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Can games be an effective way to learn, and how should we perceive the learning function of games?

The University of Wisconsin-Madison professor James Paul Gee’s book Game-Changed Learning: Game Literacy, Critical Thinking, and the Future of Education provides a model for discussing the relationship between games and learning. For him, a game is a well-designed learning experience in which you can identify problems, understand them, and solve them.

The true potential of the game has yet to be tapped.

"The" sense of play "is everywhere"

The game Pikmin 3.

When it comes to video games, many people’s first reaction is to be addicted and unable to withdraw. They believe that online games can easily lead to negative problems such as declining academic performance or reduced work efficiency, poor eyesight, and withdrawn personality. Is this our misunderstanding of games?

James Paul Gee (author of Games Change Learning: Game Literacy, Critical Thinking, and Education for the Future): People become addicted to anything that brings pleasure, especially when it makes up something that is not there in life. However, pleasure is an important human driver. Without pleasure, one would not want to learn.If we need to deal with a variety of addictive behaviors, we need to identify what the addict is missing in real life and help them find it.In addition, we also need to learn how to make powerful technologies benefit lives rather than harm them.

When my son Sam was six years old, he played a game called Pikmin, which was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto in 2001. You may not know who Shigeru Miyamoto is, but his masterpiece is the famous Super Mario. In Pikmin, the player takes on the role of Captain Olima, whose spaceship crashes to an unknown planet due to a comet impact. Olima can only survive for 30 days, and within 30 days, he must find the missing spaceship parts and escape from the planet. The game sounded interesting, but after watching his grandson play for a few hours, Sam’s grandfather commented, "Although it may be good for the child’s eye-hand coordination, it’s a waste of time because the game has nothing worth learning."This is also a typical misconception that important knowledge is often gained from the subjects taught in schools, and the rest is just "meaningless entertainment". But in fact, games can also generate knowledge.

Jing Sun (Translator of "Games Change Learning: Game Literacy, Critical Thinking, and Future Education"): From the perspective of consumption, in our traditional culture, games and work learning are a set of binary opposing expressions, and this evaluation of traditional games has more or less influenced people’s views on digital games. From the perspective of production, although people currently know that games can play serious functions other than entertainment, and can be used in various scenarios such as education and medical care, there are very few such game products, and the public does not have much access to such games.

Furthermore, contemporary attitudes towards games are mainly divided into "addiction school" and "addiction school". It is obvious that the "addiction school" misunderstands games and advocates that all games are bad. On the contrary, the "addiction school" exaggerates the entertainment function of games and believes that all games are good.Both views are also generational differences between "digital natives" and "digital refugees," but both views are misconceptions of gaming, and ultimately a lack of adequate game literacy.

Upper Study: Game literacy is a very important concept proposed by Professor Ji in the book. What is game literacy?

James Paul Gee: When people play video games, they are learning a new kind of literacy. As an important part of digital literacy, game literacy is not just the ability to understand the game or play the game, but the ability of the player as an active participant to "control" the game symbol system in turn. In the process of playing, the player can not stop at "input" – one-way passive acceptance of the game content, but also be able to "output" – active and critical gaming experience.

In the book, I distinguish between "lowercase games," which are the software you play, and "uppercase games," which are not just the software but also the social interactions and social resources that go with it, so that players can put the game into a social context, go beyond the game itself and reflect on it, discuss it, and even modify it.What we should be focusing on is "capital games," that is, games and all the social elements associated with them. Now, players make this very clear.

Sun Jing: As far as the term "game literacy" is concerned, Professor Ji has laid a solid theoretical foundation for this concept from the perspective of linguistics and pedagogy, which is also the biggest gain I have gained from translating this book. I believe that game literacy is an active and critical game experience. One is the ability to read games, emphasizing the evaluation of games for specific game works, and to understand games in specific social and cultural contexts. The other is the ability to use game writing, that is, to modify and create games, and eventually to use games to express themselves.

When it comes to reading and writing, we usually think of words. Can games become the same medium as words?

Sun Jing: Of course, and it has already happened. In short, game thinking is a way of thinking that solves problems through trial and error, with initiative, exploration, and criticism.Today’s young people are all "game generation", growing up in the infiltration of games. Through games, they can understand traditional media such as literature, television, film, painting, etc. It can be said that the "sense of game" is everywhere, becoming a way for them to understand the world.

James Paul Gee: We’ve known for a long time that people can learn from all kinds of media experiences, just as they learn from real-world experiences. It’s true that sometimes they can’t remember whether what they’re learning came from the real world or from a medium. Games are also gradually becoming a medium like books, and have a deeper impact on people than books. In other words,Books can tell us what an electron is, but games can make us an electron.

"The Secret of the Game"

Laura in the game Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation.

Upper Study: Not everyone who plays games is successful in translating the advantages that come from gaming into their daily lives. What’s going on with some deep gamers who benefit from gaming, while others run into trouble?

James Paul Gee: The same is true for books. What you get out of a book depends on what you read, how you read it, and who you read or discuss with. Compared to other types of reading, a romance novel may not be "spiritual food for thought and practice."But if you read it with a critical perspective and "read it like an author," thinking in your head how to use it, how to change it, how to make it a spiritual imagination, then novels like this can also pay off.

Sun Jing: This is still related to game literacy. If you passively accept the content conveyed by game producers and game works, then players will still have nothing to gain except entertainment pleasure. Even hard-core players, some people are just immersed in the game, excessive consumption of time and money, affecting real life; while others may repeatedly refine strategies, optimize tactics, and become world esports champions. If you want to gain something from the game, you must have enough critical thinking and game literacy, be able to understand the game, and more advanced, be able to use the technical language of the game to solve real life problems.

Upper Study: Whether it is learning or gaming, difficulty and skills are the key parameters. In games, it is very common to not give up even if you are turned into a slag in seconds, and it is very common to not sleep until you complete the level. Why can players enjoy immersing themselves in the game, but be hesitant to learn?

