【推荐1】NASA has big plans for returning astronauts to the moon in 2024, a stepping stone on the path to sending humans to Mars. But where should the first people on the Red Planet land? While there are lots of places on Mars scientists would like to visit, few would make practical landing sites for astronauts. Thanks to the researchers, their newly-published paper in Geophysical Research Letters will help by providing a map of water ice believed to be as little as an inch (2. 5 centimeters) below the surface.

Water ice will be a key consideration for any potential landing site. With little room to spare aboard a spacecraft, any human missions to Mars will have to harvest what’s already available for drinking water. Liquid water can’t last in the thin air of Mars. With so little air pressure, it turns from a solid to a gas when exposed to the atmosphere. On this planet, water ice is locked away underground. Buried water ice changes the temperature of the Martian surface, so the study’s authors relied on heat-sensitive instruments to find ice that astronauts could easily dig up. The authors of the new paper make use of data from spacecrafts to locate water ice that could potentially be within reach of astronauts on the Red Planet.

The paper’s lead author, Sylvain Piqueux of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California said, ‘‘We’re continuing to collect data on buried ice on Mars, aiming to find the best places for astronauts to land.” Piqueux is planning a comprehensive campaign to continue studying buried ice across different seasons, watching how the abundance of this resource changes over time.

【推荐1】What if the car waiting patiently behind a parked bus is a driverless or autonomous vehicle(AV)? Will this robot car be able to understand what you mean when you flash your lights or madly wave your hands? Its sensors could decides that it’s only safe to overtake when there’ no oncoming traffic at all. On a busy road at school home time, this may be never leading to increasingly angry passengers and increasingly angry driers queuing behind.

And how will a robot car driving out from a T-junction into oncoming traffic be able to make the necessary eye contact with a human driver? These safety-first robot cars could become victims of their own politeness and end up being bullied and ignored by aggressive, impatient humans. This, at any rate, is one of the conclusions to be drawn from research carried out by Dr Chris Tennant of the psychological and behavioral science department at the London School of Economics. His Europe-wide survey finds that nearly two-thirds of drivers think machines won’t have enough common sense to interact with human drivers. And more than two-fifths think a robot car would remain stuck behind our parked lorry for a long time.

“If you view the road as a social space, you will consciously negotiate your journey with other drivers. People who like that negotiation process appear to feel less comfortable engaging with AVs than with human drivers,” says Mr. Tennant in his report. Of course, humans are always skeptical about new technologies of which they have little experience. That skepticism usually decreases with usage, however. And even many skeptics accept that emotionless AVs could cause fewer accidents than we humans, with our tendency to road anger, tiredness and lack of concentration. A statistic often repeated is that human error is responsible for more than 90% of accidents. But 70% of the 12,000 people Mr. Tennant and his team interviewed agreed that: “ As a point of principle, humans should be in control of their vehicles.” An even greater proportion-80%-thought an autonomous vehicle should always have a steering wheel.

【推荐2】Those who are concerned that robots are taking over the world can rest easy—for now. Though the androids have proved useful at performing ordinary tasks, they are not ready for the greatest time. At least that appears to be the case at Japan’s Henn-na Hotel chain where over half of the robot staff are being replaced by humans.

The first location of the unique hotel opened in July 2015 was at Nagasaki’s Huis Ten Bosch Theme Park. The hotel’s owner, Hideo Sawada, promised the hotel to be managed primarily by robots. Guests were greeted and checked-in by a dinosaur robot, while a cute android called Churi, placed inside each room, provided information about attractions. Not surprisingly, the lodging, recognized in 2016 as the world’s first robot-staffed hotel by Guinness World Records, drew in curious visitors from all around the world.

But as the years have passed, the hotel’s main draw is becoming less novel and more unsatisfactory. Also as the robots are “aging”, they are costing more to repair. Among the 283 androids being replaced are the chain’s two dinosaur receptionists. In addition to scaring young guests, they are also unable to photocopy guests’ passports, forcing human employees to step in each time. Also out are the cute Churi robots, which annoyed guests by interrupting their conversations. For example, one guest told The Wall Street Journal that Churi mistook his snoring for a command and kept asking him to repeat his request all night.

Sawada told The Wall Street Journal, “When you actually use robots you realize there are places where they aren’t needed—or just annoy people.” While Sawada may be cutting back on his use of androids, the recently-opened Smart LYZ Hotel and the Fly Zoo Hotel in China, are run entirely by robots, with not a human in sight. Whether the employees have more competence than those “hired” by the Henn-na Hotel chain remains to be seen.

