1 . Here’re some of the excellent inventions in 2023. Which one do you like most?

The paint on a white building reflects 80 to 90% of the sunlight that strikes it. The rest of the light warms the surrounding area, raising air-conditioning bills. But the Whiter Paint is made of chemicals that better reflect UV rays. It reflects up to 98% of the sunlight, which could reduce AC use by 40%. “The heat is reflected into deep space,” says Xiulin Ruan, who led the Purdue University team that created the paint.

Now you can take music lessons on a smartphone, using this app, which uses an on-screen piano to teach basics such as harmony and beat. You learn by interacting with more than 200 popular pieces of music. Just match sounds to notes and play along. “You don’t need natural talent to learn music,” says Karen Chow, who’s a learning scientist at Duolingo.

Model A, developed by Alef Aeronautics, is a two-seat all-electric vehicle with a flight range of 110 miles. And it looks as if it were made to be parked in a garage. In July, 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration gave Ale f permission to take the vehicle on test flights. The company hopes to deliver the first Model A by 2026.

They’re actually battery-powered shoes with wheels. They let you walk normally—just faster and more easily. Moonwalkers, made by Shift Robotics, use AI to sense when you’re speeding up or slowing down, and adjust themselves accordingly. With it, you can walk at speeds up to seven miles per hour.

4 . When people in your organization come to you to discuss a problem, you give them your best answer and probably assume you’ve helped them.

    1    . You’re not being much help if you’re not really listening to them. We’re not talking about the mere act of listening, but the art of listening, known as active listening. How can you become a more effective listener? Here are some tips:

Be present.     2    . There’re so many things that make you lose focus in the office many of them tech-related, like instant messaging and email—that you almost can’t help but half listen to anyone who speaks to you, whether it’s in person or by phone. What you need to do is purposefully practice active listening by bringing yourself fully into the conversation.     3    .

Give the other person your undivided attention. It shows respect and can have a positive impact on your entire exchange. It also means you’re less likely to misunderstand, or simply miss, what the person is saying to you.     4     when a customer or coworker is telling you about a problem you already know how to solve before they’ve finished speaking. But part of active listening means you need to let them complete their full “download” to you before you respond.

Understand nonverbal（非语言） changes.     5    , but good listeners will also sense what is not being said, as well as what is verbalized. Learning how to read physical cues, such as facial expressions, takes practice. Improving these active listening skills will help you get the message and resolve problems faster.

5 . New research concludes people may struggle to differentiate between medical advice given by chatbots (聊天机器人) and human health care providers. Findings indicate chatbots, like ChatGPT, could be valuable tools in assisting healthcare providers in communicating with patients.

ChatGPT is trained to predict the most probable next word in a conversation using vast amounts of Internet data. It responds to user enquiries, learning from human feedback. However, it’s not without limitations. ChatGPT, like other large language models（LLMs）, can sometimes produce biased information and lacks the ability to perform true reasoning.

The research had 392 participants aged 18 and above who were presented with ten patient questions. Half of the responses to these questions were given by humans, while the other half came from ChatGPT. Participants then had to identify the origin of each response and rate their trust in the chatbot’s answers from “completely untrustworthy” to “completely trustworthy”. Participants could only correctly identify chatbot-given responses 65.5% of the time. Participants displayed the most trust in chatbots when handling the matters, such as scheduling appointments or addressing insurance enquiries, with an average trust score of 3.94. Preventative care questions, like cancer screenings, came next at 3.52. However, trust decreased for diagnostic (诊断) and treatment advice, registering scores of 2.90 and 2.89 respectively.

The study’s results indicate the potential chatbots possess in aiding patient-provider communications, especially in areas like administrative tasks. But scientists have something to say regarding chatbots assuming more clinical roles. “Providers should exercise picky judgment when it comes to chatbot-given advice due to the limitations of AI models,” researchers said in a statement.

The use of AI into healthcare is no longer a distant possibility but a rapidly evolving reality. This study offers a glimpse (瞥见) into the ways we can expect to see AI platforms team with medical clinics. It also shows us improvements that are needed so that new technologies become effective aids and tools for both doctors and patients. These include the following.

