1 . Computer scientist Mary has an idea for a new robot to help her work with children. How should it look? The robot should have arms to be able to lift things. And if it is going to communicate with people, it will also need a face. Scientists believe that giving a robot a face can make it seem more friendly. Humans would also like to pay more attention to robots with faces. But what kind?

For Mary, she wants to make sure that her new robot doesn’t look too much like a human. She wants people to just treat it as a machine-person. If it looks more like a human than a machine, she thinks users might find it a bit creepy and feel afraid. Mary also believes that robots’ faces don’t need to look a lot like ours. Her research shows that we can enjoy communicating with robots whether or not they look like humans, because our brains are able to look for faces. Just put two circles on top of a robot’s body, and we will see a face.

Dave feels differently. He believes that although at first we might be afraid when seeing a robot with a lifelike face, we may soon get used to it. If robots are going to work closely with humans, they should look as much like us as possible. After all, faces are an important part of the way we communicate.

To make his robots look as much like real people as possible, Dave invented a special skin (皮肤) for their faces. With this skin, robots can show human-like expressions and appear to be angry, sad, happy or surprised. Dave’s robots are also programmed to copy expressions. How? Just imagine his robot is looking at you. The cameras in its eyes send pictures of your face to its central computer!

2 . The world uses about a thousand million (百万) tons of water a day. Water is a human right and everyone should have their share. Yet more than 700 million people around the world have trouble getting clean, safe water.

Treating wastewater is a good way to provide fresh water for us. And it also helps the environment by keeping waste out of rivers and oceans. 80% of wastewater around the world is not treated at all, and it is running into oceans. But now we have got the technology to treat and reuse the wastewater.

While 75% of our planet is covered with water, only about 2% is fresh water—that comes from rivers, lakes, ice and snow. The rest, 98% of the water, is in seas and oceans. It is too salty to drink. Then desalination businesses come in. More than 19,000 factories have been built around the world, mostly in coastal countries. They process (加工) more than 92 million tons of water every day. But the technology they use requires a lot of energy.

Scientists are working to create a less costly technology. They want to produce 20 times more clean water and make sure everyone has enough. But for now, the world still faces each day with not having enough water for everyone.

3 . Banana is a kind of popular fruit. It tastes good and you needn’t wash it before eating. However, British scientists say that the fruit may disappear by 2050.

One reason for this is climate change. Scientists collected information from 27 countries and areas. They produce 86 percent of the world’s bananas. Scientists found in the past 60 years, the temperature rise has really made the average production (平均产量) of bananas increasing year by year.

However, if temperatures keep rising, this advantage will disappear. Ten of the countries, including India, the world’s biggest producer of bananas, will produce fewer bananas. By 2050, the fruit may die out.

Don’t bananas like to grow in hot weather? In fact the perfect temperature for growing bananas is between 24℃ and 32℃. If temperatures get too high, they will stop growing.

Diseases (疾病) are another danger to bananas. Bananas are grown by shoot cuttings (茎段) instead of seeds. This means that all banana plants have the same genotype (基因型). In other words, if a disease is able to kill one plant, it could kill them all.

One serious disease is called Panama. It spreads easily. It has spread across South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia. If one banana farm suffers from (感染) the disease, it will take 30 years until it is able to grow bananas again. Scientists haven’t yet found a way to treat this disease.

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4 . Dragons are not real animals, but look like a combination (组合体) of many animals such as snakes, fish and deer. They have two horns (角) and a long moustache (胡子). With fantastic powers, they can fly in the sky or swim in the sea. They can make rain, too. The Chinese dragon is a symbol of strength and good luck. The emperors of ancient China loved dragons. Their clothes were covered with pictures of dragons.

We are proud to call ourselves the “descendants (传人) of the dragon”. In Chinese, “excellent” people are often called “dragons”. A number of Chinese sayings and idioms talk about dragons, for example, “Hoping one’s child will become a dragon,” which means he or she will be successful. It is said that people born in the Year of the Dragon have certain characteristics. They are creative, confident, brave and quick-tempered. There are some famous “dragons” who have done excellent things, for example, Deng Xiaoping, and the famous businessman Li Jiacheng. They are all successful.

There are also some traditional festivals about dragons in China, such as Dragon Head-Raising Day and Dragon Boat Festival. We have different kinds of activities to celebrate them. These two festivals come every year, but the Year of the Dragon comes every twelve years.

