Children with strong family connections are associated with     1     high likelihood of flourishing in life, according to a new study. Researchers     2    (survey)over 37, 000 children in 26 countries and found adolescents having a great bond with their family also     3    (success)in life.

The essence of family connection is children feeling that they’re accepted and nurtured at home,   which allows them     4    (learn)what their strengths and weaknesses are in a     5    (relative)safe environment. Children with the greatest level of family connection were over 49%     6    (likely)to flourish compared with those with the lowest. The highest scores in both family connection     7     flourishing came from children who lived with parents or never had their family worrying about finances.

Researchers then controlled the data for families’ poverty levels to remove the effect they may have     8    the numbers. After     9    (control)these factors, the strength of family connections still impacted how much children flourished. So it’s very important to create a space     10     children feel seen and heard, researchers said.

4 . Conservationists go to war over whether humans are the measure of nature’s value. New Conservationists argue such trade-offs are necessary in this human dominated era. And they support “re-wilding”, a concept originally proposed by Soule where people reduce economic growth and withdraw from landscapes, which then return to nature.

New Conservationists believe the withdrawal could happen together with economic growth. The California-based Breakthrough Institute believes in a future where most people live in cities and rely less on natural resources for economic growth.

They would get food from industrial agriculture, including genetically modified foods, desalination intensified meat production and aquaculture (水产养殖), all of which have a smaller land footprint. And they would get their energy from renewables and natural gas.

Driving these profound shifts would be greater efficiency of production, where more products could be manufactured from fewer inputs. And some unsustainable commodities would be replaced in the market by other, greener ones-natural gas for coal, for instance, explained Michael Heisenberg., president of the Breakthrough Institute. Nature would, in essence, be decoupled from the economy.

And then he added a warning: “We are not suggesting decoupling as the pattern to save the world, or that it solves all the problems.”

Cynics (悲观者) may say all this sounds too utopian, but Breakthrough maintains the world is already on this path toward decoupling. Nowhere is this more evident than in the United Sates, according to Iddo Wernick, a research scholar at the Rockefeller University, who has examined the nation’s use of 100 main commodities.

Wernick and his colleagues looked at data carefully from the U.S. Geological Survey National Minerals Information Center, which keeps a record of commodities used from 1900 through the present day. They found that the use of 36 commodities (sand, iron ore, cotton etc.) in the U. S. Economy had peaked.

Another 53 commodities (nitrogen, timber, beef, etc.) are being used more efficiently per dollar value of gross domestic product than in the pre-1970s era. Their use would peak soon, Wernick said.

Only 11 commodities (industrial diamond, indium, chicken, etc.) are increasing in use (Greenwire, Nov. 6), and most of these are employed by industries in small quantities to improve systems processes. Chicken use is rising because people are eating less beef, a desirable development since poultry cultivation has a smaller environmental footprint.

The numbers show the United States has not intensified resource consumption since the 1970s even while increasing its GDP and population, said Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller University.

“It seems like the 20th-century expectation we had, we were always assuming the future involved greater consumption of resources,” Ausubel said. “But what we are seeing in the developed countries is, of course, peaks.”

5 . Big Tech companies are “training” generative AI (生成式人工智能) models by stealing music, books, photographs, paintings and videos off the Internet using copyright “fair use” as an excuse.

Last month, Getty Images took legal action against Stability AI — the maker of the popular image generator Stable Diffusion — for not only using 2 million of Getty’s photos, but also for changing or removing copyright management information from the images. It seems clearly unlawful, but that doesn’t mean the courts will agree. Big Tech has successfully skated through legal matters for years, waving the banner (旗帜) of “permissionless innovation”.

Only the biggest of Big Tech players will dominate generative AI, because it requires massive amounts of computing power. But copyright appears to be anything but a top priority for Google and Microsoft. So while human creators rationally (理智地) explore and debate this issue, tech companies are using their work to train the generative machines that ultimately may make the artists irrelevant in the future.

The problem goes beyond artists losing incomes. AI operates on the theory that all the possible original ideas in the universe are already contained in the data sets from the Internet. So, the intelligence of AI merely requires reorganizing this data into something that differs enough from the original work to not risk a copyright problem.

Surely, the world has plenty of standardized artistic content already. What’s needed: ensuring a continuous flow of original ideas and fresh perspectives — to build a culture that goes beyond what is already found on the Internet and can be enriched by artists who might grow in ways no AI could predict.

