1 . The global climate (全球气候) has been changing over thousands of years. The global average temperature (平均气温) today is about 15℃. Scientists find that the planet is warming faster than ever before. The 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years. If this situation continues, temperatures may rise by 3—5℃ by 2100.

Scientists say we should try to stop the situation and not allow the global average temperature to rise more than 1.5℃. Even a 2℃ rise will be bad for us all. Now, 0.5℃ doesn’t sound like much—but it could make a big difference to the planet.

A 2℃ rise means that all the coral reefs (珊瑚礁) will disappear, but a 1.5℃ rise means that there will still be some. Also, 18 percent of the insects (昆虫) on the earth will disappear if the temperature goes up by 2℃. But only 6 percent will disappear at 1.5℃. A 2℃ rise will also mean that 37 percent of people will be influenced by dangerous heatwaves. That’s twice the number compared to at a 1.5℃ rise.

Do you want to know what scientists say? They say that everyone and everything is far better off in a world that limits the rise to 1.5℃.

So, what can we do? Please return to us in our magazine next month, you will read about the advice given by the world’s top scientists, researchers and leading environmental protectors. We’d also like to hear about your ideas and suggestions. Please write to us at 123socialmagazine@yahoo.co.uk. Let’s work together to limit the temperature rise to 1.5℃.

4 .

The Yellow River is known as the mother river of the Chinese people. However, flood control and disaster forecasts (灾害预报) of the river have always been challenging for people. Now, scientists can better work on these problems by giving the river a digital twin.

The digital twin of the Yellow River uses different kinds of technologies, including big data, artificial intelligence and the internet of things. Devices(设备)are set up along the river to collect and transmit (传送) information to the center. Based on the information, a 3D model of the river is showed on the computer screen. It’s like the Yellow River has a twin that describes its real conditions.

One big thing in the digital governance (治理) is “smart stones”. A smart stone is a detector (探测器) with chips, a battery, and a signal transmitter. They are put in important dikes (堤坝) to record and report the movement of dike stones. If it feels any movement of the dikes stones, it will send an alarm to the center for quick response.

In the sky, there are flying drones (无人机). They are designed to look at the river, its dikes and flood prevention projects. The drones provide researchers with photos and information. The researchers use this information to update a 3D model to watch the changes of water to avoid disasters.

Under the water and up in the sky, intelligent systems are helping to protect the Yellow River. According to the Ministry of Water Resources, in the future, we can expect to see an even more complete digital system for the river.

5 . Many universities in China are being encouraged to start offering soccer as a new undergraduate major(本科专业)this year. The purpose of that is to improve the country’s physical education according to the Ministry of Education（教育部）.

Soccer has been set up as a new major in 30 universities in China, including Beijing Sport University and Liaoning Normal University, according to a new notice from the Ministry of Education in March, 2024.

At the same time, more universities have set up some majors related to sports, such as sports training and physical education. Some famous universities such as Tsinghua University, Peking University and Beijing Institute of Technology have also been allowed to start offering majors in physical education.

Qian Junwei, a professor (教授) at Peking University, said that setting up undergraduate major in physical education is to meet the need of the national requirement of building high-level sports teams. He said that Peking University will train more excellent physical educators to build a strong sports country. Liu Bo, the director of the sports department at Tsinghua University, added that sports majors are expected to become popular among universities. The new soccer major might help more sports students get into university.

6 . What may two dogs making radio programs look like? How about a basketball match with different sea animals as players?

With Sora, you may soon be able to find out. The latest AI model can generate videos up to a minute long from some key words in seconds. It was built by OpenAI, the company behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT.

The public cannot use Sora now. OpenAI is asking experts to test it for possible risks (风险). The model is also open to a small group of artists. The company hopes to make Sora better.

Before Sora, the leading text-to-video AI model was made by Runway. The videos it produced were short and often frightening. So most people were surprised by the high quality of Sora’s videos.

