Some countries have a large number of earthquakes. Japan is one of them.     1     There are few earthquakes in Britain.

    2     The ground vibrates(颤动). Houses fall down. Railways are broken, which causes trains to turn over. Sometimes thousands of people are killed in different ways. About 60, 000 were killed in 1783 in the south of Italy.

    3     The centers of some earthquakes are under the sea. The bottom of the sea suddenly moves. The powerful forces inside the earth break the rocks. The coast is shaken and great waves appear. These waves travel long distances and rush over the land when they reach it, breaking down houses and other buildings.     4    

A terrible earthquake happened in Assam, India, in 1986. The land near Shillong suddenly moved 1.5 feet to one side, and then back again.     5     Few buildings could stand what was happening and the great stores flew four feet up into the air. What kind of building stays up best in an earthquake? The Americans carefully studied, the results of the earthquake at San Francisco(1906) and believed it best for buildings to be made with concrete(混凝土) walls together by steel frames. Such are the buildings that can’t burn or fall easily.

When people talk to friends online, they may use emojis(表情符号) or memes(表情包) more often than words to show their feelings. Memes are more complex(复杂的) than emojis. They have words on images(图像).

Why do people like using them so much? I think there are a few reasons. With emojis and memes, we are able to show our feelings without typing(打字). It makes us chat more easily. If I want to say “I love you”, I can just send someone a “heart” emoji. Or I can send an “angry face” emoji to say “I'm very upset right now!”

Sometimes it is difficult to show feelings with words, so we can use emojis and memes to help us. For example, when you want to celebrate a victory(胜利), you can use the Success Kid meme. It's a picture of a boy with a clenched fist(紧握的拳头) and a determined(坚定的) face. It's easy to use a picture to show a thought or feeling that everyone knows.

People use these things for different reasons.

Emojis and memes are quick and easy, and almost every phone or messaging app has them.

【推荐1】China plans to send one to three network backup satellites for the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) into space this year to improve the stability and usability of the constellation (星座), according to the 13th China Satellite Navigation Conference on Thursday, June 27,2023.

Beidou is a positioning system. It is developed by China. China is the third country in the world to have its own positioning system. With Beidou, China no longer has to depend on foreign systems. This is very important for national safety. Work on Beidou began in 1994. However, the first two Beidou satellites, were not sent into space until 2000. Currently, it has 45 satellites in orbit (轨道), including 15 for BDS-2 and 30 for BDS-3. These satellites have formed a global network.

The complete Beidou will be more powerful than any existing (现存的) positioning system all over the world. Yang Changfeng is a designer of Beidou. He says that the system can notice the sway (摇摆) of a building in strong winds. Beidou has brought many advantages to our lives. Let’s take Shanghai as example. Thousands of buses have been using Beidou. When we are waiting for a bus, we can know when it is about to come. Many smart phones have been using Beidou as well, “Many people say, let me turn on my GPS. In fact, their phones are using Beidou.” jokes a salesperson in Beijing.

China will accelerate (加快) the integration (融合) of BDS with emerging technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence and big data. It aims to build a more ubiquitous, integrated, and intelligent national spatial and temporal system by 2035.

The 3-day conference kicked off Wednesday in Beijing. More than 4,000 experts and scholars from home and abroad in the satellite navigation field attended the conference online and offline.

A．

B．

C．

D．

【推荐2】For people, it’s not surprising that we can open a door, lift a heavy box and control ourselves while walking in the snow. But can a robot do these? Well, Google’s new robot, Atlas, can not only do these things, but it can stand up if it falls down. Although the robot may be slow and clumsy, it was created mainly to work in dangerous places for humans.

Now, robots are much smarter than you might imagine. On March 9 this year, AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence (人工智能) program made by Google’s DeepMind, challenged top professional Go player Lee Sedol from South Korea. And AlphaGo beat Lee at last.

AI is when computers or computer software is able to have intelligent behavior, such as thinking or acting like a human. In our daily life, we already use AI in many ways, such as Apple’s Siri and search engines like Baidu and Google.

Some people may worry whether computers are now smart enough to beat us at everything. But experts say that is not the case. Real life problems can be more difficult than the Go game. For example, humans can watch a person throw down a cup of coffee and know that the result will be a mess on the floor. A computer program would have to know the size of the cup, the height of the cup from the floor and many other things to find out the result. But we never know what will happen in the future.

【推荐3】“Dear Afu, who is Beyonce?”

“Beyonce is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and dancer…”

“Good. Tell me how I can escape from doing homework.”

“Are you crazy? If you do that, your teacher will be crazy!”

This was a conversation I had with ChatGPT, a chat robot developed by US company OpenAI. To me, the answer was no different than a real person. ChatGPT as the latest talking AI has won the hearts of many users all over the world, ever since it appeared online on Nov. 30, 2022.

The chat robot can answer questions, do translations, write stories and even draft（编程）for a computer program. It is as good as a human living inside a computer.

ChatGPT is making life much easier. However, people can’t help worrying that these robots may replace humans one day.

AI can quickly draw a picture, but that picture will be based on pictures that have been stored. It can also write stories, but based on what it has read. A human brain imagines the future and then works hard to realize it. However, AI can’t. So there is no need to worry too much. By being creative there will be plenty of chances for humans to leave AI behind.

【推荐1】There is a close relationship between humans and dogs for thousands of years. We love dogs for many reasons, including their loyalty (忠诚的), their sense of fun and how soft they are. Now researchers have found another reason why humans might like dogs: their wagging (摇摆的) tails.

A research team looked at more than 100 studies on tail-wagging. They noted that dogs wag their tails to communicate, but different types of tail-wagging might be sending different messages.

The research team came up with two possible explanations. The first has something with the rhythm of tail-wagging. Rhythm is repeated sounds or movements—it’s an important part of music. Humans love music, too. So they chose to make friends with dogs that wagged their tails more. Then this tail-wagging would have been passed down to the dogs’ children.

The second explanation is that humans chose dogs for other reasons, such as tameness (温顺), and dogs with these features happened to wag their tails more. This would make tail-wagging a side effect of domestication (驯养).

More research is needed because no one really understands how or why wagging happens. One of the team, Andrea Ravignani, told the science.org website that there is a lot of work to be done. “We still don’t know exactly which parts of the dog brain control which features of the tail-wagging,” she said.

【推荐2】The traditional Chinese lunar calendar divides the year into 24 solar terms. Grain Rain (谷雨), as the last term in spring, starts on April 19 and ends on May 4.

Grain Rain comes from the old saying, “Rain brings up the growth of hundreds of grains”, which shows that this period of rainfall is very important for the growth of crops. Here's something that you may not know about the Grain Rain.

【推荐3】Do you like dancing? Do you know breakdance? It is a type of street dance. It first started in America in the 1970s. Some African Americans in New York started to act this kind of dance on the street. People who watched them liked it very much. As time went by, more and more people accepted it and joined in the groups of breakdance. So it quickly became very popular. It has gone all over the world in a very short time.

A report says that there are more than a million break dancers in the world now. We have to say it is really a very large number. Lots of break dancers will feel happy because of the following news. It is said that breakdance becomes an Olympic sport. It will appear at the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024. It is such important news for all the communities of break dancers. They will be a part of the Olympic world.

As break dancers for the Olympic Games, they need to be strong. That will influence their scores in the competition. Olympic judges will watch other things, too. They will judge the style and they will judge the dancer’s interesting and unusual skills to decide the winners.

In 2024, will you be a fan of breakdance?