Do you want to take time to get in touch with yourself, your feelings, your dreams, and a good, healthy life? Here are some tips:

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Sometimes it seems as if our culture has begun to view the need for sleep as a sign of weakness. But your body was genetically(基因地) programmed to spend a third of its life on sleep, and this affects thinking, memory, growth, your immune(免疫的) system and even your weight.

    Begin the day in thankfulness. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Name each person and hold them in your thoughts. The sense of thankfulness you experience will set a peaceful tone for the entire day, and reduce a day's stress that can lead to sleeplessness that night.

    Strike a balance. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Think about tai chi, prayer, yoga(瑜伽)—any daily activity that allows you to develop a peaceful center and a sense of balance.

    Play with friends. The "tend and be friend studies", as they are called, conducted by UCLA researcher, Shelly Taylor, Ph.D. indicate that when women are stressed, they tend to their children and play with other women. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    Use guided imagination. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} The tone of your voice, pacing, music, and pictures will persuade your nervous system that it's time to calm down.

Shaking hands, American style

    People often shake hands in the United States. American men shake hands with other men. American women often shake hands with men, and sometimes they shake hands with other women. Adults shake hands with children. And some people even teach their dogs to shake hands! {#blank#}1{#/blank#} How do they shake hands just long enough? Just hard enough? Here are four little rules to remember.

1）Use your right hand.

2）Use good eye contact(眼神交流). Look at the person in the eye while you are shaking hands.

3）Don't shake too long.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} Then let go and pull your hand back toward you.

4）{#blank#}3{#/blank#} When a handshake is weak, Americans think the person may not be a hard worker or a good leader. When a handshake is too strong, Americans think the person is too rough(粗鲁) or has bad manners.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} They shake hands when they meet for the first time. They shake hands to say congratulations. They shake hands when they meet after not seeing each other for a while. And they often shake hands when they say good-bye. In business, shaking hands shows agreement and honesty.

    Handshakes are good everywhere.{#blank#}5{#/blank#} So make sure to shake plenty of hands.

A. Offer you hand first.

B. Shake for no more than three seconds.

C. How do people shake hands correctly?

D. Don't shake too strongly or too weakly.

E. It is not polite to refuse a person's hand.

F. When do people in the United States shake hands?

G. Make sure your hands aren't sweaty when you do this.

    Does the future of filmmaking lie in virtual reality (VR) films?

   An ambitious team led by Yale senior Celine Tien might hold the answer to that question.

    Tien produced,directed and acted in Pippa's Pan,which she says is “one of the world's first live-action VR films.”The film,which was completed in April,mixes live action with VR sections.Some of the characters were created via animation（动画）and other techniques that distinguish the film from 360° VR videos like the ones frequently seen on YouTube.

    “360° VR videos are stagnant,which means you don't move with them and see a 360° view of whatever they're filming.”Tien explained.“What we're doing is immersive（沉浸式的）VR.When you put on the goggles (a kind of special glasses) you can physic.ally walk around in the space,pick up objects and engage with the environment.It's a huge difference.”

    The immersive VR film experience is different for everyone who interacts with the medium,but that doesn't mean the film's ending will change for each viewer.

    The film stars two Chinese-speaking actors."It's a love story about a woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease who is trying to bring back memories of her husband,"Tien said.

    The film has already been recognized by the VR industry.After handing in a short demo to the AT&T Developer Summit Conference,Tien and her team were invited to Las Vegas in January,where they came in third place.

    If you're dying to see the film already,your choices area bit limited: Pippa's Pan can't be seen in movie theaters unless they happen to have VR goggles available.According to Tien,many theaters in China will soon have the ability,which makes sense considering China is the film's target market.

    Pippa's Pan will be released in three languages: Chinese,English and Korean.“It can get spread in different ways: at film festivals with VR set ups and through HTC or Oculus headset stores,”Tien says.“If you have VR goggles you can download it and experience it yourself.We will also cooperate with movie theaters that have VR set ups.”