Sora model isn’t perfect now because it may not understand cause and effect. “For example, a person may take a bite out of a cookie, but then the cookie may not have a bite mark,” OpenAI says on its website. What’s more, Sora cannot tell left or right. In a video on the OpenAI website, a man is running on a treadmill (跑步机) in the opposite direction. At the same time, some people have other worries. They are afraid that some people may not use AI-generated content in a correct way. Unreal AI-generated information is the biggest risk the world faces. To solve this problem, OpenAI says that it’s also building tools to help users to find out videos made by Sora.

7 . Me and My Brain

We all know that meaningful changes happen in our bodies during adolescence (青春期), but have you ever stopped to wonder what’s actually going on inside our brains during this time?

To paint a clear picture, we should first know about ourselves with the different parts of the brain. Did you know, for example, that our brains are made up of around 100 billion nerve cells (神经细胞) called neurons (神经元)? And coming from these neurons are several branch-like structures for sending and receiving electrical signals? Every time we do or think anything, a signal is sent. The signal travels down a long structure called the axon (轴突) and, at the end, it passes across small gaps called synapses (神经元的突触) to the dendrites (树突) of another neuron, which receive the signal. In this way, messages are sent across our neural network.

Our brain structure changes greatly as we grow up. Newborn babies have almost all their neurons but few connections between them, which is why they can’t do very much. After a few months however, the number of connections increases quickly, which in turn helps small kids master new skills such as walking and talking. Most brain development is completed in the first few years, but we now know that our brains continue to develop throughout our lives and perhaps the most surprising time of change and development is during adolescence.

During this period of reorganization, the brain notices a sudden increase in neurons not dissimilar to a plant growing uncontrollably in spring. Just as we cut back a plant to make it stronger and healthier, we cut back our brains. The connections that are used become stronger, whereas those which aren’t used dry and die. So, the more often an action or thought is activated, the stronger the connections become between the neurons, which in turn makes the part of the brain being used stronger. This explains why the more you do something, the better you become at it, reinforcing the old saying “practice makes perfect”. In fact, the teenage brain provides conditions for perfecting skills such as playing a musical instrument, speaking another language, or learning a difficult computer game. It could be argued that teenagers decide the development of their own grey matter through the activities they take part in and their experiences.

It may also be unsurprising to many to learn that the last part of the adolescent brain to develop is the frontal cortex (额皮质), responsible for self-control, problem solving and decision making. So, long before teens are good at abstract thinking (抽象思维) and logical decision making, they depend on the emotional center of the brain to make choices and think. So perhaps unpredictable, uncertain, risk taking teenage behaviors, often put down to hormones (荷尔蒙), may actually have more to do with what’s going on inside our brain.

8 . On Feb. 15, a new video model called Sora promises to create a video up to a minute long from a short text description. Just tell Sora your idea, and watch it make a video right before your eyes. Sora is described as “eye-popping”, “world-changing”, and “breathtaking, yet scaring.”

The videos from OpenAI’s Sora are full of details. One video of a Tokyo street scene shows that Sora has learned how objects fit together in 3-D: the camera goes into the scene to follow a couple as they walk past a row of shops. Sora knows how things should look in real life.

Sora looks at many videos and learns from them by breaking them into very small bits. It uses these bits to make a new video. The new video is grey at first and very messy. Then, Sora fixes the video until it looks good and smooth. Sora also gets help from ChatGPT, which turns the user’s short sentences into clear instructions. This helps Sora make the video just as you asked.

Sora may find “busy” pictures hard to understand. For example, when a person moves, things around them change. In one video created by Sora, a grandma blows the candle on a birthday cake, but the flame (火焰) doesn’t move. Sora may not be able to tell “left” from “right”.

OpenAI also says that Sora deals with occlusion well. But one problem is that they fail to follow objects when they are out of sight. For example, if a truck passes in front of a street sign, the sign might not reappear afterward.

