【推荐1】This year, new technologies will enable more drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel (方向盘) while on the road. But that doesn’t mean their cars will be fully self-driving — that day still remains far in the future.

Automakers like General Motors (GM), Ford and Stellantis are introducing, or upgrading existing technologies. But in the words of Kay Stepper, an automated driving expert, these systems are “feet off” and “hands off”, but they will not be “eyes off” or “mind off”.

For the time being, these systems will only be used on limited-access highways, where there are no pedestrians or bicyclists. Vehicles with this technology will be able to drive at relatively high speeds, but only in simple traffic situations.

Bryan Reimer, a researcher with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Age Lab, said it will be -decades before people can buy. truly-self-driving cars in-which humans ride as passengers，

Still, the technology that will be rolled out by the major automakers this year will do more than most so-called Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, or AD AS, do now.

GM’s Super Cruise system allows drivers to completely let go of the steering wheel while driving on selected highways. It was introduced in 2017 on the Cadillac CT6 sedan, which was ds continued last year. An improved version is coming this year on the Cadillac Escalade SUV and the Cadillac CT 4 and CT5 sedans.

Super Cruise only works on highways that have been previously laser-mapped in three dimensions. GPS positioning and the vehicles, radar sensors(传感器) and cameras are used to enable drivers to unh and — and un foot — all the controls.

Drivers still need to pay attention, however. A camera in the car makes sure the driver is looking at the road at all times. If the driver looks away from the road for more than a few seconds, the system will stop working.

【推荐3】We usually think of archaeology as lots of painstaking work by brave explorers. But today, long-hidden cities are being revealed (显露) from the air, where modern archaeologists use laser pulses (激光脉冲) to discover the sign of ancient life buried below thick surface.   

Lidar, short for “light detection and ranging”, needs directing rapid laser pulses at the ground from an airplane. Software catches the time and wavelength of the pulses reflected from the surface and connects it with GPS and other data to produce a precise 3D map of the landscape below.

In recent years, lidar exposed an ancient city in western Mexico called Angamuco. The discovery of this long-lost Mexican metropolis (大都) is especially meaningful.

“To think that this large city existed in the heartland of Mexico for all this time and nobody knew it was there is kind of amazing,” says Chris Fisher, an archaeologist at Colorado State University who led the expedition.

The city extended over ten square miles. “That is a huge area with a lot of people,” says Fisher. “You are talking about 40. 000 building foundations, which is about the same number of building foundations that are on the island of Manhattan.” Archaeologists were surprised when they saw Angamuco’s city plan. The monuments (纪念碑) were largely concentrated in eight zones around the edges rather than being located in one large center.

Archacologists discovered signs of the buried city in 2007 and attempted to explore it using a traditional way. But the team soon realized that it would take at least ten years to outline the whole metropolis. In 2011, they began using lidar to map nearly 14 square miles. Researchers now believe that more than 100. 000 people lived in Angamuco from about AD 1000 to AD 1350. That makes it the biggest city in western Mexico at the time or at least the biggest city we know about so far.

“Everywhere you point the lidar instrument, you find something new.” says Fisher. “Right now. every textbook has to be rewritten. and two years from now. they’re going to have to be rewritten again.”

【推荐1】Using your face to unlock your phone is a pretty genius security. plan. But like any advanced technology, thieves and hackers are always up to the challenge, whether that's unlocking your phone with your face while you sleep or using a photo from social media to do the am.

Like every other human biometric identification system（生物标识系统）before it， such as fingerprints and retina scans, there are still significant.security bugs in some of the most advanced identity verification（证实）technology. Brigham Young University electrical and computer engineering Professor D.J.Lee has decided there is a better and more secure way to use your face for restricted access.

It's called Concurrent Two-Factor Identity Verification (C2FIV) and it requires both one’s facial identity and a specific facial motion to gain access.To set it up,a user faces a camera and records a short 1-2 second video of either a unique facial motion or a lip movement from reading a secret phrase.The video is then input into the device, which obtains facial features and the features of the facial motion, storing them for later ID verification.

To get technical, C2FIV relies on an integrated neural network framework to learn facial features and actions at the same time.Using this integrated neural network framework, the user’s facial features and movements are embedded（嵌入）and stored on a server or in an embedded device and when they later attempt to gain access,the computer compares the newly generated embedding to the stored one.That user's ID is verified if the new and stored embeddings match at a certain level.

Lee said C2FIV has broader application,including accessing restricted areas at a workplace, online banking,ATM use,safe deposit box access or even hotel room entry or keyless access to your vehicle."How great would it be to know that even if you lost your car key, no one can steal your vehicle because they don't know your secret facial action?"