Augusto Esquivel is a sculptor who, in his own words, is “crazy with comparisons of reality and potential and the balance between them.” Perhaps the best example of what he's talking about are his most famous creations: the suspended(悬挂的) button sculptures.

Made entirely from buttons hanging on various lengths of string, Esquivel's sculptures are made to look like common objects: a piano, a gumball machine, and even a toilet. If it wasn't for the clear string hanging above, these objects, these sculptures, would look solid, yet you can put your hands right through them. The process starts with him deciding on a subject and setting the acrylic （丙烯酸树脂）from where the buttons are being suspended. He buys buttons of different shapes and sizes, paints them with spray paint, and carefully hangs them. After that, it's a manner of hanging each individual button, which takes a lot of time. For his piano, for example, he individually hung over 60 pounds worth of tiny buttons.

Esquivel's sculptures, while mostly housed inside art galleries, perfectly capture one of the main principles of street art: something that is eye-catching and something that invites interaction. Often the best sculptures outside the art galleries aren't the ones behind guards and fencing, but the ones people can go right up to and touch. In Vancouver, a series of laughing old men are attracting people for pictures and to just generally hang around, but the people who simply walk by and see the sculptures almost always leave with a smile on their face. That's good street art: it draws the viewer in rather than relying on a gallery to draw in an audience and point them to certain pieces.

Esquivel's art is not only a presentation of talent, something that mentions larger philosophical questions, like the ones he stated above, but also just the right combination of interesting idea and painstaking work. One can look at his work in a critical way, or simply appreciate his idea and execution(艺术品的制作).

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    “Well, I finally did it. I finally decided to enter the digital age and get a cell phone. My kids have been annoying me and the last straw was when my car broke down, and I was stuck by the highway for an hour before someone stopped to help. But when I went to the cell phone store, I almost changed my mind. The phones all have cameras, computers and a "global-positioning" something or other that's supposed to spot me from space. Goodness, all I want to do is to be able to talk to my grandkids ！ The people at the store weren't much help. They couldn't understand why someone wouldn't want a phone the size of a postage stamp. And the rate plans! They were confusing, and expensive… and the'contract (合同）lasted for two years! I'd almost given up until a friend told me about her new Jitterbug phone. Now,I have the convenience and safety of being about to stay in touch with a phone I can actually use. ”

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    A research has shown that nearly 90 percent of traffic accidents are caused by human errors. So our aim is a fully autonomous car that gets rid of the cause of most accidents: the driver. Researcher Hodgson points out, “For safety, the faster you can remove humans, the better, even if there are unfortunately a few accidents from new causes. It s a question of balancing the number injured or killed by autonomous vehicles with the people whose lives are potentially saved.”

It's an idea that Elon Musk, chief executive of electric car company Tesla Motors, has long believed. His company are determined to be the first to deliver a fully autonomous vehicle to consumers. Last year, Musk announced that Tesla's 2017 goal was “to do an example drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York…and have the car park itself.”

However, even Tesla admits that there are problems to overcome—the software needs further validation and the appropriate regulatory approval needs to be in place. Indeed, recent crashes of Tesla vehicles and Google cars confirm that the software isn't ready yet.

The UK government appears committed to encouraging the development of autonomous vehicles. It's supporting four city trials, publishing the Modem Transport Bill to reduce red tape around their introduction and adapting the legal system to take into account problems such as insurance liability when a human isn't in control of a vehicle.

    The insurance industry is similarly eager to help increase autonomy in cars. As the Association of British Insurers (ABI) points out, “More than 90 per cent of road accidents are caused by human error.” This costs motor insurers a shocking £20m per day in claims.

    Scientists are using robots to study the health of waters in and around Venice, Italy. The robots are designed to act like fish, other underwater creatures and plants. The scientists are working with several universities and research centers as part of a group called subCULTron. The European Union gives money to the project as part of its Horizon 2020 program whose aim is to take great ideas from the lab to the market and support science and innovation (创新) in Europe. The scientists want to use the artificial intelligence of the robots to help humans understand what is happening under the water of the Venice lagoon (潟湖).

