Car companies are developing vehicles that will plug into electric sockets, ust like many laptops, digital cameras, cell phones and Mp4 do. Called “plug-in vehicles”, these cars will get most of their power from electricity. Their drivers won't have to stop at gas stations as often as usual.

    The technology is more than just cool. In our car-filled world, plug-in vehicles could reduce the amount of gas we use, which keeps rising in cost now and then. Besides, driving around in these vehicles may even help the environment. Gas-burning cars produce a lot of greenhouse gas, which causes global warming.

    The first company-produced plug-in vehicles could hit the roads by 2020. But engineers still have a lot of work to do to make the technology practical and inexpensive.

    Batteries are the biggest challenge. In the plug-in-vehicle world，Li-ion(锂离子)batteries are getting the most attention. These batteries can store a large amount of energy in a small package, and they last a longer time between charges. Li-ion batteries can fit laptops, cell phones, heart instruments and other similar pocket ones.

    But because cars are so big and heavy, it would still require a suitcase-sized Li-ion batteries to power about 12km of driving. What's more, the batteries are much expensive.

    “A car filled with batteries could go a long distance,” says Ted Bohn, an electrical engineer in Chicago. “But it couldn't pull any people, and it would cost $100,000.” So researchers need to work out how to make batteries smaller and cheaper, among other questions.

    “The answers don't exist yet,” Bohn says, “As a kid, I thought someone someplace knows the answer to everything. All of these questions haven't been decided. That's what engineering is about-making a guess, running tests and getting fine results.”

    As Internet users become more dependent on the Internet to store information, are people remembering less? If you know your computer will save information, why store it in your own personal memory, your brain? Experts are wondering if the Internet is changing what we remember and how.

    In a recent study, Professor Betsy Sparrow conducted some experiments. She and her research team wanted to know the Internet is changing memory. In the first experiment, they gave people 40 unimportant facts to type into a computer. The first group of people understood that the computer would save the information. The second group understood that the computer would not save it. Later, the second group remembered the information better. People in the first group knew they could find the information again, so they did not try to remember it.

    In another experiment, the researchers gave people facts to remember, and told them where to find the information on the Internet. The information was in a specific computer folder(文件夹). Surprisingly, people later remember the folder location(位置)better than the facts. When people use the Internet, they do not remember the information. Rather, they remember how to find it. This is called “transactive memory”.

    According to Sparrow, we are not becoming people with poor memories as a result of the Internet. Instead, computer users are developing stronger transactive memories; that is, people are learning how to organize large amounts of information so that they are able to find it at a later date. This doesn't mean we are becoming either more or less intelligent, but there is no doubt that the way we use memory is changing.

    Since 2013,Torobo, a robotic are designed to test the limits of artificial intelligence, has had one ambition—to be admitted to the University of Tokyo, one of Asia's top-ranked educational institutions. Although equipped with an extensive database of textbooks and other teaching materials, Torobo has repeatedly failed to obtain the university's required minimum 80% score in the National Center Test, a yearly standardized entrance examination adopted by Japanese universities. This year was no exception.

    In early November, Torobo, along with millions of Japanese high school students, took a mock(模拟的)exam to prepare for the all-important standardized test.

    Torobo's total score of 525 out of 950, which was higher than the national average, was enough for it to get admitted to many other influential Japanese universities.

    However, its standard score of 57.1%, though 14 points higher than in 2015, still fell short of the minimum required for the University of Tokyo.

    A closer analysis of the results showed that Torobo was able to draw from its database to solve knowledge-based questions and ones involving complex mathematical calculations, but it had a hard time thinking independently, failing to comprehend multiple sentences and phrases to arrive at the logical conclusions. This weakness was reflected in its shabby English scores.

    Fortunately, the robot's creators have decided to free Torobo from its four-year sufferings. Noriko Arai, professor of the University of Tokyo who heads the team, says, “From the present results, we are able to evaluate the possibilities and limits of artificial intelligence. From now on, we will grow its abilities in the fields where it is doing well and aim to improve them to levels that can be applied in industry.” So while Torobo will never graduate from the University of Tokyo, it can still look forward to a bright future!

    On the night of August 24, 2001, everything changed when my friends car hit a wall with me inside. I lost most of my right leg, and I was left bleeding with several broken bones. At the hospital, although my body was weak, my mind was still very clear. I just kept telling myself to hold on. A week later, I made a deal with the doctors that once I could roll onto my side, I could leave.

