【推荐1】When I was small, sometimes my mum gave the family a funny special treat—she would make breakfast food for dinner.

I remember she did so one night. She had been at work all day but wanted to do something special for us all. On that evening, my mum put a plate of eggs and very burnt toast (烤焦的面包) in front of my dad. I waited to see if anyone noticed. But my dad just took his toast, smiled at my mum and asked how my day at school had been. I don’t remember what I told him that night. But I remember watching him put butter on that toast. He ate it up as usual.

After dinner, I remember hearing my mum apologize to my dad for burning the toast. I’ll never forget what he said, “Honey, I love burnt toast.” Later that night, I went to Dad to give him a goodnight kiss. I asked him if he really liked his toast burnt. He held me in his arms and said, “Your mummy worked very hard today. She’s really tired. And a bit of burnt toast never hurts anyone.”

Life if full of imperfect things. Nobody is perfect either. I’m not the best at anything. I forget birthdays and other important events just like everyone else does. I’ve learned something important from my father. Understanding is the basis of everything, whether between a husband and wife, a parent and child or just between two friends. Remember, burnt toast never hurts anyone. It’s the people with the kind thoughts who makes life worth living.

【推荐3】There is an old tree on a dry land. The tree has so many branches (树枝) that it brings shadow (树荫) to hundreds of travelers.

One day, two travelers got to the tree. They walked for a long time in the hot sun. They were too hot and tried to find a place to rest. Luckily, they found the big tree.

They made a decision to take a rest under the tree. They slept there for a while. When they woke up, they felt hungry and one traveler climbed up the tree. But he was sad to see nothing.

He started to say bad words to the tree. “Oh, this is just a useless tree without any fruit on it!” The other traveler said nothing about the tree but asked his friend to be quiet. However, the traveler in the tree still shouted at the tree.

The tree couldn’t stand the traveler at last. He said in a sad yet strong voice, “You can’t be so ungrateful (忘恩负义的) to me. Just look back to the moment when you got here in the hot sun! I gave you a cool and comfortable place to rest. You would die now without me!”

Many people do much for us, but we sometimes forget to give thanks but only complain (抱怨)! Make sure not to say any bad words to the one who has helped you.

【推荐1】Electric cars may seem like a recent invention, but they’ve been around for years. In the early 1900s, there were more electric cars on the road than there were petrol（汽油）cars. At that time, petrol was expensive compared with other fuels（燃料）. When petrol prices dropped and new technologies were developed, electric cars went out of fashion. Instead, petrol cars became more popular because they could travel longer distances without stopping.

During the 20th century, petrol cars got bigger, heavier and faster. They needed more fuel, and it caused more air pollution. For years, car makers didn’t worry about pollution. They didn’t worry about the amount of petrol cars’ use, either. But when people began to realize that there was not enough oil on the earth, they asked car makers to produce more efficient（高效能的）and less polluting cars.

One method of solving the problem was a “hybrid” car（混合动力车）, one that ran partly on petrol and partly on electricity. Hybrid cars became popular in the 2000s when petrol prices went up and the prices of hybrid cars went down.

An all-electric car uses no petrol. The problem, however, is that car batteries（电池）need to be recharged（再充电）. That makes electric cars not so useful for long journeys.

Many people are not pleased with it. The government and car makers are working together to develop safe, cheap and useful electric cars. When people have these cars in the future, a petrol station may be a thing of the past.

【推荐2】It happened in a New York classroom. Sixteen-year-old Taylor Engler came face to face with a cow. But it was all in her head.

She was trying out a virtual reality （VR，虚拟现实）headset. It took Berkeley Carroll School junior students to a farm 400 kilometers away.

Students across the US are taking VR “trips”. They are swimming in the deep sea. They are watching medical operations （手术）They are even “walking” through the human body. Teachers say this helps students understand their learning materials.

“It attracts（吸引）the students right away,” Colin Jones, a science teacher from Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District, told AP News. He uses a VR system called zSpace to cut up cells （细胞）. “It’s something that can be done in 40 minutes,” he said. “But it could take even a week when you’re doing this in a lab.”

“It’s different than watching video because you can have more than one perspective. You can actually move,” Taylor said during her “trip” on the farm.

According to the expert Richard Lamb, VR can give people experiences that are similar to the real world. Our bodies even react the same to VR as they do to real-life situations. “Heart rate, brain activity, breathing, everything,” he said But there are not many classrooms that can use this technology. VR systems are very expensive. Experts hope that more students can use it in the future, especially for doing dangerous science experiments.

【推荐3】Could you imagine being in a car driven by a computer, not a human? Nowadays, China has made a big step toward self-driving technology. Since August, driverless taxis can run on roads in Wuhan, Chongqing and Shenzhen.

Why do we develop self-driving cars? Self-driving cars have many advantages (优点). They use computers to sense the things around them and make better use of space. This means fewer crowded roads and better parking of cars. For disabled or blind people, self-driving cars can also help them get around more easily.

According to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year, more than 1. 35 million people are killed on roads around the world. Many more are hurt in accidents. Self-driving cars could reduce (减少) road accidents by 90 percent and save governments a lot of money. The main cause of car accidents is human error. By using computers, self-driving cars don’t make poor decisions or lose attention like humans do.

But self-driving cars aren’t perfect. If something unexpected on the road happens, self-driving cars can’t react as fast as a human driver can. Also, during weather events like heavy snow, self-driving cars would be hard to see the lines on the road. It might lead to an accident.

