Have you ever felt stressed and anxious when your maths teacher asks you     1     question? Or when you are doing your maths homework? If so, you might have experienced     2     is called maths anxiety — the feeling of being extremely nervous when     3     (face) with doing basic mathematics. If you have experienced maths anxiety, you are not alone.

Mathematics     4     (be) a necessary skill that people use throughout their lives.     5     (fortunate), many people feel anxious when they have to do maths. That seed of fear may come from many sources. Cultural expectations may also be     6     (blame) — girls may be more likely to catch maths anxiety, perhaps because of stereotypes (刻板印象) that girls are naturally not very good at maths. Your genes, meanwhile, might lead you to anxiety more generally —    7     (make) you more likely to respond unwillingly to maths.

Whatever its origins, once the seed of the fear takes root, it may grow by     8     (it): the more anxious you feel, the worse you perform; the more you shy away from maths, the more you worry when you face it again. Adults with maths anxiety often have trouble     9     maths in their careers and everyday life. Adults with maths anxiety are     10     (little) likely to show interest, enter, and succeed in careers relating to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

2 . Oaks Farms is a combination of experiences that are designed to keep your students engaged in fun and exciting learning opportunities. We are truly a classroom without walls, offering educator-developed programs and field trips. We invite you here to explore sustainability (可持续发展), which includes not only the environment but also animal welfare, safety and our community.

The Pig Adventure

This program will help you learn all about pork and its benefits and discover the growth cycle of pigs from little babies to full grown-ups. Monitor the development of baby pigs and see how the farm works at the Pork Education Center. You will get first-hand knowledge about how our feeding system works.

The Dairy Adventure

This program encourages you to play as you learn, by opening up a fun space for dairy discovery including learning how to use a “real” station. Understand the nutrition of the animal products, and how robots are used in the Voluntary Milking System. You can start at the entrance to the adventure, and then stop by our Birthing Barn, which is an independent education center, and take a look inside.

The Crop Adventure

Explore the Crop Adventure program to learn about the importance of working to feed

8 billion people, the many uses of corn outside of consuming it, and how we can be sustainable with limited resources. See how a tractor (拖拉机) can tell you about the nutrients in the soil. Explore how technology assists farmers and the amazing biodiversity on the Farmer’s Garden.

The Pig Adventure ($3/student)

The Dairy Adventure ($5/student)

The Crop Adventure ($4/student)

Whole Adventures — include admission to the Pig Adventure, the Dairy Adventure, and the Crop Adventure ($7/student)

3 . Reunions offer a chance to reflect on how much has changed. One happened in Hollywood when Here premiered (首映), bringing together the actors, director and writer behind Forrest Gump 40 years later for a new film. The stars were “de-aged” using new AI tools, making them more youthful in some scenes and enabling the filmmakers to see the transformation in real time while shooting.

With the use of generative AI in film making come things worth watching. The first is how AI will be used to tell new types of stories, as storytelling becomes more personalised and interactive. No one is quite sure how the nature of storytelling will change, but it is sure to. David Thomson, a film historian, compares generative AI to the advent of sound. When movies were no longer silent, it changed the way plot points were made and how deeply viewers could connect with characters. Cristóbal Valenzuela, who runs a company providing AI-enhanced software, says AI is like a “new kind of camera”, offering a fresh “opportunity to reimagine what stories are like”. Both are right.

Another big development to watch is how AI will be used as a time-saving tool. Generative AI will automate and simplify complex tasks like film-editing and special effects. For a glimpse of the future, watch Everything Everywhere All at Once, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2023. It featured a scene that used a “rotoscoping” tool to edit out the green-screen background and make a talking rock more believable. It shortened into hours what might have otherwise taken days of video-editing.

What is also noticeable is more dramatic conflicts between creators and those running AI platforms. This year is likely to bring floods of lawsuits (诉讼) from authors, musicians and actors about how their works have been used to train AI systems without permission or payment. Perhaps they can agree on some sort of licensing arrangement, in which AI companies start paying copyright-holders.

It will probably be a few years before a full-length film is produced entirely by AI, but it is just a matter of time.

4 . Turning around corners, weaving through traffic, every second matters. It is neither a street race nor a 007 chase, but the risky journey of a sushi (寿司) roll.

The streets of China are filled with delivery drivers racing noodles, sandwiches and soups across cities. While the everyday consumer may find these services convenient, most do not realize the true cost of their delivery. How much is that late-night snack really worth?

Strict time limits are the main concern for delivery drivers. The Chinese delivery app Meituan decreased the maximum time allowance from 50 minutes to 30 or even 20. Time literally means money: Surpassing the limit can result in fines, which are paid to the firm rather than to the consumers. Yet, beyond fines, there is often a greater cost. According to Pandaily News, one delivery worker is injured or killed in accidents every 2.5 days in Shanghai and, sadly, companies seldom provide insurance claims when their time limits lead to these consequences. Drivers are pushed to break traffic rules and risk their lives so your sushi is not a minute late.