    Two weeks later, I was allowed to go home. Although I left the hospital, the fight was far from over. My left knee was badly injured, which resulted in different surgeries (手术) over the next few years. And soon, more of my right leg had to be removed This made it harder to wear my false leg, so I donated it to a nurse who couldn't afford one for herself. The joy of being able to provide this gift to someone else was greater than the happiness I felt on any day I was able to wear it myself.

    People often tell me they're proud of me for staying strong. But in my mind, staying strong has always been my only choice. So, on the day I left the hospital, I made a promise to myself to always live life to the fullest.

    Now, I may not be able to do things the way everybody else does them, but still, I always find a way to do them. I soon settled into everyday life again, until one day I realized I wasn't living my life as fully as I wanted to.

    After 13 years of thinking that I was confident, I had an unfamiliar feeling sweep over me. For the first time in my life, I was not only confident but I wanted to help those around me. In 2014, I even started modeling. My dream is that one day a little girl will see me in a magazine and say, "Wow, she's beautiful, and she only has one leg. I could do that too someday, even though I have a disability."

    When men and women take personality tests, some of the old Mars-Venus stereotypes(定式)keep reappearing. On average, women are more cooperative, kind, cautious and emotionally enthusiastic. Men tend to be more competitive, confident, rude and emotionally flat. Clear differences appear in early childhood and never disappear.

    What's not clear is the origin of these differences. Evolutionary psychologists think that these are natural features from ancient hunters and gatherers. Another school of psychologists argues that both sexes' personalities have been shaped by traditional social roles, and that personality differences will shrink as women spend less time taking care of children and more time in jobs outside the home.

    To test these hypotheses(假设), a series of research teams have repeatedly analyzed personality tests taken by men and women in more than 60 countries around the world. For evolutionary psychologists, the bad news is that the size of the gender gap in personality varies among cultures. For social-role psychologists, the bad news is that the change is going in the wrong direction. It looks as if personality differences between men and women are smaller in traditional cultures like India's or Zimbabwe's than in the Netherlands or the United States. A husband and a stay-at-home wife in a patriarchal(男权的)Botswanan clan(部族)seem to be more alike than a working couple in Denmark or France. The more Venus and Mars have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their personalities seem to separate.

    These findings are so unbelievable that some researchers have argued they must be due to cross-cultural problems with the personality tests. But according to new data from 40.000 men and women on six continents, David P. Schmitt and his colleagues conclude that the trends are real. Dr. Schmitt, a psychologist at Bradley University in Illinois and the director of the International Sexuality Description Project, suggests that as wealthy modern societies level(使平等)the barriers between women and men, some ancient internal differences are being developed.

    The biggest changes recorded by the researchers involve the personalities of men, not women.

    Men in traditional agricultural societies and poorer countries seem more cautious and anxious, less confident and less competitive than men in the most progressive and rich countries of Europe and North America.

    To explain these differences, Dr. Schmitt and his partners from Austria and Estonia point to the hardships of life in poorer countries. They note that in some other species, environmental stress tends to extremely affect the larger sex. And, they say, there are examples of stress decreasing biological sex differences in humans.

Jack Horner is co-author of the book How to Build a Dinosaur. However, he is most famous for his role as consultant(顾问) on all four Jurassic Park films, including the new film Jurassic World.

The original film Jurassic Park tells the story of a theme park where dinosaurs live. In that movie, scientists used DNA collected by ancient mosquitoes that had been trapped in amber shortly after they drank dinosaur blood. The scientists used this dinosaur DNA to create baby dinosaurs. The scientists in Jurassic Park created various types of dinosaurs, but in the real world there is one big problem with the story. It turns out that DNA could not possibly survive the 65 million years since the death of the dinosaurs.

The new movie creates the Indominus Rex. This idea of creating a hybrid species is something Horner has explored before. In 2011, he gave a speech in which he discussed producing a dinosaur by working with the genes of a bird. Modern birds are the closest living relative of dinosaurs.

The concept of using the genes of different animals to create new animals is called transgenic science. And this type of science has already produced some interesting results — goats that produce spider silk in their milk, cows that produce proteins for medicines that can treat diseases, and a pig that produces less-polluting waste thanks to a bit of mouse DNA. However, none of these examples are close to the dinosaurs in Jurassic World. And for a good reason — genetics is a very complex science. Producing a new species is not as simple as just exchanging a few genes around.

In the end, Jurassic World is all about fun.