We realize that Big Tech’s involvement in AI has raised concerns that may make the endangering of artists’ rights seem pale. Yet a nation’s cultural life is not a minor matter, and preserving artists’ rights is essential to ensuring their continued contribution. Existing copyright laws should ideally prevent abuses, but this is not always the case. Another solution may be needed: new laws governing AI and safeguarding the human core of artistic creativity.

Japan said on Tuesday that it had decided to    1    (gradual) release tons of treated wastewater from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant (福岛第一核电站) into the ocean,    2     (describe) it as the best solution to dealing with the leftovers (残留物) from the Fukushima nuclear accident, one of the    3    (serious) in the world.

The    4    (decide) ends years of debate over how to deal with the water,    5    is enough to fill more than 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

“The Japanese government ignores concerns and strong opposition both at home and abroad. Such an    6    (responsilble)act not only directly harms the interests of the people in Japan’s neighbouring countries, but    7    threatens the global marine environment and international public health security,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.

Greenpeace(绿色和平组织)criticized Japan’s plan and said there are other solutions that should    8    (censider). “    9    than using the best available technology to store and process the water    10    the long term, they have chosen the cheapest solution, damping the water into the Pactfie Ocean.”

7 . Up to now, Wood has published more than 60 diaries, and he still updates the diaries frequently on social media websites. In his first diary, he mentioned, “news is going around about a bad cold virus in Wuhan, but I feel worlds away from me and few people wear masks in public.”

He recorded in his diaries that thousands of medical workers from different provinces and cities went to Hubei to help with the anti-epidemic (抗疫). Restaurants and shops were closed down, while supermarkets checked people’s body temperatures. And community workers across the country took strict action, asking people to stay at home and helping the old buy daily necessities.

“People in some countries said these measures (措施) could cause panic (恐慌) among the public. However, my experience in China shows these efforts are useful and effective, which finally removed (去除) people’s fear,” Wood said.

Wood’s diaries soon attracted the world’s attention. Over 10,000 people left him messages on Facebook, and he was interviewed by Canadian CTV which later showed his diaries on its website.

“I also received greetings from my family and friends in Canada. They said they were inspired by the efforts the Chinese have made, he said. “People from some countries thought the Chinese overreacted, and that the Chinese government had overdone in epidemic prevention and control. However, since more countries and regions have been infected (感染) by the virus, more and more people came to realize how proper and important China’s control and prevention measures are.”

Wood is working with the New World Press, which plans to make his diaries a book named The Invisible War. In this book, he hopes to share China’s anti-epidemic experience with more people across the world so they can build confidence to fight against the virus.

8 . Men aren’t typically known for their shopping power. As the “She economy” became a buzz phrase in business magazines, the ever-expanding Chinese female middle class has been eagerly pursued by consumer brands from cosmetics to electronics. For some companies, that means there is a huge missed opportunity in the male market, especially given the fast-rising living standards across the most populous country on the earth and a male population that’s increasingly longing for a better quality of life.

Those instincts appear to be largely on point, according to the latest report on male consumption trends conducted by Suning Institute of Finance. The author of the report, the institute’s Senior Researcher Fu Yifu, concluded the male-oriented (男性导向的) market in China has great potential after observing three specific shopping habits of Chinese men in recent years: widened category, improved awareness and increased online consumption.

These trends are particularly noticeable in the country’s tech-adapted Millennial and Gen-Z populations, who have warmly embraced some special-interest consumer culture in other parts of the world through the Internet, such as the sneakerhead subculture, as a way to express their individuality. More importantly, many are willing to spend a fortune on it.

Also, nowadays, many Chinese men are definitely looking to lead more refined lives. The desire for “refined lives” has been channeled strongly through the pursuance of a more polished look-lighter skin, longer eyelashes and bigger eyes. These features are widely considered to be desirable traits for modern Chinese men.

JACB, which stands for “just a cool brand”, is one of the Chinese start-ups looking to capitalize on men’s increasing desire for a finer appearance. While most male cosmetic products today still focus on fixing skin problems such as acne (粉刺), JACB is pioneering the “men makeup” category with products such as BB cream for men. And the company mainly targets men in their 20s and early 30s, as they are more accepting of the new trends.

“The individual’s awakening in consumption has helped drive the men-oriented market to new heights that we are seeing today,” Fu said. “Chinese men have learned to buy skincare products, expensive suits, watches and luxury cars as a way to show their personal abilities.”