James Paul Gee: This can be called the secret of games. I’ve played a lot of games and found that a good game has a characteristic: almost every problem has multiple solutions. Players can choose strategies that suit their learning, thinking, and acting styles, which is a great motivator and a rich resource for reflecting on their behavior and problem-solving. I wrote this book to help people uncover this secret, find effective ways to coordinate game skills and task difficulty, and then apply the corresponding game thinking to learning to make learning fun and effective.

Upper Study: Professor Ji mentioned in the book that one of the spiritual cores of the game is critical reflection. How is criticism reflected in the game?

James Paul Gee: I had this experience in the game Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. You play as Lara, a teenage girl, who follows an archaeologist, Professor von Croix, on an expedition through a Cambodian temple. The professor once told Lara to follow him and not stray from his path. But I found that if you follow the professor’s orders, you risk missing out on a lot of hidden treasure. Good games have a mechanism that encourages players to try, question and break the rules, and such experiences not only enhance the fun of the game, but also cultivate critical thinking.In this way, players no longer rely on various operation guides, get rid of the established routine of completing tasks, and even jump out of the rules. They will also reflect on the values that the entire game mechanism has shaped.

Jing Sun: It can be said that critical reflection underpins game thinking. In fact, critical reflection may not have been ubiquitous in the general public at every stage of history, from Plato’s "The Parable of the Cave" to Kant and Foucault’s "What is Enlightenment". At present, people are faced with too much information, and the discourse of power operates in more subtle ways in daily life, which can also affect the way some people understand the world. Because of this, we need to emphasize the cultivation of critical thinking.

James Paul Gee: Just to add that critical thinking is not the same in different fields of knowledge and practice, for any branch of science, law, game design, or gardening. Critical thinking involves understanding how to make and use knowledge, principles, and methods in a given field to discover, to criticize, and to solve problems. In order to produce critical thinking in any meaningful dimension, we need to teach people how to acquire knowledge in that field, for example, the spread of viruses, the nature of video games, or the role of government, and how to use that knowledge to cooperate with people to solve problems and reach effective criticism,The purpose of criticism is to construct, not to destroy. We need to use knowledge as a tool, not rote for exams.

"The game is always changing."

But the problem we have to face is that the game industry is mixed, and not all games are suitable for teenagers. What kind of digital games can have great appeal and practical benefits for children?

James Paul Gee: Like choosing a book, teenagers are left to decide on their own which games are good. In any case, we want teenagers not to jump in without thinking, but to think like designers and ultimately learn to "design" their lives with their own experiences, using a variety of different tools and effective ways to become good people. They will also become teachers and parents, and hopefully they will be able to "design" quality experiences for their children and students.

We can learn from games that schools should not be designed as warehouses of past knowledge, but as a source of imagination that can make life and society better.

Jing Sun: The quality of game works is uneven, which is normal, because novels, movies and other art works also have the same problem. Teenagers are still in the stage of exploring the world and learning to learn, so it is not suitable for game products that emphasize consumption. Consumption here includes both money consumption and time consumption. Therefore, video games that emphasize exploration and creation with one-time payment are more suitable for teenagers to play.

As for how we can learn from good video games to design learning models and education systems, Professor Ji gives a detailed answer in the book. He lists 36 principles, including building situations, encouraging exploration, and understanding fun groups. This kind of education can not only make children feel interesting and learn knowledge, but more importantly, it can cultivate their way of thinking, which will benefit them for life.

The current challenge we are facing is how to use the unique projective identity of games to construct meaningful "second classrooms" outside of school education and in the game world. This poses a challenge to current game design. Can we change the crude way of mass production of games that look at money, and make games that are not only formal and slogans, but also thought-provoking?

James Paul Gee: I talk a lot about projected identity in my books. Projected identity in a video game is when the player projects their identity on a virtual character or stand-in, performing some form of action, and the player accepts the stand-in’s values, goals, and identity.I believe that we are also adapting to our new identities in the real world in the same way. If we want to learn science, we need to accept being a scientist before we can really use scientific knowledge in depth.

Developing a science game is easier for students to experience as a scientist than learning, at least in the United States. In reality, however, schools can do the same if the school space is properly adjusted to have a strong interaction with the world outside the school, the virtual world, the simulation world and the game world.

We need to change not only the profit-driven approach to the mass production of games, but also current classroom teaching and schooling to develop problem-solving strategies and plan for an entirely new future. In the United States, this often stems from the need for standardization and profit in the textbook industry, at the expense of critical thinking and problem-solving. Putting multiple design technologies (including literacy) at the service of design thinking, problem-solving in deep collaboration, and ensuring that we all serve in a rapidly changing, high-stakes complex world will only get better when people discover the importance of this approach. For now, we must pay more attention to the future and use the past to imagine the future, otherwise we humans will not have the future.

Driven by the digital revolution, new technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence (AI) are changing the learning environment. Will games under the new technologies affect people’s learning ability more deeply?

James Paul Gee: It’s critical for people to realize that digital games are a very cutting-edge and rapidly changing technology. If you compare games from 1995 to games today, there are a lot of differences between the two. New game genres are being discovered and made. The types of games we’ve made, maybe only 1% of future games, still have a lot of room for imagination and creativity. Games are always changing, and this trend will continue as games merge with other technologies like VR, AR, and AI. Emerging social games and cooperative games will also be developed. This is a powerful technology that is undoubtedly critical to economic, cultural, and even social development.

People need to realise that when it comes to books, most of what they hear are "bestsellers". However, there is an important and growing industry of indie games that make games from the fields of art, medicine, design, science, collective intelligence and more. Above all, it is important to realise what digital game technology really means. It is a virtual imagination, based on important choices, strategic thinking and learning from failure. It is also an external active imagination, based on well-designed and carefully directed virtual experiences that allow players to merge their identity with real-world experiences.

Sun Jing: I also think that the answer is yes. In the real world, learning resources and feedback cycles are limited, and games can create more diverse and rich learning scenarios by simulating reality and fiction. For example, there are VR games that specifically train medical students to perform surgery, which can provide operators with real-time feedback and accurately complete surgical training.

