1 . Iron Cooks

Robots have arrived in American restaurants and hotels for the same reasons they first arrived on factory floors.     1     Labor, meanwhile, is getting expensive, as some cities and states pass laws raising the minimum wage.

“We think we’ve hit the point where labor-wage rates are now making automation of those tasks make a lot more sense,” Bob Wright, the chief operations officer of the fast-food chain Wendy’s, said in a conference call with investors last February, referring to jobs that feature “repetitive production tasks.” Wendy’s and McDonald’s are in the process of installing self-service kiosks in locations across the country, allowing customers to order without ever talking to an employee.

    2     The international chain CaliBurger, for example, will soon install Flippy, a robot that can make 150 burgers an hour. John Miller, the CEO of Cali Group, which owns the chain, says employees don’t like working in the kitchen. Once the robots are sweating there, human employees will be free to interact with customers in more-targeted ways, bringing them extra napkins and asking them how they’re enjoying their burgers.

How many employees, though, do you need working in the café?     3     Will companies like CaliBurger see sufficient value in employing human greeters and soup-and-sandwich deliverers to keep those positions around long-term?

The experience of Eatsa may be instructive. The start-up restaurant, based in San Francisco, allows customers to order its quinoa bowls and salads on their smartphone or an in-store tablet and then pick up their order from a white wall of cubbies — an Automat for the app age. Initially, two greeters were stationed alongside the cubbies to welcome and direct customers.     4     So the company now employs a single greeter in its restaurants.

A．The early success of the kiosks suggests that, at least when ordering fast food, customers prize speed over high-touch customer service.

B．Business owners insist that robots will take over work that is dirty, dangerous, or just dull, enabling humans to focus on other tasks.

C．The better hope for workers might be that automation helps the food-service industry continue to develop.

D．But over time, customers relied less frequently on the greeters.

E．The cost of machines has fallen significantly in recent years, dropping 40 percent since 2005.

F．This has typically been the story of automation: Technology eliminates old jobs, but it also creates new ones.

2 . In the fog of uncertainty about how new technology will change the way we work, policymakers around the world have flocked to the same idea. No matter what the future brings, they say confidently, we will need to upskill the workforce in order to cope.

The view sounds reassuringly sensible. If computers are growing smarter, humans will need to learn to use them to humans’ advantage. Otherwise, they may run the risk of being replaced by computers.     1     .

Research published by the Social Mobility Commission shows that workers with degrees are over three times more likely to participate in training as adults than workers with no qualifications. That creates a virtuous circle for those who did well at school, and vicious circle for those who did not. If the robots are coming for both the accountants and the taxi drivers, you can bet the bean counters will be more able to retrain themselves out of danger.

    2     In the UK, the government introduced an “apprenticeship levy” a few years ago in an attempt to force employers to spend more on training. A surprising number have responded by sending their senior managers on “apprenticeships” at business schools.

It is no good criticizing employers for directing investments at their highly skilled workers. They are simply aiming for the highest return they can get. And, for some types of lower-paid work, it is not always true that technological progress requires more skills. The UK’s latest Employment and Skills Survey, which is performed every five years, suggests the use of literacy and numeracy skills at work has fallen since 2012, even as the use of computers has increased. The trouble is, when the computer makes your job easier one day, it might make it unnecessary the next. Many of those affected by automation will need to switch occupations, or even industries.     3    

It is time to revisit older ideas. The UK once had an energetic culture of night schools, for adults to attend after their day jobs. These institutions have been disappearing due to funding cuts. But a revival of night schools could be exactly what the 21st century needs.     4     They can also explore interests they never had a chance to nurture before.

It is still not clear whether the impact of new technology on the labour market will come in a trickle or aflood. But in an already unequal world, continuing to reserve all the lifeboats for the better-off would be a dangerous mistake.

A．Employers also invest more in better educated workers by launching employer-sponsored cmployee education programs.

B．According to an Oxford University study, nowadays employers are more likely to hire the first-year apprentices.

C．Rather than just “upskilling” in a narrow way, people could choose to learn an entirely new skill or trade.

