【推荐2】Global Positioning Systems are now a part of everyday driving in many countries. These satellitebased systems provide turnbyturn directions to help people get to where they want to go. But, they can also cause a lot of problems, send you to the wrong place or leave you completely lost. Many times, the driver is to blame. Sometimes a GPS error is responsible. “Most often”, says Barry Brown, an expert in humancomputer interaction, “it is a combination of the two”.

We spoke to Mr Brown by Skype (网络电话软件). He told us about an incident involving a friend who had flown to an airport in the eastern United States. There he borrowed a GPSequipped car to use during his stay. Barry Brown, “And they just plugged in an address and then set off to their destination. And, then it wasn’t until they were driving for thirty minutes that they realized they actually put in a destination back on the West Coast where they lived. They actually put their home address in. So again, the GPS is kind of ‘garbage in garbage out’”.

Mr Brown says this is a common human error. But, he says, what makes the problem worse has to do with some of the shortcomings, or failures, of GPS equipment. Barry Brown, “One problem with a lot of the GPS units is they have a very small screen and they just tell you the next turn. Because they just give you the next turn, sometimes that means that it is not really giving you the overview that you would need to know that it’s going to the wrong place.”

Barry Brown once worked on a project with Eric Laurier from the University of Edinburgh. The two men studied the effects of GPS devices on driving by placing cameras in people’s cars. They wrote a paper based on their research. It is called “The Normal, Natural Troubles of Driving with GPS”. It lists several areas where GPS systems can cause confusion for drivers. These include maps that are outdated, incorrect or difficult to understand. They also include timing issues related to when GPS commands are given.

Barry Brown says to make GPS systems better we need a better understanding of how drivers, passengers and GPS systems work together.

【推荐1】Alexa is a form of artificial intelligence, or AI for short. Many people start their mornings by asking Alexa for the weather forecast or the latest news. A device(设备) that houses Alexa can also play music from your favorite playlists, keep a shopping list, order takeout food, answer questions, send messages and even run “smart” home controls.

Training AI systems to respond to problems with human-like intelligence and learn from their mistakes can take months, or even years. Consider Alexa and similar software, such as Apple’s Siri. To do the tasks its human owners ask, these systems must make sense of and then respond to sentences such as, “Alexa, play my Ed Sheeran playlist” or “Siri, what is the capital of India?”

Computers can’ t understand language as it is spoken by people. So AI researchers must find a way to help humans communicate with computers. The technology used to get computers to “understand” human speech or text is known as natural language processing. By natural language, computer scientists refer to the way people naturally talk or write. To teach an AI system a task like comprehending(理解) a sentence or responding to a person ’s last move in a board game, scientists need to feed it lots of examples.

AlphaGo is an AI system designed by Google that has beaten a human champion, Lee Sedol, at the strategy(策略) board game Go. To train AlphaGo, Google had to show it 30 million Go moves that people had made while playing the game. Then AlphaGo used what it learned to analyze those plays as it played against different versions (版本) of itself. During this practice, the program came up with new moves---ones never seen in games between people.

【推荐2】Hikers, soldiers and school children all know the burden of a heavy backpack. But now, researchers from three Chinese institutes have developed a prototype(雏形) that not only makes loads feel about 20% lighter, but also harvests energy from human movements to power small electronics.

The new backpack, reported in ACS Nano, could be especially useful for athletes, explorers and disaster rescuers who work in remote areas without electricity, the researchers say.

Backpacks are widely used in everyday life for the hands-free carrying of loads. Over time, however, walking or running with a heavy bag can cause back and neck pain. Also, backpackers in wilderness areas or even those in cities who don’t have ready access to a charger might wish for a bag that could harvest the mechanical energy of walking to power portable electronics or health-monitoring sensors.

Previously, researchers have used triboelectric nanogenerators(TENG) –– small devices that convert mechanical energy into electricity –– to make energy-harvesting backpacks, but those bags had relatively low power outputs and they didn’t provide added benefits, such as load lightening or shock absorption. Zhong Lin Wang, Jia Cheng and their colleagues wanted to design a prototype that overcame these limitations.

