【推荐3】According to Nielsen, the average number of mobile phone calls we make is dropping every year, after hitting a peak in 2007. And our calls are getting shorter: In 2005 they averaged three minutes in length;   now they’re almost half that.

We are moving, in other words, toward a fascinating cultural transition: the death of the telephone call. This shift is particularly plain among the young. Some college students I know go days without talking into their smartphones at all.

This generation doesn’t make phone calls, because everyone is in constant, lightweight contact in so many other ways: texting, chatting, and social-network messaging. And we don’t just have more options than we used to. We have better ones: These new forms of communication have exposed the fact that the voice call is badly designed. It deserves to die. Consider: If I suddenly decide I want to dial you up, I have no way of knowing whether you’re busy, and you have no idea why I’m calling.

We have to open Schrodinger’s box every time, having a conversation to figure out whether it’s OK to have a conversation. Plus, voice calls are emotionally high-bandwidth, which is why it’s so weirdly exhausting to be interrupted by one. (We apparently find voicemail even more torturous: Studies show that more than a fifth of all voice messages are never listened to.)

The telephone, in other words, doesn’t provide any information about status, so we are constantly interrupting one another. The other tools at our disposal are more polite. Instant messaging lets us detect whether our friends are busy without our annoying them, and texting lets us ping one another but not at the same time. (Plus, we can spend more time thinking about what we want to say.) Despite the hue and cry about becoming an “always on” society, we’re actually moving away from the demand that everyone should be available immediately.

We’ll still make fewer phone calls, as most of our former phone time will migrate to other media. But the calls we do make will be longer, reserved for the sort of deep discussion that the medium does best.

As video chatting becomes more common, enabled by the new iPhone and other devices, we might see the growth of persistent telepresence, leaving video-chat open all day so we can speak to a spouse or colleague spontaneously. Or, to put it another way, we’ll call less but talk more.

【推荐1】Over 70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water, but it’s undrinkable. Scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC ) have modeled a system that can collect water vapor (水蒸汽) from above the ocean surface and freeze it into fresh drinking water at a large scale.

Water shortage is an issue that’s projected to get worse, as climate change makes dry areas even drier. The oceans, home to over 96% of water on Earth, represent a huge potential reservoir (a place to store water), but desalination (海水淡化) is a challenging and complex prospect to scale up because of the poisonous wastewater it produces.

But nature already has a pretty good desalination system — the sun is heating up the surface of the ocean and evaporating water out of it, which of course goes on to become rain. In a new study, the UIUC team came up with a method to use this resource. The team proposes that structures could be built several kilometers offshore to obtain air rich in water vapor from above the ocean surface. That air can then be piped back to land and turned into water. This fresh water could then be used for drinking, agriculture, or whatever else a region needs it for. The whole system could be powered by offshore wind farms and land-based solar panels.

The researchers evaluated 14 cities around the world, analyzing how much water could be collected based on the offshore air in those locations. Based on their models, the scientists estimated that these structures could collect between 37.6 billion and 78.3 billion liters of water per year, depending on the conditions in a specific location.

The team says that the solution is pretty good, since it works like the natural water cycle except that the vapor is guided to where it’s needed. “The system we are proposing will be useful under climate change. This provides a much needed approach for adaptation to climate change, particularly to populations living in dry and semi-dry regions of the. world,” said Afeefa Rahman, the co-author of the study.

【推荐2】B

The African grey parrot’s ability to talk and mimic sounds makes it a charming companion. African grey owners often report that their greys oftentimes talk in context and can understand their people’s emotions(情感). The African grey parrot is not just a top talker — this bird is also known for its extreme intelligence, which gives them the name ＂The Einsteins of the Bird World＂.

The bird is medium-sized, dusty-looking and almost pigeon-like. It has a bright red tail, intelligent orange eyes, and a stunning scalloped(扇形的) pattern to its feathers. Their diet in the wild consists mostly of nuts, seeds, fruits, and leafy matter.

At home, African greys need plenty of toys that challenge their intelligence, such as food searching and puzzle toys. Nutri-Berries by Lafeber Company are a perfect choice, which, with a balance of grains, seeds and other nutrients in the shape of a berry, encourages African greys to hold, bite off, and even play with, just as they do in the wild.

African greys seem especially affected by stress and disturbing noise in their environment and can be put more at ease by placing one corner of the cage against a wall as opposed to in the middle of a room.

