1 . The latest photo taken at China’s well-known Tsinghua University became a hit, where a student was seen using his laptop while riding on a bike. The moral of the story is that wasting time on things like commuting between university facilities becomes unacceptable, since the pressure to graduate top of the class is so intense.

Into the real world, working extra hours is a common practice of China’s most brilliant figures in technology. In finite overtime, premature balding (秃顶) and hospital admissions are all but part of standard professional life for the nation’s brightest. Similarly, blue-collar workers don’t have it easier. Food delivery riders are reportedly trapped by an algorithm (算法) that automatically works out the best delivery time for app users, and never minds if the workers are at the risk of road accidents.

People are wondering whether all this hard work really makes life better. Actually, it may well be making things harder for everyone, but there doesn’t seem to be a way out. A popular sense of being stuck in an ever so exhausting rat race where everyone loses has given rise to a new buzzword: neijuan (involution). The Chinese word, neijuan, is made up of the characters for “inside” and “rolling”, and is understood as something that spirals in on itself, a process that traps participants who know they won’t benefit from it.

“From a sociological point of view, involution is unavoidable because of society’s structural shifts,” said Yan Fei, a professor of sociology at Tsinghua University, “One big question for the middle class is how to remain in the middle class. Meanwhile, the lower class still hopes to change their fate. But the middle and upper classes aren’t so much looking upward, and they are marked by a deep fear of falling downward. Their greater fear is perhaps losing what they already have,” he explained.

2 . A diverse workforce consists of people from all walks of life. These are employees who will view the world differently, and who will apply their personal experience to contribute unique viewpoints which can benefit your company.     1     There are still more real and immediate benefits of diversity in the workplace.

When employees with different viewpoints come together, everyone shares a slightly different approach to the job and the problem at hand. And that’s a benefit, as far as your success is concerned.     2     They’re diverse too, after all.

Meanwhile, workplace diversity boosts creativity. Think about it this way: sameness causes sameness. If you only hire employees coming from similar cultures and socioeconomic circumstances, you’re limiting the creativity and innovation of your company.     3    

In general, people like to fit in, so they are careful not to stick their necks out. When in a strong, homogenous (同种类的) culture, they prevent the natural cognitive (认知的) diversity in groups through the pressure to follow the majority.     4     No matter who they are or where they come from, this inclusiveness helps them break down barriers and reduce the fear of being rejected.

    5     A diverse workforce gives you a diverse and global perspective — a point of view rich in incredible slight differences in human experience and culture — and that means you will have a greater chance of expanding into more diverse markets, both at home and abroad.

3 . American researchers say the thought that machines could take over the world is becoming an increasing reality, rather than the nightmarish plot of a sci-fi horror movie. Now, they are fueling workplace worry, with some employees reportedly sabotaging (暗中破坏) and even attacking their robot replacements.

However, psychologists think that reminding ourselves of our humanity could help alleviate irrational (不合理的) fears about machines replacing people in the workplace. It involves repeating positive statements used to promote confidence and belief in your own uniquely human abilities. These statements help shift focus away from perceived failures or inadequacies and onto a worker’s strengths — those you already have and those you want to develop.

Lead author Professor Kai Chi Yam says in a media release, “Some economists theorize that robots are more likely to take over blue-collar jobs faster than white-collar jobs. However, it doesn’t look like robots are taking over that many jobs yet, at least not in America, so a lot of these fears are rather subjective.”

Yam’s team carried out tests and analyzed data from participants in the U.S., Singapore, and India. In one experiment, working with industrial robots fueled stress and unrest among 118 engineers employed by an auto manufacturing company in India. An online survey of 400 participants found self-affirmation exercises reduced feelings of hopelessness. The workers then wrote about characteristics or values that were important to them. “Most people are overestimating the capabilities of robots and underestimating their own capabilities,” Yam says.

While some individuals may have legitimate concerns, media coverage may be unnecessarily heightening fears among the general public. “Media reports on new technologies like robots and algorithms tend to be apocalyptic (毁灭性的) in nature, so people may develop an irrational fear about them,” Yam concludes.

5 . Stepping into the period of aging life means a new chapter in the life. It brings great problems and challenges to both the elder people and their family members.     1     Many things can be done to attract public awareness to relieve their sufferings.

You can become an advocate for seniors by helping them individually where they live. Volunteering in a nursing home to help with daily life is one of the common ways to offer help. Speaking and spending time with the elderly will increase your awareness of their daily concerns and challenges.    2    

    3     The local community center might serve as a good location for area residents to gather and learn about the challenges of elder adults. Hosting community forums, creating online blogs and joining a supportive group are always workable forms.

Helping get seniors online is another way to win them more resources for self-help. One major daily challenge faced by seniors is that they fail to locate certain necessary services because they lack vital computer knowledge. Work with seniors to get wired and train them in basic computer skills.     4     If, for example, their main motivation is to communicate with family, you needn’t teach them to pay online.

It’s essential for you to learn some basic healthcare practices.     5     You can get certified in senior first aid, CPR or attend healthcare conferences to learn more about senior care. Try to learn about the physical, social, emotional, and mental health of the elderly to address the problems effectively.

7 . A long-standing idea of urban design is that cities encourage interactions among different economic groups and so lead to less segregation (隔离). One common way to measure this is to look at where people live and their corresponding economic position. But some argue the analysis is incomplete and needs to include how people interact when they aren’t at home.