In a video of a papercraft underwater scene, Sora has added what looks like cuts between different pieces of footage (镜头), and the model has kept the same style between them. But it’s not perfect. In the Tokyo video, cars to the left look smaller than the people walking beside them. They also pop (突然出现) in and out between the trees. “There’s some work to be done,” says Brooks. “For example, if someone goes out of view for a long time, they won’t come back.”

“Sora seems like a very important leap forward,” says Sam Gregory, a human rights organization that specializes in the use and misuse of video technology. “But there are two sides of the coin,” he says. “The meaningful abilities help many more people to be storytellers using video. And there are also possibilities for misuse.”

OpenAI has also realized the risks that come with a video model. The OpenAI team plans to draw on the safety testing. “We’ll need to get more feedback (反馈) and learn more about the types of risks that need to be solved with video before it would make sense for us to put Sora into use,” says Ramesh.

10 . Hilary Smith belonged to a good family. But by the age of twenty, he had spent all the money the good old family had. He then had some trouble with the bank and was put in prison. He escaped from the prison and ran to Australia at once.

Hilary did not like Australia, and Australia did not like Hilary. What he could do seemed to be one of two things: die or work. Then he remembered that he was not alone in the world. He had an aunt.

She was his father’s only sister, but his father used to say she brought no glory (荣耀) to the family. Hilary, of course, tried to discover what she had done. It seemed that she had failed to marry a nobleman. Instead, she had chosen a husband who was connected with “trade”. Of course, as soon as she became “Mrs. Parks”, her brother considered her dead. Later on, Mr. Parks died and left her a lot of money. But that did not bring her back to life in her brother’s opinion.

Hilary discovered his aunt’s address. Luckily she remained faithful and loyal to him even after she fell ill. So Hilary’s star shone again, and soon he moved into her house and lived as comfortably as a sailor who had just reached harbor. He had only about a six-pence in his pocket.

One thing was soon clear: his aunt was seriously ill, and nothing could cure her illness. Hilary was very worried. Fate had found a home for him, and was now going to throw him out of it. There was only one thing that could save him: her will (遗嘱).

“Will? ”she said, “yes, I have made one. That was when I was a girl and had not much money. I left all my money to some religious people. ”

“Didn’t you make another will when you were married? ”Hilary asked.

His aunt shook her head. “No, ” she said in a low voice. “There was no need. When I finally had a lot of money I found I had no relations. ”

On the next day he went to the public library and examined a book of law. It told him what he already believed. When a woman is married, an earlier will loses its value. A new will must be made. If no new will is made, the money goes to the nearest relation. Hilary knew that he was his aunt’s only relation. His future was bright.

After a few months had passed, Hilary’s problems became serious. He badly needed money. He had expensive tastes, and owed a lot of money to shopkeepers. They believed in him because his aunt was rich, but the debt was terrible.

Unluckily his aunt did not want to discuss money matters at all. In the end they had a quarrel about the small amount of ten pounds. Hilary was not very angry. He began to wonder about a new problem. Was it kind to want his aunt to live any longer? Was it not better for her to die now? While he was considering what to do, his aunt told him that she was going to send for her lawyer. So she was going to make a new will, Hilary thought. She might leave all her money to someone else. Soon he reached a clear decision. He must do a great kindness to the poor old woman.

One night when the old servant who had been nursing his aunt went off, he doubled the amount of some medicine. The total amount was too great and it could just put her to sleep forever.

“Thank you, ”his aunt took the glass from his hand with a grateful look. “I want, more than anything, to sleep, and never to wake up again. Is that what you wish, Hilary? Don’t blame (责怪) me if I have some doubts about what you intended to do. Sick people get these ideas, you know. One thing I ought to explain to you. Mr. Parks never married me. He already had a wife and couldn’t marry again. That made your foolish father very angry with me…Well, if I am alive tomorrow I shall make another will in your favor (赞成). If I die tonight, you’ll get nothing…. No, Hilary, don’t try to take the glass away. If you do that, I shall know, and I don’t want to know. Goodnight, Hilary. ”

Then, very carefully, she raised the glass to her mouth and drank.