Good games typically convey knowledge and shape people’s way of thinking, while good educational games can also stimulate interest in learning, create a more immersive learning environment, and provide a more fulfilling formative evaluation.With them, you and I can not only become the "number one player", but also benefit our future learning and lifelong education.

"Games Change Learning: Game Literacy, Critical Thinking, and the Future of Education"

?By James Paul Gee

Translated by Sun Jing

East China Normal University Press

　　Introduction: Friends are very familiar with Xiaomi and mobile phones. In everyone’s impression, Xiaomi mainly produces mobile phone products. In 2013, Xiaomi launched the self-developed Xiaomi TV. How about Xiaomi TV? Most friends are very curious about this issue. How is the performance of Xiaomi TV? What are the characteristics? You can take a look at the introduction below. Although Xiaomi has been engaged in TV production for a long time, the quality of the product is completely fine.

　　Although there are not many TV products launched by Xiaomi, the reputation of Xiaomi TV has been good since its launch, especially among young users. It can also be said that this is a TV product specially developed for the younger generation. It is very advanced in terms of production technology and manufacturing process. It is also equipped with independent Bluetooth and audio, which makes many friends feel very cool. What else are the specific features? Friends may wish to learn about it together.

　　Features of Xiaomi TV:

　　First, the Xiaomi TV uses an ultra-clear screen design. It can be said that the clarity of this TV is more than 4-5 times that of other TVs, and the picture is enhanced with high definition technology. The LCD screen design is used in the panel of the TV, which can appear more distinct and outstanding in terms of brightness.

　　Second, the TV can be more high-quality in terms of sound effects, enabling a sound experience similar to that of a movie theater. An independent sound system is installed inside the TV, achieving high-quality sound in terms of sound.

　　Third, the operating system is provided by an independent TV, with a lot of free TV programs built in. It can be said that Xiaomi TV is a model of smart TV. Users and friends can watch those high definition programs they like at any time when using the TV, and it is free!

　　Fourth, the Xiaomi TV is designed with a high-speed CPU, with a 4-core processor inside, making even large-scale games run smoothly. Friends don’t have to worry about getting stuck.

　　How about Xiaomi TV? The above is the explanation of this problem. Friends can find that Xiaomi TV is still very good. It is also slightly better than other products in terms of workmanship, and it adopts a narrow frame design, which can look more fashionable than other TV products. The external Bluetooth controller can make the functions of games play to the extreme, and it can be said that there are absolute advantages in video playback and games.

　　Recently, a news about the "Barrier-Free Day" has caused heated discussions on the Internet, and many netizens have asked: What is the "Barrier-Free Day"? The reporter learned that Ele.me recently announced that August 7 will be designated as the "Barrier-Free Day", and will send benefits to visually impaired users every year from this year.

　　On the day of the free-order festival, the platform offers free-order for visually impaired users: no need to guess the answer, no need to grab time, and no total quota. The first catering order of the day can be free of charge for up to 39 yuan. This is also the second consecutive year that Ele.me has launched a special free-order event for visually impaired users.

　　The sense of participation of minorities, that is, the responsibility of marketing activities

　　According to the data released by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, the total number of disabled people in our country has exceeded 85 million. The number is huge, but they are rarely seen – because they rarely go out. Because of this, the issue of disabled people has always been a hot topic of attention from all walks of life in the country and society.

　　According to data, more than half of visually impaired people choose to order takeout to solve their daily diet, and more than 70% of visually impaired users use Ele.me. The large visually impaired group relies heavily on takeout apps, so Ele.me has always paid great attention to the experience of visually impaired users, gained insight into the needs of the disabled group, and carried out many benefits and activities for visually impaired users to send warmth to everyone.

　　Barrier-free environment is an important basic condition for facilitating the full participation of special groups such as the disabled, the sick, the elderly, and the young in social life. At the same time, it is also a key factor in improving the quality of life and service level in urban environments.

　　"Will there be free Ele.me this year? There was one last year, and now it’s almost that time again." A user named "Star Magic" posted a question on the Zhidu forum, an online community for the visually impaired. Their discussion has been followed by Ele.me.

　　According to the relevant person in charge of Ele.me, this year’s free-order rules are similar to those of last year. Since Ele.me cannot directly identify visually impaired users, users who have opened the Ele.me App using screen-reading software between July 5 and August 5 (this is the operation of visually impaired people using mobile phones) will automatically enjoy free-order eligibility.

　　Zhao Zhiguo, spokesperson for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, recently mentioned that we will continue to promote the results of information accessibility construction and guide 1,735 mainstream commonly used websites and mobile apps to complete the senior-friendly transformation. The implementation of a series of relevant policies and regulations has provided a strong guarantee for the construction of a barrier-free environment in our country, helping all sectors of society to actively participate in the construction of a barrier-free environment and improve the well-being of the people with disabilities.

　　The benefits are not closed, and the care is not stopped. "Last year’s free-order activity for visually impaired users received a very enthusiastic response. Recently, we also saw some netizens concerned about the situation this year in the forum for visually impaired people." The original intention of the free-order activity is to make more people happy, and we will not forget visually impaired users this year, and plan to stick to it every year. "

　　Welfare is one aspect, and more importantly, visually impaired people believe that they are cared for and valued, which is the reason why they are happier.

　　In recent years, our country has continued to introduce relevant policies to promote the construction of barrier-free facilities and services. On June 28, at the third meeting of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People’s Congress, the Barrier-free Environment Construction Law was officially voted and will come into effect on September 1, 2023, providing a strong legal guarantee for the construction of barrier-free environment in our country.

　　From a business perspective, due to the small user base, most companies rarely launch targeted product launches and activities for visually impaired people, making it difficult to customize activities that suit their experience.

