1 . Donna Urquhart is an experienced runner. She ran 1,402 kilometers over the course of 28 days in Antarctica (南极洲), _______ the record for the longest-ever run in a polar region.

Urquhart spent 10 months training for the _______, turning to some unusual training methods. A company allowed her to run in a _______ storage unit where she ran in temperatures below zero. Besides, she ran along the beaches with uneven (凹凸不平的) surfaces that are like the _______ grounds in Antarctica. All those proved useful _______.

The difficulties that Urquhart faced in Antarctica were _______: taking in about 5,000 calories each day, _______ in a tent. Combined with the sound of _______ winds and the continent’s 24 hours of sunlight in the summer months, these were _______ favorable to a good night’s sleep. Urquhart would usually wear four layers of coats and keep ________ her own body temperature while running.

Urquhart launched the Run Antarctica aiming to encourage more women to ________ sport. Though still unsure about what her next running challenge will have, she has set a ________ of raising $1.5 million for charity.

“Confidence is a real issue for females,” says Urquhart. “And a sporting environment provides them with a great opportunity to ________ themselves.” This served as a huge ________ for her to take on a challenge that no other woman had attempted before. “It was actually showing that we can push our ________, and explore what seems impossible,” says Urquhart.

6 . A team of three students won $700,000 this week for using artificial intelligence (AI) to read passages from an ancient papyrus scroll (纸草卷轴). The document is one of the more than 800 scrolls known as the Herculaneum papyri that were carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Researchers discovered the passages in the 18th century, but attempts to read them proved in vain: Unfolding them by hand only caused them to fall apart.

That’s where the Vesuvius Challenge comes in. Brent Seales, a computer scientist, and two businessmen, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, launched the Vesuvius Challenge in March 2023, offering more than $1 million in prize money for reaching a series of milestones using “computer vision, machine learning and hard work”. For the biggest prize, the organizers released high-resolution CT scans of the scrolls and explained the contest’s rules: Participants would need to decipher (破译) at least 85 percent of four passages. A series of smaller prizes were also awarded throughout the year.

The winning team consists of Nader (an Egyptian PhD student in Germany), Julian Schilliger (a robotics student in Switzerland) and Luke Farritor (a computer science student in Nebraska). Their submission was “met with widespread amazement” by the review team of papyrologists. Farritor also won the challenge’s $40,000 “First Letters” prize in October, when he deciphered the scroll’s first word “porphyras”, which means “purple” in ancient Greek. Nader and Farritor began working together the following month and were joined by Schilliger shortly before the December 31 deadline.

The team ultimately trained machine-learning algorithms (算法) to decipher more than 2,000 characters—more than what was needed to win the Grand Prize. These passages appear to be a philosophical discussion of life’s pleasures, including music and food, though the papyrology team is still studying the results. “It seems familiar to us, and we can’t escape the feeling that the first text we’ve uncovered is a 2,000-year-old blog post about how to enjoy life,” write the organizers.

10 . Several years ago, I was at a pre-season football practice at a high school where I was working with the team on a concussion (脑震荡) research project. The players were lined up in two rows facing each other and with little more instruction from the coach than, “on the whistle, hit the man across from you”, great concern rushed through my mind.

Professional sports get the lion’s share of attention, but over three million children and teenagers in the United States play the same game. This directly places concussions as a significant public health concern for all.

However, for decades, concussion has been considered a temporary injury with no long-term consequences. Many athletes will do just about anything to stay on the field and “play through the pain” as a sign of toughness. In 2005, with the release of the brain tissue pathology (病理学) report of Mike Webster a, a retired National Football League player, our thinking on concussion began to shift. Since then, public attention has focused on this link between brain injury and blows to the head. As our understanding of concussion progressed to understanding its significance as an injury, so too did the development of player equipment.

In the early 1900s football was played without helmets (头盔), but severe injuries, like skull fractures, led to the occasional use of leather helmets in the 1920s.The first facemask entered the game in the 1950s. Modern helmets use advanced shell materials, have moveable panels to absorb forces, and multi-layered padding that responds to different impacts. Companies will continue to improve helmets as new materials become available, guided by the newest science.

Sports are an important part of a society’s culture and they give millions of children much-needed exercise. Yet, participation in any sport carries injury risk, and concussion will always be part of that. As those children become adults and make sport their hobby or even career, ensuring them play safely at all levels is essential.