2022 Beijing Winter Olympics presented the world fantastic events and bunches of brilliant athletes, among whom certain young athletes stood out and went viral among audience.
YuzuruHanyu
Aged just 19, Hanyu became the first Asian man to win an Olympic gold medal in Sochi, becoming the youngest men's champion since 1948. Hanyu's technique is outstanding, but he combines his ability with an astonishing creativity and artistry. Though the "ice prince" tumbled (摔倒) in his performance and thus failed the gold medal in Beijing 2022, he still makes a deserving figure skating icon.
Alexandra Trusova
Alexandra Trusova is a Russian figure skater who is the Beijing 2022 Olympic silver medalist (representing ROC). The 17-year-old is best known for her quadruple-jumping abilities. She was the first female to land each of the quad Lutz, flip and toe jumps in competition, and was also the first to land two- and then three-quads in a free skate.
Eileen Gu
Nicknamed "Snow Princess", Gu initially represented the United States of America in competition, but she chose to compete for China, the birth land of her mother who is from Beijing. As a Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games gold medalist in big air, the 18-year-old girl is the first female Chinese freestyle skier to top the podium (领奖台).
YimingSu
Born in 2004 in Jilin, Su is the first Chinese snowboarder to ever land on World Cup podium in either big air or slope style. He is also the first rider ever to land 1800s two ways in a FIS competition. This year he won China's sixth gold medal in the Olympics.
Click here for more information about the above athletes.
In 2017, Titli Trust began working with Tehri Forest Division to arm the local community — with knowledge — through a program named Living with Leopards (豹). The forest officials made a study trip to Mumbai to learn from their experiences there.
"Our Mumbai trip has taught us that we need to change the focus from leopards to people," says Dr Koko Rose from the Tehri Forest Division. This meant reaching out to villagers to share measures they could take to minimize (最小化) the chances of meeting a leopard or being attacked. They include clearing bushes around homes to minimize hiding spaces for leopards, leaving a light on at night, and ensuring people, especially children, did not go out alone at night. The strategies are carefully aimed at a leopard's known habits: they are shy, tend to avoid human beings, and are more active at night.
Forest officials also went to schools and launched a children's ambassador program, where children dressed up as leopards and performed for their parents in order to create more understanding of why leopards come near their homes, and how to stay safe.
These efforts seemed effective. In the four years before the program started, there were 45 cases of human-leopard conflict in the Tehri area, among them 10 human deaths. Now, the number went down to 14 and four human deaths. "Our ancestors tell us how they have lived in the forests, grazed (放牧) the animals in the forests, but the leopard has never attacked them," says Meena, a local villager, "So we too can live with leopards, if we remain watchful and follow the rules."
Using a raised eyebrow or smile, people with speech or physical disabilities can now operate their Android-powered smart phones without using their hands, Google said on Thursday.
Two new tools put machine learning and front-facing cameras on smart phones to work, identifying face and eye movements. Users can look at their phone screens and select a task by smiling, raising eyebrows, opening their mouths, or looking to the left, right or up.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that 61 million adults in the United States live with disabilities, which has pushed Google, Apple and Microsoft to make products and services more accessible to them. "Every day, people use voice instructions, like ‘Hey Google', or their hands to operate their phones," the tech giant Google said in a blog post. "However, that's not always possible for people with serious physical or speech disabilities."
The changes are the result of two new features: One is called "Camera Switches", which lets people use their faces instead of taps to interact with smart phones. The other is Project Activate, a new Android application which allows people to use those gestures to start an action, like having a phone play a recorded phrase, send text, or make a call. The free Activate app is available in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States at the Google Play Store.
Apple, Google and Microsoft have kept rolling out inventions that make Internet technology more accessible to people with disabilities or who find that age has made some tasks, such as reading, more difficult. Voice-instructed digital assistants built into speakers and smart phones can enable people with sight or movement challenges to tell computers what to do. There is software that identifies text on web pages or in images and then reads it aloud, as well as automatic generation of captions that display what is said in videos. Apple built "Assistive Touch" into the software powering its smart watches. It lets touch screen displays be controlled by sensing movements such as finger pinches or hand clenches.
The term "social distancing" has been at the center of public conversation for a while. But it's not "social" distance we are trying to promote. It's physical separation. In fact, preserving social ties— even at a distance— is essential for both mental and physical health. The results of an analytic review done in 2019 indicate that a lack of social support is on apar with (与……不相上下) smoking cigarettes as a risk factor for health.
Given this fact, how might we best stay connected to others while maintaining physical distance? Would we be better off e-mailing a friend? Making a phone call? Setting up a video chat? In our study, Nick Epley and I tested whether the media through which people interact affects their sense of connection— and how expectations about certain technologies impact the communication media they choose to use.
