【推荐3】Taktak tabulaba?

You probably don’t know how to answer that question---unless you happen to be one of the about 430 people in the world who speak a language called Matukar Panau. Then you would know it means “What are we doing?” Matukar Panau is one of the world’s rarest languages. It is spoken in just two small coastal villages in Papua New Guinea.

Several years ago, David Harrison, a language expert didn’t know much about Matukar Panau either. No one had ever recorded or even studied its words and rules. With so few speakers, the language risked disappearing soon. It was endangered.

Harrison didn’t want that to happen to Matukar Panau. So in 2009, he set out for Papua New Guinea. His goal: use modern technology to help the remaining speakers preserve their native tongue.

But Matukar Panau is far from the only language facing loss. Studies suggest that by the end of this century, nearly half of the 7,000 languages now spoken worldwide could disappear. They’re in danger partly because the only people left speaking them are elderly adults, Harrison says. When those individuals die, their language will die with them. In addition, children may discard a native language and instead use more common global languages, such as Chinese, English or Spanish.

In the United States alone, 134 native American languages are endangered. Harrison says, “language hotspots” exist all over the world. These are places with endangered languages that haven’t been recorded. They include the state of Oklahoma, pockets of central and eastern Siberia, parts of northern Australia and communities in South America.

【推荐1】Obesity(肥胖) has become a serious problem now. According to a recent survey, teenage obesity has increased at an alarming rate across America. Teenage obesity is mainly due to the increased consumption (消耗) of junk food which contains large amounts of fat. This has exposed the teens to a 14% greater risk of having a heart attack as well as seriously high blood pressure.

Various causes of teen obesity have been claimed, the most important of which is having insufficient physical exercise on the teens’ part. It is argued that teens nowadays who lack sufficient physical exercise and have unhealthy eating habits are more likely to be obese. Nowadays, a main part of the teenagers spend their spare time on the computer, television or perhaps simply playing games. This greatly limits any kind of physical activity of the teenager. According to a recent survey, around 43% of teenagers spend more than 2 hours watching television every single day.

Long time inactivity in addition to the ill eating habits has increased the chance of obesity in teenagers even more. However, this does not mean that teens do not do enough exercise, but the amount which they do, is certainly not enough as compared to their intake of fatty foods. Besides this, parents need to change the whole lifestyle of the family in order to develop a healthier lifestyle of their children.

The teenagers must also be encouraged to take part in other physical activities which require more effort; such as playing basketball, tennis, badminton, volleyball and swimming. Meanwhile, the teenagers also need to be educated on the ill effects of junk food and must be asked to avoid them as much as possible. Their diet must also be made healthier and more balanced, which will help them in losing more weight quickly. For better guidance on reducing the teens’ weight quickly, parents can always turn to a doctor.

【推荐2】A foreign degree was once believed to be a sure path to a well-paid job. However, more and more graduates have found that this is not necessarily true.

The number of Chinese studying abroad grew at a slower rate in 2018 compared with 2017, according to a recent report released by the Ministry of Education. In 2018, 662,100 Chinese went abroad to study, up 8.83 percent from a year earlier, while the growth rate was 11.7 percent in 2017.

A major reason for the slower growth is that more and more students have realized that overseas study does not necessarily guarantee a well-paid job, reported China Daily.

According to a 2018 report by the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), about a third of graduate returnees to China earn less than 6,000 yuan a month, while 25 percent make between 6,000 and 8,000 yuan a month.

For example, Lucy Liu, a woman from Beijing, was disappointed after being interviewed by a famous film studio in Beijing. She had just finished her postgraduate (研究生) studies in documentary production at New York University in the United States.

“The pay would be 150,000 yuan for one documentary, and at best I could finish one documentary a year,” Liu told South China Morning Post.

“After spending so much on my studies, I couldn’t accept that pay,” said Liu. She spent about 1 million yuan in tuition and living expenses while studying abroad.

Worse still, it takes over four months for over 50 percent of returned students to land a job, and only 20 percent get job offers before graduation, according to Qi Bin, from Haiwei Career Services, a company that specializes in employment for returnees.

Two major reasons are that they often miss the main job-seeking season while they’re abroad and they lack internship experience, Qi told China Daily.

However, this doesn’t mean studying overseas is useless.

On the contrary, it may provide students with good language and communication skills, an independent character and a global mindset, which are important for their career development, according to Qi.

“Studying overseas cannot guarantee everything, but foreign-educated students have great potential, and at some point their break will come,” Li Qing, a researcher from CCG, told the South China Morning Post.

【推荐3】Robots really are taking over the world. They’re writing novels— the first was 1 the Road, a cyborg’s homage to Jack Kerouac published in 2018. And they’re making lunch: The California restaurant chain Cali Burger is trying out a robot that can flip 2, 000 burgers a day. What human can compete--especially given that robots don’t complain, ask for raises, or get drunk at the office Christmas party?

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the invention of the word robot by the Czech playwright Karel Capek, we thought it would be fun to take a look at another side of robotkind, one that’s all too human. Here’re two failed attempts by robots to replace us flesh-and-bone types.

A few years back, the Hennna Hotel in Nagasaki, Japan, hired 243 robots to cover positions ranging from receptionists to bellboys. Unfortunately, the check-in robots had trouble answering guests’ questions and photocopying passports, while bellboy robots kept banging into walls and tripping over curbs. One in-room assistant sprang to attention every time a lodger snored, saying, “Sorry, I couldn’t catch that. Could you repeat your request?” Not long after the experiment began, the hotel "fired" half of the malfunctioning robots. And they didn’t get their tips, either.

Facial recognition software has one problem— it can’t always recognize faces. The American Civil Liberties Union proved that point when it used the Amazon Rekognition software to match mug shots of criminals to 28 members of Congress. But what about soccer ball recognition? During a match last year, the Scottish soccer team Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC unveiled AI-programmed video cameras designed to automatically follow the ball. Alas, the cameras constantly mistook the referee’s bald head for the soccer ball. One helpful viewer called the team to suggest supplying the referee with a cap.

A．

B．

C．

D．