　　Therefore, in some large-scale marketing activities, under the conditions permitted by the platform or enterprise capabilities, it is a useful exploration to integrate activities that are more convenient for visually impaired users to participate in. When more and more enterprises join, they can enhance the consensus of disadvantaged groups in social care.

　　As some netizens said in a message, the social treatment of minorities is a silhouette of the degree of civilization in a society. To pay attention to them is to pay attention to everyone, because anyone may become a minority.

　　From helping popular science to supporting merchants, the sense of social responsibility of "playing" free of charge

　　In fact, although giving benefits is a public welfare activity, it hides the attribute of "popular science" behind it. Since the main activity of free shopping is "guessing the answer and free shopping", Ele.me invited many professional institutions, experts and scholars to pose questions, and developed it into a large-scale popular science platform with the help of the traffic of the event itself.

　　For example, on July 20, "China Aerospace News" was invited to publish a popular science project about China’s lunar exploration project, and Shanghai Fire Protection also published a popular science topic about the "trivia" that cannot be placed in the home at will, which is easy to cause fires.

Aerospace experts pose a popular science question about China’s moon landing plan

　　There are also institutions such as Qingdao Anti-Fraud Center, Jinan Ecological Environment Bureau, and China Packaging Federation, which have been invited to provide happy popular science for netizens in the form of questions. The fields are diverse enough, the content is practical enough, and the interaction is interesting enough, so that the participants can sow the seeds of knowledge and curiosity in an unconsciously happy atmosphere.

　　This type of activity exploration has given special groups a sense of inclusive participation, allowing platform companies to root their business development in social needs. This has undoubtedly opened up avenues for other platforms and brands, providing an excellent reference sample.

　　At the same time, free shopping also effectively promotes consumption and drives the growth of merchant orders. Last year’s free shopping activities led to the recovery of orders from a large number of merchants in Shanghai, Changsha and other places. This year, Ele.me invited the Jinzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce to issue a question to promote Jinzhou BBQ. The topic of Weibo #Jinzhou is the ceiling of the barbecue industry #boarded the hot search, and the reading volume exceeded 110 million that day.

　　Compared with last year, the number of merchants benefiting from free orders this year has increased significantly. The latest disclosure data of Ele.me shows that since the opening of the free order activity on June 21, the participating merchants have exceeded 1.50 million, which is 2.5 times more than last year’s 600,000.

　　The inspiration of free-order public welfare: looking forward to many parties working together to "create festivals"

　　In addition to targeting visually impaired groups, Ele.me also collaborates with merchants to provide benefits to outdoor workers in many places through free-of-charge activities. For example, starting from July 15, Ele.me started a series of cool-off activities in Guangzhou, going to the construction site of Guangzhou Metro Fangbai Intercity Rail Project in Baiyunrenhe to distribute free cold drinks to subway workers who are struggling on the front line. At the same time, Ele.me also set up "cool stations" in many places in Guangzhou, distributing 10,000 free ice drinks for outdoor workers to receive for free; in order to allow workers to survive the hot and hot summer season, on July 23, Ele.me and Zhengzhou Federation of Trade Unions sent hundreds of watermelons weighing about 1,000 kilograms to outdoor workers to relieve the heat and so on at the Huaibei Community Love Station of Huaihe Road Street Office, Erqi District.

　　In fact, the free-order form has a certain appeal to any consumer. It allows consumers to intuitively see the discounts and profits on real money, and there are no extra routines, so it is a success for brands. And if you want to achieve long-term benefits through the free-order economy, you must also focus on higher social value dimensions. The plan given by Ele.me is to combine its own business conduct with social responsibility, and drive merchants to invest in it, laying a solid foundation for the long-term sustainability of its model.

　　As a platform enterprise in the field of local instant e-commerce, Ele.me pays attention to the product experience and well-being of visually impaired people. It can be seen that it has always rooted its business value in social needs, and has therefore harvested good social feedback and market data. Sorting through media reports in recent years, it can be seen that Ele.me is not a whim to create a festival for visually impaired users. In March 2023, Ele.me App was awarded the first batch of excellent cases of Internet application senior-friendly and barrier-free transformation. In addition, Ele.me continues to realize the dreams of visually impaired users by supporting blind school teams and holding blind e-sports competitions.

　　Making benefits for visually impaired users fixed as a festival not only allows more visually impaired people to be seen, but also expresses Ele.me’s firm determination to appeal for the rights and interests of visually impaired people. This can not only drive more brands to participate, but also play a demonstration role in society and build a broader consensus. Perhaps we can imagine that there will be a large number of brands in the future to create a lifestyle consumption festival for visually impaired people.

　　Ele.me said that only when the government, platforms, merchants and other parties work together can the value of the festival be maximized and a sustainable state of long-term development be formed. Ele.me will continue to work with all partners in the ecological chain to make more visually impaired people visible and valued through technological innovation, unique business gameplay and other forms.

　　Reporter | Han Donglin

　　Intern reporter | Tian Mi

　　The picture shows the Milky Way observed in the infrared band. The picture is from the 2MASS Sky Survey project. The pictures are all stitched together from multiple observations. Due to the interstellar extinction in the optical band, it can be seen that the image of the Milky Way in the optical band is light and dark.

　　The Milky Way is like humanity’s "most familiar stranger". After more than 200 years of hard work, we still haven’t fully seen its face. A new study has brought us one step closer to the true appearance of the Milky Way.

　　On a clear night, looking up at the stars, you will see a milky white bright band running through the night sky, which is the home of hundreds of billions of stars, including the sun – the Milky Way.

　　Since more than 200 years ago, people have been trying to understand the structure of the Milky Way.

　　This is not simple, not only because we are in it, but also because various interstellar media interfere with people’s vision and obscure the true appearance of the Milky Way.

　　Recently, researchers at the National Astronomical Observatory have measured the latest hydrogen column density and optical extinction ratio in the Milky Way. This work will help to understand the interstellar medium and is a crucial step in the journey to understanding the structure of the Milky Way.

