1 . It is a small step for a plant, and a giant leap for plant kind. A sprouting (发芽) cotton seed on China’s Chang’e-4 lunar lander is the first plant ever to grow in another world, indicating a new era for life in space.

Seeds, including cotton, arabidopsis (拟南芥), oilseed rape (油菜) and potato were carried to the Moon as a part of biological experiment, along with fruit fly eggs and some yeasts (酵母).

Pictures sent back by the probe show the cotton seeds sprouting on January 7, 2019, a few days after Chang’e-4 landed on the far side of the Moon.

The organisms (生物) are in a sealed can, protected from the extreme temperatures and radiation on the surface. “Understanding how to grow plants in space will help lay the foundation for human settlement on the Moon,” a scientist leading the experiment told the South China Morning Post.

The six organisms are intended to form a mini-ecosystem, with the plants making oxygen and food to sustain the fruit flies. Yeasts could process the flies’ waste and dead plants to provide another food source.

In a future human settlement, potatoes could provide food, rapeseed could be a source of oil and cotton could be used for clothing. A study in 2014 reported that plants could sprout and grow in lunar soil for 50 days without any additional nutrients (营养物). Over longer periods, human waste could help support plants’ nutritional needs.

These lunar green shoots aren’t the first plants in space. Astronauts on the International Space Station have grown crops including peas, radishes and cucumbers. They got their first bites of space-grown romaine lettuce in 2015.

The China National Space Administration eventually hopes to put humans on the Moon. “We are studying the program of sending astronauts to the Moon, but it’s still in very early stages,” a deputy director told the South China Morning Post. “We haven’t got the approval yet.”

2 . “The Worthington Christian defeated the Westerville North by 2—1 in an Ohio boys’ soccer game on Saturday.” That’s according to a story that appeared last month in The Columbus Dispatch. That lead was written not by a sportswriter, but by an artificial intelligence (AI) tool.

Many news organizations are now examining how AI might be used in their work. But if they begin their “experimenting” with high school sports because they are less momentous than war, peace, climate change and politics, they may miss something crucial. Nothing may be more important to the students who play high school sports, and to their families, neighborhoods, and sometimes, the whole town. That next game is what the students train for, work toward, and dream about. Someday, almost all student athletes will go on to have jobs in front of screens, in office parks, at schools, in hospitals or on construction sites. They may suffer blows and setbacks. But the high school games they played and watched, as well as their hopes and cheers, will stay vivid in their memories.

I have a small idea. If newspapers will no longer send staff reporters to cover high school games, why not hire high school student journalists? News organizations can pay students an hourly wage to cover high school games. The young reporters might learn how to be fair to all sides, write vividly, and attract readers. That’s what some celebrities in sports did, and do.

And think of the great writers who were inspired by sports: Hemingway on fishing, Bernard Malamud and Marianne Moore on baseball, Chen Zhongshi on football, and CLR James on cricket, who said, “There can be raw pain and bleeding where so many thousands see the inevitable (不可避免的) ups and downs of only a game.” A good high school writer, unlike a robot, could tell readers not just the score, but the stories of the game.

3 . In January 2020, I left for a mission, along with a 75-person crew. I had got to know everyone quite well, which made me feel confident that everything would run smoothly. The main goal of the mission was to voyage through the water, identifying boats and aircraft with our sensors while remaining undetected. We were the eyes and ears of the French navy, 300 metres under the ocean.

Being in a submarine (潜水艇) is a bit like being in a spaceship. Letters from family were allowed to keep crew members motivated, but for safety and caution, all communication from the crew’s families was seen first by navy staff who removed any content that could cause panic on board.

In February 2020, as Covid-19 started to emerge in Europe, the navy began to block all Covid-19-related news in our life. Throughout March and April, we had no idea that Covid-19 was even a thing, let alone that France was under strict lockdown.

The day finally came when we were set to come back. The radio channels on the submarine announced the news: “There is a deadly virus, and the country is locked down.” Actually, the information didn’t make any sense to me at that time. “Lockdown” was a new word to me. I didn’t know what to expect.

When I got out of the submarine. I got my phone back and received weeks’ worth of panicked messages. I took a train back to Paris, where my family lives, and was completely lost. People had masks and gloves on. I put over my mouth a fireproof mask that had been given to me by the navy. I just thought, everyone is hiding their mouths, so I’ll do it, too, even though I didn’t know why.

China’s first domestically made passenger jet (喷气式飞机)     1     (fly) its first successful commercial flight on Sunday,     2     (mark) a milestone in the nation’s decades-long effort to compete with industry giants such as Boeing and Airbus in the global aircraft market.

The C919 plane, carrying about 130 passengers on the flight, was built by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC).     3     (operate) by state-owned China Eastern Airlines, the jet took     4     on Sunday morning from Shanghai Hongqiao Airport and landed less than two hours later in Beijing. Passengers received special red boarding passes     5     enjoyed a themed meal to commemorate the flight.

“I’m confident about the plane. The flight was     6     (smooth) than expected,” one of the passengers said.

The flight comes as COMAC seeks     7     (break) into the jet market in a direct challenge to Airbus and Boeing. Airbus’s A320 and Boeing’s B737 jets are the most popular aircraft     8     (typical) used on domestic and regional routes.

The C919,     9     had been in development for 16 years, has a maximum range of about 5,630 kilometers and is designed to carry between 158 and 168 passengers. It made its first flight in 2017 and had conducted numerous test     10     (flight) before Sunday’s first commercial flight. The company plans to build 150 C919 planes each year in the next five years. Over 1,200 C919 jets have been ordered, COMAC says.

10 . The Beatles will release what is said to be their last ever song this week, pieced together from recordings spanning more than four decades and it would not have been possible without AI.

Now and Then has been edited together from a recording of the late John Lennon playing the piano and singing at his home in New York in 1979. Now, artificial intelligence has been used to extract usable sections from that noisy tape. These have been combined with guitar tracks from the late George Harrison, recorded in 1995 when efforts were made to finish the song. The endeavour was called off due to poor sound quality, which AI has now been able to solve.

Finally, new recordings made earlier this year from Paul McCartney and Ringo Start were added. McCartney has teased the existence of the song in interview s and said in a statement: “There it was, John’s voice, crystal clear. It’s quite emotional. And we all play on it, it’s a genuine Beatles recording. In 2023 to still be working on Beatles music, and about to release a new song the public haven’t heard, I think it’s an exciting thing.”

When creating Now and Then, AI is used to separate the dialogue from other noises to help editor s create a workable documentary. Ultimately, the engineers were able to develop bespoke AI powerful enough to remove all background noise and isolate not only speech but even the sound of each instrument played in a band.

Jess Aslan at University of London, says The Beatles’ track is an interesting experiment because it was done transparently with the blessing of the living members of the band, but adds that AI is a double-edged sword that also presents risks to artists. “One significant issue is that generative AI is squeezing the already extremely narrow creative job market,” she says. “Another is that of ownership, as these large-scale models are in fact bypassing copyright laws and using artists’ data without permission.”