D．But the truth is, the people who are being “upskilled” in today’s economy are the ones who need it the least.

E．People can effectively train or upskill themselves to meet their specific professional needs.

F．But a retailer or warehouse company is not going to retrain its staff to help them move to a different sector.

3 . Lessons from Commencement Speeches

As a business owner, you probably don’t look to college commencement speeches as a source of inspiration when you’re feeling frustrated or defeated — but you should. Here are three university commencement speeches delivered by successful individuals from a variety of fields.     1    

.1. Get comfortable with change / Jimmy Iovine, USC, 2014

Music mogul (大亨) Jimmy Iovine’s main advice is to get comfortable with change and the fear that comes with it. In his speech, Iovine explains that he learned his greatest life lesson when he realized the successful record company, he built couldn’t compete with the new industry model of downloading free music. He had a choice: get on board or get left behind.     2    

.2. Build businesses that do good / Bill Gates, Harvard University, 2007

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, uses this speech to pose a question he asks himself: How can you do the most good for the greatest amount of people with the resources you have?

For years, Gates was unaware of the millions of people around the world living in poverty and battling diseases. Once he realized he could help, he changed his approach to business. Pursuing innovation and advancement is important.     3     Gates tells Harvard, “Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries—but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.”

.3. Spend less time dreaming and more time doing / Shonda Rhimes, Dartmouth, 2014

If you feel beaten by the dreams you have for your business, this speech will set you straight.

Author and TV show producer Shonda Rhimes tells the Dartmouth graduates, “While some are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, engaged, powerful people, are busy doing.”     4     You don’t even need to know exactly what you want to do. Rhimes says the most important thing is to stay open to possibilities and just start somewhere.

A．Dreaming is only effective if you follow it up with action, whether you’re brainstorming a new business model or imagining how to grow your company.

B．Failure can be a driving force: one that frees you from fear and encourages you to pursue what you want most.

C．In today’s fast-moving world, one with great technological advancements and cultural shifts still needs to be prepared to learn, adapt, and start over if necessary.

D．It’s more important to develop creative business models that turn profits and solve problems.

E．The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.

F．Their words are guaranteed to motivate you to think critically about your business.

4 . Why Do Cats Love Boxes So Much?

There is an object that’s pretty much guaranteed to arouse your cat’s interest. That object, as the Internet has so thoroughly documented, is a box. Any box, really. Like many other really strange things cats do, science hasn’t fully cracked this particular feline (猫科的) mystery.

    1     In fact, when you look at all the evidence together, it could be that your cat may not just like boxes, he may need them.

The box-and-whisker plot

Understanding the feline mind is extremely difficult. Still, there’s a sizable amount of behavioral research on cats who are, well, used for other kinds of research. These studies have been taking place for more than 50 years and they make one thing quite clear:     2    

This is likely true for a number of reasons, but for cats in stressful situations, a box or some other type of separate enclosure can have a strong impact on both their behavior and physiology.

Ethologist Claudia Vinke of Utrecht University in the Netherlands is one of the latest researchers to study stress levels in shelter cats. Working with domestic cats in a Dutch animal shelter, Vinke provided hiding boxes for a group of newly arrived cats while keeping another group from them entirely.     3     In effect, the cats with boxes got used to their new surroundings faster, were far less stressed early on, and were more interested in interacting with humans.

The ‘If it fits, I sits’ principle

Some feline observers will note that in addition to boxes, many cats seem to pick other odd places to relax. Some curl up in a bathroom sink.     4     This brings us to the other reason why your cat may like particularly small boxes: It’s really cold out.

So there you have it: Boxes are insulating, stress-relieving, comfort zones—places where cats can hide, relax, sleep, and occasionally launch a surprise attack against the huge, unpredictable apes they live with.

A．Your furry companion obtains comfort and security from enclosed spaces.

B．Others prefer shoes, bowls, shopping bags, coffee mugs, empty egg cartons, and other small, enclosed spaces.

C．She found a significant difference in stress levels between cats that had the boxes and those that didn’t.

