【推荐1】People depend on plants. We use plants for food, cloth, shelter(住处), and even the air we breathe(呼吸).

Plants keep our air and water clean. Green plants give us oxygen (氧气). Oxygen is part of the air we breathe.

Plants are also part of the water cycle(水循环). Most of the water that a plant takes in goes back into the air.

Plants give us a lot of the food on the earth. Fruits, vegetables, and grains(谷物) come from plants. Without plants, we would not have bread, ice, carrots, apples, oranges, or bananas! Many people are growing plants to eat in their own gardens at home.

Having your own garden helps the earth as well.

When you grow your own fruits and vegetables, you help cut down on pollution amount because big trucks don’t need to take your food to shops. You also help reduce the amount of rubbish because you don’t need to use bags for packing your food. You can just pick it out of the ground or off a plant and put it into a basket!

Trees are an important plant resource(资源). Trees provide wood to build homes and furniture to make lots of things around your home and at your school. And tree provide fruits that are good for you. Without trees, the earth would be a very different place.

【推荐2】Basketball is a young game. In the year of 1891, a famous college was having some trouble with its boy students. When the weather was bad, they couldn’t play outside. So they were unhappy. Sometimes they even got into fights. Finally, some teachers asked Dr. Naisimth to invent a game so that the students might have something to play indoors.

Dr. Naisimth thought for a few days and invented a kind of ball game. It was an exciting game with much moving and passing of the ball. It was played between two teams. In order to make a score, the ball had to be thrown into a basket ten feet above the floor on the wall.

At first, Dr. Naisimth had planned to have the ball thrown into a box. As he couldn’t find boxes of the right size, he had to use a fruit basket instead. That is how the game got its name basketball. The history of this game is over 120 years.

【推荐3】At 15:40 on December 9th, 2021, the “space teacher”, Wang Yaping, made some experiments in the Tianhe Core Module of the Chinese Space Station. “Welcome to the ‘Tiangong Classroom!’” said Wang Yaping.

▲Taking a “spacewalk” is difficult.

Ye Guangfu was working hard to walk, but his body floated (漂浮)! Then he tried to turn around but he couldn’t. “In space, astronauts are in a weightless environment. So we need to use nearby devices (装置) to move,” he said.

▲The paper flower “blooms”.

In the “Tiangong Classroom,” Wang Yaping made a beautiful water film. Then she took out a paper flower and placed it on the film of water. The pink flower slowly “bloomed”! “I hope your dreams can bloom in the huge universe!” she said.

▲“Space Happy Ball” brings fun

Wang Yaping asked the children on the ground to put their ping pong ball in the water. The density (密度) of the ball was less than that of the water, so it floated up. In space, when she put the ping pong ball into the water, it did not float up to the surface. It stopped in the center of the water! “The buoyancy (浮力) disappears in a weightless environment in space so the ping pong ball cannot float,” Ms. Wang explained.

【推荐1】During the past years, lots of great technologies have come into our lives, such as driverless cars and AI. Inventions make a big difference to people’s lives. Here are some of the most useful inventions.

【推荐3】Anna Du was walking along the beach when she noticed plastics (塑料) there. She reached down to pick them up, and quickly realized a problem: there are many more small pieces than she could deal with. It seems impossible to clean them all up.

Du, 12 years old at that time, tried to solve the problem like a good scientist — first, by doing a little research. That’s how she learned that eight million tons of plastics end up in the oceans every year. Then she got to build something that could help solve the problem: a remote-operated vehicle (遥控潜水器) , or ROV. Her ROV could move through water and find plastics on the ocean floor.

The cool part of Du’s invention is its detection system. She uses a camera along with three different kinds of light to find the plastics. She also uses visible light to find unnatural colors that make the plastic stand out.

“She has a very good engineering sense to break down a problem like this, and then go after it, ” says engineer Carsey Machado, “It sounds simple, but it’s a level of thinking that’s really amazing. ”

Du started attending public events and workshops at a university when she was five years old. That was how she picked up the engineering skills necessary to build her ROV. She says actually getting her ROV to move through water well was not easy. She failed many times, but she never gave up trying and testing.

When asked about her future plans, she mentioned wanting to address the effects of climate (气候) change. “I think there are a lot of problems that could be solved with new inventions, ” says Du.

Du thanks her parents who for years have taken her to student outreach activities, for supporting her interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) . She says she has been able to meet students and scientists there. “I know I want to be an engineer because I like building things to help solve big world problems. ” says Du, “but I’m not sure what kind of engineer I want to be yet. ”

【推荐1】Tim Berners-Lee is not the most famous inventor in the world. However, his invention has changed our lives.

