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Have you wondered how your pets are feeling? When your dog wags(来回摇摆)its tail, does that mean it is happy? A new app called Happy Pets can tell you what’s going on.

The app uses artificial intelligence(AI) to analyze(分析)the facial(面部的)expressions of cats and dogs. Then it can tell you what kind your pet is and how it is feeling. It can show the five most common feelings — happiness, anger, neutral(中性的)feelings, sadness and fear.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne in Australia developed the app. The key technology used in the app is facial recognition, a common use of AI. We can unlock our mobile phones or enter train stations with facial recognition readers. But this is the first time that the technology has been used for animals.

The app’s AI was first taught to recognize a picture of an animal. Then, it was taught to recognize the facial features of cats and dogs. Next came the most important step — teaching it to detect(察觉)emotions(情感)according to certain facial features(特征). For example, if a dog closes its eyes and mouth while changing the position of its ears, this means the dog is scared. To master this skill, the AI program “saw” and “read” thousands of example images.

Are the results correct? The researchers think they are believable since the app has been tested many times. Interestingly, they have found that cats are harder to read than dogs. In the future, the app might also be able to analyze a pet’s body to make its readings more correct.

【推荐3】Spend your holiday in a smart way with these apps!

	Grammarly Grammarly is great for checking spelling, grammar and other kinds of mistakes. You can type your message. Then Grammarly will check your words and see if you made a mistake. It will show you how to fix the mistake and why it is wrong.
	Fitbod How can we exercise safely? Fitbod can show you how to exercise correctly with videos and text. You can learn how to do simple exercises. It will change to meet your needs after each exercise. Although you need to pay money to use the app, the first three times are free.
	Mathway Are you good at math? Do you have trouble in learning math? Come to Mathway now! It can show you how to solve difficult math problems. Even better, the app can explain each step for solving math problems. Mathway will make learning math much easier.
	Watoo We are all very busy. Which tasks should be done first and which should be done later? Watoo can help us sort (分类) our tasks,so we can focus more easily.We can organize our tasks by using some colorful faces. A big red face means a task is really important. A small, happy yellow face means we can take our time.

【推荐1】How important is shopping to you? How much time do you spend buying things? And how much time do you spend organizing these things in your home? In the future, how much time will you spend in movie theaters, at amusement parks, at shopping malls, or at convenience stores? When you add it all up, you will probably see you spend a lot of your life consuming things. Consuming products is not necessarily bad. However, if we spend too much time doing it, we should look at it carefully.

Imagine that you have a week off from school. You don’t have to go to class. However, in this week, you cannot spend any money—no shopping, no movies, no eating out. How would you spend your time? What things would bring you happiness? Perhaps you would take a walk with your best friend. Perhaps you would help a child read. Or you might spend time with your family.

When we look back, it is likely that non-consuming experiences like these will be our most important memories. Why? Non-consuming activities are active, not passive. They don’t come in a package. You make the experience yourself. For example, each person who reads to a child will have a different experience. The experience changes with the reader, the child, and the book. Similarly, when you have a conversation with a friend, you are actively creating an experience. The conversation that you have with your friend cannot be experienced or recreated by anyone else. However, if you watch a movie with a friend, you will each have a packaged experience. It requires no action and little interaction between the two of you.

The environment we live in encourages us to have packaged experiences. We feel that we must consume because we believe that buying is doing. However, we can start a personal revolution against consumerism. How? By consuming less. We can ask ourselves what experiences bring us the greatest satisfaction. Then we can organize our lives so that we have more of those kinds of experiences.

【推荐3】Eliminating（消除）poverty（贫困）is a common task all over the world. It’s even more difficult for China, the biggest developing country with the largest population in the world. But China has done a good job of dealing with it.

In 2013, President Xi Jinping put forward “targeted poverty alleviation”（精准扶贫）and set a goal to eliminate poverty by 2020. From 2013 to 2016, 55.64 million rural（农村的）people in China were lifted out of poverty. By the end of 2020, China had made all the rural people get rid of（摆脱）poverty.

On Feb 25, 2021, President Xi announced（宣布）that China has made a “complete victory” in the fight against poverty. That means 98.99 million rural people have been lifted out of poverty. The 832 counties（县）and 128, 000 villages which these people live in are no longer in poverty.

Such great achievements（成就）have caught the eyes of the world. How did China make it? It found its own way to fight poverty. Instead of just giving money to poor people, it has tried to educate people and give them the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty. Since 2015, three million officers from the government, state—owned（国营的）companies, and public organizations（组织）have also been sent to rural（农村的）areas.

Eliminating poverty is not the end, but the starting point of a new life. This year, the National Administration for Rural Revitalization（国家乡村振兴局）was set up. Its goal（目标）is to fully develop the countryside. Hopefully, there will be strong businesses and a pleasant living environment.