Ten years ago, I had just started my first job as a Medical Representative in a small town in India—but was 1 every moment of it. I had the 2 to promote and get sales regardless of whether there was a need for my drugs or not. To make matters worse, I was 3 from my original plan of pursuing (追求) a Ph.D in biology.
All these thoughts were crowding through my mind, as I was driving my scooter around the town visiting one doctor after another.
At one of the traffic lights, I hit a red and had to wait for the signal to turn green. I noticed that there was a huge rock lying near the square—a result of somebody's carelessness. Yet nobody thought it 4 to get out of the vehicles and move the rock to the edge of the road where it would lie, harmless.
Suddenly I noticed a young kid crawling his way across the other side of the road. He must have had a serious infection of polio (小儿麻痹症) when he was a baby. He was crawling on both his hands and 5 his body behind him.
This guy came up to the rock with a look on his face showing that he did not believe in his handicap (残疾). He was looking at that rock with 6 —as if saying to the stone "You are an instrument of my will." He 7 to push the rock to the side of the road. I can never forget that look of pride on his face, showing that he has 8 something that able-bodied people like me were avoiding doing.
And looking at this kid for this brief time, I was reminded how small my troubles were in respect to his and how much I was worrying about them.
Since then I have never 9 . I did pursue my dream of finishing a Ph.D in the biological sciences. To that unknown messenger of hope and 10 , this is the ovation (鼓掌) I wish to give—though belatedly.
In 2023, 13.9 million people (visit) the Spain's Canary Islands—that's six times more than the number of people who actually live there. Locals say they are not all tourism because it creates jobs and money, but they want their government to put a limit on the number of tourists. They think the government should work out how many tourists can be supported, so that the Canaries can become an example of (sustain) tourism.
In spring, thousands of birds fly north to breed in Siberia. Some birds eat grass shoots start to grow at the beginning of the season. This food source is only available for a few weeks and rising temperatures (cause) by climate change can sometimes make the grass grow earlier than usual. This means that some birds are arriving too late to eat the grass, (leave) them without a food source. As more and more land is used for farming, the natural wetlands birds like to search for food are disappearing too.
Dylan Allman, aged 18, recently received an award for his work to protect hedgehogs (刺猬). The award (go) to inspiring people who make changes in their community. Allman's mission started four years ago he became interested in the number of hedgehogs in his garden. Earlier this year, he launched a program, in which a team of volunteers rescued injured hedgehogs in parts of Wales. Allman also visited schools to teach people about hedgehogs and raised money (support) animal rescue centers.
2024 Harvard Winter Program in Shanghai China
The city of Shanghai has brought together diverse peoples, cultures, and economies from various parts of China and around the world. Blending cultural studies with social sciences, 2024 Harvard Winter Program in Shanghai, China will help you understand the city.
Program dates: November 8, 2024 to December 21, 2024
Apply by: August 25, 2024
Program Structure
This six-week program includes two courses on Shanghai's cultural history and economic development experiences. You start each week with two days of seminars (研讨会) designed to let you see Shanghai differently. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, the group moves to a field site for a hands-on research practicum (实践操作课) in companies, government offices, and communities. Over the weekend, you try your own hands at exploring the city and its economy, working on creative projects and/or research papers, with a flexible final project format that accommodates student priorities.
The program counts as two semester-long courses of degree credit (学分), 4 credits each. Both program courses can count towards East Asian Studies credit.
Accommodations
You will live in an on-campus hotel in one of China's most distinguished academic institutions. Hotel services include wi-fi, daily housekeeping, safe for storage of valuables, cafeteria and gym. Apart from all the practical conveniences of a student district, the campus also offers library access and will be an ideal base for your creative and research projects.
Application
To apply, you must:
•Be at least 18 years old
•Have completed at least one year of college
•Be in good academic standing
Students enrolled at any university are welcome to apply.
The Winter 2024 application will be available in early July. Each program has unique requirements included in the online application. Beginning your application early is the best way to ensure that you have sufficient time to review and complete the application requirements by the deadline.
If you have questions about the application, please contact the Harvard Study Abroad Office by email at winterabroad@winter.harvard.edu.
