The common problem of myopia(近视) among students has been a big challenge for China to deal with for many years. According to reports, about 35.6 percent of primary school students and nearly 81 percent of senior high school students are nearsighted(近视的) in China.
Considering this background, Wantang Primary School in Yunnan province really stands out. This is because none of the students at this school suffer from myopia. Parents, teachers and eye experts began discussing whether the school's experience can be used to tackle the rising level of myopia across China.
Yang Chenhao is a doctor at the Children's Hospital of Fudan University. He said that while the school is a special case, some of its methods are highly worth learning, such as keeping children away from mobile phones and getting them outdoors more often.
Yang Qingyi is a teacher at the school, which has 536 students. He said that all children are required to go outside during class breaks. "Even for quiet kids, we encourage them to take a walk outside," he said. When the three sports teachers there are busy, teachers of other subjects will work as trainers to teach basketball and table tennis.
"If there is one piece of advice that we can share on achieving zero myopia, I would say large amounts of outdoor activities," said Sun Fubiao, the primary school's headmaster. Sun said that a number of his students' parents are working in other areas, so the school has fixed six public phones while not allowing use of personal mobile phones.
"In teacher-parent WeChat groups, we often remind parents to pay attention to kids' eye health when they are at home for weekends or vacations," he added.
As autumn arrives in the United States and Canada, you could see the yearly migration of the monarch butterflies(帝王蝶).
No other butterfly in the world migrates like the monarch butterflies of North America. Every year, they fly to the south because they can't live for long periods in cold weather.
So each autumn around October, the butterflies travel up to 3, 000 kilometers south to spend winter in warmer locations. Some even fly to the mountains of Mexico. There are so many of them that they almost block out the sky. And you can hear their wings beating.
It usually takes the butterflies two months to reach Mexico. After five months of staying, they head back north in the spring.
But not one butterfly finishes the whole round-trip. They lay eggs along the way and die. Three generations(代)of butterflies will live and die during the spring journey alone. The fourth and final generation of the year is born in early autumn and will reach the north. But the butterflies hardly get to rest before starting the long journey south again to Mexico.
The most amazing thing about these butterflies is that they return to the very same trees in Mexico that their great-great-grandparents used to live on the winter before.
However, the population of this colorful butterfly has dropped in recent years. One of the main reasons, experts say, is that farmers have used herbicides(除草剂) on plants. The monarchs lay eggs along the route of their migration. Their larvae(幼虫) live and feed on the plants. But the herbicides can kill them.
Recently Google has announced a series of new artificial intelligence (Al) (人工智能) tools designed to help users in organizing emails and creating business writings and meetings. These tools display important AI development progress in recent years. The tools are built by putting a great deal of data (数据) into machine learning computer systems. The data trains the AI systems to develop skills and produce human-like results.
The technology received wide attention last year after a company called OpenAI announced a free writing tool called ChatGPT. That tool can quickly produce human-quality writings. Experts(专家) say such systems may bring great changes to many different industries and jobs. Now some companies are able to test Google's new tools in their development and business activities.
Like ChatGPT, Google's AI tools are designed to create completely written texts for many different purposes. For example, an office worker could enter some keywords of a kind of text they want. The tools could then create a full marketing email, training materials or a business plan in a while. Google sees the system being able to offer an "AI Helper" to help human workers in real time. Google wants to have its AI change the work of lawyers, scientists, teachers and more.
However, Google says it keeps developing AI products of high quality. That is why the company is inviting groups of "trusted testers" to use its AI tools rather than widely selling its new products. Google's new AI tools are the company's latest move to fight for business. Companies like Microsoft and Meta are also working on products about AI.
Technology experts have warned that while the new AI tools can produce human-like writings, the systems can also make mistakes.
Last month, Bard, Google's new AI tool designed to give a better online search, made a mistake and caused a $100-billion drop. Microsoft users said the company's new AI tools produced unfriendly and rude results.
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