The moment I was diagnosed with cancer, I decided that I would not let this "beast" win easily. I had no idea        my treatment would be like, and I surely didn't think social media would be a way for me to conquer this "beast". However, by sharing      (feel) on the Internet, I am able to remind myself, and my viewers, that everything is going to be okay. Their words are a big part of what helped me stay      (hope). Besides, I have made several "cancer friends" so far, and we're determined to fight this battle together.

    Successful communication       (involve) more than talking to a person. Good listening skills and body language are also important for us to communicate       (effective) with others. Studies have shown that of the information that is received from other people, only 10% is from what they say and 40% is from the tone and speed of their voice. The other 50% is obtained from their body language. Therefore,       (read) body language is an important part of developing our social skills.

    We could learn vocabulary while we are asleep. Researchers showed it is possible        (learn) new information while sleeping deeply, and recall this information later. They did tests to see        a person could remember new words and their translations while sleeping. The answer is yes. The language areas of the brain remember vocabulary during sleep, especially during deep sleep. While sleeping, our brain switches on for about half a second and then switches       for half a second. The active state       (call) "up-state". This is how our brain could learn new vocabulary.

    I grew up on a 40-acre farm in the small rural community of Illinois, as the fifth of six children.

    My parents, Robert and Patti, often noted during meals how everything on the table except sugar and wine came from the land.1 running the farm, Dad was also a carpenter. In the fall of 1980, he was working on a house when all of a sudden the ladder broke. His back was broken.

    He stayed in hospital for almost a month with his head and feet down, 2his back to align (成直线) correctly so the bones would heal.

    On Thanksgiving, Dad was still in hospital recovering from his back injury. Normally he would take us to butcher pigs the day after the holiday, and that year my uncle 3 up with my four cousins to help my two elder brothers 4 our year's supply of pork.

    When Dad came back home from the hospital, he was still in a back brace (支架) and 5 to work. I was too young to realize our family had no money coming in as Christmas 6 . Another day we saw a car coming up the long driveway. Always longing for company, we kids were7 about who was visiting. Rose Anderson, our neighbor, was at the door, holding an envelope stuffed with money. She told my dad she had8 money in the community and came to deliver it.

    Dad tried to refuse,9 Rose insisted. I can still hear her saying, "Robert, whenever someone's baler (压捆机) breaks down, you bale their hay. Whenever someone passes away, Patti cooks. It's our 10."

    I learned later that we also 11 gift baskets from more than one organization. That Christmas, I, a 6-year-old kid, understood what being a good neighbor was, and that as my parents were good neighbors, their12 would be returned. These tales of Christmas kindness will 13 our heart, too.

    My parents were accustomed to being the 14, not the receivers of such generosity. They had a bit of pride to swallow, but continued all of their lives to show us kids the 15of kindness.

    Courses & Curriculum of the College of Arts & Sciences in Cornell

    Should Parents Teach Children How to Tweet?

    Social media is a seemingly endless source of concern for parents, with worries that it weakens their children's confidence and attention spans. But others counter that it could also be broadening their horizons.

    The latest round of worry was sparked by a study of the impact of social media use on 8-12- year-olds published by Anne Longfield, Children's Commissioner for England. The report focused on 32 children, who said they used social media to stay connected with friends and family and to have fun, by watching videos for example. But they also described pressures from constant contact, online comments that weaken their self-esteem, and the need to shape offline activities to make them shareable. "You see your friends going ice skating, partying or talking about how much revision they have done, and it can make you feel inadequate," says Bea, a junior school student from Bristol, UK. "It's just so hard to get away from."

    Children have to take risks on their journeys to adulthood, and desires to fit in and be popular existed before Mark Zuckerberg came along with Facebook. However, in previous generations these pressures came largely from people they knew, and they mostly stayed outside the home. Now the pressures could come from any one of the nearly 3 billion people online, and follow them from school to home, and can even continue through the night.

    The pressures do get on parents' nerves, among which the utmost concern is how their children can be protected from harms, given that social media is now integral to the way many young people interact. A good starting point is a basic understanding of childhood development milestones.

    Broadly, children have a high dependency on carers for security and guidance up to the age of 5, increasing independence and self-care from 6 to 11, and increasing autonomy and growing reliance on peers from 12-18 years old. Against this background, the suitability of social media for children of different ages should be considered respectively.

