【推荐1】Home to the yearly World Internet Conference (WIC), Wuzhen, a water town in East China’s Zhejiang Province, has always been connected with technology.

Wuzhen’s People’s Park was built in the 1950s. But this traditional park is now a center with the latest technologies. Powered by technologies including 5G, AI and AR, 23 interactive displays have been set up in the park.

An AI assistant is placed at the park’s entrance. From the weather forecast to the price of meat and vegetables, it provides daily-life information for the local people.

Square dancing is popular in China. A big screen has been put up in the park’s square, and dancers can learn routines (路线) from the screen or use it as a music player. Using AR, dancers can see themselves through the special camera, making the screen a “mirror”.

The rubbish cans here are smart, too. The rubbish can opens by itself when it senses something moving near. It then sorts the rubbish and tells you which kind it falls in.

The virtual (虚拟的) zoo in the park is the children’s favorite. By using the park’s app to scan (扫描) the area, visitors can check out virtual animals by AR cameras.

The park is not just a collection of technologies put together for no reason. All the services were designed according to people’s actual needs, which showed us what “technology +” could be like in the future.

【推荐2】In ancient times, people depended on stars to guide them on a clear night. Today, we have navigational systems (导航系统) to help us find our way. The recent one is the Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BDS).

The Chinese engineers built the BDS independently. With the launch (发射) of the last satellite (卫星) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on June 23, 2020, the global (全球的) network of 59 satellites has been completed. On July 31 of the same year, Beidou started providing services to the world. It’s difficult to imagine.

When you unlock one of Hellobike’s bicycles, you are using the BDS. Users can also find shared bikes more easily thanks to Beidou’s positioning service.

However, the BDS doesn’t just work one way. As the country’s largest space-based system and one of four global navigation networks, Beidou has a two-way communication system, including its ability to receive messages sent by people from areas with poor communication signals. In fact, it isn’t designed for users to chat online. Instead, it plays a role when disasters happen and communications are blocked (被阻塞).

The Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 interrupted (中断) all ground-based communication facilities (设施). Though the first generation of Beidou could only send 120 characters in a single message at that time, communication between affected areas and rescue centers was successful. Now, Beidou can send 1,200 Chinese characters in a single message.

As Sun Jiudong, former chief designer of the BDS, said, “The application (应用) of Beidou is only limited by imagination.”

【推荐3】During the Two Sessions in 2024, the founder of 360, Zhou Hongwei talked about the development of AI in China.     1    .

In fact, AI has been used in more and more areas these years, including education. That means AI can help children learn in several ways.

AI can be used in children’s personalized (个性化的) learning.

AI can know better about students, including their advantages, weaknesses, skills, learning favorites, learning needs, and so on.     2    . And these plans can help students concentrate on the areas that they need to improve at their own ability.

AI can be used in children’s interactive (交互的) learning

    3    . Things like interactive learning apps and educational games can make children’s learning more interesting. What’s more, they can make students interested in one subject at once. This kind of active learning is sure to be more helpful than studying alone.

    4    .

AI can examine students’ work and provide them with personalized advice and help. For example, ChatGPT can answer students’ questions quickly in a private way. This kind of advice and answers can help students understand and use the knowledge better.

AI can provide education with greater resources (资源).

AI can make many students’ learning resources richer and wider, like electronic textbooks, online classes, and study apps.

    5    . By using AI, students can study smarter and reach higher levels of learning and success.

【推荐1】Jupiter(土星) is the fifth planet from the sun and it is the largest one in the solar system. It is about 11 times bigger than the earth. Jupiter's strangest thing is its huge red spot. Pictures taken from space tell us that the red spot is probably a hurricane(飓风). It is so big that the earth would fit right in the middle of it. Sometimes the hurricane looks like a huge oven with orange-red waves (波浪). Some other time the color almost disappears.

On the earth, hurricanes move. We can watch them travel across water to land. Jupiter's red spot also moves. Scientists say it “walks”. It is carried along by air in Jupiter's atmosphere(大气层).

So far, Jupiter has been visited by four spacecrafts. All of them flew by Jupiter very quickly. On the next trip to Jupiter, a spacecraft will stay near the planet much longer. New information will be sent back to the earth. Soon scientists will know much more about this strange red spot in the atmosphere.

【推荐2】Pollution inside homes and other buildings kills more than 4 million people each year. Many people die as a result of breathing smoke or from cooking over wood-powered (由木柴供能的) or coal-powered cookers.

One way to reduce (减少) the number of death is through cookers powered by the sun. Crosby Menzies, a solar power expert in a South African company, described his latest solar cooker—the “Sol-4”. It is four square meters of mirrors, six to eight meters long. It is quite a large cooker.

The Sol-4 works by reflecting light from the sun off large mirrors. The mirrors direct (对准) the light at a cooking pan. Then the light heats the pan with solar energy. Within two minutes, the pan was hot enough to cook sausages and onions. In just four minutes, water can be boiled. That is as fast as cooking with natural gas or electricity.