Jure Leskovec at Stanford University in California and his colleagues have used smartphone data on 1.6 billion interactions among 9.6 million people unknown by name in more than 382 US towns and cities to show that people in large cities have less social integration, and mix less with those from different socioeconomic backgrounds, than people in small towns. Leskovec and his team first looked at where each phone, representing a person, was located at around 2 am, when they were likely to be at home sleeping. “From this, we infer their income, their socioeconomic position, and then we look during the day, as these cell phones move around, how often these cell phones cross paths,” says Leskovec.

The researchers defined crossing paths as two people being in a 50-square-metre area within a 5-minute period. They tried other definitions, changing the space and time boundaries, but it didn’t transmute the findings. They found that segregation was 67 percent higher in the 10 largest cities they looked at than in the smallest, defined as having fewer than 100,000 people.

“What is new and interesting about what they’ re doing is the use of mobile phone data,” says David Manley at the University of Bristol, the UK. “That large kind of spatial (空间的) data set means that they’re able to get the population movements in a way that we haven’t been able to do before. However, the data set isn’t detailed enough to say whether people are interacting or just being in the same space, and different data sets could be needed to get that level of detail.”

8 . While the teams of the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar competed in the fields, it was worth noting that it was not only soccer that caught the world’s attention, but also the video assistant referee (VAR) technology. Like it or dislike it, the VAR is a part of football games today.

Many football fans question whether the system made the game better or if it added an unnecessary layer of complexity to the beautiful game as a number of debatable decisions were made involving the VAR — it slows down the game; the offside law sometimes becomes rigid. The introduction of the VAR means top-level football games are now easily affected by stoppages and delays with the on-field referee often waiting for decisions to be made by those in offices often far away from the stadiums.

Actually, the use of video match officials in football was included in the 2018/2019 edition of the Laws of the Game and was already used at the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Since then, the system has been applied in over 100 competitions worldwide.

Despite criticisms, FIFA considered the first use of the VAR to be a triumph, with referee committee head Pierluigi Collina claiming that 99.3 percent of “match-changing” decisions were called correctly at the World Cup—“very, very close to perfection”. Without the VAR, referees called 95 percent of the incidents correctly.

Not only football, sports tech to support a referee’s decision-making is widely adopted by other major sports in professional and Olympic games to assist referees to make the correct decisions. Tennis employs the Hawk-Eye Live system on competition courts, and the NBA has long used instant replay and other high-tech aids to make sure players are shooting within the time given by the shot clock in order for the referees to make the right call.

We should admit that sports tech is still not perfect in the field of sports events. People’s feelings are not towards those technologies themselves, but the current shortcomings of the application of the technology. However, fairness and consistency should not be a zero-sum option. Efforts should be made to further improve efficiency and reduce disturbance to beautiful games.

9 . When I was nine years old, I was desperately in love with a man who was 40 years my senior. Don’t worry; Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees didn’t even know I existed because he’d stopped being an actor 20 years earlier. But that didn’t stop me from decorating my books with love hearts.

The Monkees were entirely manufactured, but as a product they were a success: they used the media to develop a bond between an audience member and her target. In their TV show, they regularly broke the fourth wall, throwing knowing winks (眨眼) to camera, and shared their funny behind-the-scenes lives. They made us think we knew them, as a friend.

This kind of “parasocial relationship” (准社交关系) has long roots in media. Radio characters like Lonesome Gal started her program with, “Sweetie, I love you,” speaking directly to her listeners in the the 1950s. Each individual felt he had her undivided attention. She was an entirely virtual girlfriend, at a time when the word had nothing to do with technology.

Parasocial relationships have become a means to an end in the digital age, now that selling yourself has become a way of life. Using these relationships is how you gain followers, credibility and influence. But once you start to gain a critical mass, the relationship necessarily transforms—at least in the eye of the digital personality. You can speak directly to one fan, or even five. But it’s not possible to respond to the 10, 000 people who subscribe to your TikTok. What was once a close and friendly relationship turns into a business transaction (交易).

Rising social media stars have to manage themselves and their boundaries. That’s one of the most undeveloped skills in the digital age. Today’s parasocial relationships are surfing unknown territory, so it is expected that they—we—will make mistakes. And who is there to help when we’ve put ourselves out there online?

NANJING, March 20 (Xinhua) — During the holidays, many young Chinese are eager to invite their friends to visit museum exhibitions     1    appreciate the charm of traditional culture. “Exhibition-watching socialization” has     2    (gradual) emerged as a popular social activity for young people.

According to the data     3    (release) by Trip.com Group, from January to May in 2022, museums, art galleries and exhibition halls ranked fourth     4    the top 10 most popular scenic spots, and 25 percent of the museum reservations     5    (make) by people born after 1995.

Every morning, almost all the venues of Nanjing Museum are crowded with young     6    (tourist). They carefully select postcards and line up in a long queue,    7    (wait) to have them stamped with images of cultural relics collected at the museum.

“For museum cultural relics and exhibitions of museums, digital collectibles also meet     8    appetite of young people. Not only    9     it attract the attention of many youths, but also it encourages them     10    (approach) cultural relics, understand history and ignite their love for traditional Chinese culture,” said Guo Daijing, a staff member of Wuxi Museum.