1 . Scientists have long believed that Mars was wet around three billion years ago and then lost much of its water. But a new study presents evidence of water activity from about 700 million years ago, posing a new puzzle about Mars and its history for scientists to crack in their future studies.

The new study is based on data from China’s Zhurong rover (“祝融号”火星车), part of the Tianwen-1 mission that touched down on the surface of Mars in May 2021. In particular, the scientists used data the rover gathered during its first 92 Martian days, at its landing site in Utopia Planitia. Yang Liu, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS), and his colleagues analyzed data from three different instruments on Zhurong. Those instruments studied minerals that suggest the presence of a large quantity of liquid water at the site about 700 million years ago, which scientists previously thought was dry.

“This is a very interesting result. We have very little recorded evidence of young liquid water systems on Mars. And for the ones we have, they were usually in the form of salt minerals,” says Dr. Scheller, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology. He explained Zhurong’s instruments spotted water molecules locked away in the rock, which was different from other young liquid water environments that have been observed.

“One of the major things we’ll have to find out and that I look forward to seeing from the Zhurong rover is how extensive these ‘young’ water-bearing minerals are,” Dr. Scheller said. “Are they common or uncommon in these ‘young’ rocks?” Zhurong has now covered about two kilometers during its more than 350 Martian days and has analyzed a range of features on its travels, meaning more new Martian insights are likely still to come from the rover.

NASA has so far sent its Mars rovers to ancient landing sites, dating back to more than 3.7 billion years ago. Zhurong is not just an extra set of wheels on Mars, but a powerful suite of instruments exploring a new, geologically young site to open new windows of opportunity for research on Mars.

Thanks for your listening!

6 . In the thick forest, a New Caledonian crow carefully removes a branch, pulls off unwanted leaves and makes a tool from the wood. The crow is a perfectionist. When it’s satisfied, the bird advances the finished tool into a hole in the tree and fishes out a wriggling grub (蠕动的幼虫).

The New Caledonian crow is one of the only birds known to make tools, a skill once thought to be unique to humans. The remarkable originality that Christian Rutz, a behavioral ecologist at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, observed changed his understanding of what birds can do. He started wondering if there might be other ignored animal abilities. Experiments have shown that different crow groups in the forest have distinct vocalizations (发声). Rutz wanted to know whether these vocalizations could help explain cultural differences in tool-making among the groups.

New technology powered by artificial intelligence (AI) is ready to provide exactly these kinds of insights. Whether animals communicate with one another in terms we might be able to understand is a question of enduring question. “With recent breakthroughs in AI, people realize that we are on the edge of fairly major advances in regard to understanding animals’ communicative behavior,” Rutz says.

Beyond creating chat-bots that attract people and producing art that wins fine-arts competitions, machine learning may soon make it possible to crack (破解) things like crow calls, says Aza Raskin, one of the founders of the nonprofit Earth Species Project. Cracking animal vocalizations could aid conservation and welfare efforts. It could also have a shocking impact on us. Raskin compares the coming revolution to the invention of the telescope. “We looked out at the universe and discovered that Earth was not the center,” he says. The power of AI to reshape our understanding of animals, he thinks, will have a similar effect. “These tools are going to change the way that we see ourselves in relation to everything.”

7 . Katya Echazarreta recently made history as the first Mexican-born American woman and one of the youngest women ever to fly to space—a lifelong dream she was able to accomplish at only 26 years old.

On June 4, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket carried its fifth group of passengers to the edge of space and Katya got an opportunity to apply for one of the six seats through a nonprofit called Space for Humanity. The previous flights had been all filled to capacity.

The organization’s goal is to send passengers to space and allow them to experience the “overview effect”, a phenomenon astronauts have described after looking down at the Earth from the outside. “They recognize that, as humans, our commonalities far outweigh our differences,” Space for Humanity says on its website.

Katya, an electrical engineer originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, was selected for the trip from a pool of 7,000 applicants from more than 100 countries based on her outstanding achievements in the space industry, and this met their requirement—sending “exceptional leaders” to experience. After going through training, she and her five fellow passengers took off from Blue Origin’s launch facility in West Texas. The spacecraft took them 62 miles above the Earth’s surface, giving them a few minutes of weightlessness before a descent (下降) back to a parachute landing.

“The trip up was the most fascinating experience because a lot of us are used to traveling horizontally. But when you’ re in a rocket, you’ re going up vertically (垂直地) and that feels very strange,” Echazarreta said. “Seeing the Earth from the outside, I feel it really puts things into perspective. Everything that we’ve ever experienced—all of your problems, and all of your obstacles—and everything that feels like the end of the world to us sometimes, are all there. It feels so big to us, and yet it’s not, because I just left in a matter of minutes.”

8 . Artificial intelligence (AI) tools designed to operate at human levels have greatly expanded in popularity over the past year. These include OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s AI-powered search engine Bing. Such tools, also known as chatbots or generative AI, are computer-powered systems. They are designed to interact smoothly with humans and perform high-level writing and creative work.

In recent months, these tools have demonstrated an ability to produce high-quality work. This has led some technology experts to warn that generative AI systems could end up replacing workers in many industries.

This year, researchers at Harvard Business School and other organizations carried out an experiment. It aimed to test how well AI tools could help workers perform their usual duties or tasks. It involved more than 700 business advisors, called consultants, from Massachusetts-based Boston Consulting Group.

Harvard Business School recently published the results from the experiment in a working paper. The main findings suggest that AI tools like ChatGPT can greatly improve worker performance. For example, researchers found that, on average, workers who used OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT 4 tool completed 12 percent more tasks than non-ChatGPT users. Tasks carried out with help from the AI technology were completed 25 percent faster. And the team found the quality of work performed by consultants using ChatGPT 4 increased by about 40 percent.

However, the paper also noted areas where the performance of consultants using ChatGPT 4 dropped. The researchers said this was especially true with tasks the AI tool was not good at completing. “Of tasks the AI was good at, the experiment showed it significantly improved human performance,” the paper said. “But for tasks ChatGPT 4 was not right for, humans relied too much on the AI and were more likely to make mistakes.”

The team suggests one of the biggest barriers to companies effectively using AI is not knowing which tasks can be completed best with the technology. Finding this out will require businesses to carry out thoughtful research and training efforts in order to find the right mix of AI and human-level work.

Today, environmental problems have been the greatest risk to life on Earth. Scientists are thinking of ways to     1    (low) this risk. There is no doubt     2     humankind is drawn towards Mars, with dreams of making     3     our second home. However, radiation is the biggest problem we will have to solve in order to settle on Mars. Radiation levels on the surface of Mars are two and a half times     4    (high) than those on the International Space Station.     5    (expose) to high levels of radiation may increase the risks of contracting cancer and other diseases.

Dust storms are common throughout the year and cover the entire planet for weeks, blocking sunlight from reaching the surface. Perhaps more     6    (important), these storms, made up of fine dust     7    (catch) in the atmosphere, can affect energy production for long periods.

To live on Mars, we should find permanent shelter that     8    (offer) long-term protection from radiation. We could build a special structure near the Red Planet’s freezing north pole. It would protect us against radiation and keep inner atmospheric pressure constant as well.

For now, human settlement of Mars is decades away. Regardless, it seems that humans       9    (live) on Mars may well happen a lot sooner     10     most people believe. Until we are finally able to live on Mars, we need to take much better care of our own.