【推荐1】Shanya Gill, 12, a seventh-grader at Miller Middle School in San Jose, spent more than a year developing a fire detection (探测) device.

Last summer Shanya was sad after a fire happened in a restaurant in her California neighborhood. So the middle-schooler got straight to work.

“I had never really experienced something like that before,” she said of the early morning fire at Holder’s Country Inn, which was reported, to have started in the kitchen. No one was hurt, but the restaurant was demolished. “It hit close to my heart because it was part of my community.”

Shanya created a tool that uses thermal imaging (热成像) to detect when a heat source (来源) — such as a gas burner — is left unattended for10 minutes. Her goal, she said, was to design an early warning system that is better than a standard smoke detector.

Shanya recently won the top prize at the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge in D.C., in part for her fire-detection device. Judges were impressed by her fire detection system, featuring a thermal camera and a Raspberry Pi, a small computer board.

Creating the prototype (原型) was not easy, Shanya said. “I had really big difficulties with my project, and almost all of them were related to code (编码),” she said. “I had two designs, and my first design completely failed.”

While Shanya is pleased with her final prototype, she is now working to improve it. She is in the process of trying to find something more affordable than the Raspberry Pi, which starts at around $35, and she is also working to improve the code. Her plan is to bring the product to market and give out the money to organizations that support people who suffer from fires.

Shanya’s success at a young age has made her excited about her future career in science. She hopes to continue creating products that help people.

“I want to follow what I love and try to create a positive impact,” she said.

1. What does the underlined word “demolished” in paragraph 3 mean?

A．Damaged completely.	B．Decorated well.
C．Sold out.	D．Built up.

2. What is the primary goal of Shanya’s fire detection device?

A．To repurpose restaurants.

B．To win science competitions.

C．To replace smoke detectors in homes.

D．To identify unattended heat sources early.

3. What challenged Shanya when she developed the prototype?

A．The cost of materials.

B．Code-related problems.

C．No community support.

D．No experience in invention.

4. What is Shanya’s plan for her fire detection device?

A．Bring it to market.

B．Use it in her school.

C．Keep it for personal use.

D．Use it for further research.

【推荐2】Researchers have designed a 4D-printed soft robot that self-assembles (自动组装) when heated and can take on challenging tasks like rolling uphill and navigating an unpredictable landscape.

“Like an insect with antennae (天线), the robot can overcome a small obstacle. But when the obstacle is too high, it will turn back and never come back,” says senior author Wei Feng, a materials scientist at Tianjin University in China. “The whole process is finished by itself without human’s control.”

When the surface beneath it is heated, the robot form a tube like a spring. The change in shape adds time as a fourth dimension (维度)to the printing process, making it 4D.

Once the robot forms a tube, the contact from the hot surface causes a response in the material, which causes it to roll in one direction. The driving force behind this motion is so strong that the robot can climb up a 20° incline (斜度) or even carry a load 40 times its own weight. The length of the robot affects its speed, with longer robots rolling faster than the shorter ones.

The researchers caught videos showing off the robot’s skills, including a race between differently sized robots and another robot carrying a cart. The videos also show how its behavior changes based on its surroundings, with the robot either climbing up a step or changing directions when encountering a difficult obstacle.

For Feng, the behavior of the robot came as a surprise. He says, “We found many interesting driving phenomena besides the change of shape.” In the future, these soft robots may be used to perform work in small, limited places like in a pipe. “We hope that soft robots will no longer be limited to simple actuators (驱动器), which can only change shape in a fixed position,” says Feng.

1. What will the robot do when an obstacle is beyond its reach?

A．Give up reaching it.

B．Go back to ask for help.

C．Search for another one.

D．Turn to the people around.

2. What will happen when the robot is heated?

A．It will become a spring.

B．It will change faster.

C．It will change its shape.

D．It will be out of control.

3. What can affect the rolling speed of the robot?

A．How heavy it is.

B．How long it is.

C．What it looks like.

