique alien environment needs to be preserved as it is as much as possible. We’ve already done too much damage here on our own planet. By studying Mars and other planets and moons in their present natural state, we can learn so much about their history and also learn more about our own world. We should appreciate the differences of other worlds instead of just transforming them to suit our own ambitions.

5 . Blind people have long desired for brightness, but scientists don’t have the technology. To bring that one step closer to reality, Zhiyong Fan, a materials scientist of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, developed a new artificial eye recently. The device, which is about as sensitive to light and has sharper vision and a faster reaction time than a real eyeball, may outperform human eyes.

The human eye owes its wide field of view and clear eyesight to the retina (视网膜) — an area at the back of the eyeball covered in light-detecting cells. The design for a new artificial eye is based on the structure of the human eye and uses a friendly light-sensitive material. At the back of the eyeball, an artificial retina is lined with Nan scale light sensors (纳米级光感器). Those sensors measure light that passes through the lens (晶状体) at the front of the eye. Wires attached to the back of the retina send signals from those sensors to the processor, similar to the way nerve networks connect the eyeball to the brain.

“In the future, we can use this to replace damaged human eyes,” says the lead designer. In theory, this artificial eye could see more clearly than the human eye, because the artificial retina contains about 460 million light sensors per square centimeter while a real retina has about 10 million light-detecting cells per square centimeter. Besides, the artificial eyeball records changes in lighting faster than human eyes can — within about 30 to 40 milliseconds, rather than 40 to 150 milliseconds. Although its 100-degree field of view isn’t as broad as the150 degrees a human eye can take in, the device can see as well as the human eye in poor light.

Hongrui Jiang, an electrical engineer at the University of Wisconsin, though, thinks engineers need a much more practical and efficient way to produce vast series of tiny wires on the back of the artificial eyeball to give it superhuman sight, which is super hard to achieve.

6 . There was a point in time when the solar industry was considered dead money. It was too expensive, too inefficient, and too inconsistent to be a viable (切实可行的) alternative energy source for really anything, let alone your home or office.

But those days are long gone.

Solar energy costs have dropped more than 70% over the past 10 years, and are now cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the United States. Better yet, the drivers of these cost declines — economies of scale (规模经济) and technological improvements — are durable (耐久的) , and therefore, solar is only going to get even cheaper. Indeed, these forces are so powerful in the solar industry that they have their own law — Swanson’s Law — which states that the price of solar modules (模块) decreases by about 20% for every doubling in global solar capacity.

Meanwhile, solar panels have become very efficient at transforming light from the sun into usable energy. Back in 1992, researchers at the University of South Florida made a thin-film solar cell with 15.9% efficiency — and that was considered a breakthrough at the time.

These days, though, your average silicon solar cells’ efficiency rate is around 20%. That’s standard. And some research efforts have even managed to achieve near 50% efficiency in certain lab tests.

At the same time, these solar systems have become dramatically more consistent. One of the biggest hurdles for solar in the early 2000s was its intermittency — the sun doesn’t shine every day, so what do you do when its cloudy?

Well, that’s why the clean energy industry has developed energy storage solutions, which are basically just big batteries that homeowners and office building managers can install on-site and link to their solar panels to store excess (过度的) solar power on super sunny days, and use that power on cloudy days.

Cheapest. Most efficient. Most consistent. That’s a powerful combination. No wonder solar industry has accounted for 58% of all new energy capacity additions so far in 2021 and is only going to get stronger and more active over the next 10 years — to a point where, by 2030, I wouldn’t be surprised to see solar industry accounting for 90%+ of all new energy capacity additions.

8 . Here are some highly recommended books for readers to choose.

Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?       by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn       $23.92

Lizzie Damilola Blackburn’s first published novel is incredibly relatable for anybody whose family members frequently question their relationship status. In Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? a thirty-something Nigerian woman attempts to find herself a wedding date and learns some valuable lessons about life and love.

Violeta       by Isabel Allende       $ 25.76

Isabel Allende’s expansive collection of works continues with Violeta — the story of a woman named Violeta Del Valle who gives readers a front-row seat to historic moments of the 20th century, from the Spanish flu to the Great Depression to the women’s rights movement, as she recounts the highs and lows of her 100-year life in a series of letters to her grandson.

The Perfect Escape       by Leah Konen       $15.64

Loved Leah Konen’s All the Broken People? Prepare yourself for her newest thriller (惊悚小说), The Perfect Escape, which is about a group of friends whose girls’ weekend goes wrong when they land themselves in deep trouble in the Catskills and one of them goes missing.

Greenwich Park      by Katherine Faulkner       $24.84

Talk about suspense! Katherine Faulkner’s Greenwich Park, told from three angles, centers on a pregnant woman who meets another mom-to-be who couldn’t be more different from her. As their friendship develops, they realize they may be more connected than they think.