1 . Teen Writing Contest at the Morgan Library & Museum

How does money impact our behavior? The Morgan Library & Museum’s exhibition Medieval (中世纪) Money, Merchants, and Morality explores mainly how the newly widespread use of money in medieval life transformed society, often challenging and conflicting with the moral beliefs of the community. Choose an object from the Selected Images on the exhibition page and write a diary entry from the opinion of a character in the image.

Winners receive a $100 MasterCard gift card!

Entry rules:

▲Identify the title of the Medieval Money artwork that inspired you in your submission.

▲Participants can submit up to two diary entries per person. Character limit is 3,000 per entry.

▲Awards will be given in two age groups: Middle School (Grades 7 to 8) High School (Grades 9 to 12)

Entries will be judged by a group of Morgan Library & Museum staff for originality, creative choice of opinion and style.

Written work should be submitted in a format (格式) readable by Google Drive and/or Microsoft Word. Submissions must be written in English. Content will be published on the Morgan’s webpage and via our social media channels.

Morgan Teen Writing Contest Guidelines:

◆Participants must live, work, or go to school in one of the five areas of New York City.

◆Participants must be between 13 and 19 years of age as of the date of entry.

◆Contest ends at 11:59:59 PM ET on Sunday July 10,2024.

◆Limit two entries per person, per email address.

◆Winners will be informed on Friday, July 29,2024.

◆The Morgan requests a photograph of the winner to post with their writing.

Located in Lichuan, Hubei proince, Tenglong Dong is one of the world’s largest caves. The cave     1     (list) as the 74th longest cave of the world and the third longest in China with a length of 53,210m. The cave offers extraordinary big passages and one of the     2     (tall) cave entrances on earth, 74m high and 64m wide. The cave     3     (it) is a huge passage, only slightly smaller than the entrance.

The cave is entered at one point by a huge river,     4     (call) Qingjiang River, a branch of the Changjiang. This river first drops     5     almost 10m high waterfall, right before it enters the cave. Here a path was built about 20m above the water,     6     (enter) the river cave. The water deepens and calms down, while it is narrowed by the cave     7     (wall).

The first written mention of the cave is from the Qing dynasty. The cave was     8     (original) named Dong Po or Shui Dong     9     means Water Cave, probably in the meaning river cave. It was renamed     10     the unique name Tenglong Dong, after a Chinese evergreen about flying dragons (龙). And of course, there are mountains in the cave, caves in the mountains.

3 . My heart raced as I read Noelle’s message. She was ______ that someone had shared her private news, something she’d only told a few. Shame wished over me; I was the one who had let it ______ . Despite knowing it wasn’t right, I’d told someone outside her inner ______ .

Noelle’s ______ seemed to spread to many people, giving me the chance to stay unknown. “I’m so sorry this happened to you,” I ______ .“It’s terrible that your trust was betrayed (背叛).” Her response was quick: “Thank you.”

Later that day, ashamed of both my actions and my cover-up, I approached Noelle. “Noelle, I need to ______ something,” I said, my voice trembling. “I was the one who shared your ______ news. I’m so sorry for not coming clean earlier. I was afraid of damaging my reputation, but I realize now that being ______ is far more important.”

Noelle ______ me, her expression mixed with surprise and disappointment. “I appreciate your honesty,” she said ______ “It hurt deeply when that news got out. But I forgive you. ”

Tears welled up in my eyes as I ______ her for her grace (大度). Though I didn’t know if she would share my ______ with others, I felt a weight lifted from my shoulders. By ______ truth and seeking forgiveness, I had ______ myself from shame and strengthened my honesty. Our friendship ______ , a proof to the healing power of honesty and grace.

The art competition at school was always a highly anticipated event. This year was no exception, with students from all grades eager to showcase their creative talents. Among them were two friends, Jane and Sally.

Jane had a deep passion for art, but she often struggled with expressing her ideas on paper. She would spend hours in front of a blank canvas (画布), trying to capture the perfect image in her mind, but her efforts often fell short. Sally, on the other hand, was naturally talented and her artworks were always praised by teachers and classmates.

As the competition drew nearer, Jane worked harder than ever, staying up late into the night to perfect her piece. Sally, however, seemed to take it all in stride (大步走), casually sketching and painting without much effort. She often teased Jane about her lack of talent, making jokes that were meant to be light-hearted but stung Jane deeply.

On the day of the competition, Jane’s heart was filled with both excitement and fear. She had worked so hard on her piece, but she knew that it still paled in comparison to Sally’s effortless creations. As she set up her canvas and began to paint, she could feel Sally’s eyes on her, mocking (嘲笑) her every move.

Halfway through the competition, Jane encountered a difficult obstacle. She couldn’t seem to capture the essence of her subject the way she wanted to, and her frustration mounted. She looked around at the other students, seeing their confident strokes and vibrant colors, and she felt a pang of defeat. She wanted to give up, to throw away her brush and walk away.

But just as she was about to do so, she caught sight of Sally. Sally wasn’t laughing or mocking her now; instead, she looked at Jane with a mixture of surprise and concern. It was as if she realized that her words had hurt Jane more than she had intended. And in that moment, Jane found a new resolve. She wasn’t going to let Sally’s words or her own doubts defeat her. She was going to finish her piece, no matter what.

