Throughout the history of the arts, thenature of creativity has remained constant to artists．Nomatter what objects they select, artists are to bring forth new forces andforms that cause change—to find poetry where no one has ever seen orexperienced it before．

Landscape (风景) isanother unchanging element of art．It can be found from ancient timesthrough the17th-century Dutch painters to the 19th-century romanticists andimpressionists．Inthe 1970s Alfred Leslie, one of the new American realists, continued thispractice．Lesliesought out the same place where ThomasCole, a romanticist, had producedpaintings of the same scene a century and a half before．UnlikeCole who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace innature, Leslie paints what he actually sees．In his paintings, there is no particularchange in emotion, and he includes ordinary things like the highway in thebackground．Healso takes advantage of the latest developments of color photography to helpboth the eye and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom．

Besides, all art begs the age-oldquestion: What is real? Each generation of artists has shown theirunderstanding of reality in one form or another．The impressionists saw reality in briefemotional effects, the realists in everyday subjects and in forest scenes, andthe Cro-Magnon cave people in their naturalistic drawings of the animals in theancient forests．Tosum up, understanding reality is a necessary struggle for artists of allperiods．

Over thousands of years the function ofthe arts has remained relatively constant．Past or present, Eastern or Western, thearts are a basic part of our immediate experience．Many and different are the faces ofart,and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings．

    The U.S. Postal Service(USPS) is losing billions of dollars a year. The government company that delivers "small mail" is losing out to email and othertypes of electronic communication. First-classmail amount fell from a high point of 104 million pieces in 2000 to just 64million pieces by 2014.

    Congress permits the 600,000-empIoyee USPS to hold a monopoly (垄断) overfirst-class and standard mail. The company pays no federal, state or local taxes; pays no vehicle fees; and is free from many regulations on other businesses. Despite these advantages, the USPS has lost $52 billion since 2007, and will continue losing money without major reforms.

    The problem is that Congress is preventing the USPS from reducing costs as its sales decline, and is blocking efforts to end Saturday service and close unneeded post office locations. USPS also hasa costly union-dominated work force that slows the introduction of new ideas ormethods down. USPS workers earn significantly higher payment than comparable private-sector workers. The answer isto privatize the USPS and open postal markets to competition. With the riseof the Internet, the argument that mail is a natural monopoly that needs government protection is weaker than ever.

    Other countries facing declining letter amounts have madereforms. Germany and the Netherlands privatized their national postal companies over a decade ago, and other European countries have followed suit. Britain floated shares of the Royal Mail on its stock exchange in 2013. Some countries, such us Sweden and New Zealand, have not privatized their national postal companies, but they have opened them up to competition.

    These reforms have driven efficiency improvements in all of these countries. Additional number of workers have been reduced, productivity has risen and consumers have benefited. Also, note that cost-cutting measures—such as closing tone post offices—are good for both the economy and the environment.

    Privatization and competition also encourage new changes. When the USPS monopoly over "extremely urgent" mail was stopped in 1979, we saw an explosion in efficient overnight private delivery by firms such as FedEx.

    The government needs to wake up to changing technology, study postal reforms abroad and let businessmen reinvent our out-of-date postal system.

    AlphaGo is a computer program that plays the board game Go.

    In March, 2016, the pride of humankind was crushed (粉碎) by a computer. Google's AlphaGo defeated the South Korean grandmaster (围棋大师) Lee Sedol four games to one, as the world looked on with shock and awe (敬畏). Artificial intelligence (AI, 人工智能) had suddenly reached a new and unexpected height.

    But as smart as AlphaGo is, it's no longer the best Go “player” in the world. Google's artificial intelligence group, DeepMind, has created the next generation of its Go-playing program, called AlphaGo Zero. The new AI program is unique in the way it learned to play Go. Instead of learning from thousands of human matches, as its predecessor (前任) did, AlphaGo Zero mastered Go in just two days without any human knowledge of the game and defeated AlphaGo by day three, reported The Guardian. It then went on to defeat AlphaGo 100 games to zero.

    To learn how to play Go, AlphaGo Zero played millions of matches against itself using only the basic rules of the game to rapidly create its own knowledge of it. Like the previous version, it used “reinforcement (增强) learning to become its own teacher,” according to DeepMind's website.

    “It's more powerful than previous approaches,” David Silver, AlphaGo's lead researcher, told The Guardian, “because by not using human data, or human expertise in any fashion, we've removed the constraints (约束) of human knowledge and it is able to create knowledge itself.”

