In May, as our scientific institution began to open back up and whispers about face-to-face lab meetings started to float around, I panicked.

My hearing loss began when I was in graduate school. At first, I fondly thought I could overcome it with hard work. I began to record every one-on-one meeting because even with the strongest focus I just couldn’t catch everything, and taking notes is not a choice when you rely on lip-reading. In meetings, I sat in the front row, tiring myself as I strained to both hear the speaker and process the science. So, in the fourth year, I decided cochlea implants (植入耳蜗) were the right next step.

The week after I began to hear with both implants, I attended a conference. I looked over every listening environment to plan my equipment and where I needed to be located during the event. It worked OK — but it was still tiring, and I felt excluded from so much.

When meetings were held online, my experience was much better. The sound quality was clear, without the powerful noises of a physical office space or meeting room. I could sit back and let the sound come to me. It was easier to focus, participate, and think deeply about the science. I felt a sense of belonging. I began to leave meetings feeling refreshed rather than needing a short sleep.

I didn’t want to be forced back into struggling to understand. So, with anxiety, I contacted my adviser to make a simple hearing plan which includes asking presenters to use a microphone for our lab meetings. It worked. Now, a few weeks later, my anxiety is gradually giving way to scientific curiosity and questions enabled by feeling included and worthy of belonging. A few of my lab mates have even thanked me because they, too, were unable to hear people without microphones. Maybe instead of rushing back to “normal”, we can all take this chance to create environments that are more welcoming — for everyone.

Most people can’t live to 100.Those who do live so long can hardly walk, let alone take part in any activities. A few people, however, take part in dangerous activities even though they are more than 100 years old﹣They keep going and going! There is a great grandmother who likes challenging herself although she is 101 years old this year.

Mary Hardison believes that people should always be cheerful and more importantly, take on all kinds of adventures while they physically still can. So, instead of celebrating her 101st birthday with a boring party, she decided to go paragliding(滑翔跳伞)﹣an idea she got from her 75﹣year﹣old son who recently took it up as a hobby.

So on her birthday, cheered on by her big family, she tied herself up together with expert instructor Kevin Hintze, and jumped down fearlessly from the sky near her home in Ogden, Utah. And, it was not just a simple jump either. According to Kevin Hintze, the grandmother encouraged him to turn around, as they made their way down.

This is not the first time that Mary has done something “wild” and “crazy”. For her 90th birthday she rode all the adult rides at Disneyland. And, she is not done yet﹣For her 102nd birthday she hopes to go down the 3,000 feet Alpine Slide at Utah’s Park City Mountain Resort!

Not surprisingly, this great action has made Mary Hardison very famous and also earned her a place in the Guinness World Records where she broke a 2007 record set by a 100﹣year﹣old British woman. What an amazing lady!

As a Hollywood film star in the 1930s and 1940s, Hedy Lamarr at one point was called "the most beautiful woman in the world." What she was less known for was her scientific intellect.

Lamarr had a natural curiosity about the world around her. As young as age 5, she would spend time taking apart and rebuilding her music box to understand how it worked. But her technical mind was overshadowed by her looks-at 16, she got her   first film role and quickly became an international icon.

As her acting career continued to take off during World War II, Lamarr became restless, feeling that she should do more to contribute to the Allies' war efforts. Together with her friend Antheil, Lamarr came up with a groundbreaking new form of wireless communication known as spread spectrum(光谱).The concept was to create a wireless signal that could hop from frequency to frequency, making it impossible to track or jam.They received a patent for their technology in 1942, but the military refused to implement(实施) it in their war effort.

The technology sat unused for years, until one day the military revived it in the 1960s and the system "spread like wildfire."It became the backbone of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS and a range of wireless communication mechanisms we rely on today.By the time the technology was implemented, Lamarr's patent had been due, and she never received a single payment for her revolutionary invention.

Hedy Lamarr played the role she was expected to play in Hollywood — a beautiful object to admire on the big screen.If she yielded to society's expectations in other ways, communication as we know it could look completely different today.