He was born in London, England in 1955. When he was a small boy, Tim was interested in playing with electrical things. He studied science at Oxford University. He made his first computer from an old television at the age of 21.

Tim started working on early computers. At that time, they were much bigger than now. He worked in England then Switzerland. Tim was really interested in two things, computers and how the brain works. How could the brain connect so many facts so quickly? He had to work with people all over the world. They shared information about computers. It was hard to manage all the information. He answered the same questions again and again. It took a lot of time. It was even difficult for computers in the same office in Switzerland to share information.   Tim also forgot things easily. Could a computer work like a brain? Could it “talk” to other computers?

There was an Internet already but it was difficult to use. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW) all by himself. This had a special language that helped computers talk to each other on the Internet. When people wanted to share information with others, they used the World Wide Web. The Internet grew quickly after that.

Tim Berners-Lee doesn’t think he did anything special. He says that all of the ideas about the Internet were already there. All he did was to put them together. He says that many other people worked together to make the Internet what it is today.

Most inventors want to become rich. But Tim gave away the World Wide Web for nothing. He now works in America. He helps people share technology and wants the Internet to be free for everyone to use. Maybe he is the most important but least famous inventor in the world today!

The eye-recognition(眼睛识别) program is already being tested in shops and banks in the USA, Britain and France. Soon, this technology(技术) will change all other ways of finding out who people are.

However, scientists are working on other systems. Machines will soon be able to know you from the shape of your face or hands or even your smell! We already have machines that can tell who you are from your voice or the mark made by your fingers.

Eye-recognition is better than other kinds because your eyes don’t change as you get older, or get dirty like hands or fingers. And even twins have different eyes, so the program can be up to 94％ correct, depending on how good the technology is. Some programs may only be right   51％ of the time. In Britain, it was found that 91％ of people who had tried it said that they liked the idea of eye-recognition.

In the future your computer will be looking at you in the eye. So smile!

ChatGPT, a smart AI tool has swept (席卷) the education world in the past months. According to a US survey of more than 1, 000 students, over 89 percent of them have used ChatGPT to help with homework. ChatGPT is a powerful tool. You can ask it to write stories and emails, translate (翻译) languages, and answer all kinds of questions.

Some schools in the US, Australia and France have banned (禁止) the use of ChatGPT. The move comes out of worries that the tool could make it easier for students to cheat on homework. Some people also worry that ChatGPT could be used to spread wrong information. However, not all educators say “no” to ChatGPT. Some Canadian educators are making decisions on its use, for both students and teachers. They have no plans to ban the tool so far.

Bhaskar Vira, a teacher at the school in Cambridge, said that bans on AI like ChatGPT are not wise. “People should use ChatGPT in a wise way and it can make our life more convenient.” he told Varsity, the school newspaper. What we need to do is “get used to our learning, teaching and examinations”. That way, we can “have honest students while realizing the use of the tool”.

【推荐1】New York is a very large city with 8 million people. How do so many people move about the city on their way to work and school? So, we should know something about its transport(交通). In New York you can travel about the city by underground, bus, taxi and car.

The underground runs on the railroad lines under the city. Traveling by underground is the fastest way to get around the city. The second way to travel around the city is by bus. It’s a slower way to travel. This is because the bus moves in road traffic which is often heavy.

You can also travel around the city by taxi. This is the most expensive way, but the taxi will take you to the very place you wish to go to. If traffic is heavy, the taxi will be slow.

During the mornings and afternoons, there is the “rush hour”. This is the time when the traffic is very heavy with people going to and from work. The last way to get around New York is using your own car. However, it’s not easy for you to drive, especially when you are driving in the “rush hour”. The best time to travel around the city is from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. because it isn’t “rush hour”.

【推荐3】I'm Daming. All my family members like to use computers. We live in China, but my uncle lives in Australia. My father and my uncle often send emails to each other. Sometimes they chat online.

My mother is a teacher in a middle school. She often uses the computer to prepare her lessons. She also gets information for her lessons on the Internet. My brother and I like to play computer games. I like to play Counter Strike, but he likes to play Tomb Raider. My parents don't want us to play too long. Because it is bad for our eyes and study. We all like music. So sometimes we download music from the Internet to our MP3 player.

My friend Mary uses computer every day. In the morning she makes a timetable on the computer. In the afternoon she writes her homework on it and searches for some information from the Internet. In the evening, she often plays computer games and listens to music. Her Mum and dad use the computer, too. They share it with Mary. Her parents only check emails and get information about their work. They also think that it's bad to play computer too long. I think computers are useful, but we should not depend on it too much.