【推荐1】Chinese researchers have developed a robot designed to help doctors treat the new coronavirus and other highly infectious diseases. The machine has a long robotic arm attached to a base with wheels. It can perform some of the same medical examination tasks as doctors. For example, the device can perform ultrasounds (超声波扫描检查), collect fluid samples from a person’s mouth and listen to sounds made by a patient’s organs. Cameras record the robot’s activities, which are controlled remotely so doctors can avoid coming in close contact with infected patients. Doctors and other medical workers can operate the machine in another place.

The robot’s main designer Zheng Gangtie, an engineer and professor at China’s Tsinghua University, told Reuters news agency that he got the idea for the device when his medical friend told him that one of the biggest problems in dealing with COVID-19 was that healthcare workers treating patients were getting infected themselves. Zheng said he wanted to do something to help this situation. So the engineer gathered a team and went to work on the robotic device.

Zheng said the devices use the same technology that is used for space equipment, including moon explorers. The new robot is almost completely automated. It can even disinfect itself after performing actions involving patient contact.

However, Zheng said he had heard from some doctors that it would be better not to build such robots to be fully automatic. This is because many patients still desire a personal presence to help calm them during treatment.

The team currently has two robots and both have been tested by doctors at hospitals in Beijing. One machine was taken to Wuhan’s Union Hospital, where doctors there got trained to use it. The plan is to use the robot to help treat coronavirus patients, along with assistance from nurses and other hospital workers.

Zheng would like to build more of the robots, but says money from the university has run out. Each robot costs about $72,000 to make. He says he does not plan to commercialize the design, but hopes that a company can begin that process.

【推荐2】Astronomers have found patches(斑块) of frost around the moon' s north and south poles which could one day provide a source of water for human visitors. The scientists spotted the signature of frozen water in infra -red(红外线的) measurements taken by Nasa' s moon mineralogy mapper, an instrument that flew on India's Chandrayaan-1 mission to the moon a decade ago. The freshly-analyzed data show that water ice lies low on the ground near the moon's polar regions that are permanently in shade and so sheltered from the heat of the sun' s rays.

Most of the ice was found near the moon' s south pole around a bunch of craters. In the north, the patches of ice appeared to be more separated, according to Shuai Li at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology in Honolulu. Follow-up measurements of the ice patches found that they tended to form where the surface temperature never rose above -163 °C, but temperature alone was not enough to guarantee frozen water: only 3.5% of the shadowy areas the scientists checked for water revealed notable signs of ice.

The images are the first “direct and definitive evidence” of water ice that is exposed on the surface of the moon, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.“These ice deposits might be put to use as a local resource in future exploration of the moon,” the authors write.

The Indian Space Agency launched its Chandrayaan-l mission to the moon in 2008 and was swiftly rewarded with evidence of frozen water on the lunar surface a year later. Rather than sheets of ice on the surface, the water is thought to exist as water molecules(分子) bound to grains of moon dust.

Soon after the Indian feat, NASA crashed a spacecraft into the 100km-wide Cabeus crater which is in permanent shade on the moon s south pole. The intentional act of lunar violence threw up some pieces of soil from which scientists were able to confirm the presence of water on the moon.

【推荐3】Scientists today are making greater effort to study ocean currents (洋流). Most do it using satellites and other high­tech equipment. However, ocean expert Curtis Ebbesmeyer does it in a special way — by studying movements of random floating garbage. A scientist with many years’ experience, he started this type of research in the early 1990s when he heard about hundreds of athletic shoes washing up on the shores of the northwest coast of the United States. There were so many shoes that people were setting up swap meets to try and match left and right shoes to sell or wear.

Ebbesmeyer found out in his researches that the shoes — about 60,000 in total — fell into the ocean in a shipping accident. He phoned the shoe company and asked if they wanted the shoes back. As expected, the company told him that they didn’t. Ebbesmeyer realized this could be a great experiment. If he learned when and where the shoes went into the water and tracked where they landed, he could learn a lot about the patterns of ocean currents.

The Pacific Northwest is one of the world’s best areas for beachcombing (海滩搜寻) because winds and currents join here, and as a result, there is a group of serious beachcombers in the area. Ebbesmeyer got to know a lot of them and asked for their help in collecting information about where the shoes landed. In a year he collected reliable information on 1,600 shoes. With this data, he and a colleague were able to test and improve a computer program designed to model ocean currents, and publish the findings of their study.

