2 . If you have the strange feeling that you’ve read this before, don’t be alarmed. It’s probably just déjà vu. Déjà vu is the strange feeling that you’ve experienced something before, while at the same time knowing that you haven’t. You visit a friend’s apartment and have the overwhelming sense you’ve been here before, but that can’t be the case. This is the first time you’ve ever visited this city. Still, the feeling may be so real that you almost know what you’ll find when you walk into the kitchen.

Experts estimate roughly two out of three people have had the experience at least once. The experience typically lasts no more than a few seconds and there’s no warning of when it’s about to happen, making it extremely difficult to study. Much that is known about déjà vu is based on surveys. Still, researchers have come up with novel ways to study it in the wild.

Anne Cleary, professor of cognitive psychology and memory researcher, used virtual reality (VR) to trigger (引发) déjà vu. Cleary and her team took subjects through a series of scenes in the video game, carefully designed so that the spatial layout (空间布局) of one scene was similar to another, even though the actual images were quite different. The subjects experienced déjà vu when a scene was similar to one they’d seen before, suggesting that a similarity in spatial layout between two places might lead to a déjà vu-like sense of familiarity in a novel place.

“There may be many different reasons that could all be true for why déjà vu can happen,” Cleary says. Though no one has yet explained what causes déjà vu, it’s a good thing that science finally got serious about studying the strange phenomenon. “I think déjà vu research has been shedding light on processes that are helping us to understand memory better at a wider level than just trying to understand déjà vu,” says Cleary.

3 . Francis Kere is the first African to win the Pritzker Prize, known as the Nobel Prize of architecture. However, his ________ to the peak of his field was far from smooth. Growing up in a village where there was no kindergarten, he was ________ into an extremely hot classroom with over 100 students. At the age of 7, Francis Kere had to leave his family home to attend school because his village didn’t have one of its own. This ________ of poor building facilities contributed to his vision of better educational lives of local children, using architecture. Thirteen years later, he boarded a plane for Germany on a scholarship to study architecture.

His early reputation came in helping ________ a school in his village after graduating from college. He ________ the whole village to provide ideas and drew the ________ on sand for all to see. ________, he involved them in constructing the school, using local wood and local clay (黏土).

The result of their hard work was a welcoming structure with a “floating” roof that ________ ventilation (通风) in a hot climate and wall openings that bring ________ for students to learn even without electricity. He showed the villagers that ideas to ________ climate or other challenges are always at hand.

In this process, local people learned ________ skills that they could later use to find work. By cooperating with them, Kere ________ the idea that climate solutions started with big institutions. He ________ that everyone could contribute to addressing the major issues related to education and climate and ________ a global impact by acting locally.

Adopted by architects in dozens of countries, his ________ is rooted in the “unique” aspects of each community now.

4 . A Neste fuel station in Finland is currently the only place in the world where you can have your car refueled by a robot. It’s the pilot site chosen by Autofuel, a Danish startup, to test its futuristic refueling system—a robotic arm that can locate a car’s fuel tank door, select the right type of fuel; and operate the pump (加油泵).

“Our technology intends to provide the customers with maximum comfort and safety at gas stations,” Jonas Thor Olsen, CEO of Autofuel, said. “The robotic arm doesn’t need human involvement. It allows them to go to the shop for a coffee or take a short break while the car is refueled.”

Autofuel’s solution consists of a robotic arm housed within the fuel pump, and a series of sensors and cameras designed to keep things running smoothly. Cameras detect the vehicle’s registration number, so the system is able to detect what kind of fuel it requires. Another camera directs the car to stop in a certain area so that the arm can easily reach the fuel tank door. The arm itself then starts to move, opening the door, selecting the right fuel and finally refueling the car.

The whole thing looks great in promotional videos, but after one of them recently became popular online, people brought up a few concerns. First of all, in order for the entire process to work, one needs to have their vehicle registered with Autofuel. That’s information many people have no inclination to share for something as small as refueling. Also, the speed at which the robotic arm operates worries a lot of people as it appears to move much slower than a human.

With robots and AI becoming such a big part of our lives lately, it’s easy to imagine solutions like Autofuel becoming mainstream in the near future. But any new innovation has to be tested and improved over and over again.

6 . ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence-driven chatbot (聊天机器人) programme that responds to user prompts, has gone viral in social networks in recent weeks. Its ___________ is such that within days of its launch, OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind the chatbot, announced that 1 million people had used. In comparison, Facebook and Spotify took months to achieve that ___________of engagement (受人关注) . The attraction is obvious: ChatGPT can produce jokes, essays and computer code from a short writing prompt.

There’s nothing ___________ in software that produces fluent and logical writing. ChatGPT’s predecessor (前身), the Generative Pretrained Transformer 3 (GPT-3), could do that too. Both were trained on an unimaginably large amount of data to answer questions in a/an ___________ way. But ChatGPT has been updated by being given the data on human “conversations”, which significantly ___________ the truthfulness and informativeness(信息准确性) of its answers.

