2 . While most people were stuck at home last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, feeling isolated, some young people were thinking outside the box and reached for the sky as they created an impressive work.

When Bilibili uploader Lin Xiao, had too many bags to carry, instead of asking someone for help, the then 18-year-old spent about nine months addressing the problem. He built a robot, which can follow him wherever he goes, and upon which he can ride. The robot’s name? Devil! The name comes from the background music Devil’s Swing (Remix) for the video game Bendy and the Ink Machine. It resembles a suitcase, which can follow Lin wherever he goes, day or night, and detect obstacles in its path. It can also be used for transport and even charges Lin’s electronic devices.

Lin did everything himself, from designing the robot with 3D modeling, manufacturing the physical parts and programming it, to assembling all the components and electronics. The robot has a steel structure, a 3D-printed plastic shell and two 2D laser and radar scanners. The brain of the robot is powered by Arduino, an open-source electronics platform, and computing and coding solutions from computer manufacturer Raspberry Pi.

Lin admits that Devil is not perfect, but he hopes that it can inspire his peers to believe “what you do matters” and that they can make a difference in people’s lives. He sees Devil as “a toddler who is learning to walk”.

Lin’s passion for robotics began in his first year at his high school, when a teacher, discovered his talent for working with computers. He provided full support to advance Lin’s skills and took him to various computer science competitions.

5 . It’s a really cold winter day. I had just finished some shopping, and was ready to _________ the supermarket’s parking lot. Hearing the _________ coming from the area of the shopping carts, I _________ the sounds. It was someone I knew well who was playing the guitar. Beggar (乞丐), I can’t really call him.

He never begged. It was more like he was open to _________ presents. He would just sit _________ to the side of the entrance, and _________ everyone very politely who gave him something. I’d seen him many times.

He had been an epileptic (癫痫患者) since his childhood. He couldn’t even _________ the lowest-paid job the social services try to offer people like him. They seemed afraid of the _________.

I started feeling _________ for him, but he said, “I’ve made my __________ with that. I’m happy I could live in a flat. It’s very difficult to get off the street when people know you’ve lived here.” He told me how he’d remembered his __________ for music. He’d gotten so much help, and wanted to try to __________ the kindness, starting with the music. Thus everyone could enjoy sweet music while shopping.

I was __________ when he said that people were much more giving, and he wasn’t __________ about the money anymore because it didn’t matter to him any longer. He was grateful for what he had. He only wanted people to give him money if they really wanted to, if it was a __________ from the heart.

6 . When it comes to cooling the planet, forests have more than one trick upon their trees. A new study finds tropical (热带的) forests help cool the average global temperature by more than 1℃. “The effect is largely from forests’ ability to stockpile CO₂. But around one third of that tropical cooling effect comes from several other processes, such as the letting-out of water vapor (水蒸气),” researchers reported on March 24 in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change.

“We tend to focus on CO₂ and other greenhouse gases, but forests can not only keep CO₂,” said Deborah Lawrence, an environmental scientist at the University of Virginia. “It’s time to think about what else forests are doing for us besides keeping CO₂.”

“Researchers already know that forests influence their local climates through various chemical processes. Trees let out water vapor through their leaves and, like human sweating, this cools the trees and the things around them. But on a global scale, it isn’t clear how the other cooling works compared with the cooling provided by forests’ ability of keeping CO₂,” Lawrence said.

So she and her colleagues studied how over-cutting would affect global temperatures, using data gathered from other studies. For example, the researchers used data to decide how much the letting-out of CO2 stored by those forests would warm the global temperature. They then compared those results with other studies’ results of how much the loss of other aspects of forests.

The researchers found that in forests at latitudes (纬度) from around 50°S of the equator to 50°N, the primary way that forests influenced the global average temperature was through CO₂ store. But other cooling factors still played large roles.

10 . The story happened in the morning. I just _________ my dog from the vet’s. When I was driving home along the road, I found the car behind was _________ lights at me. Considering the signal might tell me that I was driving too slow, I _________ over. The car stopped, too. I was _________. What should I do?

A man approached and said my wallet had _________ the roof of my car at the last bend and that he had seen a lady pick it up. _________, I remembered I had placed my wallet there as I took away my dog in the doghouse and placed him in my car, but I _________ to take it back.

Having thanked him, I drove back to the previous _________. A lady came over and asked if I had lost anything. I said, “Yes, my wallet must have _________ somewhere.” She continued to ask me what was in my wallet. I responded truthfully. She added the __________ were scattered (分散的) on the road so she could confirm the wallet was mine. I was really __________. I took my wallet and said thanks. When I __________ my head to keep the things organized, I found my credit card, licence and cash were all right in my wallet.

I simply saw her disappearing __________ as I held my head up to look for the lady. She did me a favor but walked away silently. What a (n) __________ and kind lady! The lady’s and the man’s good deeds deeply touched me. I expressed my __________ to them from the bottom of my heart.