【推荐2】IKEA (瑞典宜家家具公司) is set to launch (上市) an air-purifying curtain coated with a mineral-based surface that breaks down common pollutants. The surface of the curtain is treated with a photocatalyst (光催化剂) mineral that causes air pollution to break down when light shines through it, allowing users to purify the air in their own homes.

The technology works in a similar way to photosynthesis - the natural process that plants and some other organisms use to change carbon dioxide and water into food, using light.

Developed over several years by IKEA in collaboration with universities across Europe and Asia, the purifying technology works with both natural and artificial light. “For me, it’s important to work on products that solve actual problems and are relevant to people,” explained IKEA product developer Mauricio Affonso. “We are creating an affordable and space-saving air purifying solution that also makes the home more beautiful,” he continued.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has stated that even now, 91 percent of the world's population live in areas where air pollution goes over WHO guideline limits. The effects of poor air kill about seven million people worldwide each year, research by the WHO has found.

“Besides enabling people to breathe better air at home, we hope that the curtain will increase people's awareness of indoor air pollution, inspiring behavioral changes that contribute to a world of clean air,” said IKEA head of sustainability Lena Pripp-Kovac. “It is the first product to use the technology, but the development will give us opportunities for future applications on other textiles (纺织品).”

“We know that there is no single solution to air pollution. We work long term for positive change, to enable people to live healthier lives,” added Pripp-Kovac.

【推荐3】Scientists from the University of Tsukuba designed a text message mediation(调节) robot that can help users control their anger when receiving upsetting news. This device may help improve social interactions as we move towards a world with increasingly digital communications.

While a quick text message apology is a fast and easy way for friends to let us know they are going to be late for a planned meeting, it is often missing the human factor that will accompany an explanation face to face, or even over the phone. It is likely to be more upsetting when we are not able to notice the emotional weight behind our friends’ regret at making us wait.

Now, researchers at the University of Tsukuba have built a robot that they called OMOY, which was equipped with a movable weight driven by mechanical parts inside its body. By shifting the internal weight, the robot could express simulated emotions(模拟情绪). The robot was designed as a mediator for reading text messages. A text with unwelcome or frustrating news could be followed by a suggestion by OMOY. The robot tries to make the user not get upset, or even expresses sympathy for the user.

“With the medium of written digital communication, the lack of social feedback shift focus from the sender and onto the content of the message itself,” author Professor Fumihide Tanaka says. The mediator robot was designed so that it can control the user’s anger and other negative motivations.

The researchers tested 94 people with a message like “I’m sorry, I am late. The appointment slipped my mind. Can you wait another hour?” The team found that OMOY was able to reduce negative emotions. “The mediation robot can relay(播放) a frustrating message followed by giving its own opinion. When this speech is accompanied by the appropriate weight shifts, we saw that the user would feel the ‘intention’ of the robot to help them calm down,” Professor Tanaka says.

【推荐1】Promising (有前途的) Careers in Australia

If you’re trying to take your first steps on the career ladder, this country is certainly rich with opportunities. In this article, we’ll look at four of the best careers in Australia and why they’re considered rewarding.

Wildlife Biologist (生物学家)

If you love working with animals and enjoy watching wild animals in their natural habitat, the life of a wildlife biologist may be suitable for you. Some of your daily duties may involve doing animal population studies, marking animals, and developing habitat management plans.

Average Salary: 64,000 AUD per year

Teacher

You’ll be able to teach subjects that you’re knowledgeable and enthusiastic about and inspire that same enthusiasm in your students. You’ll be able to make a positive contribution and help to shape the future of Australia. Although teachers may have a set timetable every day, no two days will ever be the same.

Average Salary: 74,800 AUD per year

Aged Care Worker

Working with the elderly is a great job that affords you an enormous variety and job satisfaction. As Australia’s population is aging, more and more skilled care workers are needed. What’s more, the care of the elderly is so different that no matter what your skills are, it’s easy to find a promising job.