It’s clear that there is a lot of work to do to make self-driving cars popular on our roads. And China is taking the lead in making this happen.

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【推荐2】Type in “A cat wants to go to space” and ask a robot to write a bedtime story. Just one second later, you’ll get the story of Max, who made his way through many difficulties to sing among the stars.

This robot writer is real. It’s called ChatGPT. From writing a story to making music, ChatGPT has surprised the world since it came out in late 2022 by the US company OpenAI. It can translate (翻译) languages, talk with people and write songs, poems and even jokes. It’s one of the most powerful AI of this kind, with the complete writing abilities of a real person.

People around the world have tried ChatGPT and posted their results on social media. Some used it to write history reports, some asked it to take notes of speeches, and some even got advice on how to communicate with people at a party.

ChatGPT comes along at a time when AI is becoming able to do creative tasks. There is no doubt that ChatGPT is a powerful tool. However, some schools in US, Australia,and France 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 also worry that ChatGPT could be used to provide improper information.

“It does not build critical (批判的)-thinking and problem-solving skills,” said Jenna Lyle, the deputy press secretary of the New York City Department of Education. “The articles it creates are difficult to tell from those made by humans. This causes many problems, such as the issue of copyright (版权). Since ChatGPT is mainly trained using words from the Internet, it can also pick up on the Internet’s biases (偏见) about some groups. These are all the things that depend on humans to solve.”

【推荐3】If you go into the forest with friends, stay with them. If you don’t, you may get lost. If you get lost, this is what you should do. Sit down and stay where you are. Don’t try to find your friends — let them find you. You can help them find you by staying in one place. There is another way to help your friends or other people to find you. You can shout or whistle (吹口哨) three times. Stop. Then shout or whistle three times again. Any signal (信号) given three times is a call for help.

Keep up shouting or whistling. Always three times together. When people hear you, they will know that you are not just making a noise for fun. They will let you know that they have heard your signal. They will give you two shouts or two whistles. When a signal is given twice, it is an answer to a call for help.

If you don’t think that you will get help before night comes, try to make a little house with branches (树枝). Make yourself a bed with leaves and grass.

When you need some water, you have to leave your little branch house to look   for it. Don’t just walk away. Pick off small branches and drop them as you walk in order to go back again easily. When you are lost, the most important thing to do is to stay in one place.

【推荐1】The local government of Haidian and the Internet company Baidu had an agreement in January, 2018. They wanted to develop “smart city” building together. Haidian Park was chosen by them. Why was Haidian Park chosen? It is because the park covers about 34 hectares（公顷）near the 4th Ring Road. And it received about 1.2 million tourists last year. It took the workers 10 months to change Haidian Park into an artificial intelligence（AI）（人工智能）theme park. Haidian Park lies in northern Beijing. So Haidian Park became China's first artificial intelligence theme park. It was opened to the public in early November.

Now the park has driverless buses, smart lamp posts（灯柱）and smart speakers. The buses themselves can run according to the directions from a computer. The smart lamp posts can record a lot of data quickly and well. The smart speakers can understand human instructions correctly. The park gives people a totally new look. People can experience different artificial intelligence here.

Che Jianguo said that a total of 10 government departments and companies took part in the rebuilding of the park over the past 10 months. He comes from the park office and he is in charge of the program.

In recent years, Chinese high-tech companies begin to do some things in the artificial intelligence industry. The central government also said in October that it would help the development of the country's new generation of artificial intelligence.

【推荐2】Although English people don’t care about what they eat, they care about where they eat. Rich families usually have a nice dining room.

English people like to eat out. The rich go to big restaurants. The poor go to small ones or fast food restaurants. There are also a lot of foreign restaurants in England, such as Italian, Chinese, Indian, Japanese restaurants and so on. A good restaurant is usually big and clean. The waiters and waitresses wear uniforms. They are friendly and polite. When you are eating, you might hear gentle music. It makes you feel comfortable. It makes you feel time passes quickly, too. Small restaurants or fast food restaurants are noisier, but they are also clean and pleasant.

In summer, English people like eating out. People bring two baskets of sandwiches and sit on the grass in the park, enjoying the sun. Some English kids’ favorite food is pizza. Most kids hate vegetables. Some of them like eating the most famous English food: fish and chips.

【推荐3】The most unusual museum in London is the Science Museum. In most museums, there’s no shouting and no running, and you aren’t allowed to touch the exhibits(展品). But the Science Museum is different, because it’s noisy! People talk about what they can see and do there, and some of the machines are noisy as well. Visiting the Science Museum is fun and it’s a great way to learn about science because you can work things out and try out ideas.

When I visit the Science Museum, I go to the Launch Pad. This is my favourite room because you can do physics experiments. For example, if you want to fill a bag with falling sand, you have to move a kind of truck on wheels into the correct position. I also go to the Rocket Show. You can learn how we travel into space and back again.

Then I go upstairs to Human and Nature room. You can compare your speed with animals there. You hear a noise and push a button(按钮). If you aren’t fast enough, the lion catches you! I’m faster than all my friends, but the lion still catches me.

There are also rooms on transport, the environment and space technology, as well as maths, physics and chemistry.

You can do a lot of things in this museum, but you have to obey some rules as well. For example, you mustn’t take photos of the exhibits in the museum. But you can buy postcards of them in the museum shops.

Above all, the Science Museum is free. That means you can drop in for a few minutes or you can stay as long as you like—it’s open every day, from 10 am to 6 pm. So if you ever go to London, make sure you visit the Science Museum. It’s my favourite museum in the whole world.