    SubCULTron, a collective artificial intelligence project, plans to create the biggest shoal (鱼群) of robot fish in the world. The project's aim is to improve knowledge of the seabed and try to turn human abilities into hi-tech items.

    Alexandre Campo, a computer scientist, says the scientists have looked at the way animals learn to work in groups to understand how robots can learn to work together. The subCULTron project wants its robots to learn to work together so they can watch out for changes and new problems in the water.

    One problem the researchers had in the beginning was how the robots would communicate with each other. Wi-Fi and GPS equipment don't work underwater. Instead，the robots can use sonar (声呐) and an electric field.

    Another problem was charging batteries. The robots come up to the water's surface and stay near a boat or a power station to charge without any electrical cables. Besides, how to be water- proof, especially for some key pads of the robots, was really tough. Fortunately, a special mixture has been created to be pinned on the robot, which successfully stands the test of water.

    The health state of the lagoon is pretty good. There are no industrial polluters, and the city now has a modem sewer (污水管) system. It's not like before when all the waste flushed directly into the water. The robots in Venice will continue their work until 2019. The subCULTron project hopes they develop into “an artificial society underneath the water surface” that serves “a human society above the water”.

    Welcome to your future life!

    You get up in the morning and look into the mirror. Your face is firm and young-looking. In 2035, medical technology is better than ever. Many people your age could live to be 150, so at 40, you're not old at all. And your parents just had an anti-aging(抗衰老的) treatment. Now, all three of look the same age!

    You say to your shirt, “Turn red.” It changes from blue to red. In 2035, “smart clothes” contain particles(粒子) much smaller than the cells in your body. The particles can be programmed to change clothes' color or pattern.

    You walk into the kitchen. You pick up the milk, but a voice says,“ You shouldn't drink that!” Your fridge has read the chip (芯片) that contains information about the milk , and it knows the milk is old . In 2035, every article of food in the grocery store has such a chip.

    It's time to go to work. In 2035, cars drive themselves. Just tell your “smart car” where to go. On the way, you can call a friend using your jacket sleeve. Such “smart technology” is all around you.

    So will all these things come true? “For new technology to succeed,” says scientist Andrew Zolli ,”it has to be so much better that it replaces what we have already.” The Internet is one example—what will be the next?

    Mrs. Jones was my first patient when I started medical school—and I owe her a lot.

    She was under my care for the first two years of my medical training, yet I knew very little about her, except that she was thin, perhaps in her mid 70s. It might seem rather negligent not to know the basic facts of my patient ,but I had a valid reason—Mrs. Jones was dead, and had been dead for about three years before I made a patient of her. Mrs. Jones was the dead body that I dissected（解剖）over the first two years of my medical training.

Of course, her name wasn't really Mrs. Jones, but it seemed a little impolite to be conducting research into someone's body without even knowing its name, so out of courtesy, I thought she should have one. "Me and Mrs. Jones, we've got a thing going on," went the song coming out of the radio as I unzipped the bag of her on my first day — and so she was christened.

As the months passed, I soon forgot that Mrs. Jones had, in fact, once been alive. One day, though, she suddenly became very human again. I'd been dissecting Mrs. Jones a good 18 months before I got around to the uterus（子宫）. After I'd removed it, the professor came up to me, "If you look at the opening carefully, you'll see that the angle indicates that this woman has had several children, probably three." I stared at it, and I suddenly felt very strange. This woman, who had given me something incredibly precious that I'd begun to take for granted, wasn't a dead body. She was a person, a mother, in fact.

    At my graduation, the same professor came over to congratulate me. I explained the story about Mrs. Jones to him, and recalled what he'd told me about her having children and how that had affected me all those years ago.

"Well," he said, "at the beginning of your training you had a dead body and managed to turn it into a person. Now you're a doctor, the trick is to have a person and not turn them into a dead body," and he laughed, shook my hand and walked away.