    You can't always predict a heavy rain or remember your umbrella. But designer Mikhail Belyaev doesn't think that forgetting to check the weather forecast before heading out should result in you getting wet. That's why he created Lampbrella, a lamp post with its own rain-sensing umbrella.

    The designer says he came up with the idea after watching people get wet on streets in Russia. “Once, I was driving on a central Saint Petersburg street and saw the street lamps lighting up people trying to hide from the rain. I thought it would be appropriate to have a canopy(伞蓬) built into a street lamp,” he said.

    The Lampbrella is a standard-looking street lamp fitted with an umbrella canopy. It has a built-in electric motor which can open or close the umbrella on demand Sensors(传感器) then ensure that the umbrella offers pedestrians shelter whenever it starts raining.

    In addition to the rain sensor, there's also a 360°motion sensor on the fiberglass street lamp which detects whether anyone is using the Lampbrella. After three minutes of not being used the canopy is closed.

    According to the designer, the Lampbrella would move at a relatively low speed, so as not to cause harm to the pedestrians. Besides, it would be grounded to protect from possible lightning strike. Each Lampbrella would offer enough shelter for several people. Being installed(安装) at 2 metres off the ground, it would only be a danger for the tallest of pedestrians.

    While there are no plans to take the Lampbrella into production, Belyaev says he recently introduced his creation to one Moscow Department, and insists his creation could be installed on any street where a lot of people walk but there are no canopies to provide shelter.

    Will it matter if you don't take your breakfast? A short time ago, a test was given in the United States. People of different ages, from 12 to 83, were asked to have a test. During the test, these people were given all kinds of breakfast, and sometimes they got no breakfast at all. Scientists wanted to see how well their bodies worked when they had eaten different kinds of breakfast.

    The results show that if a person eats a right breakfast, he or she will work better than if he or she has no breakfast. If a student has fruit, egg, bread and milk before going to school, he or she will learn more quickly and listen more carefully.

    The result is opposite to what some people think. Having no breakfast will not help you lose weight. This is because people become so hungry at noon that they eat too much for lunch. They will gain weight (增加体重) instead of losing it. You will lose more weight if you decrease your other meals.

 Imagine this. You need an image of a balloon for a work presentation and turn to an AI text- to- image generator, like Midjourney or DALL-E, to create a suitable image. You enter the prompt(提示词)" red balloon against a blue sky" but the generator returns an image of an egg instead.

What's going on? The generator you' re using may have been" poisoned". What does this mean?

Text- to- image generators work by being trained on large databasets that include millions or billions of images. Some of the generators have been trained by indiscriminately (任意地) scraping online images, many of which may be under copyright. This has led to many copyright infringement(侵害) cases where artists have accused big tech companies of stealing and profiting from their work.

 This is also where the idea of" poison" comes in. Researchers who want to empower individual artists have recently created a tool named" Nightshade" to fight back against unauthorised image scraping. The tool works by slightly changing an image's pixels(像素) in a way that confuses the computer vision system but leaves the image unchanged to a human's eyes. If an organization then scrapes one of these images to train a future AI model, its data pool becomes" poisoned". This can result in mistaken learning, which makes the generator return unintended results. As in our earlier example, a balloon might become an egg.

 The higher the number of" poisoned" images in the training data, the greater the impact. Because of how generative AI works, the damage from" poisoned" images also affects related prompt keywords. For example, if a" poisoned" image of a Picasso work is used in training data, prompt results for masterpieces from other artists can also be affected.

 Possibly, tools like Nightshade can be abused by some users to intentionally upload" poisoned" images in order to confuse AI generators. But the Nightshade's developer hopes the tool will make big tech companies more respectful of copyright. It does challenge a common belief among computer scientists that data found online can be used for any purpose they see fit.

 Human rights activists, for example, have been concerned for some time about the indiscriminate use of machine vision in wider society. This concern is particularly serious concerning facial recognition. There is a clear connect ion between facial recognition cases and data poisoning, as both relate to larger questions around technological governance. It may be better to see data poisoning as an innovative(创新的) solution to the denial of some fundamental human rights.