【推荐1】Chinese researchers have developed a robot designed to help doctors treat the new coronavirus and other highly infectious diseases. The machine has a long robotic arm attached to a base with wheels. It can perform some of the same medical examination tasks as doctors. For example, the device can perform ultrasounds (超声波扫描检查), collect fluid samples from a person’s mouth and listen to sounds made by a patient’s organs. Cameras record the robot’s activities, which are controlled remotely so doctors can avoid coming in close contact with infected patients. Doctors and other medical workers can operate the machine in another place.

The robot’s main designer Zheng Gangtie, an engineer and professor at China’s Tsinghua University, told Reuters news agency that he got the idea for the device when his medical friend told him that one of the biggest problems in dealing with COVID-19 was that healthcare workers treating patients were getting infected themselves. Zheng said he wanted to do something to help this situation. So the engineer gathered a team and went to work on the robotic device.

Zheng said the devices use the same technology that is used for space equipment, including moon explorers. The new robot is almost completely automated. It can even disinfect itself after performing actions involving patient contact.

However, Zheng said he had heard from some doctors that it would be better not to build such robots to be fully automatic. This is because many patients still desire a personal presence to help calm them during treatment.

The team currently has two robots and both have been tested by doctors at hospitals in Beijing. One machine was taken to Wuhan’s Union Hospital, where doctors there got trained to use it. The plan is to use the robot to help treat coronavirus patients, along with assistance from nurses and other hospital workers.

Zheng would like to build more of the robots, but says money from the university has run out. Each robot costs about $72,000 to make. He says he does not plan to commercialize the design, but hopes that a company can begin that process.

【推荐1】To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians have ever cooked up. For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil. So when Columbus brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to the obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.

What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake, a plant that was thought to have come from Hell. What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits. Though the tomato and the mandrake were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit, the general population considered them one and the same, too terrible to touch.

Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet. In the 1880s, the daughter of a well-known plant expert wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at here father’s house had been the “introduction of this wonderful new fruit--or is it a vegetable?” As late as the 20th century some writers still classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an “evil fruit”.

But in the end tomatoes carried the day. The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert Johnson, and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820, people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead. “ What are you afraid of ?” he shouted. “I’ll show you fools that theses things are good to eat!” Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story, set up a tomato-canning factory.

【推荐2】Why is poverty so difficult to overcome?Why are poorer people less likely to spend money on their own learning and ability development,but more likely to be addicted to television and video games?

In the past,a poor person was normally considered to have bad virtue or have no ambition. The Nobel Prize winner Banerjee corrects such views and explains the truth behind the poor. Poor people tend to live with more worries in their lives,he said,so they need tools such as televisions,cell phones,junk food and video games to get rid of worries more than others.But learning something often takes a lot of time and money to get rewards,while the poor are often impatient due to economic(经济的）reasons,and their life in the meantime is getting more boring.

Banerjee's research has found that the poor often need to borrow short-term loans(贷款）.Thus,the poor tend to take higher financial risks-they often have unstable incomes and are unable to get money to start a business from banks,so they rely more on these high-interest loans.And these small loans put a brake on their savings against risks.

How could the poor step into the middle class?Maybe starting a business is a way out.But for the extremely poor,it's impossible to get help from banks to start a business.In most cases,a more practical option is getting a job in government agencies because comparatively speaking, government jobs are very stable,which give the poor the opportunities lo be hired for the long term,to increase the“bandwidth(带宽）”of their thinking,and thus making it possible for families to move from poverty to the middle class.

What's the role of government then?When the market can't solve a problem,the government will solve it.And the problem behind the poor is actually the failure of the market. The poor often lack the necessary information to make the right choices and they often carry too much responsibility for their survival to make the best choices.In this sense,Banerjee's research provides a new perspective for governments to understand poverty,so that policies can be tailored to reduce poverty and eventually remove it.

【推荐3】Electrical devices(仪器) could soon use power made by human energy. Scientists say they have developed an experimental device that produces electricity from the physical movement of a person walking. British scientist Max Donelan and other scientists             in Canada and the United States developed the device.

The device connects to a person’s knee. As the person walks, the device captures energy each time the person slows down. To do this, the device helps with the slowing down movement of the leg. The movements of the walking person push parts of a small             machine that produces electricity. Using the device, an adult walking quickly could produce thirteen watts of electricity in just a minute. Donelan says walking at that speed could produce enough power to operate a laptop computer for six minutes.

There are several possible uses for the device. Developers say it could help people who work in areas without electricity to operate small computers. The device could also be used in hospitals to operate heart pacemakers(起搏器). It could even be used             to assist in the movement of robotic arms and legs.

The experimental version of the device weighs about one and a half kilograms, but it is too costly for most people to buy. But the researchers hope to make a lighter, less costly version. An improved version should be ready in one year.

The developers hope the device will one day help developing countries. Nearly twenty five percent of people around the world live without electric power.

A similar product was invented in 2005 by Larry Rome of the University of Pennsylvania. He created a bag carried on a person’s back that also produces power from walking.

The knee device does not produce as much electricity as the bag. But the bag requires the walker to carry a load of twenty to thirty kilograms.

【推荐2】In the waves of human exploration into space, our brave Chinese people have never stopped the pace of advancing. In just half a century, China has made remarkable aviation exploration success. After landing probes on the lunar and Martian surfaces, China has begun to set its exploratory sights on the core of our solar system—the sun.

Named Xihe after the sun goddess in ancient Chinese tales, the 508-kilogram Chinese H-Alpha Solar Explorer satellite was launched on Oct. 14 from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province. It then entered a sun-synchronous orbit about 517 kilometers above Earth.

The spacecraft is China’s first space based solar telescope and is designed to work for at least three years, Wang Wei, project manager of the satellite told China Daily.

Its scientific payload (有效载荷) is an H-alpha imaging spectrograph (成像光谱仪). The H-alpha band is one of the best spectral lines to study solar activity, according to the Global Times. “The instrument is able to observe and record changes in the sun’s physical elements like its temperature and speed, facilitating scientists’ studies about the dynamics and physics during a solar eruption,” Wang told China Daily.

Several Chinese satellites, such as the Fengyun 3E meteorological (气象的) satellite, have carried equipment that can collect solar data, but Xihe is the first one dedicated to solar observation.

“Since solar activity has many effects on life on Earth, it is important for mankind to study the sun,” Zhao Jian, a senior official at the China National Space Administration, told China Daily.

Since the 1960s, NASA has sent dozens of solar orbiters to circle the sun, and in 2004, the Genesis spacecraft returned a sample of solar wind. The most recently launched solar mission was Parker Solar Probe in 2018. Europe and Japan also have solar missions, according to the South China Morning Post.

“Our country is ranked No.2 in the world in terms of published research papers on solar observations, but all of the satellite-generated data used by our scientists are from foreign spacecraft,” Zhao told China Daily. “Xihe will put an end to the dependence on foreign satellites, and we will share its products with researchers around the world.”