Love to sink into your chairs and relax when you get to school. Then you will not be happy to hear that schools all over the world are seriously considering exchanging traditional desks for ones with no seats at all — Yes, that means you will be encouraged to stand through those already too long math and science lessons! Why would anyone even think of putting kids to such cruelty. Experts say it improves their health and helps fight obesity. While that may seem a little far-fetched (牵强的), the officials at the few schools around the world seem to agree.

    Among them are educators from the College Station Independent School District in Texas, who recently completed a week-long experiment involving 480 students across three elementary schools. The 374 kids that agreed to participate in the study were provided a device that helped record step count and calorie consumption over the entire period.

    All 25 teachers involved in the study reported that students appeared to be more alert and concentrate better, when allowed to stand. The one thing that did surprise the researchers was that younger kids were more willing to stay standing than kids in higher grades. They believe this may have something to do with the fact that after years of being asked to “sit still”, older kids have a harder time adjusting to this unexpected freedom.

    American schools are not the only ones reporting success with stand-up desks. Four schools in Perth, Australia, which have been testing them since October 2013, have seen similar results. In May 2014, Grove House Primary School in West Yorkshire, became Europe's first test one, with a seven-week trial that involved the use of desks made by Ergotron in their fifth-grade classrooms. While official results are not out yet, early reactions from both teachers and students, have been extremely encouraging.

    The findings of these studies and others done previously, all seem to mean that allowing kids to move around in classrooms is a win-win for students and teachers — it helps kids get healthier and provides educators with a more attentive audience.

    Gus Wenner runs Rollingstone.com; his father gave him the job. But Jann Wenner, the magazine's co­founder and publisher, was quick to assure critics of the appointment process that his son is terribly talented and had to prove himself before being given the post. Apparently Gus worked his way up from more junior positions with the company, and demonstrated, according to his father, the “drive and discipline and charm, and all the things that show leadership.” Gus Wenner is 22 years old.

    He is certainly not the only kid out of college, or even out of high school, working at daddy's firm. Family contacts are a common way of finding both temporary internships and longtime careers. Opportunities for the children of top 1 percent are not the same as they are for the 99 percent.

    This is hardly a shock, but it is precisely the type of inequality that reveals the hard­ to­ define promise of the “Just Do It” version of the American dream and deepens our cynicism(愤世嫉俗) about how people get ahead. As a consequence, it weakens support for public policies that could address the lack of upward mobility among children born at the bottom, who ought to be given priority. A strong tie between adult outcomes and family background annoys Americans. When an organization conducted a nationally representative survey asking about the meaning of “the American dream”， some typical answers included: “Being free to say or do what you want” and “Being free to accomplish almost anything you want with hard work.” but also “Being able to succeed regardless of the economic circumctances in which you were born.”

    This is exactly the reason that “the American dream” is not only a defining metaphor for the country, but also why Americans have long been willing to tolerate a good deal more economic inequality than citizens of many other rich countries. A belief in the possibility of upward mobility not only morally justifies inequality as the expression of talents and energies, but also extends a promise to those with lower incomes. After all, why would you be a strong advocate for reducing inequality if you believe that you, or eventually your children, were likely to climb the income ladder?

    Hard work and perseverance(毅力) will always be ingredients for success, but higher inequality has made having successful parents, if not essential, certainly a central part of the recipe.

    The belief that talent is something you are born with, and that opportunities are open to anyone with ambition and energy, also has a dangerous consequence. When the public policy is focused on the difficult situation of the poor, this belief can help the concept resurface that the poor are “undeserving” and are the authors of their own situation. Yet we actually know a good deal about why children of the poor have a higher chance of being stuck on poverty as adults.

    The recipes for breaking this intergenerational trap are clear: a nurturing(培养) environment in the early years combined with accessible and high­quality health care and education promote the capacities of young children, heighten the development of their skills as they grow older, and eventually raise their chances of upward mobility.

    Talent is nurtured and developed, and even genes are expressed differently depending upon environmental influences.

    The 1 percent are the goal for these upper­middle­class families, who after all have also experienced significant growth in their relative standing. The graduate and other higher degrees that they hold, for which they put in considerable effort, have put them on the upside of the wave of globalization and technical change that has transformed the American job market.

    An age of higher inequality gives them both more resources to promote the capacities of their children, and more encouragement to make these investments since their children now have all the more to gain.

    For them, an American dream based on effort and talent still lives, and as a result they are less likely, with their considerable cultural and political influence, to support the reshaping of American public policy to meet its most pressing need: the future of those at the bottom.

Everyone has got two personalities—the one that is shown to the world and the other that is secret and real. You don't show your secret personality when you're awake because you can control yourself, but when you're asleep, your sleeping position shows the real you. In a normal night, of course, you often change your sleeping positions. The important position that best shows your secret personality is the one that you fall asleep with.

    If you go to sleep on your back, you're a very open person. You normally trust people and you are easily influenced by fashion or new ideas. You don't like to upset people. So you never express your real feelings. You're quite shy and you aren't very confident.

    If you sleep on your stomach, you are a person who likes to keep secrets. You worry a lot and you're always easily becoming sad. You never want to change your ideas, but you are satisfied with your life the way it is. You usually live for today not tomorrow.