In our experiment, we asked participants to reconnect with someone they hadn't interacted with recently, either through e-mail or over the phone. Participants first made predictions about what it would be like to get in touch if they reached out in these two ways. They generally believed that they'd feel more connected when interacting via the phone than over e-mail. But they also predicted that talking on the phone would be more uncomfortable than sending an e-mail. Although these participants believed that talking encouraged stronger bonds, most of them said they'd rather send an e-mail than call the person up. Fears about awkwardness, it seems, push individuals toward text-based methods for communicating.
In the next part of the experiment, we had participants actually reconnect using one randomly determined mode of communication and then followed up with them after they had done so. We found that people do form meaningfully stronger bonds when interacting over the phone than over e-mail. Importantly, though, there was no difference in the amount of discomfort when reconnecting on the phone.
The next time you think about how best to connect, consider calling or setting up a video chat. Feelings of social connection are preferably facilitated by voice rather than a keyboard.
What's the use of language? Why does the human race learn to speak, write, and sign? Certainly the primary purpose of language is for communication. We use language to communicate our ideas and opinions to each other. We use it to tell others our thoughts. Sometimes we tell the truth. Sometimes we tell lies. But in all these cases, the basic aim is clear: to get the ideas in our head into someone else's head. But there are several other uses of language where the basic aim has nothing to do with communicating ideas.
Earlier in the book, I talked about accents and dialects. These tell people who we are and where we come from. In both ways we express our identities.
Here's another use of language: to express our emotions. Imagine you're hammering a nail into a piece of wood, but something goes wrong and you hit your finger instead. What will come out of your mouth? But quite a few would shout, "Stupid hammer!" as if it was the hammer's fault. What sort of language is this? The hammer doesn't have a brain, so it can't possibly understand us. So what are we doing? Actually, we just want to get rid of our nervous energy. By shouting at the hammer, we feel a bit better.
We also use language to avoid embarrassment and get on with other people. Imagine people sometimes say such things as "Looks like rain" or "Lovely day" when they meet each other. They don't want to start a proper conversation, but they feel it would be rude to pass by in silence.
A. Therefore, they make a comment on the weather.
B. One of these uses of language is to express identity.
C. Of course, if you're very brave you might not say anything.
D. It shows that we're getting on well with the people we're talking to.
E. And for that to happen, we must speak them, write them, or sign them.
F. We might think the answer is very simple: to communicate with each other.
G. Rather a large number of people, I suspect, would shout out something bad.
A few years back, I planned to build a networked digital library where theses (论文) from African universities could be stored. I wanted to find a way to make these great 1 visible to the whole world. It took me months and even years to 2 build it to my taste. But finally, it went nowhere.
The other day, I was at a rest area. I observed that when one ant found food, others immediately 3 to help pull the food to their storage. I tried to 4 the pattern, which unfortunately resulted in 5 one. Quickly, they came together to rescue it. Then they reorganized and 6 in the line they had created. I saw no 7 of supervision (监督), yet they were moving pieces of food that were about 30 times their individual sizes, which is a 8 task.
As I watched them, the library plan 9 in my mind. Wouldn't it be 10 to trust others to help you? Right there, I made the following 11. The ants cooperated with each other: I will form a(n)12, bringing professionals together. The ants trusted one another: I must 13 the notion (观念) that only by working alone can I ensure quality. The ants were 14: I will share my ideas with like-minded people.
It is about a month later now and the project is progressing well. It's true that by 15 everyone in the organization and trusting people, we will achieve success.
At your next meeting, wait for a pause in conversation and try (measure) how long it lasts. Among English speakers, chances are that it will be a second or two at (many). But while this pattern may be universal, our awareness of silence differs (dramatic) across cultures. one culture considers a confusing or awkward pause may be seen by others as valuable moment of reflection and a sign of respect for what the last speaker has said. Research in Dutch and also in English found that when silence in conversation stretches four seconds, people start to feel uneasy. In contrast, a separate study of business meetings found that Japanese people are happy with silence of 8.2 seconds—nearly (two) as long as in American meetings. In Japan, it (recognize) that the best communication is when you don't speak at all. In the US, it may originate from the history of colonial America as a crossroads of many different (race). When you have a couple of differences, it's hard (establish) common understanding unless you talk and there's understandably a kind of anxiety unless people are verbally engaged to establish a common life. This applies also to some extent London. In contrast, when there's more homogeneity(同种族), perhaps it's easier for some kinds of silence to appear. For example, among your closest friends and family it's easier to sit in silence than with people you're less well acquainted with.
