【推荐2】China is recognized as a world leader in the development of artificial intelligence（人工智能）and facial recognition systems. A Chinese company, the Beijing-based Hanwang Technology Ltd.. says it has created a new facial recognition system that can identify people even if they are wearing masks. Engineers at the company say their system is the first to be created to effectively identify people wearing face masks.

The company told a news agency that a team of 20 people built the system in about a month. The system is based on existing technologies developed over the past 10 years. The process involved adding a collection of about 6 million unmasked faces and a much smaller collection of masked faces, the company said.

The company is now selling two main kinds of products that use the new technology. One performs "single channel" recognition, which is designed to be used at the entrances to buildings.

The other product is a "multi-channel" recognition system that uses groups of surveillance（监视）cameras. It can identify individuals in a crowd of up to 30 people within a second.

"When people are wearing a mask that covers the mouth and the nose, the recognition rate can reach about 95%, which can ensure that most people can be identified." said Huang, vice president of the company. He added that the system's success rate for people not wearing a mask is about 99.5%.

However, the new system struggles to identify people wearing both a mask and sunglasses. "In this situation, all of the key facial information is lost. In such cases recognition is tough," Huang said

People were reacting differently to the new technology. While some citizens have beer against using such tools, the majority have accepted the technology as an effective way to decrease crime and catch criminals.

【推荐3】Robots that can cook are in growing demand in the United States. The increased demand comes at a time when restaurants are trying to put some distance between their workers and customers during the COVID-19.

In a few weeks, White Castle restaurants will test a robot arm that can cook French fries and other foods. The robot, called Flippy, is a product of Miso Robotics, a company based in Pasadena, California.

Robot food service was becoming popular even before the coronavirus pandemic (冠状病毒). Hospitals, college dining areas and other places tried to meet demand for food while keeping labor costs low. Robot chefs appeared at places like Creator, a restaurant in San Francisco. Now, some say, robots may become necessary for the food service industry. “I expect in the next two years you will see much more robotic adoption (采用) in the food field because of COVID-19,” Jain said.

Some people say, robots can lower the demand for labor. At the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, cafe workers used to spend six hours per day making salads, notes Tonya Johnson, the school’s director of nutrition services. But two years ago, the university added a Sally, a kind of robot that now makes around 40 salads per day. By adding Sally, the school was able to cut (消减) a job opening in its cooking staff. Johnson said, “I think the pandemic has made us realize how much we need more equipment like Sally.”

Miso Robotics’s co-founder and chief Buck Jordan said fast food restaurants are already having trouble finding workers, partly as a result of a losing population of young workers. Jordan added that his company’s position is that “automation (自动化) is not a choice”. He added, “You must automate in order to survive in the future.”

【推荐2】Young people’s career expectations have become more concentrated in fewer occupations over the past two decades though social media and technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) are developing rapidly, according to a report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Traditional occupations from the 19th and 20th centuries, such as lawyers and police officers, continue to trap the imaginations of young people around the world as they did nearly 20 years ago.

The report, based on a latest survey of the 15-year-olds in 41 countries, said the career expectations of youngsters may be “antiquated and unrealistic”. Nearly half of young people around the world wish to work in just 10 of the most common professions. The surveys show that too many teenagers are ignoring, or don’t know, new types of jobs that are coming up, particularly as a result of digitalization (数字化). It is a concern that more young people than before appear to be picking their dream job from a small list of the most popular, traditional occupations, like teachers, lawyers or business managers.

The report found that among boys and girls who perform similarly in science, boys are more likely to expect to work in science and engineering. The top 10 occupations preferred by boys have changed very little since 2000 but girls are now more likely to want to be architects, police officers, and designers rather than hairdressers or writers.

The report also found a broader range of career expectations in countries with strong and firm occupational training for teenagers. For example, in Germany teenagers show a much wider range of career interests that better reflect patterns of labour market demands. More than a third of students in the UK report a lack of career advice at schools and colleges. Young people’s wishes are set as young as age seven, and do not change enough over time to meet demands.

【推荐3】Finland’s education system is considered one of the best in the world. Finland (芬兰) is not only the top European country but also competes with Asian giants like Shanghai, Singapore and South Korea. But what makes the educational system in this small country so different from others in the western world?

Until the 1960s Finland’s school system had been influenced largely by its neighbor, the Soviet Union. Most students left school after six years; some went on to private (私人的) schools. Only the wealthy ones got a better education. In the middle of the 1960s the Finnish government saw the need to reform and modernize (使现代化) their education system if they wanted to be internationally competitive.

Most of Finland’s schools get their money from the government. The people who are in charge of the education system, from teachers to officials are trained teachers, not politicians like in other countries.

Teachers work with their pupils in school as much as possible. When teachers are not with the pupils, they spend a lot of time in schools working on the curriculum and new projects.

All Finnish children, whether they come from the city or the country, whether from a rich or poor family, have the same chances in education. There are not so many differences between the wealthy and poor, as in America or other western European countries. Education experts say that there is very little difference between very good and the worst students. Two thirds of Finnish pupils move on to higher education, the highest rate (比率) in the European Union.