China is recognized as a world leader in the development of artificial intelligence and facial recognition systems. A Chinese company, the Beijing-based Hanwang Technology Ltd. , says it has created a new facial recognition system that can identify people even if they are wearing masks. Engineers at the company say their system is the first to be created to effectively identify people wearing face masks.

The company told a news agency that a team of 20 people built the system in about a month. The system is based on existing technologies developed over the past 10 years. The process involved adding a collection of about 6 million unmasked faces and a much smaller collection of masked faces, the company said.

The company is now selling two main kinds of products that use the new technology. One performs “single channel” recognition, which is designed to be used at the entrances to buildings. The other product is a “multi-channel” recognition system that uses groups of surveillance (监视)   cameras. It can identify individuals in a crowd of up to 30 people within a second.

“When people are wearing a mask that covers the mouth and nose, the recognition rate can reach about 95%, which can ensure that most people can be identified.” said Huang, vice president of the company. He added that the system’s success rate for people not wearing a mask is about 99.5%. However, the new system struggles to identify people wearing both a mask and sunglasses. “In this situation, all of the key facial information is lost. In such cases recognition is tough.” Huang said.

People were reacting differently to the new technology. While some citizens have been against using such tools, the majority have accepted the technology as an effective way to decrease crime and catch criminals.

It’s easy to blame an achy neck and stiff shoulder on bad posture. But on many desks, experts agree, the quiet culprit is your mouse.

“There are a lot of delicate body parts involved in mousing,” explains Cameron Stiehl, a San Francisco-based ergonomic assessment specialist. “When you’re at the computer for hours at a time, having a mouse that doesn’t fit properly or is positioned incorrectly can cause soft-tissue injuries in the fingers, wrists, hands, elbows and even in the shoulder.” Countless ergonomic mouse models promise improvement. If you’re ready for a level up, here are four mice that will give you a hand.

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The curb cut (下斜路缘). It’s a convenience that most of us rarely, if ever, notice. Yet, without it, daily life might be a lot harder—in more ways than one. Pushing a baby stroller onto the curb, skateboarding onto a sidewalk or taking a full grocery cart from the sidewalk to your car—all these tasks are easier because of the curb cut.

But it was created with a different purpose in mind.

It’s hard to imagine today, but back in the 1970s, most sidewalks in the United States ended with a sharp drop-off. That was a big deal for people in wheelchairs because there were no ramps (斜坡) to help them move along city blocks without assistance. According to one disability rights leader, a six-inch curb “might as well have been Mount Everest”. So, activists from Berkeley, California, who also needed wheelchairs, organized a campaign to create tiny ramps at intersections to help people dependent on wheels move up and down curbs independently.

I think about the “curb cut effect” a lot when working on issues around health equity (公平). The first time I even heard about the curb cut was in a 2017 Stanford Social Innovation Review piece by PolicyLink CEO Angela Blackwell. Blackwell rightly noted that many people see equity “as a zero-sum game.” Basically, that there is a “prejudiced societal suspicion that intentionally supporting one group hurts another.” What the curb cut effect shows though, Blackwell said, is that “when society creates the circumstances that allow those who have been left behind to participate and contribute fully, everyone wins.”

There are multiple examples of this principle at work. For example, investing in policies that create more living-wage jobs or increase the availability of affordable housing certainly benefits people in communities that have limited options. But, the action also empowers those people with opportunities for better health and the means to become contributing members of society—and that benefits everyone. Even the football huddle (围成一团以秘密商讨) was initially created to help deaf football players at Gallaudet College keep their game plans secret from opponents who could have read their sign language. Today, it’s used by every team to shield the opponent from learning about game-winning strategies.

So, next time you cross the street, or roll your suitcase through a crosswalk or ride your bike directly onto a sidewalk—think about how much the curb cut, that change in design that broke down walls of exclusion for one group of people at a disadvantage, has helped not just that group, but all of us.