Paper lanterns are beautiful decorative lanterns     1    (original) made of rice or silk paper, covering a light source. They have been used     2    (decorate) rooms during festivals and other important     3    (occasion) for hundreds of years. Nowadays,    4    (hang) lanterns is still one of the traditional customs in many places.

Due     5    the thin covering of paper lanterns, the lanterns are very beautiful when they are lit. Different paintings and designs     6    (attach) to the thin covering that make the lantern more attractive. The only color not traditionally used in making paper lanterns is white; it is often used in memory of     7    dead in many Asian cultures. Paper lanterns have various shapes and sizes. A common design is the ball or globe design,     8    holds its shape by being stretched(伸展) over bamboo strips.

It is very unusual today to see paper lanterns that hold candles, unless the paper     9    (use) is fire resistant(耐火的). It's simply too easy for them to catch fire, otherwise. So in modern times, for     10    (safe), people often use a small electric light instead of a candle to avoid possible fires.

What will our cities be like in 2050? How much will artificial intelligence advance? Some scientists    1     (make) different predictions recently.

Joel E.Cohen from the The Rockfeller University says    2    is likely that by 2050 the majority of the people in the world will live in urban areas, and will have a    3    (significant) higher average age than people today. Cities will be    4    only realistic solution to housing a population that is expected to expand    5    9.7 billion by 2050.

And the technology will keep    6    (advance) rapidly. According to Bill Michell, the late director of MIT Media Lab’s Smart Cities research group, cities of the future won’t look like “some sort of science-fiction fantasy” or “Star Trek” ,but virtual reality will change    7    we live. Self-driving cars will make the roads    8    (secure), driving more efficient, and provide faster transport.

Charles Ebinger at the Brookings Institution thinks that by 2050 we will also have a so-called “smart grid” where all of our    9     (appliance) are linked directly to energy distribution(分布) systems,    10    (allow) for real-time pricing based on supply and demand. Such a technology would greatly benefit most people and reduced the consumption(消耗) of fossil fuel energy.

9 . When almost everyone has a mobile phone, why are more than half of Australian homes still paying for a landline (座机)?

These days you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Australia over the age of 15 who doesn’t own a mobile phone. In fact plenty of younger kids have one in their pocket. Practically everyone can make and receive calls anywhere, anytime.

Still, 55 percent of Australians have a landline phone at home and only just over a quarter (29%) rely only on their smartphones according to a survey (调查). Of those Australians who still have a landline, a third concede that it’s not really necessary and they’re keeping it as a security blanket — 19 percent say they never use it while a further 13 percent keep it in case of emergencies. I think my home falls into that category.

More than half of Australian homes are still choosing to stick with their home phone. Age is naturally a factor (因素)— only 58 percent of Generation Ys still use landlines now and then, compared to 84 percent of Baby Boomers who’ve perhaps had the same home number for 50 years. Age isn’t the only factor; I’d say it’s also to do with the makeup of your household.

Generation Xers with young families, like my wife and I, can still find it convenient to have a home phone rather than providing a mobile phone for every family member. That said, to be honest the only people who ever ring our home phone are our Baby Boomers parents, to the point where we play a game and guess who is calling before we pick up the phone (using Caller ID would take the fun out of it).

How attached are you to your landline? How long until they go the way of gas street lamps and morning milk deliveries?

10 . “Human activity has wiped out two-thirds of the world’s wildlife since 1970,” CNN reported on September 10, 2020. Later that month, the Guardian reported that “40 percent of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction”. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich and his colleagues argued that “the ongoing sixth mass extinction may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization”. Around the same time, the Daily Mail warned that “human civilization stands a 90 percent chance of collapse within decades due to deforestation”.

These horrible calculations and projections come from authoritative-sounding reports issued by international agencies, conservation groups, and peer-reviewed scientific journals. But is the future of wild nature and human civilization really so poor?

Data from uncontroversial mainstream sources strongly indicate that both humanity and the natural world are likely to be flourishing rather than collapsing at the end of this century. Humanity is becoming an urban species, and that’s good for the environment, since urban dwellers generally use less electricity, produce less globe-warming carbon dioxide, and have smaller land footprints than people living in the countryside. By 2100, it is estimated that 85 percent of people will be city dwellers, which would leave only 1.2 billion still living in the countryside. That means more space for the wildlife and less pollution from the agriculture.

The global tree-covering area increased by 865,000 square miles between 1982 and 2016. The researchers found that gains in forest area in the mild, subtropical and northern climatic zones are offsetting declines in the tropics. The Maryland researchers owe much of that increase to “natural afforestation on abandoned agricultural land”. “Furthermore, forests in mountainous regions are expanding as climate warming enables trees to grow at higher altitudes,” they added.

Humanity does face big environmental challenges in the coming century. But the scientific and economic evidence shows that most of the trends are positive or can be turned in positive direction by human wisdom. Rather than an age of extinction, the 21st century promises to be an era of environmental renewal.