Average Salary: 55,400 AUD per year

App Developer

You’ll work with all kinds of businesses to create custom-made applications that either help make the businesses more efficient or bring value to their customers. It’s a rewarding and increasingly in-demand profession.

Average Salary: 98,634 AUD per year

【推荐1】Robots have certain advantages compared to humans: They are efficient, tireless, can be repaired when damaged and they never get sick. This last trait has made them the star during our fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. While hundreds of thousands of medical workers have fallen ill dealing with this highly infectious virus and a lot more are forced to stay at home for fear of getting the disease, this isn't a problem for robots.

This is why the COVID-19 outbreak is seen as the "tipping point"—noted The Independent Science reporter Anthony Cuthbertson—for robots to start to replace humans in certain jobs.

In areas like hospitals and healthcare facilities, robots are used to perform high-risk tasks. In China, for example, a hotel in Hangzhou employed a robot named "Little Peanut" to deliver food to people under quarantine. In Spain, robots are about to be used to test people for the coronavirus.

"Hospitals around the world are waking up to autonomous disinfection," Per Juul Nielsen, CEO of Denmark's UVD Robots, a leading company manufacturing disinfection robot, told Forbes. "We can't build these robots fast enough."

In non-medial companies, robots are also replacing human employees since they don't have the problem of social distancing and will never take sick leave. Walmart and Amazon, for example, where robots are already used in sorting, packing and shipping, are planning to increase the number of robots in their facilities.

According to futurist Martin Ford, using more robots than human employees can prove to be rewarding for companies even when the pandemic is over. " People will prefer to go to a place that has fewer workers and more machines because they feel they can lower overall risk," Ford told the BBC.

But this sudden surge in robot demand doesn't mean that they triumph over humans in every aspect. According to Bill Smart, a roboticist at Oregon State University, the human contact between doctors and patients is still important. Doctors comfort the patients and guide them through hard decisions while robots are only doing routine tasks, like cleaning and giving tests, just to free up doctors and nurses.

It might be true that robots have certain advantages over humans, but they are still secondary to human interaction.

【推荐2】The spot of red was what first caught Randy Heiss’s attention on December 16, 2018. He walked toward it and found a balloon attached to a piece of paper. “Dayami,” it read on one side, in a child’s writing. Heiss flipped the paper over. It was a numbered list in Spanish. His Spanish isn’t very good, but he could see it was a Christmas list.

He was charmed and wondered whether he could find the child. About 20 miles to the southwest, just across the border, was the city of Nogales, Mexico. Based on the prevailing wind, he was pretty sure that’s where it came from.

Back home, Heiss’s wife who is fluent in Spanish translated the list. Dayami, probably a girl, had asked for a doll, a dollhouse, clothes and art supplies.

Heiss then posted about his quest on Facebook, attaching photos, hoping someone might know the girl’s family.

A few days passed with no leads; Heiss worried that time was running out before Christmas. On December 19, he decided to send a private Facebook message to Radio XENY based in Nogales. The next morning, Heiss awoke to a message: The staff had located Dayami, who indeed lived in Nogales and would be willing to arrange a get-together at the radio station.

Heiss and his wife rushed to buy everything on Dayami’s list. Then they drove for 45 minutes, crossing the border into Nogales. They finally met the very excited girl. “Her eyes were wide open with wonder. Like, ‘Oh my gosh, this really did work!’ It was a beautiful experience,” Heiss said. “Quite healing for us.”

Heiss, 61, has lived in Bisbee, Arizona for more than three decades. Ten years ago, he and his wife lost their only child. They have no grandchildren. Now they split their time between Nogales and Bisbee.

“Being around children at Christmastime has been absent in our lives,” Heiss said. “It’s been kind of a gaping hole in our Christmas experience.” He has since reflected on what a miracle it was that he spotted the balloon at all, let alone that he was able to locate Dayami and her family.

【推荐3】Scientist at University College London have discovered sets of regulatory genes, which are responsible for maintaining healthy hearing. The finding, made in fruit flies, could lead to treatments for age-related hearing loss (ARHL) in humans.