    According to Longfield's study, children should be taught about online safety from an early age, better before secondary school. There is growing evidence that efforts need to be extended to provide earlier guidance on less extreme but more common risks, including oversharing, low selfesteem, addiction and insomnia. The evidence suggests she is right. However, approaches that focus merely on the potential negatives are unlikely to work.

    "My school has tried to do a lot, but it often involves trying to drill into us how bad social media can be," says Bea. "People of my age really like social media, so I think a better approach would be if they said ‘Although it is good, here are some negatives'."

A Letter that Changed My Life

    I was about 30 years old and was working as a firefighter in the South Bronx's Engine Co. 82. It was a restful Sunday and between alarms I rushed to the office to read a copy of the New York Times. I read an article on the Book Review section which openly stated what I took to be a calumny – that William Butler Yeats had gone beyond his Irishness and was forever to be known as a universal poet. As I read it, my blood began to boil.

    There were few things I was more proud of than my Irish heritage, and ever since I first picked up a book of his poems from a shelf when I was in the military, Yeats had been my favorite Irish writer, followed by Sean O'Casey and James Joyce.

    I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote out a letter of anger to the editor. Throughout Yeats' poetry, his view of the world and the people in it was basically Irish. He had lived his life and written his poetry through the very essence of his Irish sensibility. It was offensive to think Irishness was something to be transcended(超越).

    I don't know why I felt it my duty to safeguard the reputation of the world's greatest poet. I just knew that I had to write that letter.

    After my letter got published, I received a letter from The New Yorker, asking for an interview. When my article Fireman Smith appeared in that magazine, the editor of a large publishing firm called me, asking if I was interested in writing a book about my life. I had little confidence to write a whole book, though the subject was worthy. I wrote Report From Engine Co. 82 in six months, and it sold really well. In the years that followed, I wrote three more best-sellers.

    Being a writer had been far from my expectations. How had it happened? I often found myself thinking about it, and my thoughts always came back to that letter to the New York Times. For me, the writing was a natural consequence of the passion I felt and the subjects represented the great values burning within me as I wrote.

    Over the years, my five children have come to me with one dilemma or another. My answer is always the same. Think about what you're feeling and measure the heat of the fire in your heart, for that is your passion. Your education and your experience will guide you toward making a right decision, but your passion will enable you to make a difference in whatever you do. That's what I learned the day I stood up for Ireland's greatest poet.

AlphaZero--an Updated Model of AI

    Soon after Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion, lost his rematch against IBM's Deep Blue in 1997, the short window of human-machine chess competition slammed shut forever. Unlike humans, machines keep getting faster, and today a smartphone chess app can be stronger than Deep Blue. However, as people see with the new AlphaZero system, machine dominance has not ended the historical role of chess as a laboratory of cognition.

    Much as airplanes don't flap their wings like birds, machines don't produce chess moves like humans do. Based on a generic algorithm (算法), AlphaZero incorporates deep learning and other AI techniques like Monte Carlo tree search to play against itself to develop its own chess knowledge. Unlike the traditional program Stockfish, which employs many preset evaluation functions as well as opening and endgame moves, AlphaZero starts out knowing only the rules of chess, with no preset human strategies. In a few hours, it plays more games against itself than have been recorded in human chess history. It teaches itself the best way to play, reevaluating the relative values of the pieces. It quickly becomes strong enough to win 28, draw 72, and lose none in a victory over Stockfish. Since AlphaZero can program itself, this superior understanding allows it to outclass the world's top traditional program despite calculating far fewer positions per second. It's the typical example of the cliché, "work smarter, not harder".

    AlphaZero shows that machines can be the experts, not merely expert tools. Explainability is still an issue—it's not going to put chess coaches out of business just yet. But the knowledge it produces is information humans can learn from. AlphaZero is surpassing humans in a profound and useful way, and researchers are working on transferring the knowledge acquired from AlphaZero to other fields.

    Machine learning systems aren't perfect. Even though great progresses have been achieved, AI algorithms are still struggling on open problems such as computer vision, natural language understanding... There will be cases where an AI will fail to detect exceptions to its rules. Therefore, as Kasparov writes, "We must work together to combine our strengths. I know better than most people what it's like to compete against a machine. Instead of raging against them, it's better if we're all on the same side."