    If you sleep curled up(卷曲), you are probably a very nervous person. You have a low opinion of yourself and you often protecting yourself from being hurt, so you are very defensive. You're shy and you don't usually like meeting people. You prefer to be on your own. You're easily hurt.

    If you sleep on your side, you have usually got a well-balanced(平衡的) personality. You know your strengths and weaknesses. You're usually careful. You believe in yourself. You sometimes feel anxious, but you don't often get unhappy. You always say what you think, even if it makes people rather angry.

    That the US stock market dropped sharply immediately after the US government put forward the proposal on Tuesday to tighten the control on exports of various artificial intelligence technologies indicates what the market thinks of the move.

    Multi-national corporations have led the way in the profound compressing(压缩) of time and space that has flattened and changed the world over the last couple of decades, and the overwhelming majority of international technological transfers have been conducted among multi-national companies in pursuit of profits.

    Thus the proposal the US government put forward on Tuesday to tighten the control to "avoid negatively impacting US leadership in the science, technology, engineering and manufacturing sector" is being viewed not only as a brake on the US economy but also as a barrier to maintaining that leadership since it will reduce cooperation with the rest of the world and shrink the market for US companies preventing them from investing research and development.

    The bigger its market, the more profits a technology company can earn, and the more money it then has to invest in developing even more advanced technologies. This is as true for US companies as it is for others.

    Behind the proposal is the narrow-mindedness of policymakers in the US administration, who choose to ignore the fact that the United States would not have become the world leader in science and technology if it had kept its doors closed.

    If such controls are intended to contain China's development, they will certainly fail.

    It is true that China has a lot to do to catch up with the US and other developed countries. Yet it has made great steps forward by opening its doors and cooperating with other economies.

    As it opens its door wider, it will have even more opportunities to cooperate with other countries in science and technology.

The de-materialization of economic activities — with economic output and income generation increasingly reliant on information rather than inputs of raw materials — only increases the need for cooperative agreements and a cross-disciplinary approach to increase the capabilities of AI and advance its application.

    By trying to enforce and exploit an invented-here ideal that is untenable, the US will undoubtedly lose the leadership in science and technology gradually to which it has become accustomed, and prevent the progress of both humans and machines.

    It was a morning in January. The jet stream (急流)had dipped down, causing the Arctic cold to reach the mountains of my home. It was only 2 degrees outside, but the cold wind made it feel like it was 15 below zero. Still, I was kneeling in the snow alongside my house trying to open a tiny door, so I eoukl get in. 1 had forgotten to leave my water dripping the night before and now my water pipes were frozen and my faucets(水龙头)were dry.

    The wind cut into me like a knife while I struggled to get two electric heaters in place around the section of frozen pipes. The waterlines were buried except for a small piece that connected up to my house. I put a heater on each side of it, ran the extension cords(软线)into my house and plugged them in. Both heaters roared to life and started blowing hot air on the frozen water pipes. My fingers had already started to go numb, so I stayed inside to wait. I could only hope that this bit of warmth could get my water flowing again. Finally, after twenty minutes, the water started flowing through my faucets again. I went back outside into the biller cold and gathered my heaters up. I looked at the weak January sun shining on the frozen snow and smiled. Then I sent a joy filled with "Thank you" heavenward and returned inside to make myself a hot breakfast.

    Sometimes the coldness of this life can get to us as well. It can make our hearts feel icy and frozen. It can keep our kindness and love from flowing out to others. Sometimes, though, all we need is a bit of warnth to get us going again. It can be a simple smile, a kind word, a heart-felt hug, a morning sunrise, a bird's song or any gentle reminder of just how much God loves us. Let us all be grateful for those bits of warmth that gel us going again. And let us all try to be that bit of wannth for others every chance we get.

    In the space of just two years, the app Douyin, created by Beijing-based company ByteDance, has gathered more than half a billion users—around 40%of them outside China—who share short videos of themselves lip-syncing (假唱), cooking, dancing or just being silly. What sets ByteDance apart is its success in the social media category, which is controlled by Facebook, Twitter and Snap—all Western companies.

    ByteDance calls itself an artificial intelligence company. It uses machine learning and algorithms (算法) to figure out what people like most and give them more of what they want to see. On Douyin, people can edit and beautify 15-second videos before posting them online. The app has even made a phrase to describe people glued to their customized feeds: "shua Douyin" or "scrolling through Douyin". Last year, the company released TikTok, the overseas version of Douyin. ByteDance's growing video empire has made it the world's fifth biggest app maker. ByteDance says TikTok and Douyin together have more than 500 million monthly active users.

    Investors like ByteDance because its hundreds of millions of users attract a lot of advertising money. The video apps are lucrative because they attract a lot of users in their teens and 20s, who are more generous with the money. ByteDance also makes money through income sharing deals. People on TikTok, for example, can buy digital coins to give to other people on the app—like throwing money in a performer's tip jar. ByteDance takes a cut of those earnings.

    ByteDance's founder and CEO is Zhang Yiming, a 35-year-old former Microsoft employee. People who have worked with Zhang describe him as someone who thinks deeply about technology and spends much of his free time writing code.

    Like Facebook and Twitter, ByteDance is also battling fake news and inappropriate content. ByteDance promises to add thousands more employees to review content on Douyin.