D．What direction it rolls in.

4. How does Feng expect the robot to become?

A．More beautiful.

B．More accessible.

C．More convenient.

D．More powerful.

【推荐3】Scientists at the University of Central Florida (UCF) have created a new kind of paint that’s very light and very strong. The colors in the new paint aren’t at all like those in most paints. Instead, they’re more like the colors on a butterfly’s wings.

The colors in most paints come from pigments (色素)—small amounts of colored things mixed into the paint. For hundreds of years, humans have been blending different minerals, metals or chemicals together to produce different colors of paint. But nature has another way to create color, called “structural color”. Structural color comes from small shapes on the surfaces of things like wings or feathers. Normally, we never see the shapes that create these colors.

Researchers at Dr. Debashis Chanda’s lab at UCF weren’t really planning on making paint. They were trying to create a special mirrored surface. But they found super-tiny clumps (簇) of aluminum atoms (铝原子) on the surface. They realized that these clumps made colors when light hit them. So they turned their discovery into paint.

The new paint is so light that it could reduce the amount of fuel used by planes and cars. Normally, it takes about 500 kilograms of paint to cover a Boeing 747 airplane. It’d only take 1.3 kilograms of Dr. Chanda’s structural paint to do the same job. American Airlines once figured that cutting 30.4 kilograms from its flights could save 1,514,000 liters of fuel every year. Structural paint could save over 16 times as much.

In regular paints, pigments break down and become less bright over time. That’s not true for the new paint. “Once we paint something with structural color, it should stay for centuries,” says Dr. Chanda. Besides, the new paint doesn’t heat up like regular paint. The new paint can keep surfaces up to 16.6° Celsius cooler than normal paint.

The scientists know how to make small amounts of the new paint in the lab. Now they’re trying to figure out how to make large amounts of the paint cheaply, and hopefully, it will soon come onto the market.

1. What does the underlined word “blending” in paragraph 2 mean?

A．Mixing.

B．Buying.

C．Creating.

D．Discovering.

2. How was the new paint discovered?

A．Smartly.

B．Carefully.

C．Purposefully.

D．Accidentally.

3. How does the new paint help to reduce planes’ consumption of fuel?

A．By improving their quality.	B．By making them fly faster.
C．By reducing their weight.	D．By using more pigments.

4. What is the author’s attitude towards the new paint?

A．Disapproving.

B．Positive.

C．Unconcerned.

D．Doubtful.

【推荐2】Now that nobody knows for sure what the world will look like in the near future, it can be fun to picture some jobs we might be able to apply for in the coming decade!

Distant drone (无人驾驶飞机)drivers and pilots

How cool would it be to deliver packages from the comfortable office? That’s the way of the future with delivery drones and self-driving trucks. Zach Howard says, “Many delivery companies will soon need lots of drones and a large number of skilled pilots who can run the drones.”

Rewilders

To save Mother Nature, someone will need to remove the damage humans have done to the environment. Through the Jobs of 2030 project, an organization guesses we will need rewilders to remove the damage to the countryside caused by people, factories, cars and farming. These workers will be responsible for removing walls to give flight paths back to birds and replacing roads with forests.

Gamification (游戏化)marketing experts

This future expert will need to make online shopping feel like a game; that is, gamification is about keeping customers more delighted during shopping. The gamification marketing expert will help keep online buyers’ attention by making their experiences more playful and exciting.

1. According to Zach Howard, distant drone drivers and pilots ________

A．can earn lots of money.

B．are required to work outdoors.

C．need update drones regularly.

D．will be in great need.

2. To remove the damage caused by humans, a rewilder’s job will be ________

A．keeping track of birds’ health.

B．returning the roads to forests.

C．constructing more roads for villagers.

D．preserving the cultural heritage.

3. How will the gamification marketing expert most likely influence customers?

A．By creating fun online shopping experiences.

B．By reducing the competition between stores.

C．By decreasing their daily cost of playing games.

D．By making them more likely to communicate.