"Can I see my baby?" the happy new mother asked. When the baby was lying in her arms and she moved the fold of  cloth to look upon his tiny face, she gasped(喘气). The doctor turned quickly and looked out of the tall hospital window. The baby had been born without ears.

    Time proved that the baby's hearing was perfect. It was only his appearance that was imperfect. When he rushed home from school one day and threw himself into his mother's arms, she sighed, knowing that his life was to be unfortunate. He cried out the tragedy, A boy, a big boy… called me a freak(怪人).

    He grew up, handsome. A favourite with his fellow students, he might have been class president, but for that. He developed a gift, a talent for literature and music. “But you might communicate with other young people,” his mother blamed him, but he felt a kindness in her heart.

    Two years went by. One day, his father said to the son, “You're going to the hospital, son. Mother and I have someone who will donate the ears you need. But it's a secret.” The operation was a brilliant success, and a new person emerged.

    Later he married and entered the diplomatic service. One day, he asked his father, “Who gave me the ears? Who gave me so much? I could never do enough for him or her.” “ I do not believe you could,” said the father, “but the agreement was that you are not to know… not yet.”

    The years kept their secret, but the day did come. He stood with his father over his mother's casket, Slowly. Tenderly, the father stretched forth a hand and raised the thick, reddish brown hair to reveal the mother had no outer ears

    “Mother said she was glad she never let her hair be cut,” his father whispered, gently, “and nobody ever thought Mother less beautiful, did they?”

    A new study finds almost one third of the world's population is overweight. Since 1980, obesity rates(肥胖率)in children and adults have doubled in 73 countries, making people more worried. And rates are increasing in many other countries. Obesity is increasing faster in children than adults in many nations, including Algeria, Turkey and Jordan, the report said. But the world's weight problem is growing in both rich and poor countries alike. Researchers say an increasing number of people are dying of related health problems in what they called a "disturbing global public health problem."

    Researchers studied health information from 1980 through 2015. They examined obesity rates, average weight gain in 195 countries. They found that obesity rates are three times greater among youth and young adults in countries like China, Brazil and India. Almost 108 million children and more than 600 million adults were found to be overweight. Egypt had the highest number of overweight adults in 2015. Vietnam had the least. In the same year, the United States had the highest number of overweight children, and Bangladesh had the least.

    Yet hunger remains a problem in many areas. The United Nations said that almost 800 million people, including 300 million children, go to bed hungry each night. Experts said poor diets and lack of physical activity are mainly to blame for the rising numbers of overweight people.

    Growing populations have led to rising obesity rates in poor countries. Often, poor people will eat processed(加工的) foods instead of choosing a diet rich in vegetables.

    The London-based Overseas Development Institute studied the price of food in five countries: Britain, Brazil, China, Mexico and South Korea. It found that the cost of processed foods like ice cream and hamburgers has fallen since 1990. But the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables has gone up.

    This year's flu season is pretty scary. To try to minimize the effects, public officials are still urging anyone who hasn't yet gotten their flu shot to get one as soon as possible. However, even if every single person got a shot in the arm, the vaccine(疫苗)—with its excellent 36 percent effectiveness—would not prevent everyone from getting infected with the annoying virus. Knowledge is power, so here's what goes on in your body when you come down with the flu.

    The influenza virus primarily attacks your nose, throat, and the tubes that lead to your lungs. But the flu is so much more than that. Your muscles ache, your head hurts, and your appetite goes down, among other things. To our surprise, almost all of these symptoms have less to do with the virus itself than with your immune(免疫的)response to them. Unfortunately, the very defense you have in place to get rid of the flu is the reason you feel so painful when you recover.

    The virus usually enters through your mouth, typically by way of your hands. But it takes a few days for symptoms to set in. While this process might cause some harm to your nose and throat, it's nothing major, and nothing like the symptoms that typically accompany a bad or even mild case of the flu.

    The real fun starts when your immune system begins to fight. Your immune system comes in two parts: the innate system and the adaptive. The innate immune system is essentially an all-purpose tool. As soon as your body senses the presence of any injury or invader (入侵者), the innate immune system launches into action by producing tiny proteins called cytokines and chemokines. The cytokines reproduce almost immediately and start to attack the virus. This increase in immune cells creates an serious inflammation(炎症) throughout the body. But the worst is still to come. Meanwhile, the chemokines work with the adaptive immune system to help create T cells. These cells are a special type of white blood cell that works in a much more specific way: They find the influenza virus, identify what's special about it, and create something unique on their surface that finds and destroys similar invaders.

    Humans make mistakes. Even surgeons with years of experience are not infallible. But what if these doctors could pool their knowledge and experience together and create a surgical standard of care, to be carried out by machines?