With renewed determination, Jane returned to her canvas.

She heard her name announced as the winner of a special recognition award for perseverance and dedication.

5 . What would you do if you walked up to a robot with a human-like head and it smiled at you first? You’d likely smile back and perhaps feel the two of you were genuinely interacting. But how does a robot know how to do this? Or a better question, how does it know to get you to smile back?

While we’re getting accustomed to robots that are expert at verbal (口头的) communication, thanks in part to advancements in large language models like ChatGPT, their nonverbal communication skills, especially facial expressions, have fallen far behind.

The Creative Machines Lab has been working on this challenge for more than five years. In a new study, the group unveils Emo, a robot. To train the robot how to make facial expressions, the researchers put Emo in front of the camera and let it do random movements. After a few hours, the robot learned the relationship between their facial expressions and the movement orders — much the way humans practice facial expressions by looking in the mirror. This is similar to our human ability to imagine what we look like when we make certain expressions.

Then the team ran videos of human facial expressions for Emo to observe them one after another. After training, which lasts a few hours, Emo could predict people’s facial expressions by observing tiny changes in their faces as they begin to form an intent to smile. It can not only make a wide range of facial expressions but also knows when to use them.

“I think predicting human facial expressions accurately is a revolution. Traditionally, robots have not been designed to consider humans’expressions during interactions. Now, the robot can integrate human facial expressions as feedback,” said Yuhang Hu. “When a robot makes co-expressions with people in real-time, it not only improves the interaction quality but also helps in building trust between humans and robots. In the future, when interacting with a robot, it will observe and understand your facial expressions, just like a real person.”

6 . During my daughter’s first year at school, her teacher dismissed our concerns about her shaky pencil hold by saying: “Don’t worry, handwriting is on its way out. By the time she’s in year 12, they’ll all be typing or voice-dictating their exams.”

Fast-forward 12 long school years and that now grown-up girl is in her final high-school exams. And of the many hours of articles and long and short answers, every single page, line, word and letter will be handwritten. Every single primary-school teacher undertook at the start of each year to fix her handwriting but it never changed.

My high school had company typing classes. It was so boring but I say that typing is the very best thing I learned at school. In all my work—as a health professional, a writer and an online teacher—being able to type efficiently, quickly and exactly has been invaluable. As a writer, I can type reasonably accurate notes during an interview, all while looking at the person I’m speaking with. As writing rates have been inactive or going backwards, I’d have a much harder time if I couldn’t type so well.

A group of friends who went to high school says that I’m fortunate to have had compulsory typing lessons, as some schools only offered it to girls, and some friends deliberately shunned the subject in order to avoid gender-based opinions that they wanted to become a secretary.

You might be thinking that none of this will be an issue for much longer, given how far voice recognition tech has come and how ChatGPT can produce writing within seconds. In fact, the increased availability of AI will perhaps mean that handwritten exams will be around for even longer, as seeing someone put pen to paper is one of the few ways we have of promising original work.

Efficient handwriting and fast and correct typing are skills that perhaps should be more highly valued by educators and employers. Learning to hand-write and type might be boring but I predict that they’ll still be important skills even when today’s little ones are in year 12.

8 . Chocolate makers are expected to raise prices this year because of higher costs of cocoa from exporters like Ivory Coast. The West African country is the world’s largest cocoa producer. Hershey is the largest producer of chocolate products in the United States. It said last month it plans to raise prices on all of its products because of the rising cost of ingredients. Ingredients are the things used to make a food or product.

Demand for chocolate in America increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and cocoa producers in places like Ivory Coast are struggling to keep up with that demand. Experts say one reason for that is climate change.

Harvard University researchers estimate that by 2030 parts of West Africa will be too hot and dry to produce much cocoa. The West African countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast together produce 70 percent of worldwide cocoa supply.

Cocoa farmer Raphael Konan Kouassi recently took VOA to his farm. Huge green and yellow cocoa pods hung from trees. He said his trees are producing less because of rising temperatures and less rainfall than usual.

“Almost all of the young plants die in the high season. If you have not been able to get water to them, you have no cocoa,” Kouassi said.

Kouassi receives government assistance in the form of cocoa trees. But he said the government gives out trees at the wrong time of year. Because of this, the young trees have a difficult time surviving.

Christian Bunn is with the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, a worldwide scientific organization. Bunn said information about how the climate is changing can inform farmers about how to better care for their crops.

“What we’re seeing is that the onset of both dry and wet season can change. It’s less reliable. During the season, there may be breaks in terms of rain during the dry season, or there’s a dry spell during the wet season,” Bunn said.

The data show it may be better for farmers to stop producing cocoa and instead grow a variety of different crops, he said.

But the chief of one Ivorian company that supplies The Hershey Company said higher prices for cocoa could be welcomed by farmers. Olga Yenou said, “My opinion is that these farmers should have better prices, should earn more, because they work hard. Most are poor,” Yenou said.

Her wish appears to be coming true. As climate change continues to have effects on production, prices continue to rise.