【推荐3】People use colors to express their feelings and describe their world.     1     Let’s see if we can figure out where they originated.

Black sheep of the family

The phrase refers to a member of a family or a group who is in disgrace (失宠). It probably comes from the days when, in a group of sheep, the black ones were worth less than the white ones at market because their wool could not be dyed (染色) into different colors.     2    

Green with envy

When your friend shows up with the hottest new video game in town, you might feel this way.     3     It was the Greeks who connected it with sickness. They thought that when a person was ill or envious, his or her body produced too much bile (胆汁), giving his or her skin a greenish color.

True blue

Is your best friend “true blue”? No, this doesn’t refer to a dye job on his hair.     4     Back when all color dyes came from natural sources, such as berries and leaves, blue was the most difficult color to produce and often faded quickly. Finally, during the Middle Ages, an English town became famous for a blue dye that produced a nice, rich blue that didn’t fade after just a few washings. This reliable color became known as “true blue”.

Royal purple

Purple is a fairly popular color. But throughout history, it was reserved for royalty and important members of the church. Purple was once the most expensive dye in the world.     5     The resulting purple-colored cloth was costly, and only the richest people could afford to buy it.

【推荐2】The world is full of screens. They are on TVs, computers and smartphones. Screens are at school, at home, and just about everywhere in between. The time people spend every day looking at screens is known as “screen time.” Most families have rules about how much time children can spend with screens. Why do they have rules? Are there good reasons to limit screen time?

In many ways, screens are helpful for communication and connecting with other people. Social media and video calls allow people to be always in touch with one another. ________By sharing and commenting on videos, photos, games or music, people can meet others who have similar interests.

However, some adults are worried that young people spend too much time on screens and not enough time meeting people in real life. As a result, they may not properly understand feelings or develop strong relationships.

Many kinds of screen time may be good for students. Students may use screen time to develop their skills in creating music or videos. They may even learn skills such as coding (编程) computer programs. When students use their screen time to do research online, they may meet people who are different from them or ideas they have never thought about before.

However, some researchers think that screens change how the brain processes information. Some have linked (连接) screen time to lower test scores or less attention time.

In the future, scientists will continue studying the effects of screen time. Parents will likely continue to make rules limiting screen time. Plenty of good things can come from all this screen time, but it’s a good idea for people to pay attention to how much time in a day they spend looking at a screen. They should know how screen time influences their health, relationships, and learning.

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【推荐3】When TikTok videos emerged showing “Taylor Swift” making a coin disappear and enjoying a lollipop, the account name was the only obvious clue that this wasn’t the real deal. The creator of the “deeptaylorswift” account on the social media platform was using “deepfake” technology to show a machine generated version of the famous singer performing magic tricks.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America provides a measure of how far the technology has progressed. The results suggest that real humans can easily fall for machine-generated faces—and even interpret them as more trustworthy than the genuine article. “We found that not only are synthetic (合成的) faces highly realistic, they are regarded more trustworthy than real faces,” says study co-author Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The result raises concerns that these faces could be highly effective when used for immoral purposes.

After compiling 400 real faces matched to 400 synthetic versions, the researchers asked 315 people to distinguish real from fake among a selection of 128 of the images. Another group of 219 participants got some training and feedback about how to spot fakes as they tried to distinguish the faces. Finally, a third group of 223 participants each rated a selection of 128 of the images for trustworthiness on a scale of one (very untrustworthy) to seven (very trustworthy). The first group did not do better than a coin toss at telling real faces from fake ones, with an average accuracy of 48.2 percent. The second group failed to show dramatic improvement, receiving only about 59 percent, even with feedback about those participants’ choices. The group rating trustworthiness gave the synthetic faces a slightly higher average rating of 4.82, compared with 4.48 for real people.

The authors of the study end with a conclusion after emphasizing that deceptive (欺骗性的) uses of deepfakes will continue to pose a threat: “We, therefore, encourage those developing these technologies to consider whether the associated risks are greater than their benefits,” they write. “If so, then we discourage the development of technology simply because it is possible.”

【推荐1】New York City delivery workers have to deal with an array of threats: speeding cars, changeable weather, and armed robbers. Lately, workers have added another to the list–their electric bikes bursting into flames.

The powerful lithium ion batteries(锂电池) used in small electric vehicles are responsible for a growing epidemic of fires. This year, there have been about 200 fires and six deaths, according to the New York City fire department. This month, an e-bike fire inside a Manhattan high-rise apartment became an inferno(火海) that injured nearly 40 people and forced firefighters to evacuate residents using ropes.

That’s also become a daily concern for delivery workers such as Delores Solomon, a 64-year-old Brooklyn resident who has been working for Uber Eats for about two years. Solomon said she “lives in fear” that her vehicle might catch fire while it’s charging or even while she’s riding it. Last year, while delivering food on her e-bike, Solomon hit a pothole(凹坑), causing the battery to fly out and hit the pavement, where it burst into flames. “It was like a big popping sound,” she told the Guardian. “It scared me—like, ‘if that would’ve happened on the bike, I would’ve been blown up.’”

On Monday, the city council held a hearing where legislators put forward bills to combat the battery fires, including a proposal to outlaw the sale of secondhand electric vehicle batteries, and another to ban all batteries that haven t been approved by a nationally recognized testing lab. If passed, that measure would force riders to use batteries such as those certified by the Illinois-based Underwriters Laboratory (UL). An Uber spokesperson in support of the new proposals provided a statement, saying “No one should have to choose between their safety and their livelihood.”

【推荐3】Spaghetti bolognese (意大利肉酱面) appeared to me during a Year 8 home science lesson. Our home teacher told the class to tie back our hair and start cutting the vegetables into pieces. Spaghetti bolognese made a world of difference to mealtimes.

This meal became a weekly food at our house - especially since the job of making spaghetti Bolognese fell to me or one of my three sisters, giving my mother a break from cooking. But finding that this “Italian” food was mouth-wateringly delicious and could be made in our own kitchen, wasn’t just happening at our house. In many places around the world, people were discovering just how delicious Italian food could be.

So by 2014, a survey done by the Germany-based company Apetito found that spaghetti bolognese was the third most popular dish eaten in their workplace cafeterias (自助餐厅). And in 2018, research in Britain to find out how new diets were changing what families ate at mealtimes, commissioned(委托) by British cooking appliance-maker Belling, discovered that spaghetti bolognese had won the competition and was the all-time favourite meal of Brits. “It has been interesting to see dishes, which we now consider very closely connected with family mealtimes, rising from relative unknown dishes, like everyone’s favourite spag bol, to take the top place,” said a Belling spokesperson at the time. This Italian favourite isn’t just popular in the West. In the 1980s, spaghetti bolognese was getting a workout in Malaysian home kitchens, according to chopinandmysaucepan. com, and is still often found on the menu of many local restaurants there.

However, not all Italians love what we’ve done to their cultural cuisine. Many pasta lovers rail at the idea that spaghetti bolognese is the same dish as ragù alla Bolognese, as it is known in Italy, or that it in fact comes from Bologna. In 2019, the then Bolognese mayor, Virginio Merola, started a debate on Twitter saying that it was not true that spaghetti bolognese originated from his great city. They believe the sauce should not be served with spaghetti.