    AlphaGo Zero's approach to self-learning is a significant advancement in AI that could be applied to help solve some of the world's biggest problems, according to a recent research report published in the journal Nature. For example, DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis argues that AlphaGo Zero could probably find cures for a number of serious diseases within weeks, according to The Telegraph. Indeed, the AI is now being used to study protein folding, which is connected to diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

    So now that AI has exceeded (超过) the bounds of human knowledge, perhaps the question is not about what AI can learn from humans, but what humans can learn from AI. We can only wait and see.

    Can exercise during childhood protect you against memory loss many decades later?Exercise early in life seems to have lifelong benefits for the brain,in rats at least.

    "This is an animal study,but it shows that physical activity at a young age is very important一not just for physical development,but for the whole lifelong track of cognitive（认知的）development during ageing,"says Martin Wojtowicz of the University of Toronto,Canada."In humans,it may delay the appearance of Alzheimer's symptoms（阿兹海默氏症）,possibly to the point of preventing them."

    Wojtowicz's team divided 80 young male rats into two equal groups,and placed running wheels in the cages of one group for a period of six weeks.Around four months later—when the rats had reached middle age—the team taught all the rats to connect an electric shock with being in a specific box.When placed in the box,they froze with fear.

    Two weeks later,the team tested the rats in three situations: exactly the same box in the same room,the same box with the room arranged differently,and a completely different box in a different room.

    The rats without access to a running wheel when they were young now froze the same percentage of times in each of these situations,suggesting they couldn't remember which one was dangerous.But those that had been able to run in their youth froze 40 to 50 percent less in both changed box settings.

    “The results suggest the amount of physical activity when we're young,at least for rats,has influence on brain and cognitive health—in the form of better memories—when we're older,"says Arthur Kramer of Northeastern University in Boston,who has found that,in humans,exercise promotes the growth of new brain cells.

    Recently a friend of mine asked me whether I'd seen the TV series Cook' Table. Of course, I hadn't because I'm not that into food. But I do get hungry for adventures sometimes, so I decided to watch the show. This is when I was introduced to the cook Francis Mallmann.

    He makes choices; he doesn't plan. When he was young, he looked for mentors (导师) and experiences, not books or paths. He honored his roots but embraced the world and sought things and places he didn't know. He isn't content with just one lifestyle and he doesn't bend to expectations. This made me puzzled because I grew up thinking I had to have a plan and have long-term stability in front of me.

    When I saw Mallmann doing what makes him happy, everything changed. I thought to myself, "That's how we're supposed to live." I felt as if I'd stood up from a comfortable fireplace and the blanket of my life just fell to the ground. I submitted my leave of absence application to my employer less than a month later. I'm now full of excitement. I'm leaving my job and a good salary, and I'm going to do things that feed my soul.

    Michael Kernis and Brian Goldman, psychologists at Clayton State University in Georgia, studied the benefits of authenticity (真实性) and being true to yourself. Some of the benefits of following your inner voice include enjoying a strong sense of purpose in life, greater confidence, healthier relationships and strong skills.

    I might soon be hungrier and poorer than I was before but at least I'll be staying true to who I am and I'll get the true freedom.

    Your house may have an effect on your figure. Experts say the way you design your home could play a role in whether you pack on the pounds or keep them off. You can make your environment work for you instead of against you. Here are some ways to turn your home into part of your diet plan.

    Open the curtains and turn up the lights. Dark environments are more likely to encourage overeating, for people are often less self­conscious (难为情) when they're in poorly lit places—and so more likely to eat lots of food. If your home doesn't have enough window light, get more lamps and flood the place with brightness.

    Mind the colors. Research suggests warm colors fuel our appetites. In one study, people who ate meals in a blue room consumed 33 percent less than those in a yellow or red room. Warm colors like yellow make food appear more appetizing, while cold colors make us feel less hungry. So when it's time to repaint, go blue.

    Don't forget the clock—or the radio. People who eat slowly tend to consume about 70 fewer calories (卡路里) per meal than those who rush through their meals. Begin keeping track of the time, and try to make dinner last at least 30 minutes. And while you're at it, actually sit down to eat. If you need some help slowing down, turn on relaxing music. It makes you less likely to rush through a meal.

    Downsize the dishes. Big serving bowls and plates can easily make us fat. We eat about 22 percent more when using a 12­inch plate instead of a 10­inch plate. When we choose a large spoon over a smaller one, total intake (摄入) jumps by 14 percent. And we'll pour about 30 percent more liquid into a short, wide glass than a tall, skinny glass.