The dragon is very important in Chinese culture. As the “descendants of dragon”, it is necessary for us to know the views on dragons in our culture. It can help us understand why our parents always want us to be “dragons”.

2024 will be the Year of the Dragon. Good luck to you!

6 . “Made in China” is popular now—and it’s a fashionable one.

The story of Chinese fashion began in 2011 when Feiyue and Huili, the two Chinese sports shoe brands, suddenly got international attention. Their products were seen all over the world. A famous Chinese sportswear brand Li Ning was at the New York Fashion Week in September, 2018. They showed their new designs—sweaters and jackets with Chinese characters.

Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, said that the latest Chinese brands no longer catch customers’ eyes by low price. He told CNN, “They are sure that they can go head to head with foreign brands.”

Maybe it is because China’s young people are now more confident about their own culture. They don’t show immediate interest in Western culture any more.

“Today’s young people in China are crazy about Chinese cultural elements,” Jin Qu, the manager of a clothing shopping website, said at a cultural festival in 2018. “They like these elements printed on their clothes, even the brand picture of Laoganma in China, which was once seen as outside of fashion. But now young people are proud of these Chinese symbols.”

In fact, many stars in the West now are interested in Chinese cultural elements in fashion. Rihanna, a US singer, for example, wore a Chinese red dress to the 2015 Met Gala in New York. The dress was designed and made by Chinese designer Guo Pei.

“We have to move from making to creating,” Chinese-American designer Aric Chen once told The New York Times. “We want to replace the words ‘Made in China’ with ‘Designed in China’.”

On the Loess Plateau (黄土高原), a donkey carries boxes of shadow play tools while five players walk with musical instruments on their backs. They travel through mountains and villages. When it becomes dark, they set up the light and paper screen and start their show.

This is a Daoqing shadow play (道情皮影戏). It is an art mixing Daoqing music and shadow play. The player holds the human characters behind the paper screen and plays a series of stories. The characters are usually made of cow skin.

The stage of the Daoqing shadow play is simple. It’s usually a table covered with a large piece of paper. The light was behind the paper screen. As the shadow player moves his fingers, the characters come to life and their looks, dress and movement can be clearly seen from the other side of the screen. The player is also the lead singer. All the characters are played and voiced by him. It’s not an easy job.

Shi Chenglin is an old shadow player. He says it takes a player ten to twenty years to be good at playing the characters well. He used to have students, but they gave up one by one.

To protect the traditional Chinese folk art, the Museum of Daoqing Shadow Play has been built in Gansu, and many artists are trying to spread it to the stage of China, and of the world.

9 . Do you often buy something that you don’t really need? It looks nice in the shop. There is a good advertisement. You want it. All your friends have one. There are lots of excuses!

We throw away millions of mobile phones and computers every year. They aren’t broken. We just want the newest model. But buying too much is bad for the environment because it creates pollution and uses up the world’s resources. It also wastes a lot of money.

Could you spend a whole day without buying anything? Well, on the last Friday in November, many people around the world celebrate Buy Nothing Day. They buy nothing for 24 hours!

A Canadian artist called Ted Dave created the day in 1992. And the idea has spread around the world since then, and gets bigger every year. Nowadays, people in over 60 countries celebrate Buy Nothing Day, including the UK, Austria, Germany, New Zealand and Japan.

You can celebrate Buy Nothing Day in different ways. You can simply avoid buying anything on the day, even online shopping. You can organize fun activities in shopping centers to call for people to buy nothing. Or you can go out to nature to enjoy a long walk on the beach, in a park, or along a river.

Though most people like Buy Nothing Day, some do not. Some people say that people just buy more things the next day. Other people say that it is just for people with too much money, because poor people only buy a few things in a year. What do you think? Is Buy Nothing Day a good idea to encourage you to produce less waste and think more about what you buy?

10 . Soon a computer and other machines will be able to remember you by looking at your eyes!

The program can work because everyone’s eyes are different. So in the future you won’t have to remember a long code when you want to use a machine or take money out of a bank. You just have to look at the machine and it will be able to tell who you are.

The eye-recognition (眼睛识别) program is being tested in some shops and banks. Soon this technology will change all the other ways of recognition.

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

But 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. In Britain it was found that 91% of the 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 eyes. So smile!