-- It's great. There are different_______ of _______ from different places.

    Do you know why different animals or pests have their special colours? Colours in them seem to be used mainly to protect themselves. Some birds love eating locusts (蝗虫), but birds cannot easily catch them, why? It is because locusts change their colours with the change of the colours of crops. When crops are green, locusts look green. But as the harvest (收获) time comes, locusts change to the same brown colour as crops have. Some other pests with different colours from plants are easily found and eaten by others. So they have to hide themselves for living and appear only at night.

    If you study animals' life, you'll find the main use of colour is to protect themselves. Bears, lions and other animals move quietly through the forests and they cannot be easily seen by hunters. This is because they have the colours much like the trees.

    Have you ever noticed an even stranger act? A kind of fish in the sea can send out a kind of very black liquid (液体) when it faces danger. While the liquid spreads, its enemies cannot find it. And it immediately swims away. So it has lived up to now though it is not strong at all.

Did you know that a seed (种子) can have its own "ID card"? The "card" shows that the seed is at the national crop germplasm bank (国家作物种质库) in Beijing, known as China's seed bank.

A seed's journey to the seed bank starts with a census (普查). China's latest census of seeds started in 2021 and ended in 2023, reported CCTV News. Workers collected more than 139,000 new seeds from all over the country. They then arrived at the seed bank.

When seeds first come in, they each get a number for their "physical examination". For example, workers put all kinds of corns from different farms together. Then they put them into groups according to the seeds' look or taste.

Next, workers check the seeds to make sure they're healthy and all the unhealthy ones are given up. A worker at the seed bank showed CCTV News a seed that had a large insect (虫子) inside it, "A seed like this should not be saved," he said.

With the bad seeds gone, workers then test the good ones to see how likely they are to grow. The seed bank has a quick, smart way of doing this: Workers test the seeds and use the information they get to predict (预测) their growth. Workers dry and weigh the best seeds after several tests. Then, they're stored in fridge at -18℃.

China's seed bank keeps all the seed information safe and helps people learn about them. This can help develop new plants that can grow better and deal well with hard environments, ensuring (确保) the food safety of the country.

Breakout year for AI

For language masters like ChatGpt to helpful "painters" such as Midjourney, Al is changing how we live. No wonder(难怪) the UK's Collins Dictionary has named "A" as the Word of 2023.

AI is now an everyday technology, as common as e-mail or online video, said Alex Beecroft from Collins. And you can see this in "Time's Best Inventions of 2023". There are 14 Al tools on the list.

TrailGuard AI helps to protect wild animals. Small camera on it keep an eye on animals and look out for poachers(偷猎者). It has helped to catch 30 poachers in Africa.

How can we tell a real thing from a fake one? FeaturePrint helps. It is an app using AI. Take a photo of something like gold, a watch or a bag. Then FeaturePrint "sees" the details on it. It tells you whether the thing is real or not.

If these things can't make you excited enough, take a look at Google's most advanced (先进的)AI, Gemini. It can understand text, picture, audio (音频), video and code(代码). It does well in a test that includes 57 subjects, such as math, history and law.

What could Al do next? Will you use AI to help you with your study? We will have to wait and see.