Globally, one-third of people aged over 65 experience hearing impairment, and while there are thought to be more than 150 genes that may affect hearing loss, there is no unified (统一的) view on how to use these to develop hearing loss treatments.

In the study, published in Scientific Reports, researchers are at the UCL Ear Institute assessed the hearing ability of the common fruit fly across its life span (around 70 days) to see if their hearing declines with age.

A fruit fly’s ears share many molecular (分子的) similarities with the ears of humans, making it an ideal tool for the study of human hearing loss.

Researchers found that the antennal ears of fruit flies also display ARHL with nearly all sensitive hearing measures starting to decline after 50 days of age. This made the researchers want to know if there were any “age-variable” genes in the flies’ inner ears which have kept the ears healthy for 50 days of their lives.

After closer examination, researchers identified a new set of regulatory genes-homeostasis genes. These genes are often responsible for picking up sound and the overall sensitivity of the ear. Using this information, scientists were then able to genetically modify (修改) the genes and prevent the flies from getting ARHL.

Professor Joerg Albert, lead author of the study, said: “While many studies have been conducted into the hearing function of fruit flies, ours is the first to look at the mechanistic and molecular detail of their auditory life course.”

“The fact that these genes are conserved in humans will also help to focus future clinical research in humans and thereby accelerate the discovery of new pharmacological or gene-therapeutic strategies.”

【推荐2】Japanese engineer Masaaki Nagumo had always dreamed of operating a robot from “Mobile Suit Gundam”, a popular animation(动画) TV series.It was Nagumo's favourite show when he was a child. The series features huge, human­controlled machines in battle.

Now Nagumo has made the show come to life. Inspired by the machines, he has built a large robot called LW­Mononofu.The farming machinery company Sakakibara Kikai developed it.The robot is 8.5 meters tall, has two legs and weighs more than seven tons.It has a seating area with devices for the pilot to control the robot's arms and legs.

The “Mobile Suit Gundam” series inspired movies, video games and more.And Nagumo thought the robot could be popular as well.“I think this can be turned into a business opportunity.”he said.

Sakakibara Kikai develops robots and entertainment machines in addition to its main agriculture machinery business. At a price of about $930 an hour, people can rent the machines for children's birthday parties and other events. The company has created robots of all sizes. There is the almost 3.5­meter­tall Landwalker, the smaller Kids' Walker Cyclops, and the MechBoxer boxing(拳击) machine.

But the Mononofu stands above them all. It also does more complex movements. It can move its fingers and turn its upper body, and walk forward and backward. However, it moves very slowly—at a speed of less than one kilometer per hour. Although it may be slow, the Mononofu is very powerful.The air gun on its right arm shoots(发射) balls of soft material at 140 kilometers per hour.

“As an animation­inspired robot that one can ride, I think this is the biggest in the world,”Nagumo said. But Mononofu might be a bit too large.It is unable to leave the factory without being taken apart because it was built taller than the entrance.

【推荐3】Teenagers have their own TV channels， websites and magazines. So what about books？

Last year one publisher， Martins， started publishing a series called Waves. We spoke to the director Julia Smith. She explained， "Teenage fiction has been published since the 1970s but publishers have never been very successful in getting teenagers to buy and read books. Now they're realizing that teenagers are just older children， but are not adults either. They are often not interested in adult fiction. For this series we are looking for new writers who write especially for teenagers.

Athene Gorr's novel was published in the series last year and is selling well. Its title is The Purple Ring. She says， "The important thing is to encourage teenagers to pick up your book. I'm a new writer. Although I've got an unusual name which people might remember， nobody knows it yet! But my book has a fantastic cover which makes people want to look inside. Then they realize what an excellent story it is!"

And what do teenagers themselves think about the series？ We talked to Sophie Clarke， aged 15. She said？ "I've read a few books in the Waves series. They say they are for 14-19 year olds and I agree with that. We're not interested in the same things as people in their twenties and thirties. I like them and I think they look really good too. The only thing is that because bookshops put them in the children section， lots of teenagers won't find them so they may not do very well. And it's a shame there's no such series as I think lots of teenagers， especially boys， might buy."