　　The sun is not the center of the galaxy

　　In the 17th century, Galileo pointed his telescope at the milky band of light in the sky and found that it was a dense region of stars. In the mid-18th century, the Englishman Wright proposed the Milky Way Conjecture, which believed that the Milky Way is like a flat lens, and the sun is only one of the stars in it.

　　The first person to paint a portrait of the Milky Way was the Englishman William Herschel. The 18th-century astronomer built the largest telescope of his time and discovered Uranus. He also focused on the stellar world. After many years of observation, he drew a map of the structure of the Milky Way in 1785, based on the number of stars in all directions in the sky. Unable to determine the distances of distant stars, Herschel assumed that all stars in the sky had the same luminous ability and estimated their distances to Earth based on the actual observed brightness of the stars. His "portrait" of the Milky Way was flat, with an irregular profile, and the sun was located in the center of the Milky Way. Herschel used statistical methods to confirm the hypothesis that the Milky Way is a flat disk for the first time, thus establishing the concept of the Milky Way for the first time.

　　In 1906, the Dutch astronomer Kaptan proposed a "selection plan" to re-examine the structure of the Milky Way. His model of the Milky Way was similar to that of Herschel: the sun was centered, the stars in the center were dense, and the edges were sparse.

　　Almost at the same time as Captan, the American astronomer Shapley also began to study the structure of the Milky Way. The discovery of Cepheid variables made it possible for scientists to accurately determine the distances of celestial bodies. Shapley determined the distances of Cepheid variables in globular clusters to Earth based on their light change periods, and then studied the structure and size of the Milky Way from the distribution of globular clusters. In 1918, Shapley proposed that the Milky Way is a lenticular star system with its center located in the direction of Sagittarius, rather than the solar system. Later observations gradually proved that Shapley’s model was closer to the real Milky Way, so it is still used today.

　　Interstellar Dust is a "central figure"

　　Obtaining the true structure of the Milky Way is not easy. According to Shapley’s estimate, the size of the Milky Way is 300,000 light-years. According to the state of the art at the time, this was a very accurate estimate. However, this figure is three times the size of the Milky Way in modern measurements. The reason is that Shapley ignored the extinction effect of the interstellar medium on starlight.

　　Space is filled with the interstellar medium. The light emitted by celestial bodies is absorbed or scattered by the interstellar medium before reaching the earth, causing the brightness of the celestial bodies we observe to be dimmer than expected. This process is often called interstellar extinction. The hazy image of the Milky Way in the optical band is the key evidence for the existence of extinction. Therefore, studying interstellar extinction is an important step in obtaining the structure of the Milky Way. Since different components have different extinction values for starlight, extinction research can also help us gain a deeper understanding of the components of the interstellar medium.

　　To understand the structure of the Milky Way is to study the distribution of various substances in the Milky Way. The interstellar medium plays a crucial role in the study of the structure of the Milky Way. In the optical band, extinction is mainly produced by dust in the interstellar medium, and the size of the extinction is affected by the total mass, composition and size of the dust. In the X-ray band, heavy elements that are not fully ionized absorb some of the radiation.

　　Therefore, extinction in the optical band (characterized by extinction in the V-band) can be used to reveal the dust composition in the interstellar medium. The distribution of heavy elements in the interstellar medium can be known from X-ray absorption (expressed by hydrogen column density), and then the total amount of hydrogen in the three states of atoms, molecules and ionization can be obtained according to the specific proportional relationship between heavy elements and hydrogen in the interstellar medium. Through observations in these two bands, scientists can not only know the corresponding structure of the Milky Way, but also study the relationship between dust composition and gas composition. This is why the parameter of hydrogen column density and optical extinction ratio in the Milky Way has attracted much attention.

　　A new understanding of the "most familiar stranger"

　　As early as the 1980s, it was recognized that the hydrogen column density and optical extinction ratio were important for understanding the Milky Way. The current widely used value is still obtained by American scientist Bohlin in 1978. For many years, people have been working to obtain more accurate and reliable results.

　　There are generally three ways to measure this parameter. Usually the measurement of optical extinction is easier, and different methods mainly use different methods to measure the hydrogen column density.

　　The so-called hydrogen column density is assumed to have a column with a fixed cross-sectional area in the line of sight direction, and the amount of hydrogen contained in this column is the hydrogen column density. Bohlin’s method is to estimate the hydrogen column density based on the absorption of neutral hydrogen and molecular hydrogen in the interstellar medium on the spectral lines of stars in the ultraviolet band. The other two methods are to measure the hydrogen column density according to the neutral hydrogen atom and carbon monoxide radiation, and to measure the hydrogen column density according to the absorption of the interstellar medium on the stellar spectrum in the X-ray band. However, due to the complex composition of the interstellar medium and the small and unreliable sample size, the previous measurement results are not satisfactory.

　　The author’s latest work adopts the above third method, that is, the abundance of heavy elements is measured according to the absorption of the X-ray band, and then the hydrogen column density is obtained according to the proportion relationship between heavy elements and gas components. As early as the 1970s, scientists have used this method to study the structure of the Milky Way. However, due to the difficulty of data acquisition, when scientists conducted this study in the past, the sample size was only about 20 at most. In order to expand the sample size, the author’s study for the first time includes the X-ray radiation of supernova remnants, planetary nebulae, and X-ray binaries at the same time. The sample size is expanded to about 100, and the hydrogen column density and optical extinction ratio of the Milky Way are recalculated.

　　The final results show that this ratio does not vary with the spatial location of the interstellar medium, and the mass ratio of gas to dust in the Milky Way obtained by this ratio is about 140. This means that there is more gas in the Milky Way than expected.

　　The Milky Way is a disk with a certain thickness. The latest work also calculated the distribution of hydrogen between two kiloseconds (about 3.26 light-years) and 10 kiloseconds from the center of the galaxy. The research suggests that the disk is denser and decays faster than previously realized. This means that the disk is thinner than previously thought, but denser.

