Nowadays more and more people are talking about geneticallymodified foods ( GM foods). GM foods develop from genetically modifiedorganisms (有机体), which havehad specific changes introduced into their DNA by genetic engineeringtechniques. These techniques are much more precise where an organism is exposedto chemicals to create a non­specific but stable change. For many people, thehigh­tech production raises all kinds of environmental, ethical, health andsafety problems. Particularly in countries with long farming traditions, theidea seems against nature.

In fact, GM foods are already very much a part of our lives.They were first put on the market in 1996. A third of the corn and more thanhalf the cotton grown in the U. S. last year was the product of biotechnology,according to the Department of Agriculture. More than 65 million acres ofgenetically modified crops will be planted in the US this year. The geneticgenie is out of the bottle.

However, like any new product entering the food chain, GM foodsmust be subjected to careful testing. In wealthy countries, the debate aboutbiotech is not so fierce by the fact that they have a large number of foods tochoose from, and a supply that goes beyond the needs. In developing countriesdesperate to feed fast­growing and underfed populations, the matter is simplerand much more urgent: do the benefits of biotech outweigh the risks?

The statistics on population growth and hunger are disturbing.Last year the world's population reached 6 billion. The UN states that nearly800 million people around the world are unhealthy. About 400 million women ofchildbearing age don' t have enough iron, which means their babies are exposedto various birth defeats.As many as 100 million children suffer from vitamin Adeficiency, a leading cause of blindness.

How can biotech help? Genetic engineering is widely used toproduce plants and animals with better nutritional values. Biotechnologistshave developed genetically modified rice and they are working on other kinds ofnutritionally improved crops. Biotech can also improve farming productivity inplaces where food shortages are caused by crop damage attributable to drought,poor soil and crop viruses.

    Your next ca might drive itself. After years of trials on city streets, driverless vehicles are now nearing the live phase. Last moth, a driverless bus began carrying passengers through Lyon, France, Most in the automobile industry think self-driving vehicles will be on the road by 2020 or before.

    Driverless cars will at first be huddled with human-driven cars. But the first places where they will become dominant（统治的）are dense urban areas — precisely the spots most damaged by the automobile age. Many advanced cities are already reducing the role of human-driven cargo. Driverless cars will quicken that process and will bring us enormous benefits.

    Driverless cars will reduce accidents by around 90 percent. That's big—the annual death toll on the world's roads is about 1.2 million a year. Pollution and carbon emissions will drop, because urban driverless cars will be electric. The old, otherwise they would stay at home most of the time and the disabled and teenagers will suddenly gain mobility.

    On the other hand, driverless cars will bring catastrophe. The best thing about the automobile age was that it employed tens of millions of people to make, market, insure and drive vehicles. Over the next 20 years, the mostly low-skilled men who now drive trucks, taxis and buses will see their jobs reduced. Carmakers are especially scared. The few cars of the future might be made by tech companies such as Apple, Baidu and Google. Imaging the impact on Germany, where the automotive sector is the largest industry.

    Dramatic change is coming, and driverless cars could arrive by 2020. But governments have barely begun thinking about it. Only 6 percent of the biggest US cities have factored them into their long-term planning.

    A decade ago anyone hardly saw the Smartphone coming. It has bought an epidemic of mass addiction. Let's hope we do a better job of handling the driverless car.

    Grey clouds move as low as smoke over the treetops at Lolo Pass. The ground is white. The day is June 10.It has been snowing for the past four days in the Bitterroot Mountains.Wayne Fairchild is getting worried about our trek over the Lolo Trail-95 miles from Lolo Montana to Weippe in Idaho, across the roughest country in the West. Lewis and Clark were nearly defeated 200 years ago by snowstorms on the Lolo. Today Fairchild is nervously checking the weather reports. He has agreed to take me across the toughest, middle section of the trail.

    When Lewis climbed on top of Lemhi Pass,140 miles south of Missoula, on Aug.12,1805,he was astonished by what was in front of him; "high mountain chains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow.＂Nobody in what was then the US knew the Rocky Mountains existed, with peaks twice as high as anything in the Appalachians back East.

    Today their pathway through those mountains holds more attraction than any other ground over which they traveled, for its raw wilderness is an evidence to the character of two cultures:the explorers who braved its hardships and the Native Americans who prize and conserve the path as a sacred (神圣的)gift. It remains today the same condition as when Lewis and Clark walked it.