The cooker is also much “friendlier” than other models because people do not have to stand in the sun to use it. And people can prepare meals without having to collect firewood or spend money on coal. Such individuals would be less likely (可能的) to have breathing illnesses from harmful smoke.

At present, the cooker only works when the sun is shining. But engineers are working on a way to make it work without sunlight.

Each cooker costs about $2,000, which is a large amount of money for most Africans. To solve that problem, Crosby Menzies has created a non-governmental organization called Solar Cookers for Africa. It plans to raise money to provide poor people with solar cooking equipment.

【推荐3】Like many other countries around the world, China hopes to explore the moon. It has already done so with several probes (探测器) and lunar rover (月球车). But it has even bigger plans to put a man on the moon in the near future.

Yang Liwei, China’s first man in space, said that it will “not take long” for a manned mission (任务) to get official agreement and money support, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

China’s space program is still young compared to those of the United States and Russia. But it has already made great achievements in exploring the moon. Its moon mission began with Chang’e 1, an unmanned orbital (轨道) probe that was sent up in October, 2007. It collected data that was used to create a 3-D map of the moon’s surface.

China achieved another achievement with the Chang’e 3 mission. For this mission, China’s first lunar rover, Yutu, successfully landed on the moon.

For China’s space program, it was another great achievement that Chang’e 4, the second lunar rover successfully landed on the moon’s far side, an area that has not yet been explored, in December, 2018.

China will follow Chang’e 4 with a series of other lunar mission. These missions will include taking lunar soil and rock samples, building “moon base”, and hopefully landing a human on the moon’s surface around 2030, according to Zhao Xiaojin, a senior official at the China Academy of Space Technology.

Last year, when Yang Liwei was asked if he had any plans to visit the moon himself, he replied, “If I am given the chance, no problem!” It is likely that many other Chinese share Yang’s excitement about this new stage of China’s space exploration efforts.

【推荐1】At 00:23 on Oct. 16, 2021, the Shenzhou XIII spacecraft rose into the sky. Three Chinese astronauts—Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu—set off for the Tiangong Space Station.

During their six-month stay, they set up robotic arms and did medical experiments among other tasks. Wang Yaping became the first Chinese woman to take a space walk.

It’s not an easy job to do all these things. Chinese astronauts get difficult trainings before going to space. As People’s Daily reported, all the Chinese astronauts are excellent pilots with hundreds or even thousands of hours of flight time. They also receive hundreds of classes to prepare for space travel.

One of the toughest parts is the high-G training. It simulates(模拟) the environment when the spacecraft takes off. Sitting in a super-fast spinning(旋转) machine, astronauts’ face muscles(肌肉) change shape. They cry tears as they spin. Blood can’t flow to their brains properly, causing a lack o£ oxygen(氧气) and even blindness.

Astronauts must operate the spacecraft under these conditions. Another exhausting(使人筋疲力尽的) exercise, as Wang Yaping told People’s Daily, is the underwater training which lasts seven hours each time. It simulates a weightless environment. She had to wear a 200-kilogram suit and do tasks in 10-meter-deep water without eating or going to the toilet. After each training, Wang lost up to 2 kg of body weight.

“We may have to repeat such trainings every single day for years or decades,” said Wang. “But there is no ‘give up’ in our dictionary.”

The spaceship and three astronauts of the Shenzhou XIII task were successfully sent to the Tiangong space station on October 16, 2021.

The members of China’s Shenzhou XIII task, Wang Yaping, Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu, gave a lecture to students around the world on December 9, 2021. The lecture meant the beginning of Tiangong Classroom. This was the first try of it. Millions of students across China watched the 60-minute televised event.

The second Tiangong Classroom was on March 23, 2022. Certainly, they were special, interesting and fantastic lectures all over the world.

Wang Yaping also took part in the Shenzhou X task that lasted nearly 15 days on June 11, 2013. During that task, she carried out the nation’s first space-based lecture to Chinese students on June 20, 2013. The activity made China, following the United States, the second country to have held a space-based class for students.

In the future, Tiangong Classroom will encourage more young people to study science and technology and learn something more about the space.

【推荐3】China has successfully landed its rover(火星车) on Mars (火星), according to state media, becoming the second country in history to have a rover on the red planet.

The rover, Zhurong, named after a god of fire in Chinese story, May 15th 2021.

The six-wheel solar-powered Zhurong rover weighs about 240 kilograms and carries six scientific instruments. It will carry out a three-month task in search of life on Mars’ surface. It will receive signals (信号) from the Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter.

Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter had spent three months in orbit(轨道) working out possible landing sites before Zhurong was sent out to the surface of Mars.

Tianwen-1, whose name means “Quest for Heavenly Truth”, was sent up into space by a Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang space launch center in Hainan on July 23rd last year, and has successfully been in the orbit of Mars since February 2021.