___________, ChatGPT still produces answers that seem reasonable but are incorrect or nonsensical (无意义的). Even the chatbot itself says, “My responses are not intended to be considered as ___________.” This might be a big problem on the Internet, as many web platforms (平台) ___________ the ability to protect themselves against a flood of AI-generated content (AI生成的内容). Such websites as Stack Overflow, where users can find answers to programming-related questions, had to ban ChatGPT-produced posts, as its human moderators (管理员) could not ___________ the volume (大量) of incredible but wrong replies. It is ______________ to give out tools that could be used to produce fake news and messages.

Using ChatGPT too much raises the question of whether content produced by it can be truly trusted. A human author is ______________ their own work but AI is not. Artificial intelligence is not artificial ______________: ChatGPT does not know what it is doing; it is unable to say how or why it produced a response; it doesn’t have human experience, and cannot tell if it is ______________. While OpenAI has safeguards to refuse inappropriate requests, such as to tell users how to commit crimes (犯罪), these can be bypassed. AI’s potential for harm should not be ______________. In the wrong hands, it could be a weapon to harm people and society.

No one knows what will happen to such technologies if the software engineers of the future will themselves be software programs. “Human supervision (监督) and ______________ are required,” OpenAI’s researchers have warned.

Many of us know that eating late     1     (be) bad. A new study says that eating late at night could make us sick. Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital say that eating a few hours before bed means that there is a higher risk of obesity (肥胖症). They looked into why eating late increases the risk of     2     (put) on weight. They found that eating late increases     3     (hungry), so we eat more. When we eat     4     (early), we are less hungry, so we eat less food. Later eaters also eat unhealthier food, especially fast food.     5     (consequence), later eaters move around less before sleeping,     6     means they don’t burn off calories.

The researchers looked at the eating habits of five women and eleven men between the     7     (age) of 25 and 59. All of the participants were     8     good health. They ate breakfast regularly and exercised a little. For two weeks before each test, the participants did not drink coffee or alcohol. They also did not smoke or take any medicine. They all had to keep     9     sleep diary so researchers knew their sleeping and waking times. Researcher Professor Kelly C. Allison said, “I think the study tells us that it probably really is     10     (benefit) to stop eating late at night.”

8 . Imagine being able to pop to your local park and pick some tomatoes, potatoes or even bananas to take home for dinner. Sounds too good to be true, right? For residents (居民) of Andernach, German, it’s not just a dream — it’s their reality.

In 2010, Andernach began its edible (可食用的) city project that hadn’t been carried out before, planting 101 varieties of tomatoes in public green spaces around the city center. Its 30,000 residents are free to help themselves to whatever grows, as are any other visitors.  The town’s motto of sorts is “Picking is encouraged — help yourself!” Every year a new type of plant is highlighted. In 2011, 100 types of beans were planted, while 2012 saw the introduction of 20 onion varieties. And it has become the phenomenon of the city.

It’s a community effort, as local citizens are encouraged to help plant and maintain the gardens. This offers an opportunity to socialize as well as to learn about planting, cultivating and harvesting food.

An Andernach resident spoke to DW,“I often drop by to pick some herbs that I’m missing at home. Everything is easily accessible. There aren’t any fences. You just take what you need. The only thing is that you have to be quick once the fruits are ripe or they’ll all be gone!”

Andernach may have been the first in German, but it isn’t the only edible city. It’s part of the Edible Cities Network, a project funded by European Union to connect green urban foot initiatives (方案) around the world. Other cities include Carthage in Tunisia, Havana in Cuba and Sempeter-Vrtojba in Slovenia. In February 2022, the first Edible Cities Network Conference took place. Dr Ina Saumel, principal investigator of the Edible Cities Network, called it “a unique opportunity to invite researchers of edible city solutions and practitioners all together.”

Ultimately, the Edible Cities Network aims to give people “greener, more edible and, above all, more livable cities.” It is a response to the pressures of global climate change, and a significant cause full of hope.

9 . “While extroverts (性格外向者) often make great first impressions with their outgoing manner and lively personalities in interviews, that value and reputation at work diminish (削减) over time.” says Corinne Bender, an associate professor of management.

“Extroverts disappoint us over time when they’re part of a team,” Bender says. “On a team you’re expected to work hard and contribute a lot. But they’re often poor listeners, and they don’t cooperate.”

“On the other hand, introverts (性格内向者) work hard on a team because they care what others think of them. They don’t want to be seen as not pulling their weight or contributing 100%,” Bender says.

So while companies may be attracted to hiring extroverts because they impress managers greatly in job interviews, bosses also may want to consider whether the extrovert they are considering will be a valuable team player, Bender says.

Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins, two writers, agree and say managers should recognize the strengths of introverted employees, such as their ability to put themselves in others’ shoes.

“These team members are often easygoing, which can make them exceptional mentors (良师益友) to more junior staff or particularly good sounding boards when you interact with them in one-on-one situations,” Su says.

“Managers must try to help introverts find their voice,” Wilkins says. “Help them see that speaking up is not about self-promotion or being in conflict but rather about offering the team key insights, making better decisions or increasing the efficiency for all.”

What about those extroverts who never seem to be at a loss for words? Should managers cut them off? Managers definitely should weigh in on how an extrovert is affecting others. Wilkins suggests saying something in private to make adjustments.