"A bird with a broken wing will never fly as high." I'm sure that T. J. Ware was made to feel this way almost every day in school. By high school, T. J. was the most celebrated troublemaker in his town. He was always impolite, didn't answer questions and got into lots of fights.
I met T. J. for the first time at a weekend leadership program. At the start of the program, T. J. was literally standing outside the circle of students with that "go ahead, impress me" look on his face. The ice really melted (融化) when the groups started building a list of positive and negative things that occurred at school that year. T. J. had brilliant thoughts on those situations. The other students in T. J.'s group welcomed his comments. All of a sudden T. J. felt like a part of the group, and before long he was being treated like a leader.
The next following days, T. J. was very active in all the sessions. Later he joined the Homeless Project team. He knew something about poverty, hunger and hopelessness. The other students on the team were impressed with his passionate concern and ideas. By the end of the program, the students elected T. J. co-chairman of the team. Many people couldn't believe that the principal (校长) would allow this crucial beginning to a three-year action plan to stay in the incapable hands of T. J. Ware.
Two weeks later, T. J. and his friends led a group of 70 students in a drive to collect food. They collected a school record: 2, 854 cans of food in just two hours. As the local newspaper covered the event with a full-page article, T. J. started showing up at school every day and answered questions from teachers for the first time. Later, he led a second project, yielding 9,000 cans of food in one day and taking care of 70 percent of the needed food for the homeless shelter for one year.
T. J. reminds us that a bird with a broken wing only needs mending. But once it has healed, it can fly higher than the rest. T. J. got a job. He became productive. He is flying quite nicely these days.
For years, scientists have been trying to figure out whether "brain workouts" such as puzzles (字谜) and online cognitive games could strengthen our minds and slow the process of aging.
Now, a study has found that regularly attempting a crossword may help slow decline in some people with mild cognitive impairment (障碍), an early stage of faltering memory that can sometimes progress to dementia (痴呆症).
While the study didn't investigate whether crosswords benefit younger adults who are not dealing with cognitive decline, it suggests that keeping your mind active as you age may benefit your brain. And the research offers hope to those diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment that they may be able to stave off further declines in the memory, language problems and decision-making that are the hallmark of the condition.
The American Academy of Neurology estimates that mild cognitive impairment affects about 8 percent of people ages 65 to 69; 10 percent of people ages 70 to 74; 15 percent of people ages 75 to 79; 25 percent of those ages 80 to 84; and about 37 percent of people 85 and older.
The research, which was funded by the National Institute on Aging, recruited 107 adults ages 55 to 95 with mild cognitive impairment. For 12 weeks, they were all asked to play one of two types of games, four times a week—spending either 30 minutes on Lumosity, a popular cognitive training platform, or 30 minutes attempting a digital crossword. After 12 weeks, the participants were reevaluated and given "booster" doses of game play six more times during the 78-week experiment.
By the end of the study, participants were given standard assessments used to measure cognitive decline, and friends and family reported on their day-to-day functioning. MRI scans also were used to measure brain volume changes.
Researchers found that in key measurements—cognitive decline scores, functional skills and brain volume changes—the regular crossword players fared better than the game players.
The finding surprised the scientists behind the study who had expected that challenging web-based brain games, which were specifically designed to boost cognitive function, would offer the most benefit.
"Our study shows that in people with mild cognitive impairment, crossword puzzles beat the computerized games on multiple metrics, " said Murali Doraiswamy, a co-author of the study. "So, if you have mild cognitive impairment, which is different from normal aging, then the recommendation would be to keep your brain active with crossword puzzles."
People with higher degrees of cognitive impairment appeared to benefit the most from doing the crossword which was designed to be a moderately difficult puzzle comparable to the Thursday game.
The study has limitations. Some of the participants may have just been more familiar with crosswords and that's why they responded better to the puzzles than to Lumosity's computer games. More years of follow-up also are needed to determine whether interventions such as crossword puzzles can "truly prevent dementia," Doraiswamy said.