6 . For the second year in a row, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) has started the program AdoptAxolotl to boost conservation efforts for axolotls, an endangered Mexican salamander (蝾螈).

Most salamanders go through a big change which allows them to live on land instead of in water. But axolotls never do. They live their whole lives in the water. Axolotls are famous for their ability to cure themselves. If an axolotl loses a leg, or even part of its heart, brain, or lungs, it can re-grow them. Scientists have long been interested in how the axolotl does this, thinking the information could help solve some human medical problems.

There’re several different kinds of axolotls in Mexico, all of whom are seriously endangered. The Mexican axolotl, which is the best-known, is only found naturally in Lake Xochimilco near Mexico City. This is not a big, open lake, but a collection of canals and smaller bodies of water.

Sadly, the number of axolotls in Xochimilco has dropped 99.5% in less than 20 years. People don’t hunt them, then, how does this happen? One is that the water in the canals has become more and more polluted. Another is that there’re a number of fish from other places in the lake which are eating the axolotl’s food, and even their babies.

Last year, the UNAM scientists started AdoptAxolotl, asking people to donate to save the axolotl. They raised over $26,000, which is being used to help clean up some of Xochimilco’s canals and for a program to raise axolotls in a safe environment.

This year, the scientists are trying AdoptAxolotl again. The money raised will be used to support the scientists’ work, and help restore the axolotl’s natural home in the canals of Xochimilco. The scientists hope to raise enough money to do a careful count of how many axolotls are left in the wild, which will help them figure out the best ways of protecting these amazing creatures.

7 . Geoffrey Holt was a “nobody” in the public eye. He worked in his eighties as a caretaker at a mobile home park in Hinsdale, New Hampshire.

Holt collected hundreds of model cars and train sets that filled his rooms. He also collected books about history, with Henry Ford and World War II among his favorite topics. Holt had an extensive record collection too, including Handel and Mozart. Very often, he’d find a quiet place and study financial publications.

After retiring, Holt did various jobs for others. Despite having taught driver’s education course to high schoolers, he’d given up driving a car. He opted for a bicycle instead and finally the mower（除草机）. His mobile home in the park was mostly empty of furniture—no TV and no computer, either. The legs of the bed went through the floor.

But Holt did have two things. He had a big secret and an even bigger heart. He passed away in early 2023. In a move that surprised the tiny town of 4,200 people, he left all his worldly goods to the people of Hinsdale.

With his casual lifestyle, no one would have guessed that Holt had a wealth worth up to $3.8million! Holt, who earlier in life had worked as a production manager at a grain factory that closed down in nearby Brattleboro, Vermont, spent his money on communications, hoping to earn more out of it. In the end, it was doing better than he’d ever expected.

Holt grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. His father, Lee Holt, was a professor who taught English and world literature in a college. His mother, Margaret Holt, was an artist. Holt went to boarding schools and attended the former Marlboro College in Vermont, where students had self-designed degree plans. He graduated in 1963 and earned a master’s degree from the college where his father taught in 1968.

9 . I was once a painfully insecure teenage girl. I felt ________ all day, and rejected by my classmates. My ________ comfort was to be the stage assistant at our school’s theater.

One day, to my ________, actors from the great Oregon Shakespeare Festival came to perform for the school. One of them was Barry Kraft, who was a ________ leading actor. As I ran around backstage ________ him, he treated me with the casual ________ that he would show for friends in his living room. I ________ thought he was just making small talk to ________ the time before the performance.

That summer, I traveled to ________ Kraft’s performance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. During one performance, I gathered my ________ and dropped him a note at intermission (中场休息), saying that if he ________ he could see me in the 15th row. Almost immediately I ________ sending the note, thinking he was too busy to see me.

After the ________, surprisingly, he was waiting for me! He smiled broadly, saying, “Would you like to visit backstage?” And off we went. Every time we ________ someone, he introduced me and said, “She helped me a lot.” I found him ________ sincere with people. It was then that I ________ I’d been wrong about him that day.

My ________ just increased 800%. After all, a well-known man like Kraft was willing to take the ________ to communicate with me, which ________ I mustn’t be so bad. From then on, I felt like a different person. ________, I successfully entered my dream university.