DAY 1:Genetic tests for pets——Testing dogs’ DNA is increasingly popular, and full of surprises.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1S94y1o7QV?spm_id_from=0.0.header_right.history_list.click
Carnegie Violet dog-fuller lives a happy life in Hollywood. She enjoys munching ice cubes and listening to Snoop Dogg. Life was not always easy. Found as an injured stray in Santa Monica, she spent time in a rescue centre before being adopted by Gregg and Linday last year.They reckoned she was a French Bulldog mix. But a DNA test revealed her to be more American Staffordshire Terrier (39%) than French Bulldog (24%), with significant Pomeranian genes (16%). “We were shocked,” admits Mr Fuller.
1 | Violet n.紫罗兰，此处应该是名字 |
Genealogy was once the preserve of elite dogs. Their breeders take a special interest in keeping bloodlines pure, to create new champions and to raise the prices of puppies. Now common mutts are having their pedigrees traced. Wisdom Panel, a firm that tests pet DNA, said on March 3rd that its database had expanded to 3m animals (over 95% of them dogs), up from 1m in 2018. Embark Veterinary, a similar firm which has 1m dogs in its database, was valued at $700m in July after a $75 investment.
1 | preserve n.私人领域、专属领域 |
During the pandemic 23m Americans adopted puppies, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Rebecca Chodroff Foran, research director at Wistom Panel, thinks this trend has collided with another: the growth of human-DNA bussiness. Owners “now consider their pets to be key numbers of the family”, she says.
1 | society n.协会 |
Animal DNA tests work much like human ones. They compare genetic markers with a database of pets with verified pedigrees, revealing canine lineage and potional health problems. Embark claims 99.9% accuracy; Wisdom Panel claims over 98%.
1 | canine a.狗的 |
Some owners are horrified to discover that their costly crossbreed is in fact a mix of entirely different breeds. But owners of adopted and rescue dogs, which make up 67% of Wisdom Panel’s database, are keen to learn. Murrary, who lives in New York with his owner Erica Hyman, looks like a Jack Russell but with his uprigtht years. He turned out to be a mix of 23 breeds. “Now I just tell people ‘He’s just a dog’”, says Ms Hyman.
1 | crossbreed n.杂交品种 |
Chico Lopez, who breeds American Pit Bull Terriers, thinks DNA is a decent investment for mutts. He compares them to second-hand cars: “You don’t know if the engine comes from a Toyota, the transmission from a Bugatti and the tyres from a little motorcycle, so you need to…find out what is going to break first.” But those wanting to pureblood, he says, should not rely on DNA, as reputable breeders already have accurate knowlegde of a dog’s ancestor.
1 | decent a.恰好的 |
Owners of adopted dogs like searching for long-lost kin. About 12% of dogs on Embark’s database discover a sibling, parent or offspring. And, as with human DNA testing, there is the possibility of stumbling on a family secret. Some dog owners are now finding that their sweet pooch fathered a little in another state before absconding. Paw form.
1 | sibling n.兄弟姐妹 |
DAY 2:Bartleby:Body of research——Online work has changed the nature of non-verb com-munication
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1P34y1t7RX?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click
Communication is an essential part of leadership. And body language is an essential part of communication. On those slim pillars rests a mini-industry of research and advice into how executives can influence, encourage and ascend without needing to say a word. The pandemic has made much of it redundant.
1 | ascend v.上升 |
Plenty of studies have looked into the non-verbal behaviour that makes out”emergent leaders”, people who do not have a specified role in the hierarchy but naturally assume a position of authority in groups. They are a bag of tics. They nod; they touch others but not themselves; they gesture; they furrow their brows; they hold themselves erect; their facial expressions are more animated.
1 | make out 造就 |
Other research suggests that, to win votes in an election, candidates should deliver speeches with their feet planted apart. The seconed-most popular TED talk claims that two minutes of private, hands-on-hips “power posing” can infuse a job candidate with confidence and improve others’ perception of them.
1 | plant vt.树立，安放 |
Gazing can foster a sense of psychological safety as well as confer authority: in a recent paper, a trio of research from Havard Bussiness School found that receiving more eye contact from a bigwig led to greater participation in group interactions. Leaders who adopt open body positions, with arms and legs uncrossed, are also more likely to encourage contribution.
1 | confer=bestow vt.授予 |
There are three problems with this body of research on non-verbal communication. One is that so much of it is blindingly obvious. Nodding at someone rather than shaking head in incredulity when they are speaking to you——this dose indeed send a powerful signal. But so does punching someone in the face, and no one thinks that requires a journal publication.
1 | blind a.瞎的 |
A second problem is that people look for different things from their bosses. Frowning is seen as a mark of emergent leaders but not of suppositive ones; the reverse is true of smiling. (The effect of similing with lowered eyebrows cries out for study.) A recent paper found that male recipients regarded bosses who used emojis, a form of non-quite-verbal communication, in an email as more effective, but that female recipients perceived them as less effective.
1 | frown vi.皱眉头 |
The third problem is newer. Almost all of the research on body language dates from a time of in-person interactions. Even when the pandemic wanes and offices in the West refill, most buildings will not return to full capacity. Employees will keep working remotely for at least part of the week; Zoom will remain integral to white-collar working lives. And if there is one thing for which online interactions are not suited, it is body language.