Furthermore, low wages and extensive working hours exacerbate these issues. Some companies in China take advantage of the economic inequalities between China’s large cities and less developed interior to offer extremely low pay to migrant delivery drivers while demanding long hours. Yet these long hours and low pay are common throughout the global delivery industry. In the United States, advertised earnings of $22 per hour are largely exaggerated while workers complain that food delivery apps rarely give them all their tips.

What is the solution? First, consumers should recognize what is behind their impossibly cheap and fast delivery: exploitation. We should expect more from the delivery app companies and less from their drivers. That is, we should pay more and wait longer while only ordering from companies who offer their drivers fair wages, insurance and a safe working environment. In the end, your sushi is just not worth it.

6 . Younger generations of Chinese citizens have developed new methods to relieve stress, which include raising unconventional “pets”, hugging trees, watching stress relief videos and so on.

On social media platforms, a new toy called “mango dog” recently emerged.     1     In the eyes of some netizens, the “mango dog” has special meanings. “Every time I see it, it heals me,” “It’s fluffy (毛茸茸的) and cute.”     2     For example, college students have shared online their experiences of raising stones and paper box “dogs”. These “pets” share similar characteristics—they don’t cry, make noise or get sick.

Tree hugging has also become a new stress relief for young people. “You may think you are hugging the tree, but in fact, the tree is embracing you,” this is a feeling shared by a netizen. Many netizens with such experiences have expressed that their anxiety has been reduced, and they feel a sense of communication with nature.     3    

“I came across the idea online. I tried it and felt truly relaxed,” said a young office worker. “In those brief seconds, it felt like the tree released a lot of pressure and stress from me.”     4     “I especially enjoy watching stress relief videos, like washing blankets and cutting soap. After watching them, I feel like the stress of the day is relieved and it’s easier to fall asleep.”

    5     According to public data, there are currently more than 800 companies in China with names, business scopes, products, services or trademarks containing the term “stress relief”. In 2023 alone, more than 70 new registered companies with this focus were added.

9 . I was annoyed that my mom had even scheduled the appointment with a doctor for me. As doctors so often do, when he arrived he went straight into the basic small talk about my _______ history.

But then he _______ a question that took me off guard. “So Robin, what are you going to do after high school?” He wrote something at his notes, with not even a glance in my _______. “I don’t know,” I mumbled(嘟哝). I was seventeen. I had no _______ what I was going to do after high school. My high school guidance counselor told me that I wasn’t “college material” and I believed her. Education wasn’t exactly _______ in my family.

“You don’t know? Well, why don’t you go to college to become a _______ like me?” He smiled as he glanced at his watch. I thought he was _______ for even suggesting it. No one in my family had even graduated from college, let alone become a doctor. “I’m not smart enough to be a doctor.”

He looked me straight in the eyes when he _______ said, “Let me tell you something; you don’t have to be smart to be a doctor. You just have to be persistent(坚持不懈的).” Then the doctor hurriedly gathered his things and _______ to his next appointment.

I ________ to think about it when I was at school. What would I do after high-school? Even though I wasn’t college material, that doctor made a(n) ________ on me. I applied to a college and soon found myself walking in the ________ as a new student. I often questioned what I was doing there. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough for college, but I could be persistent.

I was ________ to find that with each individual achievement came newfound ________ in myself. I graduated with a master’s degree in September 2014, two decades after that ________ with my doctor.

10 . Why does the giant squid (乌贼) have eyes as large as a football? Why do more than 350 species of fish produce their own electricity? Why do dogs become more optimistic after two weeks of plentiful sniffing (嗅)?

The mysteries and miracles of animal senses are revealed in this year's winner of Royal Society Trivedi science book prize. An Immense World by Ed Yong is an exploration of the unique sensory world of other creatures, from tree hoppers to singing frogs, who sense the world in vastly different ways to humans.

Yong has interviewed many kinds of scientists during his writing but sensory biologists are his favourite. “There's a surprising number of sensory biologists who are themselves neuro-atypical—they have something like face blindness or colour blindness,” he says. “Their different than‘normal’ way of experiencing the world themselves might help them better empathize (共情) with other creatures who have those experiences. The core of this book is curiosity and empathy, understanding and valuing animals for their own benefit, and trying to put ourselves in the shoes of creatures who are very different to us.”

Yong's book carries an important message about how our lack of understanding of the sensory worlds of other animals is hugely destructive. Studies have shown that LED lights are particularly damaging to bats and insects. Flowers illuminated (照亮) by bright lights receive 62%fewer visits from insects. Meanwhile, low-frequency noise in oceans has risen 32-fold since the Second World War because of global shipping-damaging whales' ability to communicate.

Unfortunately, reducing noise and light pollution is nowhere near the political agenda. "It's understandable why it's not on the political agenda because it's not a visceral (强烈的) problem like a plastic-ridden beach or chemicals billowing from a smokestack, ”says Yong. “Light and sound don't produce the same kind of horror. Light especially feels like an entirely good thing-we want more light in our lives; light is knowledge, safety, beauty and goodness. So just raising awareness that these are problems that could be tackled is an important first step and one I hope An Immense World moves people further towards taking."