D．A box, in this sense, can often represent a safe zone, a place where sources of anxiety, hostility (恶意), and unwanted attention simply disappear.

E．So rather than work things out, cats tend to simply run away from their problems or avoid them altogether.

F．Thankfully, behavioral biologists and veterinarians have come up with a few interesting explanations.

5 . Is Fairtrade fair?

Fairtrade Foundation, an international foundation committed to fair trade, does what it says on the bottle: it is about better prices for farmers and workers in developing countries. Fairtrade addresses the injustices of conventional trade, which too often leaves the poorest, weakest producers earning less than it costs them to grow their crops. It’s a bit like a national minimum wage for global trade.     1    

Free-market economists complain that Fairtrade benefits only a small number of farmers, disadvantaging those outside. This is plain wrong.     2     Research in Bolivia, for example, found that coffee producers outside Fairtrade were able to negotiate higher prices: Fairtrade had become a price setter. Fairtrade farmers also share their knowledge in trading. For those inside the system, our research shows that through the minimum price guarantee, farmers have more secure and stable incomes.

Other critics ask why we are working with retailers or big brands like Starbucks.     3    So we are unapologetic in our commitment to scale up. By doing so, moreover, we begin to affect all business behaviour.

    4    We recognise that many farmers in the UK face similar issues to farmers elsewhere, but Fairtrade was established specifically to support the most disadvantaged producers in the world—like the tea-growers of Malawi, who don’t even have drinking water in their villages. I always buy my cheese, pears and carrots from my local farmers’ market—and enjoy Fairtrade bananas, tea and coffee. It’s two sides of the same movement to put people back at the heart of trade. Surely, you cannot say fairer than that.

A．In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite is true.

B．It is not entirely perfect, but a step in the right direction.

C．A favourite question is why we don’t work with UK farmers.

D．Fairtrade is the way forward, one keeping poor producers like myself earning a living.

E．Our answer is that only by mainstreaming Fairtrade will we be able to reach more producers.

F．Fairtrade may do some good in some circumstances, but it does not deserve the unique status it claims for itself.

6 . New Journalism, American literary movement in the 1960s and 70s, pushed the boundaries of traditional journalism and nonfiction writing. The genre combined journalistic research with the techniques of fiction writing in the reporting of stories about real-life events.

As in traditional investigative reporting, writers in the genre immersed (沉浸) themselves in their subjects, at times spending months in the field gathering facts through research, interviews, and observation. Their finished works were very different, however, from the feature stories typically published in newspapers and magazines of the time. Instead of employing traditional journalistic story structures and an institutional voice, they constructed well-developed characters, sustained dialogue, vivid scenes, and strong plotlines marked with dramatic tension.     1    . Their writing style, and the time and money that their in-depth research and long stories required, did not fit the needs or budgets of most newspapers, although the editors of prominent magazines sought out those writers and published their work with great commercial success. Many of those writers went on to publish their stories in anthologies or to write what became known as “nonfiction novels,” and many of those works became best sellers.

    2    . They also associated journalism with fiction when they described their work with phrases such as “nonfiction novel” and “narrative techniques of fiction.” In so doing, they sparked off a debate over how much like a novel or short story a journalistic piece could be before it began violating journalism's commitment to truth and facts.

Some observers praised the New Journalists for writing well-crafted, complex, and convincing stories that revitalized readers' interest in journalism and the topics covered, as well as inspiring other writers to join the profession.     3    . They feared that reporters would be tempted to stray from the facts in order to write more dramatic stories, by, for example, creating composite characters (melding several real people into one fictional character), compressing dialogue (making dialogue shorter), rearranging events, or even fabricating (or inventing) details. Some New Journalists freely admitted to using those techniques, arguing that they made their stories readable and publishable without sacrificing the essential truthfulness of the tale.     4    .

A．Others firmly opposed the use of those techniques, arguing that any departure from facts, however minor, discredited a story and moved it away from journalism into the realm of fiction.

B．They also wrote in voices that were distinctly their own.

C．The New Journalists argued that objectivity does not guarantee truth and that so-called “objective” stories can be more misleading than stories told from a clearly presented personal point of view.