　　The Milky Way is like the "most familiar stranger" to humans – although it is close by, it has been unable to see its face clearly. After more than 200 years of efforts by scientists, the outline of the Milky Way’s structure is becoming clearer and clearer. However, there are still many unsolved mysteries in the Milky Way, and we are still on our way.

　　(The author is a doctoral student at the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)

　　China Overseas Chinese Network, May 23rd, according to the French "European Times" reported that recently, Chinese tourists in Paris by taxi was asked to swipe the card after the credit card was stolen brush 140,000 RMB news by the media report, caused the French National Assembly members, France-China Friendship Group Chairperson Chen Wenxiong’s attention and attention, he immediately instructed the team members and the party @Mr. Jiliang, get in touch, detailed understanding of the stolen brush situation.

　　On May 21, after learning the full story of the incident, Congressman Chen Wenxiong immediately wrote to the Paris police chief, Didier Lallement, to draw the director’s attention to this case and such cases against tourists, especially Asian tourists, and to improve the security situation. Afterwards, Congressman Chen Wenxiong also wrote to the State Secretary for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, as well as the Paris Tourism Bureau, Shapira, and the Deputy Mayor in charge of tourism in Paris, demanding that tourism safety be taken seriously and the tourism environment in Paris and France be protected.

　　In the letter, Congressman Chen Wenxiong detailed the experience of Chinese tourists to the police chief, and handed over the photos of the suspected driver and the suspected license plate number to the La Le Mans commissioner. He hoped that the police would solve the case as soon as possible to ensure the safety of tourism in Paris. For many years, due to prejudice against Asians and other reasons, Asians in France have often been the target of criminals, and violent crimes have also occurred from time to time, he wrote in the letter. Recently, illegal activities against Asians are still very rampant, and the cases of Chinese tourists have triggered discussions on social media, once again confirming the universality and seriousness of this situation. Public security issues involve the daily lives of every citizen, including Asians, and the experience of tourists in France has also greatly affected the international image of France. Chen Wenxiong drew the police chief’s attention to the law and order situation, especially illegal crimes against Asians, and said he would continue to pay attention.

　　Chinese tourists stolen 140,000 yuan

　　On May 19, Mr. Jiliang, a Chinese tourist, sent a message on his Weibo to remind his friends in France that he took a taxi from Galeries Lafayette general merchandise mall to the airport. After being asked by the driver to swipe his card, the card was stolen. He said: "I just got off the plane and received the credit card consumption information, and the total amount of continuous consumption is about 140,000 (RMB). I was on the plane at the time of consumption, and the card was also at hand, so there is no doubt that it was stolen. If you think about it carefully, it should have been in Paris yesterday. The driver kept saying that he had no cash on him and insisted on swiping the card, so he stole my credit card information. And he deliberately chatted with me on the car and found out about my approximate flight time, so he stole it when the bank called but I couldn’t answer. At that time, the driver asked me to change the card to pay on the grounds that I failed to swipe the card for the first time. And this’China Merchants Bank Card ‘locked the card for me at the first time because the transaction was unsuccessful, so I avoided greater losses. "He said that he also felt that this person was a little strange, so he took a photo of this person. According to his experience, he only used these two cards in taxis. He thought it was the taxi driver at that time.

　　After the Weibo of @Mr. Kira, many netizens with the same experience complained that they were also stolen and swiped, and everyone recognized from the photos that they were stolen and swiped by the same driver. The experience is similar: taking a taxi near Lafayette, the driver said he had no money to change, asked to swipe the card, and then was asked when he would return to China, when he would take the plane, etc. During the flight, he stole the credit card. It’s just that some were stolen and swiped, and some were not successfully stolen due to bank security measures.

　　After Mr. Kira’s Weibo was sent to WeChat Moments such as French tour guides, it also caused friends living in France to complain, saying that they had similar experiences.

　　Theft is crazy, the Chinese Embassy in France has issued a reminder

　　Credit card theft is nothing new in France. According to the National Observatory of Crime and Criminal Punishment (ONDRP), the crime of bank card theft in France has been on the rise in recent years. From 2010 to 2013, the number of bank card theft crimes in France rose by 67% in the four years. By 2014, the number of victims reached 451,000, with more than 905,000 bank cards stolen at least once, with an average amount of 112 euros. In 2016, the data reached 1.20 million, and in 2018, the rate of bank card theft in France was the highest in Europe. 69 out of 1,000 cards were stolen. The losses are huge. Figures show that in 2014, the total cost of stolen credit card user information in France amounted to more than 500 million euros.

　　As early as August 23, 2017, the Chinese Embassy in France issued a reminder on its website to prevent the theft of French credit cards. This reminder has been hanging on the website of the Chinese Embassy in France to this day. It is reminded that recently, when a number of Chinese tourists were paying for a taxi in Paris, the driver falsely claimed that his company only accepted bank cards for payment, and used the bank card replicator to copy the passenger’s bank card information during the card swiping process, and then used the consumption or withdrawal method to steal the credit card, causing the victim to suffer economic losses ranging from a few thousand yuan to tens of thousands of yuan.

　　Reminder that France expressly stipulates that taxi drivers must accept passengers to pay the fare in cash or bank cards, and provide machine-printed invoices. As a precaution, the embassy advises Chinese tourists to use small denominations of cash to pay the fare as much as possible. If you really need to use a card to pay, you should avoid letting the taxi driver operate the card swipe, and remember to ask the driver for a ticket. Once you find that the bank card has been stolen, immediately contact the card issuer to report the loss and go to the local police station to report the case.

　　In fact, taking a taxi and swiping the card is only a small part of the stolen credit card. And most of them are because of the stolen credit card information, spending on the Internet or Uber. A reader told reporters that he suddenly found in his bank statement that there were many more consumption that he did not know, one is shopping on the Joom.com.GB website, the other is using Uber, each time the cost is not high, but it is used frequently, more than a dozen times, stealing more than 400 euros.

