Female journalists who changed the world
Helen Thomas
Helen was a White House reporter who had a front row scat of history as she interviewed ten America presidents across her career. She was praised for her cruel drive, with one White House press secretary describing her questioning as torture (拷问). Her refusal to hide her strong opinions, even when asking questions to a president, made her one of the best-known journalists in Washington in the field.
Marie Colvin
The passionate and award-winning American journalist Marie Colvin worked as a foreign reporter at The Sunday Times from 1985 until she died in February 2012, while covering Siege of Homs(霍姆斯的围攻) in Syria. Marie crossed into Syria on the back of a motorcycle, ignoring the Syrian government's attempt to prevent foreign journalists from entering the country.
Mary Garber
In 1946, sports journalism was a man's job where female sports writers weren't allowed to enter press boxes. Mary Gaber changed that by paving the way for female sports writers.
She first covered high school sports and then reported on college athletics. In June 2005, she became the first woman to receive the Associated Press Sports Editor's Red Smith Award, presented annually since 1981 for major contributions to sports journalism.
Ann Leslie
Few reporters have filed stories from more than 70 countries, but British journalist Ann Leslie is considered a unique force in journalism. Because the 73-year old woman has witnessed and reported on some of the most significant events of the late 20th century. She was there when the Berlin Wall came down, and she lost her shoes in the crush waiting for Nelson Mandela's release.
When John Todd was a child, he loved to explore the woods around his house, observing how nature solved problems. A dirty stream, for example, often became clear after flowing through plants and along rocks where tiny creatures lived. When he got older, John started to wonder if this process could be used to clean up the messes people were making.
After studying agriculture, medicine, and fisheries in college, John went back to observing nature and asking questions. Why can certain plants trap harmful bacteria (细菌)? Which kinds of fish can eat cancer-causing chemicals? With the right combination of animals and plants, he figured, maybe he could clean up waste the way nature did. He decided to build what he would later call an eco-machine.
The task John set for himself was to remove harmful substances from some sludge (污泥). First, he constructed a series of clear fiberglass tanks connected to each other. Then he went around to local ponds and streams and brought back some plants and animals. He placed them in the tanks and waited. Little by little, these different kinds of life got used to one another and formed their own ecosystem. After a few weeks, John added the sludge.
He was amazed at the results. The plants and animals in the eco-machine took the sludge as food and began to eat it! Within weeks, it had all been digested, and all that was left was pure water.
Over the years, John has taken on many big jobs. He developed a greenhouse-like facility that treated sewage (污水) from 1,600 homes in South Burlington. He also designed an eco-machine to clean canal water in Fuzhou, a city in southeast China.
"Ecological design" is the name John gives to what he does. "Life on Earth is kind of a box of spare parts for the inventor," he says. "You put organisms in new relationships and observe what's happening. Then you let these new systems develop their own ways to self-repair."
Alan Mathison Turing was born in England in 1912. Like many talents who go on to great things, Turing showed his unbelievable intelligence from a very young age. Actually, by the time he was halfway through primary school, Turing's teachers had already realized he was a mathematical genius. He could do complex calculating in his head even though he had never been taught about it.
Fortunately, Turing was the opposite of Hawking, and he absolutely loved school. Proof of this is the extreme lengths he would go just to get to class. For example, on one occasion when there was a train strike, Turing even cycled 60 miles to attend. Now that's devotion!
However, in spite of Turin's scholarly attitude and his obvious genius, his teachers had their concerns about his future. This was because well-known schools in Britain like the ones Turing attended regarded the Classics, such as Latin and Greek as the most important, not subjects like maths and science. Turing's proud teachers even wrote letters to his parents asking them to persuade the young man to focus more on the Classics. Imagine how different the world might be if the young Turing had listened to his teachers! Thankfully, his love for all things scientific and mathematical meant there was no chance of that.
After finishing secondary school, Turing completed a degree in mathematics at King's College Cambridge, and then obtained his PhD from Princeton University in the USA. It was during these university years that he invented the Turing Machine, which is considered by many people to be the earliest version of a computer processing unit. It sounds unbelievable that anybody could have invented something which was similar to a computer in 1936. But that just shows how far ahead of his time Alan Turing was, even when he was still a young man.
ChatGPT, designed by OpenAI to carry on conversations just like humans, has become a viral excitement. The AI-powered tool went from zero to a million users in just five days! It is capable of providing in-depth answers to user questions, which has even drawn the attention of distinguished technology companies.
The intelligent robot understands what the user says or types and then responds in a way that makes sense. Its vast body of knowledge has been gathered from the internet and archived books, making ChatGPT a useful tool for researching almost any topic.