D．The New Journalists expanded the definition of journalism and of legitimate (正统的) journalistic reporting and writing techniques.

E．The New Journalists’ ideas continue to be explored and refined by new generations of reporters and editors.

F．Others, however, worried that the New Journalism was replacing objectivity of with a dangerous subjectivity that threatened to undermine the credibility of all journalism.

7 . The rate of childhood obesity in the U.S. has tripled over the past 50 years. But what this trend means for children’s long-term health, and what to do about it (if anything), is not so clear.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) made waves this year by recommending that doctors put obese kids as young as two years old on intensive, family-oriented lifestyle and behavior plans.     1     This advice marks a shift from the organization’s previous stance of “watch and wait,” and it reflects the AAP’s belief that obesity is a disease and the group’s adoption of a more proactive position on childhood obesity.

Yet the lifestyle programs the AAP recommends are expensive, inaccessible to most children and hard to maintain — and the guidelines acknowledge these barriers. Few weight-loss drugs have been approved for older children, although many are used off-label.     2     And surgery, while becoming more common, has inherent risks and few long-term safety data — it could, for instance, cause nutritional deficits in growing children. Furthermore, it’s not clear whether interventions in youngsters help to improve health or merely add to the stigma overweight kids face from a fat-phobic society. This stigma can lead to mental health problems and eating disorders.

Rather than fixating on numbers on a scale, the U.S. and countries with similar trends should focus on an underlying truth: we need to invest in more and safer places for children to play where they can move and run around, climb and jump, ride and skate.

    3    In 2020 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found, unsurprisingly, that kids’ sports participation increases with their parents’ incomes: about 70 percent of kids whose families earn more than $105,000 a year participate in sports, but only 51 percent of middle-class kids and 31 percent of children at or below the poverty line do. This disparity hurts people of color the most. More than 60 percent of white children, for instance, participate in athletics, but only 42 percent of Black children and 47 percent of Hispanic children do. Experts blame these problems on the privatization of sports — as public investment in school-based athletics dwindles, expensive private leagues have grown, leaving many kids out.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, children between ages six and 17 should get at least an hour of moderate to intense physical activity every day. Yet only 21 to 28 percent of U.S. kids meet this target, two government-sponsored surveys found. The nonprofit Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance evaluates physical activity in American children, and in 2022 the group gave the U.S. a grade of D–.

Why is it so hard to get kids moving? In addition to fewer opportunities at school, researchers cite increased screen time, changing norms around letting kids play outdoors unsupervised, and a lack of safe places for them to play outside the home.

New York City, for example, had 2,067 public playgrounds as of 2019 — a “meager” amount for its large population, according to a report from the city comptroller — and inspectors found hazardous equipment at one quarter of them. In Los Angeles in 2015, only 33 percent of youths lived within walking distance of a park, according to the L.A. Neighborhood Land Trust. Lower-income neighborhoods tend to have the fewest public play spaces, despite often having a high population density.     4    

Kids everywhere need more places to play: trails, skate parks and climbing walls, gardens and ball fields, bike paths and basketball courts. Vigorous public funding to build and keep up these areas is crucial, but other options such as shared-use agreements can make unused spaces available to the public.

A．Moving more may not prevent a child from becoming overweight, but studies show clearly that it helps both physical and mental health.

B．And although rural areas have more undeveloped outdoor space, they often lack playgrounds, tracks and exercise facilities

C．A lack of safe places for them to play outside the home also contributes to kids obesity.

D．It also suggested prescribing weight-loss drugs to children 12 and older and surgery to teens 13 and older.

E．Increased screen time and changing norms around letting kids play outdoors are unsupervised.

F．They have significant side effects for both kids and adults.

8 . Why Does Food Taste Bad on Airplanes?

How many times have you complained about airline food being bland (淡而无味) and tasteless? How many times have you stopped from ordering any food at all during a flight because we find it unappetizing? Sadly, we might have just been proven to simply be too critical. According to popularly accepted studies, the reason for the ‘bad food’ might just be a change in our ability to perceive taste.