1 | in-person ad.亲自 a.亲自的 |
That is partly because bodies themselves are largely hidden from view: whatever language they are speaking, it is hard to hear them. You will know the partners, pets and home-decor choices of new colleagues before you will know how tall they are. And although faces fill the video-conferencing screen, meaningfull eye contact is impossible.
1 | decor n.装饰风格 |
Once past a basic threshold of attentiveness——not looking down at your mobile phone, say——most people have the same glassy-eyed stare. If several faces appear on screen, these participants have no way of knowing that you are gazing specifically at them. (Angway, adimit it: the face you are looking at with most interest is your own.) If your camera is in the wrong place, you may think you are looking meaningfully at your team but you are actually just giving them a view of your nostrills. Animated expressions are hard to spot, particularly when people attending hybrid meetings in the office are Lowry-like figures seated metres away.
1 | threshold n.阈值 |
There are no good ways to compensate for these problems. One tactic is to go all in on expressiveness, nodding furiously and gesturing dementedly—— a small tile of caged energy somewhere in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. Another is to do a “Zoom loom”, placing yourself so close to the camera that you will give everyone nightmares.
1 | all-in a.不遗余力的 |
The simpler option is not to think too hard about body language. At a few specific moments, like job interviews and set-piece speeches, first impressions matter and a bit of self-conscious posing pays off. But posture is not leadership. If you want to give people a break from staring at a screen, turning off your camera is a good way to do it. If you want to waggle your eyebrows, up or down, let them loose. And if you need to be told that looking at someone makes them feel valued, you have big issues.
1 | set-piece a.事先精心安排的 |
DAY 3: The Theranos trial: Blood will have blood——A jury finds a former Silicon Valley star guilty of fraud.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ti4y1Q7BL?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0
On JANUARY 3RD, after seven days of delibration, a 12-member jury in Silicon Valley found Elizabeth Homlmes, the entrepreneur behind a blood-testing startup, guilty of four counts of fraudulently deceiving investors. Each count carries a prison term of up to 20 years; no date has been set for her sentencing.She was acquitted of four charges of deceiving patients and doctors; on three others the jury were deadlocked. The verdict, against which Ms Holmes’s lawyers are expected to appeal, marks the collapse of a career that beguiled the media, politicians and investors.
1 | delibration n.讨论，审议 |
After dropping out of Stanford University in 2003 at the age of 19, Ms Holmes founded Theranos to develop a radical advance in blood-testing technology that she hoped would allow hundreds of tests to be performed using a single tiny drop of blood rather than a full vial. The tantalising vision promised to make health care more effective and efficient.
1 | radical a.彻底的 |
Unfortunately, Ms Holmes could not bring it to fruition. In voting to concict on four counts, the jury concluded that, aware of her company’s failure, Ms Holmes intentionally lied about its prospects and capabilities, and so crossed the fine line from promotion to deliberate fraud——a step she explicity denied in her own testimony.
In many ways Theranos differed little from many hot startups. It raised more than $1bn, reached an extravagant theoretical valuation (in its case $9bn) before crashing without ever going public and disintegrating into a vast graveyard of unfeasible ideas. Typically, executives behind such ventures are quickly forgotten. But Ms Holmes’s path differed at least in part because even though her company’s products failed, her presence about broader story proved unusually compelling.
In building Theranos, Ms Holmes assembled a remarkable collection of acolytes. Her board was filled with several former secretaries of state and defence. Joe Bidden, while vice-prisident, called Theranos “the laboratory of future” and Ms Holmes “an inspiration”. The company’s shocking failure suggested her famous followers had fed merely on type. The fashion press was besotted by Ms Holmes’s ability to present herself. The steve Jobs-inspired black turtlenecks she wore at work were seen as reflecting authority. The opennecked shirts and blouses she donned during the trial were a sign of appealing vulnerability, augmented by the nappy bag she carried to court, which signalled to jury the costs of a potential prison term to a young mother and her infant child (who was born in July). Reporters and other onlookers waited for hours to nab a set in the packed courtroom.
Ms Holmes’s defence followed two distinct lines. The most obvious hinged on naivety. She may have been wrong about Theranos’s prospecets, the argument went, but that is not a crime. Startup investors are supposed to be a sophisticated lot, willing to wager based on deep insights in the hope of a big return, while understanding that long shots can fail. The prosecutors’ counterargument rested primarily on the presentations which Ms Holmes made to investors. These appeared to exaggerate potential sales and trumpet non-existent endorsements from the armed forces and big pharmaceutical companies. The single substantive request made by the jurors during their delibretion was to rehear a presentation that had been recorded, suggesting they were parsing what precisely she had been telling her backers.
Ms Holmes’ sound line of argument, the so-called Svengali defence, was particularly appealing to hot Hollywood, but its impact on the jury was unclear. She claimed at the trial to have been sexually and emotionally abused and manuplated by Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her ex-partner and Theranos’s former chief operating officer. As such, her lawyers posited, she could not be held responsible for her actions.
Mr Balwani has strongly denied all allegations. His own trial for fraud charges will begin next month, ensuring the Theranos saga will not end soon. And even after the last gavel is pounded, there will be more to come. In the lead-up to the verdict Hulu, a capable network, released photos from an upcoming mini-series on Ms Holmes’s story, starring Amanda Seyfried. Ms Holmes may end up going to prison, but she will not be going away.