20230319英语学习

篇目1

How Adult Brains Learn the New Without Forgetting the Old
沉默突触：成年大脑如何学习新事物

Learning new things is hard.Remembering what has already been learned is harder.Any successful learning system, be it a brain or a piece of artificial-intelligence software, must strike the right balance between stability and flexibility.It must be stable enough to remember important old things yet flexible enough to learn new ones without destroying old memory traces — preferably for as long as it exists.

Learning is a result of changes in the pattern of neural connectivity in the brain.Each connection between nerve cells, called a synapse, is a tiny gap between the ends of branches ramifying from such cells.Messages jump across these gaps in the form of molecules called neurotransmitters.Current estimates suggest there are 600 trillion synapses in a human brain.

How, then, to deal with the stability-plasticity dilemma — particularly as brains age and, as it were, fill up?Research by Dimitra Vardalaki, Kwanghun Chung and Mark Harnett at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, just suggests one way is to preserve into adulthood a type of memory-forming synapse found in children.These are called silent synapses.

Silent synapses — which, as their name suggests, transmit no signal from one nerve cell to another — are often found on the ends of slender, immature protrusions from nerve cells, called filopodia.

Until now, it had been thought that these disappeared as a brain matured.But Drs Vardalaki, Chung and Harnett have shown not only that they are present in adulthood, but also that they are common, at least in mice.Just over a quarter of the connections they sampled in adult mouse visual cortices were silent synapses on filopodia.And murine and human brains are sufficiently alike that something similar almost certainly applies to people.

To carry out their search for filopodia, the trio used a sensitive microscopy technique called emap.They studied 2,234 synapses between cortical nerve cells of a type called pyramidal neurons, which have thousands of synapses each.Peering through an emap microscope is enough to determine which cellular protrusions are filopodia.But it cannot show which synapses on them are silent.

To do that, they needed to test how the filopodia responded to glutamate, the brain’s main excitatory neurotransmitter.First, they had to deliver a controlled flow of glutamate to the particular synapse they wanted to test.To this end, they poured a soup of “caged” glutamate over the neuron under examination.This form of the molecule is inert until hit with energy from the intersection of two laser beams.

Aiming those at the synapse under study enabled them to uncage the neurotransmitter and see, by measuring the electrical activity in that part of the neuron using an ultrafine electrode, whether the synapse responded.They found that mature pyramidal-neuron protrusions generated electrical activity when exposed to glutamate, as expected.Filopodia did not, confirming the silence of their synapses.

Silent synapses are, however, useless unless they can be switched on at the appropriate moment.And the researchers confirmed this is possible.They were able to induce the silent versions on filopodia to turn into mature, active synapses by pairing the simulated release of glutamate with a subsequent surge of electricity inside the neuron.

This pairing of events caused silent synapses to start, within minutes, displaying receptor molecules characteristic of active synapses.The same pairing, applied to mature synapses, did nothing.The researchers thereby show it is hard to get a mature synapse to change the strength of its connection (thus satisfying the stability side of the dilemma), but easy to unsilence a silent one (satisfying the plasticity side).

The next thing to investigate is how, why and when new filopodia appear.The discovery of all these eager-to-learn silent synapses and filopodia, Dr Harnett says, “is a lever for us to get into understanding learning in adults and how potentially we can get access to make it not degrade over the course of aging or disease”.

---

篇目2

From Z to Alpha — Understand the Next Generations of Consumers
Z世代和阿尔法一代的消费新趋势

How we experience things is constantly changing, and you need to adapt in order to build a future-proof business.If you want to look ahead, the best option is — and always will be — to look at the younger generation.

So, let’s start with Gen Z, which is my generation.Here are some need-to-knows:

Gen Z: A brief guide

Empowered with influence:

We’re the first generation to be born fully post-internet.Ninety-five percent of us have smartphones as early as age 12, and we live out a big portion of our lives on social media.

As digital natives, our first instinct is not to just be observers, but to get involved with the brands we like.We know that the world runs on the internet now, so with any mobile device, you can get in the game.That means you shouldn’t treat us as passive consumers.If you involve us and we rock with your product, we’ll become advocates for your brand.

Independent but community-oriented:

Because our lives are digital, my generation is also the most socially isolated.We’ve learned how to make it alone, but we also crave community and the experiences we missed out on.

This is a double-edged sword for potential employers.On the one hand, the workplace is a community and can be a draw.On the other hand, my generation is mastering the art of the gig and the side hustle.

That means work-life balance is non-negotiable, hybrid work should be the norm, and workplaces need to be somewhere we want to hang out.Perks like free meals are a plus, but also the chance to develop and grow longer-term (in a way that we couldn’t do by ourselves online) could well be a clincher.

Forward-thinking but nostalgic:

If you noticed the #y2k hashtag popping up and wondered why, it’s because we Zoomers aren’t all about the future.Maybe this is because of an idealized view of the good old days, but the early 2000s are — for whatever reason — a time period that fascinates us.

Businesses have been able to lean into this nostalgia by bringing back retro styles and products, such as camcorders and flip phones.
That’s decentralized R&D, courtesy of Gen Z.

Not digital but phygital:

Just as we are not all about the future, we’re also not just about online.Unlike millennials, who are less about “stuff” and more about experiences, we are into tangible objects.In a world where digital is often the same as free, non-digital has a more valuable, exclusive vibe.It’s also easier to stand out when you have something that can’t be copied at the click of a button.

Gen Alpha: What do we know?

People are curious to know what changes the next generation will make to the game, myself included.I think it’s a little early to judge, as most of Generation Alpha are just kids still, and their priorities will most likely change as they grow up.

That said, there are a few things that we can go on:

Their parents are millennials: Unlike older generations, millennials probably won’t need to rely as much on their kids to guide them digitally and are already savvy enough to control what they can do or are exposed to.We may see millennial habits and preferences being passed down, and some of the above trends reverse.So, don’t throw out your old market research — it may be valuable again a few years from now.

They like the outdoors: Just like with shopping, it’s not all going one way.Gen Alpha is, of course, clocking in serious screen time (around 4hrs 44m a day).But just like all kids before them, they like to play outside as well.

Did all that leave you a little confused?I’ll break it down for you.Gen Z and Gen Alpha were forced to become more independent by circumstances beyond their control and are deeply immersed in their games and entertainment.We embrace change and expect updates from our products and services.

Embrace the change, welcome the future, and be ready for what comes next.Generation Beta is just around the corner.