The story goes that some time ago, a man punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and he became infuriated (愤怒的) when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree. Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, “This is for you, Daddy.”

The man was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found out the box was empty. He yelled at her, stating, “Don’t you know, when you give someone a present, there is supposed to be something inside? The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and cried, “Oh, Daddy, it’s not empty at all. I blew kisses into the box. They’re all for you, Daddy.”

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged for her forgiveness.

Only a short time later, an accident took the life of the child. It is also told that her father kept that gold box by his bed for many years and, whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.

In a very real sense, each one of us, as humans beings, have been given a gold container filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, family members, friends, and God. There is simply no other possession, anyone could hold, more precious than this.

Ten years ago, the science fiction series Black Mirror showed a story about using artificial intelligence (人工智能) to bring back loved ones. Thanks to technological advancement, the latest AI technology brings back loved ones through virtual form.

Recently, it was reported that famous musician Tino Bao had created a digital version of his daughter, who passed away in 2021 due to a rare disease at the age of 22. With the help of AI, Bao was able to recreate his late daughter Bao Rong as a virtual figure. Tino Bao, his family and the team tried to piece together pictures, videos and memories of Rong. After thousands of trials and errors, they presented the life-like digital human who speaks in both Chinese and English. Bao finally set up a company to bring the technological miracle to other families experiencing such loss.

However, every coin has two sides. The idea of bringing back a loved one through AI may seem comforting. Still, researchers warn that constantly interacting with an AI version of a deceased (已故的) loved one could lead to lasting sadness and other mental health problems.

After the case of Bao Rong, AI resurrection (复活) has become a business. Some people use it to commit crimes or make profits. Therefore, it is important for the government to make laws to make sure the use of AI resurrection technology is safe and responsible.

Living with your parents has its advantages… at least when it comes to raising your kids—their grandkids. Because two new studies add to the evidence that grandmothers can improve the survival of grandchildren. That is, unless Grandma’s too old or lives too far away.

Humans are unusual in that women live long past the age at which they stop having babies. “We don’t really see that in nature. Most of the organisms (生物) will reproduce up to their very last moment,” says Patrick Bergeron, a teacher at Bishop’s University in Quebec. This increase in post-reproductive longevity (寿命) is often explained by the so-called “grandmother effect (效应)”.

To explore the “grandmother effect”, Bergeron and his researchers examined nearly 200 years’ worth of French-Canadian population records from the 17th and 18th centuries. At the time, life was hard. In some years, a third of the kids were not even making it to one year of age. But the researchers found that having a grandmother still alive was an advantage. Families with grandmothers alive were larger by about two and the survival of these grandchildren to age 15 was much improved.

This good effect was only seen when the grandmothers lived nearby, which suggests that grandmothers help by playing an active role in their grandchildren’s lives.

Unluckily, that role is harder for them to achieve as they get older, which brings us to the second study. Researchers at the University of Turku in Finland used church records from the 18th and 19th centuries. They found that the advantages connected with having a grandmother on hand depended on her age. Once grandmothers hit 75, the grandchild survival advantages disappeared. In other words, it was better for grandchildren to have no living grandmother at all than it was to live with an old one or one that was in poor health. So a healthy grandma helps make for a healthy grandchild