    The Lolo is passable only from July to mid-September. Our luck is holding with the weather, although the snow keeps getting deeper. As we climb to Indian Post Office, the highest point on the trail at 7,033 ft, we have covered 13 miles in soft snow, and we hardly have enough energy to make dinner. After a meal of chicken, I sit on a rock on top of the ridge .There is no light visible in any direction, not even another campfire. For four days we do not see another human being. We are occupied with the things that mix fear with joy. In our imagination we have finally caught up with Lewis and Clark.

    Scientists today are making greater effort to study ocean currents (洋流) . Most do it using satellites and other high-tech equipment. However, ocean expert Curtis Ebbesmeyer does it in a special way -- by studying movements of random floating garbage. A scientist with many years' experience, he started this type of research in the early 1990s when he heard about hundreds of athletic shoes washing up on the shores of the northwest coast of the United States. There were so many shoes that people were setting up swap meets to try and match left and right shoes to sell or wear.

    Ebbesmeyer found out in his researches that the shoes — about 60,000 in total — fell into the ocean in a shipping accident. He phoned the shoe company and asked if they wanted the shoes back. As expected, the company told him that they didn't. Ebbesmeyer realized this could be a great experiment. If he learned when and where the shoes went into the water and tracked where they landed, he could learn a lot about the patterns of ocean currents.

    The Pacific Northwest is one of the world's best areas for beachcombing(海滩搜寻) because winds and currents join here, and as a result, there is a group of serious beachcombers in the area. Ebbesmeyer got to know a lot of them and asked for their help in collecting information about where the shoes landed. In a year he collected reliable information on 1, 600 shoes. With this data, he and a colleague were able to test and improve a computer program designed to model ocean currents, and publish the findings of their study.

    As the result of his work, Ebbesmeyer has become known as the scientist to call with questions about any unusual objects found floating in the ocean. He has even started an association of beachcombers and ocean experts, with 500 subscribers from West Africa to New Zealand. They have recorded all lost objects ranging from potatoes to golf gloves.

    It is difficult for doctors to help a person with a damaged brain. Without enough blood, the brain lives for only three to five minutes. More often the doctors can't fix the damage. Sometimes they are afraid to try something. to help because it is dangerous to work on the brain. The doctors might make the person worse if he operates on the brain.

    Dr. Robert White, a famous professor and doctor, thinks he knows a way to help. He thinks doctors should make the brain very cold. If it is very cold, the brain can live without blood for 30 minutes. This gives the doctor a longer time to do something for the brain.

    Dr. White tried his idea on 13 monkeys. First he taught them to do different jobs, then he operated on them. He made the monkeys' blood back to the monkeys' brains. When the brain's temperature was 10℃, Dr. White stopped the blood to the brain. After 30 minutes he turned the blood back on. He warmed the blood again. After their operations the monkeys were like they had been before. They were healthy and busy. Each one could still do the jobs the doctor had taught them.

Bullying on campus is increasingly becoming a problem, but the move by the Sherrard School in California, to set equipment inside toilets to catch bullying incidents is getting a lot of attention.

The school has put up a campus alarm system in sensitive places such as toilets that employs voice recognition and sensitive word activation, so that if someone is being bullied, the system can alert members of staff by sending specific signals. The system uses artificial intelligence for voice recognition, but its effectiveness doesn't depend only on these technologies. More important than the technology are the members of the school staff that are arranged to respond quickly and effectively to the warning calls.

Basically, technology serves as a way of reporting instances of bullying to the school authorities. What is truly noteworthy is the authorities' realization that timely intervention is required to stop bullying. In most cases of bullying in schools, educators and the administrators have overlooked early warning signs. And this can, at times, prove fatal. For instance, in a recent tragic case in Indiana, three junior school students plotted and took the life of their 10-year-old classmate. If the school had paid closer attention to the bullying, the tragedy could perhaps have been prevented. 

Returning to the system in California, should it prove effective, relevant government bodies can consider applying similar mechanisms in other schools to hold back bullying on campus. However, it is significant for them to bear in mind that it is human action, not just technology, that can help address this universal issue. Technology can definitely serve as a vital tool, but it is the human element — attentiveness, care, and timely intervention — that ultimately holds the key to creating a safer environment for all students.