　　The Chinese Embassy in France said in its repeated security warnings that Chinese tourists visiting France must carefully read the security reminders issued by the website of the Chinese Embassy in France and the Chinese Consular Service Network before their trip, understand the situation in France, pay close attention to the social security situation in France, and be vigilant. Pay attention to personal and property safety, properly keep personal belongings and identity documents, and enhance self-security awareness. The reporter believes that travelers should do their homework before coming. In fact, such theft crimes have been reminded by the embassy and there are many reports in the media. These are all valid for a long time. With a little attention, tragedies may be avoided.

　　France is the top destination for Chinese tourists, spending 4 billion euros a year

　　A recent French government announcement said that France received 89.40 million foreign tourists in 2018, an increase of 3% over 2017, setting a new record. Asian tourists were the most prominent in terms of growth, with an increase of 7.4%. Tourism, one of the key sectors supporting the development of the French economy, generated 56.20 billion euros in foreign tourists in 2018, an increase of nearly 5% over the previous year. The French government has set a goal of attracting 100 million foreign tourists by 2020.

　　Chinese tourists are the largest group of Asian tourists and contribute a lot to French tourism. In 2018, a total of 2.20 million Chinese tourists arrived in France for tourism, a record high, with an average stay of 6 days. Last year, Chinese tourists spent a total of more than 4 billion euros in France. Among them, 3.75% of Chinese tourists came to France for shopping. The French government has set a goal of attracting 5 million Chinese tourists by 2020. However, France’s tourism safety has been fiercely criticized by Chinese tourists: using cash, being robbed; swiping cards, being stolen and swiped, where do you let tourists go?

　　Recently, French Secretary of State Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne announced the establishment of a working group on sustainable tourism, composed of the French Environment and Energy Management Agency, the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Solidarity, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Economy, and the French Tourism Development Agency. It will be responsible for providing strategic and specific recommendations for the sustainable development of French tourism to meet environmental, economic and social challenges. He asked France to strengthen the quantitative and qualitative analysis of international tourists, and to study their travel patterns, economic benefits and jobs, so that the government can formulate guiding policies to enhance the diversity of French tourism destinations. The reporter believes that the Ministry of the Interior should also be included. After all, for tourists, safety is a top priority. Without personal safety, other improvements are nothing but water and trees.

　　Chen Wenxiong, taking the case of Chinese tourists being victimized as an example, wrote to Lemoyne to pay special attention to tourism safety issues. Only by continuously paying attention to and improving French safety issues can we maintain the sustainable development of French tourism and achieve France’s ambitious goals.

　　Mr. Chan Man-hung has long been concerned about law and order issues in France, especially racial crimes such as robberies against Asians. He also suggested the establishment of a working group on law and order and anti-racial discrimination to assist the government and the police in finding effective solutions to racial crimes against Asians.

　　iPhone 14, iPhone 15 series use two processors at the same time, the Pro series is "superior", but in next year’s iPhone 16 series, this situation may change.

　　Haitong International Securities analyst Jeff Pu learned from the supply chain that the A17 Pro is a transitional design, and the iPhone 16 series will be equipped with A18 processors as standard, and they are all manufactured by TSMC N3E process.

　　However, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus uses the standard version of A18, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max uses the more advanced A18 Pro, but the specific difference between the two is temporarily unknown.

　　If so, the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus upgrade will be a leap.

　　Apple A17 Pro is currently the only 3nm process chip, using TSMC’s first-generation N3B, while the next A18 uses N3E, which is TSMC’s second-generation 3nm, with lower cost and higher yield, but also lower performance.

　　Of course, iPhone 16 is still a year away, anything is possible.

　　However, Jeff Pu has repeatedly revealed new changes to the iPhone, such as the iPhone 15 Pro series will give up silent picks, the memory will be increased to 8GB, the iPhone 15 Pro Max will increase in price, and so on.

　　　　　　　 Directed by the gold-medal director Li Li, the costume action comedy starring stars such as Huang Xiaoming, Zhang Jingchu, Ren Xianqi, Chen Baixiang and Zhou Libo will be officially released nationwide on July 9. Among them, Xu Zhenqing, played by Ren Xianqi, is transformed into an ancient Einstein. All kinds of whimsical inventions make people laugh. In order to test the effect of his own inventions, Ren Xianqi is even more willing to go naked and test drugs.

Ren Xianqi incarnates as Optimus Prime

　　　　　　　 Xu Zhenqing, played by Ren Xianqi, as a generation of Jiangnan talents, was transformed into an ancient Chinese version of Einstein in the movie. Invisible Pills, Transformers, etc. were all successfully tested by him. These inventions not only became sharp weapons against the enemy, but also became a "must-have magic weapon" to play tricks on friends around him. Zhu Zhishan, played by Chen Baixiang, mistakenly thought that he had taken the invisible pill he invented and made a fool of himself, and his body and psychology were destroyed. In the final Armageddon, Ren Xianqi, who was armed with a sharp weapon, went into battle naked, and the big Transformers Autobots logo on his chest also made him the embodiment of justice. I believe that how this ancient version of Optimus Prime breaks the enemy will definitely become a major attraction of this film.

Dedicated to the screen for the first time

　　　　　　　 Unlike Chen Baixiang’s naked exit, Ren Xianqi’s body is stronger than the old talent Chen Baixiang’s round and jade figure, and Ren Xianqi’s perfect muscle lines are believed to make many female audiences feast their eyes and fantasize. According to Ren Xianqi himself, he made full preparations for this nude scene: "I have been practicing in the gym for a long time before coming to the cast, because this is the first time I have taken off so much, so I must give the audience a surprise, and I must not lose to Brother Baixiang." Compared with Ren Xianqi’s naked appearance this time, his inventions that travel through the future and his instant noodle hairstyle that is full of presence are no longer so important, and "Tang Bohu Dianqiuxiang 2", which brings together two male stars’ naked scenes, has also become a summer must-see film for female audiences.

