1 . The Drama Festival will run in and outside China from June 20 to July 7. Sixty-five works will be put on both in theaters and online. “The festival is all about imagination connecting drama with the latest technology,” says Liu Chang, manager of the festival, who is also a drama director. Technology has improved design, performances and so on. Artists like Liu aren’t sure if the new technology can take drama to the future.

A Chinese play directed by Meng Jinghui, inspired (赋予灵感) by the two-part drama Faust by Johann Wolfgang on Goethe, will be on as the opening play of the festival. In the first half of the play, Meng introduces the story to 400 real audiences (观众) sitting in the Fengchao Theater in Beijing. The second half of the play will have more audiences , who use their cellphones, computers and headsets to be part of the play online.

Zhang Zhouxiang is a director full of imagination. His work, inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, will be shown from June 30 to July 2. Supported by AI, audiences can explore the fictitious scene, similar to the feeling in the real world, as the painting describes.

“The stage (舞台) design is done by AI, which is like an assistant realizing the ideas of me and my team,” says Liu, “Now I try to use the latest technology, such as ChatGPT, to write the script, and I am still working on it because the language model is difficult to understand.”

Now technology is playing a more and more important role. Many artists want to use it to improve drama. They are very interested in the relationship between people and the latest technology, especially when connected in drama-a scene to dream.

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2 . China sent a new X-ray astronomical satellite in space, Einstein Probe, on Jan. 9, 2024.

According to Yuan Weimin, a researcher of the satellite project, the satellite is expected to find the first light from supernova explosions (超新星爆炸) in the universe, monitor high-energy transient (瞬态) objects in the universe, which are now poorly understood by scientists.

When developing the satellite, a new generation of detection equipment (探测设备) with large fields of view and high sensitivity (灵敏度) was needed. But the important question was how to make such equipment.

Lobsters (龙虾) are a kind of sea animal which can be found around the world. Scientists discovered early on that lobsters’ eyes are different from other animals’. Lobsters’ eyes are made up of lots of tiny square tubes, pointing to the same center, which allows light from all directions to reflect in the tubes and meet on the retina (视网膜), which gives lobsters a large field of view. Scientists then simulated (模仿) the lobsters’ eyes to create a telescope to catch X-rays in space.

Through working together with other organizations, the X-ray Imaging Laboratory began the research and development work on lobster-eye X-ray imaging technology in 2010 and finally made a breakthrough.

“Thanks to the lobster-eye telescope technology, the Einstein Probe is able to monitor the poorly known soft X-ray band with a large field of view and high sensitivity,” Yuan said.

All of us learn poems by Li Bai and Du Fu from a young age.     1     of the poets (诗人) lived more than 1,300 years ago. Can you imagine them now standing in front of you reciting (诵读) their poems?

At the World Robot Conference (WRC) 2023, the “poets” appeared in the form of humanoid (人形的) robots. They were both dressed in historical costumes. “Li Bai” was reciting his     2     poem Invitation to Wine. “Du Fu” sat beside him and listened     3    , with a smile on his face.

The WRC 2023 took     4     in Beijing between August 16 and 22. More than 160 companies from around the world took part in the     5    . They showed nearly 600 types of robots. For about 60 of them, it was their     6     public appearance.

The humanoid robots were the most popular with visitors. They not only look like humans, but can also understand human languages and follow instructions. Pet-shaped robots also attracted a large number of visitors. The Cyber Dog 2, for example, enjoys “being tickled (挠痒)” by its owner. What’s more, it can do flips (空翻) and other tricks like a real dog.

Robots are here to stay. How will they     7     the world in the future? It’s a good question. We’ll just have to wait and see.

ChatGPT, a smart AI chatbot (聊天机器人) tool, has swept the education world in the past months. According to a US survey of more than 1,000 students, over 89% of them have used ChatGPT to help with their ________. Developed by US company OpenAI, ChatGPT is a ________ tool. You can ask it to write stories and emails, translate languages, and answer all kinds of ________.

Some ________ in the US, Australia and France have stopped the use of ChatGPT, CNN reported. “It does not ________ students’ independent (独立的) thinking and skills, which are ________ for success,” said Jenna Lyle, the secretary of the New York City Department of Education.

However, not all ________ say “no” to ChatGPT. Bhaskar Vira, the headmaster for education at the University of Cambridge (剑桥) in the UK, said that it is not wise to stop using ChatGPT. “We have to know that AI is just a ________ people will use,” he told the school newspaper of the university. “What we need to do is to adapt (调整) our learning, ________ and exams. That way, we can be ________ while using the tool.”

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On November 14, 2023, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) officially acknowledged (承认) China’s Bei Dou satellite Navigation System (BDS) as a global (全球的) standard. This acknowledgement places it among the top group of global satellite navigation systems, sharing the stage with the United States’ GPS, Russia’s GLONASS, and the European Union’s Galileo.

China began working on the BDS in 1994. The system became operational in 2000. After 12 years of development, it started helping people in the Asia-Pacific area. By 2020, with BDS-3 being used all over the world, China improved the system to offer more accurate (精确的) positioning services. This improvement has made it a valuable tool for different kinds of industries, including transportation, farming, and land measuring.

Now, the BDS, with its 59 satellites, has served more than 1.5 billion users around the world. In China, most mobile apps that provide maps, navigation, and shopping services already support the BDS. The country’s satellite navigation industry is growing quickly, with its value reaching more than 500 billion yuan in 2022 — an amount expected to double by 2025. In the first six months of 2023, about 13.4 million new BDS devices (设备) were introduced. Nearly 60% of these devices have been used in transportation, while the rest support communication and farming. About 28% are used for communication and 12% for farming.

As BDS gets more popular, it is expected to play an increasingly important role in global navigation and positioning services.

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