【推荐1】China Media Group, the country’s state broadcaster, released the country’s top 4 science and technology news stories in 2021 on Monday.

1. China’s “artificial sun” sets new world record

China’s “artificial sun” nuclear fusion reactor in Hefei, capital of east China’s Anhui Province, has set a new world record after running at the temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds in May, laying the foundation for the country to build its own nuclear fusion energy station in the future. Click here to read more.

2. China’s first self-operated deep-water gas exploration platform starts production

China’s first self-operated 1.5-kilometer deep-water gas exploration platform, “Deep Sea No. 1,” started production on June 25. Located in south China’s Hainan Province, it is expected to supply 3 billion m³ of deep-sea natural gas each year to Guangdong, Hainan and Hong Kong. Click here to read more.

3. China Space Station now able to host long stay for astronauts

China’s unfinished space station has welcomed two groups of astronauts for months-long stay. The Shenzhou-12 crew, including three astronauts, entered the space station’s core module Tianhe in mid-June and lived there for three months till mid-September. The Shenzhou-13 crew, including a female astronaut and her two male coworkers, arrived at Tianhe in mid-October and will stay there for six months. Click here to read more.

4. China’s unmanned submersible explores deepest sea on Earth

China’s self-developed unmanned submersible “Haidou-1” has realized full detection exploration in Mariana Trench-the deepest point known on Earth-for the first time with a max diving depth of 10, 908 meters and a non-stop working time of over eight hours. Click here to read more.

【推荐3】Simon Groot, a seed expert of the Netherlands, is credited with introducing high-quality, disease-resistant vegetable seeds to more than 60 countries including the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. He was awarded the World Food Prize on Monday.

Developing seeds has been the Groot family business for a long time. He is the sixth generation of, what is called, a seedsman. He began his search for better vegetable seeds to help farmers in Southeast Asia in 1981. When he was 47, his family’s company had just been taken over by a larger corporation.

Sixteen years earlier, he had made his first trip to Indonesia. There, Groot learned that vegetable seeds which were developed for the moderate climate of Europe, did poorly when planted in the hot tropics（热带地区）. He thought there was a great possibility of introducing hybrid（杂交的）vegetables to the area. The area lacked vegetable seed developers who were trying to create hybrids for the local climate.

“It was neither charity nor business. It was a passion for providing farmers all over the world with good seeds,” said Groot. Now 85, he said developing seeds has always concerned him, “I noticed the seed quality in that part of world was so much below our standards and below achievable standards.” He added that he “could not stand” that the farmers there did not have better seeds.

At the time, farmers in Southeast Asia usually saved seeds from season to season. That was because the seeds available for sale were often old. Those seeds were usually from Europe or North America and did not grow well in their tropical climate. This meant that the farmers ended up with smaller crops, and lower quality that changed greatly from season to season. The plants also could easily become infected with diseases.

Groot received the $250, 000 World Food Prize during an award ceremony at the Iowa Capitol.

【推荐1】The Beijing 2022 Olympics earns high marks for sustainable artificial snow. Kit McConnell, sports director of the International Olympic Committee, said the participants believe the artificial snow is outstanding. “The focus is on doing this in a sustainable way, and also ensuring the athletes have an outstanding field of play on which to compete at the Olympic level,” McConnell said.

Artificial snow gives the courses a better and more stable quality. Different from natural snow, certain qualities including particle size, the proportion of water content, and the hardness can be easily changed in creating the artificial snow, to meet the qualities and needs of different competition venues. Natural snow with a very low density cannot be used for competitions as it falls off more easily and brings safety risks.

Though the artificial snow has been used for the Beijing 2022 Olympics, a few years ago China had barely any experience in making artificial snow for the Games. Wang Feiteng, a member of the snow-making team of experts for Beijing 2022, developed a localized snow production and service technology that is suitable to China’s climate with other team members after three years of experiments. The success breaks the key snow-making technology blockade.

Following the Winter Games, artificial snow technology can also be useful. Regulating the temperature within a specific range can maintain the growth of crops in the areas where global warming has had an impact. In high-altitude areas, the application of artificial snow can not only reduce the melting process of snow, but also control water flow, preventing floods and droughts from happening.

【推荐2】Technology is starting to give us superpowers once reserved only for comic book heroes like Spider-Man and Superman. We now live in an age of human enhancement and related technology has captured the attention of the media and investors.

Some of these new technologies achieve their effects by means of electronic devices that connect our brains to external sources of knowledge, sensory data or physical power. We may not get chips implanted in our brains any time soon, but think about Google Glass--who needs an inserted chip when you can wear a computer on your head?

Wearable technology doesn’t only come in the form of a pair of glasses. A Japanese laboratory is working on a more practical prototype (雏形) of a muscle suit than lron Man’s shiny armor (盔甲). The muscle suit, called an exoskeleton, enables the sick and elderly to move around more easily, New Scientist magazine reported. Coveting (觊觎) the powers of Spider-Man, the US military is working on a “Spider-Man suit” that not only lets wearers climb vertical walls, but also allows them to sense approaching objects without looking at or hearing them, according to an American military technology website.

But perhaps you favor more subtle powers like mind control or mind reading. This may one day come true as well. The most amazing human enhancement technologies that have come into reality are devices that interact directly with the human brain.

Q Sensor, created by scientists at MIT, is a wireless sensor that measures electricity conducted through the skin. It can detect whether people are bored, stressed or excited, and therefore has wide applications in research and therapy, the BBC reported.

Scientists envision neural implants that could allow humans to manipulate real-world objects with their mind--a power not unlike mind control. Slate magazine reported this might already be happening.

【推荐1】“You’re wrong about everything, Mom. I hate you. And I don’t like your hair either!” screamed my five-year-old child Amy while trying her best to hit me in the leg. Her screaming, which lasted an hour, was sparked when I asked her to put on her shoes so we could leave for the store. Luckily, this time, no one was hurt.

We call these behaviors (screaming, kicking, throwing things) hurricanes. She’ll grab me, trying to beat me and I’ll attempt to prevent her from hurting either of us. While she’s usually better-behaved in public, I’ve left the grocery store dragging my screaming daughter more times than I’d like to admit. At any given moment, my sweet child can change into something unrecognizable.

Like other parents of defiant (叛逆的) children, I was at a complete loss. It can be hard to know what’s causing our kids to act out, what steps are needed to stop the disruptive behavior and when to seek help. Nothing prepared me for parenting a defiant child, but, as I found out, the news isn’t all bad: There are solutions for families who have defiant children.

My daughter had been a pleasant, easy baby. Suddenly all that changed when she turned three. She destroyed books and wrote on walls (sometimes right in front of me), and when I tried to stop her, it would bring on another hurricane. I could use rewards, threaten consequences and take away prized toys and she still would refuse to do what I was asking. Occasionally, she’d comply (顺从) — it was so unpredictable.

Defiance is a spectrum. There are strong-willed kids who were just born that way, others who may be reacting to a short-term traumatic (创伤的) event, and kids who might be formally diagnosed as having a more extreme condition called ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder). According to a report, between one and 16 percent of children and adolescents have ODD. Boys with ODD are more likely to argue with adults and lose their tempers, while girls tend to lie and be uncooperative.