"We have a lot of information on the internet, but you normally have to Google it, then read it and then do something with it," says Ricardo, chief science officer and co-founder of AI company Erudit. "Now you'll have this resource that can process the whole internet and all of the information it contains for you to answer your question."
ChatGPT cannot think on its own. It depends on the information that it has been trained on. As a consequence, the AI tool works well for things that have accurate data available. However, when unsure, ChatGPT can get creative and flow out incorrect responses. OpenAI warns users to check the information no matter how logical it sounds. Also, ChatGPT has only been trained with information till 2021. Hence, it cannot be relied upon for anything that happened after that.
Experts believe ChatGPT has limitless potential to solve real-world problems. It can translate long texts into different languages, create content on almost any topic, and even summarize books.
Nevertheless, ChatGPT has received mixed reactions from educators. Some believe it could serve as a valuable tool to help build literacy skills in the classroom and could also be used to teach students difficult science or math concepts. But other educators, who fear this will prevent them from building critical thinking and problem-solving skills, think ChatGPT will encourage students to cheat. Consequently, many districts are starting to cease using it in schools.
Research from Harvard University's Wyss Institute have made "robotic shorts" that can help people use less energy when they walk or run.
A motor on the user's back pulls cables connected to the laps.
In the past, such devices have focused only on helping people walk or run, but not both, since walking and running use different hip(臀部) movements. But a computer on the shorts can tell which way the user is moving,
The researchers found that the main benefit of the shorts was reducing the energy people needed to walk or run. In tests, the energy needed for walking was reduced by 9.3 percent. Less energy was needed both on flat ground and on hills.
The researchers said that while the shorts weigh about 5 kilograms, moving with them makes users feel lighter. The tests showed that a person walking with the device would feel 4 kilograms lighter,
The team now also wants to make the device itself 40 percent lighter. They hope the shorts can help people in danger of injury at work and those who want to improve their physical performance,
Conor Walsh, who helped lead the study, says he hopes such devices will be available to everyone in the future.
A. as well as those with disabilities.
B. Are you eager to possess such kind of shorts?
C. and someone running would feel 5.7 kilograms lighter.
D. For running, people needed about 4 percent less energy.
E. but those excellent athletes are also able to benefit from running.
F. The shorts are made of soft material and are designed to be easy to move in.
G. allowing the device to provide the right kind of assistance for both movements.
A teenager from New York has invented a low-cost tool to spot elephant poachers(偷猎者) in real time.
Anika Puri, 17, won the 2022 Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication for her model of a machine-learning-driven software that 41 movement patterns in thermal infrared(热红外线) videos of humans and elephants.
"I'm very excited by the 42 focusing on endangered species and environmental science," Puri said.
During a recent trip to India, Puri realized that elephants were still being 43 for their tusks."I was quite shocked." Puri said. "Because I always thought. ‘Well, poaching is 44 : how come it really is still such a big 45 ?"
Over the next two years, Puri 46 the software EISa (short for elephant savior). This wildlife poacher detection solution is based on a 47 process: an EISa camera attached to an iPhone 48 over a park on a drone(无人机) and 49 the movements of elephants or humans.
Puri says the software is four times more 50 than existing state-of-the-art detection methods. It also removes the 51 for expensive high-resolution(高分辨率的) thermal cameras.
The 17-year-old's invention has earned 52 from notable scientists. "Puri's software is quts admirable", says Jasper Eikelboom, an ecologist. "It's quite 53 that a senior high school student has been able to 54 such a solution like this. Not only the research and the analysis but also being able to 55 it in the models."
So rapidly does the technology develop that no one can predict what may happen in the future. The number of 5G users in China has reached 20 percent, which leaves the people in the world (amaze). In China, operators are quick to provide constant nationwide coverage, (ensure) users a consistent experience. They also offer flexible service packages that delivers a beneficial result for both users and (they).
High-quality 5G networks (drive) rapid growth of mobile data traffic so far, according to Ding Yun, Huawei's executive director. As is estimated, the average data traffic per user per month will reach 600 GB by 2030. As a consequence this, the energy consumption of wireless networks will (definite) increase a lot if energy efficiency of existing networks remains unchanged. However, it is confirmed that Huawei has offered a comprehensive range of products and measures, will deal with the power consumption issues of wireless networks.
Huawei has already employed low-carbon (strategy) in more than 100 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Greece, Pakistan and Switzerland, helping operators reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 40 million tons. As important player in the communications industry, Huawei will continue to put green development at the center of everything it does and develop innovative ways to build (green) 5G networks worldwide than before.