A Perspective article published in Nature this week says that AI systems pose a further risk: that researchers envision such tools as possessed of superhuman abilities when it comes to objectivity, productivity and understanding complex concepts. Scientists planning to use AI "must evaluate these risks now, while AI applications are still nascent (未成熟的), because they will be much more difficult to address if AI tools become deeply embedded in the research pipeline", write co-authors Lisa Messeri and Molly Crockett.
In this article, Messeri and Crockett put together a picture of the ways in which scientists see AI systems as enhancing human capabilities. In one ‘vision', which they call AI as Oracle, researchers see AI tools as able to tirelessly read and digest scientific papers, and so survey the scientific literature more exhaustively than people can. In both Oracle and another vision, called AI as Arbiter, systems are perceived as evaluating scientific findings more objectively than do people, because they are less likely to cherry-pick the literature to support a desired hypothesis or to show favouritism in peer review. In a third vision, AI as Quant, AI tools seem to surpass the limits of the human mind in analyzing vast and complex data. In the fourth, AI as Surrogate, AI tools simulate (模拟) data that are too difficult or complex to obtain.
Informed by anthropology and cognitive science, Messeri and Crockett predict risks that arise from these visions. One is the illusion of explanatory depth, in which people relying on another person—or, in this case, an algorithm—for knowledge have a tendency to mistake that knowledge for their own and think their understanding is deeper than it actually is.
Another risk is that research becomes skewed towards studying the kinds of thing that AI systems can test—the researchers call this the illusion of exploratory breadth. For example, in social science, the vision of AI as Surrogate could encourage experiments involving human behaviors that can be simulated by an AI—and discourage those on behaviors that cannot, such as anything that requires being embodied physically.
There's also the illusion of objectivity, in which researchers see AI systems as representing all possible viewpoints or not having a viewpoint. In fact, these tools reflect only the viewpoints found in the data they have been trained on, and are known to adopt the biases (偏见) found in those data. "There's a risk that we forget that there are certain questions we just can't answer about human beings using AI tools," says Crockett. The illusion of objectivity is particularly worrying given the benefits of including diverse viewpoints in research.
If you're a scientist planning to use AI, you can reduce these dangers through a number of strategies. One is to map your proposed use to one of the visions, and consider which traps you are most likely to fall into. Another approach is to be deliberate about how you use AI. Deploying AI tools to save time on something your team already has expertise in is less risky than using them to provide expertise you just don't have, says Crockett.
How objective are you? How often are you over-reacting to situations, taking things personally or judging people unfairly? We all do this at some time or another.
. Under stress, most of us draw solely on our past experiences and biases, which cloud our ability to see things clearly and make sound judgments. Moreover, our desire to succeed is often so strong, that, under these intense circumstances, our limiting mental models tend to get in our way, creating even more stress and causing us to react in ways that we may regret.
Our ability to be objective depends on our willingness to question our mental models, the lens through which we perceive, interpret and respond to our world. If our mental models are incorrect, then our understanding of what is going on and our response to it, are often incorrect. .
The good news is that with practice, we can interrupt our automatic reactions, and choose a different response. Each time we do this, we are re-wiring our neural network by creating new pathways based on new models: new ways of perceiving and responding to our world. .
One of the most powerful mental model transformation catalysts (催化剂) is new knowledge or logic that challenge old ways of thinking. They've usually been with us a while, so we tend to trust them. For most of us, we have never been taught about mental models and how to evaluate them to determine if they are helpful or harmful.
To transform unproductive mental models, we must change our mind! We have to decide, through our own logic and reason, whether our way of seeing the world is no longer valid for us. It is in the wake of this new knowledge that transformation takes place. At that moment, a set of new connections is created in the brain. It's these new connections that have the potential to enhance our mental resources to help us transform limiting mental models.
A. We can actually learn to think smarter!
B. An objective leader must judge and treat people fairly.
C. This requires that we be open to new knowledge and reasoning.
D. The key is to accept a problem as it occurs and not take it personally.
E. This is why we sometimes misjudge situations and take things personally.
F. As we have seen, mental models are deep — rooted beliefs we tend to hold onto.
G. The challenge is that when we are under pressure, we tend to be less objective.