African grey parrots are more likely to suffer from lack of Vitamin-A/beta-carotene, and therefore benefit from eating vegetables high in beta-carotene, such as cooked sweet potato and fresh kale. Lack of Vitamin-D is another concern, especially for greys on a poor diet. Offering a balanced, pill-shaped diet, such as Nutri-Berries, helps prevent vitamin and mineral shortage.

【推荐3】Over the past few decades, children have been taking part less in free play and more in organized sports. While doing organized sports has both social and physical benefits for young children, worries about safety and benefits increase.

Though most children are naturally likely to be physically active, not all kids are willing to get up and move. Soccer coach Joseph Luxbacher says, “Every kid has the possibility of being a good sportsman in different kinds of sports. Participating (参加) in organized sports such as the school soccer team introduces direction to children’s physical activities. Following a team schedule gives kids a set time and place to exercise. As a result, kids can be safe from accidents and be protected against physical harm.”

What’s more, participating in organized sports gives children time to communicate with others and shows good sportsmanship. For young children who may still be very self-centered, participating in team, sports teach them to think about the group and encourages them to be glad about the success of their teammates. Kids can also benefit from spending time with their coach and having a chance to develop a positive (良好的) relationship with an adult other than their parents, especially if the coach is both skilled and devoted (全心全意的) to being a positive instructor.

Playing organized sports requires a lot of time for practice and games, so it would seem that this could influence students’ study. Actually it can ameliorate students’ test performance. That’s because to play organized sports well, players have to memorize information, do repetitive actions, and learn from teammates. All these types of learning skills can make students score higher.

Since stress can come from many different sources — parents, coaches, teammates or themselves — many children who participate in organized sports feel pressured to succeed. While a little stress can be helpful in leading children to perform with increased focus and strength, too much stress will leave young kids feeling very tired. Organized sports are more likely to put the right amount of pressure on them.

【推荐2】Artificial intelligence (AI) plays an important role in the Asian Games Hangzhou 2022 and Asian Para Games. AI usually refers to the advanced technologies, such as the naked-eye 3D, VR, AR and so on. These terms might sound familiar, but how smart are they when applied to the 56 Asian Games venues (场地)?

Their smartness can be found in running the venues with less human labor forces and with more connections between man and machines. At the Huanglong Sports Center, a system called Smart Stadium Brain is built. The Brain, a 25-square-meter high-definition (高清晰度) screen in the venue’s information center, displays the entire venue in 3D visualization to keep an eye on the temperature, the lighting, the energy consumption, and the equipment to guarantee a friendly environment for the athletes and audiences. For the benefit of audiences, a small screen on each seat is designed to be at the audience’s service. By finger touching, the audience can control it from three parts — angle, speed, and size to watch and keep in contact with the event. What’s more, supported by the 5G technology, a 360° playback function is fixed.

AI also means further protection on environment. At the Fuyang sports Center, although it has been raining for days, the roof of the venue still remains dry. And the secret lies in its attractive sky garden. The garden, covering the roof, is not only eye-catching but also useful. It allows the greening rate of the entire stadium to reach as high as 45%, being energy-saving. Under the cobblestones (鹅卵石) of the sky garden, a recovery system is filtering (过滤) and collecting rainwater for the venue’s water system, fountain, and irrigation water.

【推荐3】Zwingmann teaches online courses on artificial intelligence (AI) and helps customers make use of AI. Recently, he has been producing lecture notes by using ChatGPT, an advanced AI chatting robot. “I went up and said, ‘OK, tell me detailed steps of how the DBSCAN algorithm works,’ and it gave me that answer step by step,” Zwingmann said.

The ChatGPT Zwingmann uses has taken the Internet by storm. It allows users to input questions that ask the real assistant to create a series of writing tasks. Despite its beginning stage, ChatGPT has the potential to be a game-changer for the whole world.

The GPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer”, providing detailed answers to users’ questions. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer follow up questions, challenge incorrect statements and reject improper requests.

If you have a passion for writing but aren’t sure how to add a little elegance to your words, ChatGPT can help! If you want to create your personal web page but know little about HTML code, ChatGPT can help create the code for you! Even if you are an experienced developer, ChatGPT can help you analyze the code and provide a detailed explanation of the error along with suggestions for how to fix it.

Despite looking very impressive, ChatGPT still has its limitations. Such limitations include the inability to answer questions that are worded a specific way and the lack of quality in the responses it delivers, which sometimes seem to be reasonable but make no sense. With its widespread use, there is growing concern about how the tool might be used to help students create essays for class homework.

So how good is it at producing literary works in the style of a news article? And how does its writing live up to the likes of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, or a film producer like Ben Affleck? Judge for yourself.