The China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) was held in Beijing from September 4 to 9. It is a main service trade event. Visitors saw how new technologies are used in different areas. One highlight this year was service robots. Let’s look at three of them.

• Garbage-sorting robot

Garbage sorting is new to many people. Swiss company ABB has made a robot to help us do it. It uses two arms to pick different kinds of garbage and then throws them into the right bin. A screen can show how many pieces of garbage it has picked.

• Robot dog

Unitree, a company in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, has made a robot dog. With an Al-powered smart camera, it can record everything it sees in real time. It can move up to 3.3 meters every second.

The robot dog can give people a hand in many ways. For example, it can move goods or search for people who go missing during disasters.

• Ping-pong serving robot

Can you hit back a ball that is served by a robot? Find out by playing against a ping-pong serving robot made by Chinese company Siasun. The robot can serve balls one by one automatically. It can change the speed, angle and landing area of the ball as well. It can record your performance with a camera so you can review it later. It will help to train and improve ping-pong players.

In Singapore, many middle school students spend a lot of time on study. Good education is often like a ticket to success in their future.

As a result, many of these students try their best to get a good score in their exams. They have a lot of homework every day.But students are especially afraid of exams, they are a big headache for them. Sometimes some of them are even made to go to remedial classes after school.

There are also several programmes made by school during outside school hours. The students can take part in sports and games, music and dance, hiking and rock-climbing, and so on. They are also very active in community service. In their spare time, most students like to listen to pop music. Hollywood blockbusters, Hong Kong and Singapore movies are very popular among them. They understand IT very well. Some of them also spend their free time surfing the Internet, e-mailing their friends, playing computer and video games. They sometimes go to cafes, fast-food restaurants, shopping centers and big bookstores. So it seems the life as a middle school student in Singapore is not easy but rich and colorful.

5 . A hobby can be almost anything that a person likes to do in his free time. Hobbyists keep pets, build model ships, watch birds, climb mountains, and grow flowers. Hobbyists also paint pictures, go to concerts, play and perform on musical instruments. They collect everything from books to butterflies and from coins to stamps.

People have hobbies because these activities offer enjoyment, friendship, knowledge and relaxation. Sometimes they even make some money by following a hobby. Hobbies help people relax after hard work, and provide a balance between work and play. Hobbies also offer more interesting activities for persons who have retired. Anyone, rich or poor, old or young, sick or well, can follow an interesting hobby.

Hobbies can also help to keep a person’s mental and physical health. Doctors have found that hobbies are helpful for sick people to get better from physical or mental illness. Hobbies give them something to do, and offer interests that keep them from thinking about themselves.

In early years, most people were too busy making a living to have many hobbies. But some persons who were free did enjoy hobbies.

People today have more time for hobbies than before. Machines have reduced the time that they must spend on their jobs. More people are retiring at an earlier age than before. Those who have developed hobbies never need to worry about what to do with their free hours.

Sir William Osler, a famous Canadian doctor says, “No man is really happy or safe without a hobby.”

6 . A Japanese company has created a “smart’’ mask to improve communication for people wearing face coverings to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The use of face masks has become the new normal in parts of the world still trying hard to reduce spread of the coronavirus. However, masks and other kinds of coverings can affect the quality of communication between wearers.

It can be more difficult to hear voices through the coverings. Many business and public spaces also have social distance barriers in place, which also make it harder for people to be heard and understood.

The wearable electronic device is designed to help improve speech interactions in such conditions. The Japanese startup company Donut Robotics calls its invention the “e-mask”. The device is worn over other common face masks.

The e-mask is made of soft plastic material. It has a built-in microphone and holes in the front to let air in. When it is turned on, the mask uses Bluetooth technology to connect to a mobile device. An app then helps users perform several actions, including turning speech into text, completing telephone calls and making the user’s voice louder. If needed, when people speak, the text of the conversation can also be displayed on a large computer screen, which makes modern online meetings possible. During a company meeting, minutes can be created and translated without typing.

Donut Robotics plans to create a world where people can connect with each other from a distance better. The e-mask will be equipped with a Wi-Fi router. And the company is planning to install AR function as well.

“About 6,000 e-masks have been sold in Japan since a year ago.” Taisuke Ono, the head of Donut Robotics said, “I have received strong interest in the product and I believe it will sell well in China, the United States and Europe.”

Beep! Beep! Barcode technology makes it faster and easier to buy things in stores.

You’ve probably seen the black-and-white zebra stripes on product packaging. But can you imagine this great invention is more than 50 years old? In 1971, engineer George Laurer came up with a barcode that could be printed on food labels. Later, he designed the Universal Product Code barcode, which was used by many supermarket companies starting in 1973, according to The New York Times. Before this, cashiers who received and paid out money in shops had to record prices by hand.

Time has proven it to be a great invention. Today, barcodes are scanned over 6 billion times every day and used by 2 million companies worldwide, PR Newswire reported.

What information does a barcode include? Where the product comes from, where it has been, its price, expiration date...you name it. It can also help stores keep track of their products. For example, if there are 10 boxes of milk and a customer buys one, it will be recorded so that the store owner knows there are nine boxes left. In the 1980s, libraries started using barcodes to keep track of books in this way.

The next generation of barcodes, such as QR codes, can hold more information. “They can tell customers if a product contains allergens or if it is organic. This provides customers with a greater level of trust in the products they buy,” said GS 1, an organization that develops global barcode standards.

Many social study books and articles have graphs to go with the text. A graph is a kind of picture that shows amounts, or numbers clearly. A graph can show the same information that is in the text, but it helps you “picture” the information and makes it easier to understand and quicker to read. A circle graph, also called a pie graph, is divided into “slices”. It shows how the parts fit into the whole. Here are some suggestions on how to read it.

Step 1 Read the title to find out what the graph is about. The circle graph above shows the population of Washington, D. C.

Step 2 Look at the slices. This graph has seven “slices”. Each shows one group of people. You can see how each part compares to the whole-how each group compares to the total population.

Step 3 Use the label to find out what is being compared. The labels on the graph name the group of people who live in Washington, D. C. A line connects to the correct part of the graph.

Step 4 Read the introduction to the graph. The passage beside the graph may offer some more detailed information of the topic.