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Wuhan in the golden autumn ushered in the "2023 China Enterprise Digital transformation Summit and Sai Yi User Conference". At this grand event with the theme of "AI-driven, digital intelligence innovation", domestic industry professors, experts, scholars and more than 500 business leaders, more than 1,000 industry elites, in-depth discussion on the intelligent management, AI scene application, "dual-cross" integration innovation, value-based domestic substitution (Xinchuang) and many other issues facing the digital transformation of enterprises.

"Saiyi is a company that builds digital capabilities around the enterprise value chain," Zhang Chengkang, chairperson and CEO of Saiyi Information, said in the keynote speech. At this year’s conference, Saiyi Information and industry partners jointly explore the digital transformation of enterprises around AI technology, and extract value and create value from it.

In the meantime, Saiyi Information’s latest release of the first AIGC mid-platform (Shanmu GPT) focusing on the enterprise services model has become the focus of the industry.

Wind up AI to maximize the value of the industry

In the AI era, industrial reshaping and intelligent manufacturing are becoming new.

The "China artificial intelligence large model map research report" released by the new generation artificial intelligence development research center of the Ministry of Science and Technology shows that 79 large models above the 1 billion parameter scale have been released in our country.

With the continuous improvement of the top-level design, our country’s digital economy strategic system has been steadily built, providing strong support for the intelligent transformation of the real industry. In the process of enterprise digital transformation, artificial intelligence can be implemented in a variety of application scenarios, data modeling, and improve the level of analysis and decision-making in production, warehousing, marketing, marketing, finance and other links.

In the process of AIGC technology landing, Saiyi Information realized that the value of the big model lies in the combination with business scenarios. Only by generalizing, industrializing and verticalizing AI capabilities, and deeply integrating with the specific business scenario needs of different industries and different enterprises, and focusing on the big model in the field of Enterprise Services, can we deeply support the digital and intelligent transformation of enterprises.

This is also the original intention and value of the research and development of Saiyi AIGC mid-platform (Shanmou GPT).

Deeply empowering, building an intelligent innovation engine for enterprises

Behind the artificial intelligence boom, major technology manufacturers have entered the market one after another, continuously launching AI models, and AIGC applications have exploded. For enterprises, how to choose the right path and high-quality platform in the process of digital transformation?

"There are so many big models, we can only build our own capabilities on the value chain of the entire industry around the focused industry, around the industry model. Everything is for value." Sai Yi, led by Zhang Chengkang, strives to provide the best path for the digital transformation of enterprises.

According to the introduction, Saiyi AIGC mid-platform (Shanmou GPT) deeply integrates the knowledge and best practices of Saiyi Information in the fields of finance and taxation, human resources, marketing, supply chain, R & D and manufacturing, and expands the storage memory, application adaptation, scheduling execution and domain expertise of the large model through context memory, knowledge/database & table indexing, Prompt engineering, agent execution, general toolset, etc., to form a systematic enterprise services large model. Provide enterprises with capabilities such as multi-model docking, vector management, private model pre-training and application, and help enterprises quickly implement AI and realize intelligent process management, interaction, guidance and circulation.

Digital employees (intelligent guidance), intelligent documents (intelligent assistance), enterprise knowledge base (intelligent Q & A), AI automatic quotation (intelligent quotation) and other functions required by enterprises can be realized in Shanmou GPT. By combining with the existing system and Data Transmission Service of the enterprise, Shanmou GPT can provide enterprises with more personalized and intelligent services, and improve the efficiency of enterprise production and operation management.

It is understood that Saiyi has fully integrated AI capabilities into agile development, achieving automated management of the entire process from requirements planning, requirements analysis, task allocation, progress tracking, iterative testing, and online deployment, with an efficiency increase of more than 40%.

Paradigm shift, AI-driven high-quality development

The "scissors difference principle" of digital transformation has resonated widely in the industry after Zhang Chengkang’s repeated emphasis. With the development of informatization and intelligence, on the one hand, the labor cost of enterprises continues to rise with time; on the other hand, the intelligent cost continues to decline with time. When the labor cost and the intelligent cost curve reach the intersection point, intelligence will usher in an outbreak.

Zhang Chengkang believes that in the era of AI-driven intelligence, the manufacturing paradigm has migrated from physical manufacturing based on the traditional "trial and error method" to virtual manufacturing based on CPS technology, and the manufacturing system has moved from an isolated centralized to an open system of networked collaboration, realizing the revolution of production tools and the transformation of production models.

At the critical juncture of paradigm shift, facing the trend of accelerated integration of the real economy and digital technology, Saiyi Information fully embraces the era of AI intelligence, leveraging its independent research and development capabilities and deep experience in the industry to enable the digital transformation of the industry and help Chinese enterprises move towards high-quality development.

The launch of AIGC mid-platform (Shanmou GPT) comes at the right time.

According to Yuan Haigang, chief architect of Saiyi Gushen Lab: "The launch of AIGC mid-platform (Shanmou GPT) marks an important breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence. It can provide enterprises with more intelligent and efficient solutions to help enterprises achieve digital intelligence innovation and development. In the future, we will strengthen in-depth cooperation and research with customers in different industries, expand the application of AIGC in different industries and fields, and further improve the performance and applicability of Shanmou GPT."

AIGC mid-platform (Shanmou GPT) has strong and comprehensive capabilities.

Automatically generate user stories: enter simple instructions to automatically parse user requests and convert them into standardized user stories, quickly adapt to changes in the market and user requests, save a lot of time and effort for manual creation and maintenance, and improve the quality of agile development and iteration.

Intelligent form creation function: Based on the intelligent form designer provided by Gushen aPaaS platform, users can quickly complete the creation and configuration of the required form application by entering simple instructions in the dialog box, and realize interaction and data collection, further improving the efficiency of enterprise application construction.

The release of AIGC Zhongtai (Shanmou GPT) marks a new step for Saiyi Information in strategic technological innovation. In the future, Saiyi Information will join hands with more outstanding enterprises to strengthen and expand intelligent manufacturing and industrial software, join the AI digital wave, amplify the value of the industry, explore high-quality development paths, and jointly help build a digital China.