Are You Right Handed or Left Handed?

    Which hand do you use when write? About 8 to 15 percent of people are left handed. They often have to use tools that are designed for right-handed people. So it is difficult for left-handers to use most tools. If you are right handed, try this experiment: Take a knife with your left hand and try cutting a potato into pieces. Don't be surprised if you feel awkward（别扭的）.

    In the past, people thought it was strange to use the left hand. Young students looked down upon their left-handed classmates. Some children were even punished for using their left hand to write. But these days parents and teachers have accepted that. In almost every school in the world, left-handed students can use their left hand to write.

    What causes people to be left handed or right handed? Experts have searched long and hard on this. They conclude（得出结论） that left-handed people are left handed for the same reason that right-handed people are right handed. One out of every ten people just is a left-handed people are right handed. One out of every ten people just is a left-hander. It's simply like the color of our eyes – some people have brown eyes, while some others have black eyes.

    However, may researchers think that left-handers and right-handers are different in some aspects. Right-handers are more talkative and outgoing than left-handers. Many right-handed people understand spoken words better. For example, after they listen to directions to a supermarket, they can find it easily. Right-handers are good at organizing people, too. They are also better basketball guards. Just ask Yao Ming.

    Research shows that left-handers are creative and artistic. Many famous performers, like Jim Carrey and Paul McCartney, are left handed. Many left-handers learn better visually（在视觉方面）. In art, both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were left handed. In music, Ludwig van Beethoven was left handed. In science, you find Newton and Einstein. The left-handed people are also really good at tennis and other single sports.

    If you prefer one hand, but you are still good at writing with the other, you are mixed. Research shows mixed-handers can remember everyday things better than other people. What did you eat for lunch two weeks ago? If you're mixed handed, you can probably remember.

    Can plants learn and remember? Monica from Australia thinks so.

    Monica and her team members did some tests on mimosas(含羞草). The plants close their leaves quickly when people touch them. They put some mimosas in 56 pots. Every time they dropped the pots from 30cm high, the plants closed their leaves. Monica and her team members did this for a whole day. To their surprise，at the end of the day, the plants didn't close their leaves at all. It seemed that the plants learned that this action wouldn't hurt them.

    Another amazing thing was that the plants might remember things for a long time. Monica dropped the same pots of mimosas four weeks later. The plants still didn't close their leaves.

    Monica wasn't sure how plants learned and remembered. "The plants don't have brains, after all. Maybe they learn and remember with the help of their cells(细胞)," she said.

    Have you ever been ill? When you are ill, your body becomes hot, and there are pains all over your body. You must be unhappy because of it. You don't want to work. You stay in bed feeling sad.

    What makes us ill? It's germs. Germs are everywhere. They are very small and you can't find them with your eyes, but you can see them with a microscope (显微镜). They are very, very small and there could be hundreds of them on a very small thing.

    Germs are always found in dirty water. When we look at dirty water under the microscope, we can see them in it. So your father and mother will not let you drink dirty water.

    Germs aren't found only in water. They are found in the air and dust (灰尘). If you cut your finger, and if some of the dust from the floor goes into the cut, some of the germs will go into your finger. Your finger will become big and red, and you will have much pain in it. Sometimes the germs will go into all of your body, and you will have pain everywhere.

I'm Linda. In my home, there's a black and white thing. We call it Xiaodu. When you say " Xiaodu, Xiaodu", it says to you,"I'm here!" When you say" Good morning!" it says," Good morning!" to you.

 In the morning, it is my clock. When it's 7:00, it tells me the time.

 For my mom, Xiaodu is a library. It reads books to her every day.

 My brother is 3 years old. He often asks Xiaodu for help," What's a telephone?"" What's a tape player?"… For him, Xiaodu is a dictionary.

 Xiaodu is our good friend. We love it. Oh, where is it? It's on the TV set now.

Developed by US company OpenAI,ChatGPT has taken the internet by.storm. People can ask the robot to write stories and emails,translate languages,and answer all kinds of questions.It does this by drawing on information collected from a large amount of internet text.One breakthrough behind today's model is a network called Transformer.The GPT models built by Open AI combined Transformer with unsupervised(无人指导的)learning,which means that the models can learn by themselves without being told what to look at.

"One of the biggest problems with ChatGPT is that it comes back,very  confidently,with false information,"Michael Wooldridge told The Guardian.This means that ChatGPT learns information from various resources but it cannot decide what is true or false.Some argue that ChatGPT will be used to make fake news, spread falsities,or be used for ill purposes.

Andreas Schleicher thinks the chatbot will become a very powerful tool in the development of education.But he also mentioned,"There's a great risk that we'll just blindly follow the answers that we get from ChatGPT rather than question it and create new knowledge.If students are only as smart as a smartphone,it means educators are not doing enough.People should focus on developing human skills that actually are important,such as imagination and creativity."

Schleicher added that as a tool,ChatGPT is going to make learning much more interesting and powerful,but as a purpose and goal,humans need to work very hard to win that race with technology.