The Fraunhofer Institute, a research organization based in Germany, conducted a study on why a dish that would be perfectly acceptable in a fine dining restaurant would seem bland while in the air.     1    What is happening, then?

To maintain the pressure inside the cabin, airlines must closely regulate the air inside. This involves changing the composition of air that we breathe. The air inside airplane cabins is 15 percent drier than the air we breathe when we’re on the ground.     2     Scent actually starts to deteriorate the moment you step on a plane. The situation worsens once the airplane begins to climb, which makes passengers more dehydrated (脱水)and dry-mouthed. No one can deny that a glass of lemonade goes great with a meal on a sunny day, but it feels more acidic when you take a sip ten kilometers above the ground.

Although the cabin is pressurized to mimic the air pressure you would feel on the ground, it’s still less than the pressure we would normally experience at sea level. In this situation, our bodily fluids (体液) will move upwards and the nasal cavities (鼻腔) swell. The swelling messes with our taste buds, making the food taste unappealing.     3     Research has also shown that the lower temperature and air pressure on an airplane both make it harder to detect odorants, which are airborne molecules that stimulate the nose’s sensory cells and play an important role in the tasting process.

    4     These collectively produce a rather constant ‘noise’ that can be as loud as 85 decibels (分贝), which is equivalent to city traffic. It might seem like a weird reason for food to taste bland, but researchers have found that loud noises inhibit our ability to appreciate sweet flavors.

A．Essentially, it’s harder to smell on an airplane, so it’s also harder to taste.

B．You might know how dining in such conditions feel, since we’ve all fought colds or flu in the past.

C．In an environment like this, your powers of taste and smell begin to drift away.

D．Since sweet and salty foods suffer the most, airlines have begun to add more salt and spice to give their food some added vigor.

E．In a mock aircraft cabin, researchers tried out ingredients at both sea level and in a pressurized condition and the differences in taste were startling.

F．Flight noises include vibrations from the air striking the hull (机身), as well as the roaring of the engines and winds.

9 . Could a New Battery Solve Our Energy Problem?

Researchers in the US have made headlines worldwide by developing a new type of battery that charges far faster and holds way more charge than today’s lithium cells (锂电池). It’s not just a terrific technology story, either. The team behind it is led by tech legend Prof John Goodenough of the University of Texas, Austin—the co-inventor of the original lithium-ion battery, and still doing brilliant work at the age of 94.

    1     That’s why we’re still using 21^st-Century gadgetry with one eye on battery, wondering if we can get to a charger before our device goes completely dead.

This depressing state of affairs is more than simply inconvenient. If we’re to make the most of renewable energy, we need ways of coping with those times when the wind drops or there’s no sunshine.     2    

Elon Musk, the billionaire boss of electric car company Tesla, certainly thinks so. He’s already created a 20 megawatt battery ‘farm’ in California, and is willing to put his money where his batteries are.     3     For example, one wind farm in Hawaii had three fires in its battery ‘farm’ within a year of opening.

But now Goodenough and his team may have found the answer, by switching from lithium to sodium (钠).

The lithium batteries that made Goodenough’s reputation contain a liquid electrolyte (电解质) which doesn’t respond well to rapid charging. One of Goodenough’s colleagues, Maria Braga, decided that the answer lay in switching to solid electrolytes. The team has now managed to get a solid glass electrolyte to work with sodium, which is similar to lithium but far more common.     4     The battery has triple the charge of its lithium equivalent, it charges in minutes rather than hours, and it has a longer lifespan.

Advances in energy storage are vital if renewable are going to reach their potential. The boundless energy of Goodenough—the Li-ion King himself—may just have found the solution just in time.

A．Batteries that store energy for those times is one pretty obvious solution.

B．No one seriously questions the need for wind and solar power to be part of global energy strategy.

C．The result is transformational.

D．Yet not everyone is convinced current battery technology is up to the job.

E．While computing power famously doubles every two years, battery performance has barely doubled in 20.

F．Commercialisation may take a decade, though it could happen faster.