As the result of his work, Ebbesmeyer has become known as the scientist to call with questions about any unusual objects found floating in the ocean. He has even started an association of beachcombers and ocean experts, with 500 subscribers from West Africa to New Zealand. They have recorded all lost objects ranging from potatoes to golf gloves.

【推荐1】One of my favorite posters says, “Life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been a real life, you would have been instructed where to go and what to do.” Whenever I think of this humorous bit of wisdom, it reminds me not to take my life so seriously.

When you look at life and its many challenges as a test, or series of tests, you begin to see each issue you face as an opportunity to grow, a chance to discover more about life. Whether you’re being bombarded(轰炸) with problems, responsibilities, even insurmountable(不能超越的) difficulties, when looked at as a test, you always have a chance to succeed, in the sense of rising above that which is challenging you. If, on the other hand, you see each new issue you face as a serious battle that must be won in order to survive, you’re probably in a very rocky journey. The only time you’re likely to be happy is when everything is working out just right. And we all know how often that happens.

As an experiment, see if you can apply this idea to something you are forced to deal with. Perhaps you have much pressure from your parents or you have a demanding boss. See if you can redefine the issue you face from being a “problem” to being a test. Rather than struggling with your issue, see if there is something you can learn from it. Ask yourself, “Why is this an issue in my life? What would it mean and what would be involved to rise above it? Could I possibly look at this issue any differently? Can I see it as a test of some kind?”

If you give this strategy(策略) a try you may be surprised at your changed responses. It has become far more acceptable to me to accept things as they are.

【推荐2】We can achieve knowledge either actively or passively（被动地）. We achieve it actively by direct experience, by testing and proving an idea, or by reasoning．

We achieve knowledge passively by being told by someone else．Most of the learning that takes place in the classroom and the kind that happens when we watch TV or read newspapers or magazines is passive. Conditioned as we are to passive learning, it’s not surprising that we depend on it in our everyday communication with friends and co-workers．

Unfortunately, passive learning has a serious problem．It makes us tend to accept what we are told even when it is little more than hearsay and rumor（谣言）．

Did you ever play the game Rumor? It begins when one person writes down a message but doesn’t show it to anyone．Then the person whispers it, word for word, to another person．That person, in turn, whispers it to still another, and so on, through all the people playing the game．The last person writes down the message word for word as he or she hears it．Then the two written statements are compared．Typically, the original message has changed．

That’s what happens in daily life．The simple fact that people repeat a story in their own words changes the story．Then, too, most people listen imperfectly．And many enjoy adding their own creative touch to a story, trying to improve on it, stamping（打上标记）it with their own personal style．Yet those who hear it think they know．

This process is also found among scholars and authors: A statement of opinion by one writer may be restated as a fact by another, who may in turn be quoted by yet another; and this process may continue, unless it occurs to someone to question the facts on which the original writer based his opinion or to challenge the interpretation he placed upon those facts．

【推荐3】What I used to find attractive about journalism was that it brought you into contact with a huge range of interesting people, or at least people to whom interesting things had happened. But is that true? If I were coming in now, would I find journalism as attractive a job as when I first earned my pay- cheque 30 years ago?

The problem is the impact of the internet on how we write our stories. We all know the benefits that the web has provided. It has enabled journalists, along with everyone else, to find instant answers to almost any question, no matter how unusual. It has hugely quickened the gathering and spreading of news. And if the appearance of informed and readable amateur “bloggers” has forced journalists - the supposed professionals - to sharpen up our act, so much the better.

But the revolution has brought one huge negative pressure on journalists. Because the internet seems to include everything, we are deeply addicted to it. Now we spend most of our working hours in our offices, staring at screen. Oral contact with people in the outside world is heavily reduced. Face-to-face communication seems so 20th-century, such a waste of time.

This attitude not only limits the journalist’s ability to understand the complexities of the world. It also leads to what I call “hall of mirrors” reporting, in which the media village chews and chews on the same few subjects, which are often of far more interest to media staff than ordinary people.

This isn’t a cry for the days when journalists spent half their week talking to people. But it’s a request for those who claim to report the world’s affairs to get out more - to experience life at first hand, or at least to talk regularly with those who do. What many journalists report now is not reality, but virtual reality: human existence as known through a computer screen.

But perhaps that’s the way humanity in general is going. It would be funny if the communication revolution of the past 20 years ended up killing the greatest form of communication ever developed. “We should start a Campaign for Real Conversation,” I said to a colleague the other morning. “Good idea,” he replied. “Send me an e-mail.”