To save labor and absorb shock, the researchers installed two elastomers(弹性体) into the backpack that stretched and shrank, keeping the bag steady as the wearer walked. This resulted in about a 20% reduced force on the wearer. Meanwhile, the movement between the frame of the backpack and its load during walking drove a TENG to convert mechanical energy into electricity, with 14% efficiency.

“The researchers showed that the bag could power LEDs, an electric watch and fluorescent tubes. Once some challenges, such as improving the energy conversion efficiency, are overcome, the backpack has promising potential as a power source for small-scale wearable and portable electronics, GPSs and health care sensors,” the researchers say.

【推荐3】Concerns about health, animals and the environment are leading more people to remove meat from their diet. Plant-based meat alternatives(替代物) increasingly appear in supermarkets and restaurants. But what some people call clean meat—meat grown from cells in a laboratory—is still an idea that is just beginning.

More than 24 companies are testing lab-grown fish, beef and chicken. These business hope to enter the alternative meat market, which could be worth $140 billion by 2029. One of the companies, Shiok Meats, grows its product by taking shrimp(虾) cells and keeping them at a fixed temperature. They are then given nutrients(养分) in a solution. The cells become meat in four to six weeks.

This lab-grown meat’s price is high. One kilogram of it now costs $5,000, said Shiok Meats’ chief executive Sandhya Sriram. At that cost, a single pork and shrimp dumpling could be as much as $300. Sriram, a vegetarian, hopes to cut the cost to $50 for one kilogram by the end of this year. “We are looking at next year, so we might be the first ever company to launch a cell-based meat product in the world,” Sriram said. “Shiok Meats still needs approval from the city’s food regulator, and that matters the most at present.”

Although people increasingly demand meat alternatives, cell - based meat companies still face resistance to their products. In Singapore, some people said they would give lab-grown meat a second thought. “I may not exactly dare to eat it, but I do find the idea appealing because the animals in the oceans are declining,” said 60-year- old Pet Loh, while she shopped for shrimps in a Singapore market.

Any alternative wav of making animal protein without harming the environment is positive, said Paul Teng, a specialist in agriculture technology at Nanyang Technological University. But, he added, more studies are needed to understand any negative result of making cellular protein.

【推荐1】In the digital age, we rely on technology such as social media in trying to build interesting and varied lives. Social networking sites like Facebook are designed and promoted to make us believe enthusiastically that they are able to open up new experiences for us. There are constant notifications (通知) and updates, urging us to check-in to find out what is new.

But if we do not use the technology wisely, we can end up becoming overly attached and trapped in a cycle of social media FOMO, a sign of deeper unhappiness. FOMO, or fear of missing out, is a fear that exciting or interesting events are happening somewhere else and that we are not able to join.

People who experience high levels of FOMO have been found to be more likely to give in to urges to write and check text messages while driving, as well as to use Facebook more often directly after waking, while going to sleep and during meals.

When it comes to lasting happiness, it is best not to give in to FOMO, but rather to deal with the cycle of desires that fuel it. Hard as it is, we are better off working toward facing the fearful reality that we cannot experience everything we might like than to get caught in a cycle of checking behaviors that only cause anxiety.

If we have become used to using social media as part of our attempts at living interesting lives, we must admit that it is not easy to change our approach. But change is almost always worthwhile in the long run.

The fact that FOMO is so common in our digital age is a sign that there is something wrong with the way we are pursuing happiness and that we are not as happy as we might think we are. It should warn us that, in our eagerness to use digital technology to try to make ourselves happier, we may unintentionally (无意之中) be bringing on exactly the opposite result.

【推荐1】Imagine you’re standing in line to buy an after-school snack at a store. You step up to the counter and the cashier scans your food. Next, you have to pay. But instead of scanning a QR code (二维码) with your smartphone, you just hold out your hand so the cashier can scan your fingerprint. Or, a camera scans your face, your eyes or even your ear.

Now, this type of technology might not be far away. As technology companies move away from the traditional password, biometric(生物识别的) security, which includes fingerprint, face and voice ID, is becoming increasingly popular.