    That's the idea behind surgical robots, which may soon perform most surgeries, from sewing up tiny wounds to performing heart procedures. Many of these operations are, in fact, already completed with the assistance of robots. But a recent test suggests that robots in the operating room may soon go a step further, performing on soft tissue completely on their own, from start to finish.

    The Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot（STAR）, successfully completed surgeries on pigs. "We're the first group to develop autonomous robotic surgery with soft-tissue surgery, and when compared to standard operation, it's better, "says Peter Kim, professor of surgery. "The idea is not to replace surgeons；it will make the surgeons better and make the procedures safer. "

    A recent Mayo Clinic study found that major surgical errors-including operating on the wrong site or side of the body, or even leaving tools or objects inside the patient-occur every one out of 22, 000 procedures. That's rare, but robots like STAR would aim to lower the number even further.

    In the da Vinci surgical system, surgeons place their arms inside instruments and use their hands to control the movement of robotic tools on the operating table from afar. The robot's every major move is controlled by surgeons, and thus its results may vary based on the surgeon's training or experience.

    STAR, on the other hand, is entirely autonomous. It's not only able to work on its own and perform surgeries with a more flexible "hand", but it's able to react to the unexpected incidents. Cutting into hard tissue like bones is one thing, but operating on moving soft tissue is far more complex. STAR reacts to a changing environment, similar to how self-driving cars are programmed to not only drive on the highway, but also react to another driver making a mistake and getting in your way.

The Rapid Rise and Fall of Robot Babysitters

    During the winter of 2017, an 18-year old college student named Canon Reeves spent much of his time trailing a knee-high robot around Fayetteville, Arkansas, as it delivered Amazon packages to students. The robot, created by a start-up called Starship Technologies in 2014, is basically a cooler on wheels; it uses radars, sensors, and nine cameras to make deliveries. Reeves's job was to monitor how it handled various grounds, field comments from the public, and press the off switch if necessary. He said, "People would also ask if it could deliver beer." It couldn't.

    Broadly speaking, jobs of caring for robots fall under the umbrella of careers in automation, which include maintenance, engineering and programming. The demand for people with this skill set is considerable, with 20 million to 50 million new jobs to be expected in this category by 2030, according to the Mckinsey Global Institute. In the year that ended in June 2018, Indeed.com had almost three times the number of positions on the recruitment committee that ended in June 2016.

    Over the last year, a 34-year-old businessman named David Rodriguez spent hundreds of hours following a machine called the KiwiBot around UC Berkeley's campus while it delivered Red bull and other drinks to students. To retrieve (检索) orders, the app encourages students to give the robot a wave; the robot's digital eyes will roll depending on its mood. Rodriguez, who heads business development for the start-up, was tasked, early on, with monitoring the KiwiBot for problems – even carrying it, should the motors fail. Since April 2018, though, the KiwiBot has largely been left unattended, and the majority of human interactions involve technical checks and loading food into the robot. To eliminate the boring work, the team is developing a restaurant robot to collect and load orders – which could happen in 2020. However, Rodriguez assured me that his staff won't be out of work. Everyone holds double roles in the company. Greater robot self-governing just means employees will shift their focus to accounting, engineering, and design.

    Mckinsey estimates that millions of jobs globally could be lost to automation by 2030. "A huge number of jobs will be produced as autonomous vehicles are released into the environment," Ramsey said. In 2016, Bosch started training students from Schoolcraft College, a community college in Michigan, in autonomous-vehicle repair; Toyota has trained students in maintenance as well. "We might even see a return to low-level jobs where people come and fuel the car for you," Ramsey said. "Until we can wirelessly charge, someone needs to refuel them." The hardest-to-automate industries, as it happens, are the ones that require looking after humans, such as childcare, education and health care. Robot babysitters might feel like they have scored the job of the future, but in fact, they might be better positioned.

    Anyone who cares about what schools and colleges teach and how their students learn will be interested in the memoir (回忆录) of Ralph W. Tyler, who is one of the most famous men in American education.

    Born in Chicago in 1902, brought up and schooled in Nebraska, the 19-year-old college graduate Ralph Tyler became hooked on teaching while teaching as a science teacher in South Dakota and changed his major from medicine to education.

    Graduate work at the University of Chicago found him connected with honorable educators Charles Judd and W. W. Charters, whose ideas of teaching and testing had an effect on his later work. In 1927, he became a teacher of Ohio State University where he further developed a new method of testing.

    Tyler became well-known nationally in 1938, when he carried his work with the Eight-Year Study from Ohio State University to the University of Chicago at the invitation of Robed Hutchins.

    Tyler was the first director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a position he held for fourteen years. There, he firmly believed that researchers should be free to seek an independent spirit in their work.

    Although Tyler officially retired (退休) in 1967, he never actually retired. He served on a long list of educational organizations in the United States and abroad. Even in his 80s he traveled across the country to advise teachers and management people on how to set objectives (目标) that develop the best teaching and learning within their schools.