In 2013, Apple introduced the iPhone 5s, one of the first smartphones with a fingerprint scanner. Since then, using one’s fingerprint to unlock a phone and make mobile payments has become commonplace, bringing convenience to our lives. And since last year, Samsung has featured eye-scanning technology in its top smartphones, while Apple’s new iPhone X can even scan a user’s face. But despite its popularity, experts warn that biometrics might not be as secure as we’d imagined. “Biometrics are ideally good, but in practice, not so much” said John Michener, a biometrics expert.

When introducing the new iPhone’s Face ID feature, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president, said, “The chance that a random person in the population could look at your iPhone X and unlock it with their face is about one in a million.” But it’s already been done. In a video posted on community website Reddi, two brothers showed how they were each able to unlock the same iPhone X using their own face. And they aren’t even twins.

“We may expect too much from biometrics,” Anil Jain, a computer science professor at Michigan State University, told CBS News. “No security systems are perfect.”

Earlier this year, Jain found a way to trick biometric security. Using a printed copy of a thumbprint, she was able to unlock a dead person’s smartphone for police, according to tech website Splinter. “It’s good to see biometrics being used more,” Jain told CBS News, “because it adds another factors for security. But using multiple security measures is the best defense.”

【推荐2】Human demands for natural resources have doubled in less than 50 years and are now beyond what the earth can provide, a report warned. If humans carry on like this, we will need two earths by 2030. The population of wildlife has fallen by 60% in thirty years.

The report said British people are consuming (消耗) far more than the earth can deal with. If everyone lived such a lifestyle, humans would need 2.75 planets to survive. People are now living lifestyles which would require 1.5 planets, though there are great differences between rich and poor nations.

Researchers studied the global change in land use and water consumption. The UK comes 31st in a list of countries based on “ecological footprint (生态足迹)” that measures how much land and sea each person needs to produce the resources they consume and to absorb (吸收) the wastes. The UK has fallen down from 15th place in the last report two years ago to 3lst place, but the WWF believes it is an increase in other countries’ efforts rather than a reduction in the UK’s use of resources.

Ireland has the 10th highest ecological footprint, while the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Denmark, Belgium and the US are the five worst countries for over-consumption of resources. The study suggests if the expected global population of 9.2 billion in 2050 were to eat a Malaysian diet, 1.3 planets would be needed but if everyone were to eat an Italian diet, humans would need almost two planets. Those countries that can provide the highest quality of life using the lowest amount of resources will not only serve the global interest, but will be the leaders in a resource-limited world.

【推荐3】Gene therapy (基因治疗) is a revolutionary new technique for treating people with health problems. Up until very recently, the most commonly available methods for treating patients were either through drugs or operations. Gene therapy provides a third option for treatment by transforming or replacing cells with new genetic materials and instructions. Scientists can be very precise in the kinds of changes they make in patients.

Gene therapy works by using a delivery system, such as a virus, to enter a patient's body. Once inside the body, the virus combines with a host cell and delivers the new DNA. The proteins then begin to repair the affected cells. New techniques have focused on removing cells from the patients and transforming them outside the body before reintroducing them to the patients.

The two types of gene therapy are called somatic and germline. Somatic therapy refers to changing or replacing a body cell. In this case, the treatment is restricted to the patient only. This will not affect the patient's future children because the patient's germ (生殖) cells are unaffected. In germline therapy, the patient germ cells are treated, which may affect the patient's future generation.This is highly controversial (有争议的) because it is not clear exactly how this might affect them and further generations. For this reason, many countries have passed laws that prohibit this kind of treatment.

Despite the promise of gene therapy, there are still many barriers that need to be overcome before it comes into widespread use. One of the issues is that the use of viruses to deliver DNA may actually cause unexpected problems in patients if the virus grows and attacks the body. Another problem is the nature of many diseases is very complex and spread throughout multiple genes. The use of gene therapy to change a single gene in the body would probably not be sufficient as a cure. Finally, the costs of gene therapy are high. Some gene therapy procedures may cost over$1 million to undertake and require specialized doctors and equipment.