科技发展与信息技术创新、信息安全

Feeling frustrated and sometimes even exhausted from listening? Whether it happens suddenly or gradually over time, hearing loss can affect you physically and emotionally.

Dr. David C. Kelsall, a cochlear implant (耳蜗植入) surgeon and medical advisor to Cochlear, the world leader in cochlear implants, answers questions about cochlear implants and how they are different from hearing aids.

Q: How are cochlear implants different from hearing aids?

A: Hearing aids help many people by making the sounds they hear louder. Unfortunately, as hearing loss progresses, sounds need to be made not only louder, but also clearer. Cochlear implants can help give you that clarity, especially in noisy environments. Be sure to discuss your options with a hearing implant specialist in your area.

Q: Are cochlear implants covered by Medicare (医保)?

A: Yes, Medicare and most private insurance plans routinely cover cochlear implants.

Q: How do I know if a cochlear implant will work for me?

A: Cochlear hearing implant technology is very reliable. In fact, it has been around for almost 40 years and Cochlear has provided more than 550,000 implantable hearing devices.

Q: Is it a major surgery?

A: No, not at all. In fact, the procedure is often done on an outpatient basis and typically takes just a couple of hours.

Visit Cochlear.us/Rdigest to find a hearing implant specialist near you and get a free guide to cochlear implants.

Shopping around for cheaper energy is too much trouble, for you might be cheated.

Well, now you can save time and money without doing a thing.

Look After My Bills is a revolutionary and free energy auto-switching service which takes the hassle out of your energy bills.

They take all the boring bits of doing bills and leave you with a cheap deal, a reliable energy company and peace of mind every year. Their expert team manages the whole process for you, from running the comparison to sourcing a deal and even the switch itself. It will save you from spending hours shopping around on comparison sites—as well as money of course! In fact, members of the service save on average £253 a year on their bills.

When that deal ends, Look After My Bills automatically moves you to a new deal so you never have the hassle of remembering to switch yourself, and are always saving and never overpaying. You can relax safe in the knowledge that you're on a cheap energy deal every year.

Sign up once, and get great energy deals forever. Auto-switching is the simplest way to save money on your energy every year. It's the modern way to do bills, without the headache of comparison sites. It's the "why didn't we do this before?" moment we've been waiting for! So why not save yourself precious time and money and let Look After My Bills manage it all for you?

Imagine having a watch that could live-stream your heart as it beats in your chest.

Researchers have just shown a wearable ultrasound (超声波) patch. This stick-on device offers a flexible way to look deep into the body. Ultrasound maps tissues and fluids by recording how sound waves bounce off them. This tool can help doctors detect signs of organ damage or diagnose cancer. It can even track bacteria.

But most ultrasound machines are too heavy to carry around easily. There are wearable ones, but they have trouble spotting details or can only be used for short periods of time. The new patch can work for up to 48 hours straight—even while you're moving around a lot, like when you play a sport. Also, this patch sees just as well as the machines in hospitals, say its developers.

Mechanical (机械的) engineer Xuanhe Zhao, a member of the team that developed the new device, says, "This is just the beginning." Next, Zhao's team will make the patch wireless so it can talk to phones.

This has a lot of medical possibilities. Suppose you stick a patch on someone's heart. The images it takes could help predict heart attacks and blood clots (血栓) months before disaster hits, says Aparna Singh, who is a biomedical engineer at Columbia University. Placed on a patient with the virus, the patch could become an easy way to spot lung problems at an early stage.

In many poorer countries, access to hospitals and their high-power imaging machines can be limited. But the new device has a huge potential to help people in these parts of the world, Singh says. Right now, the patch costs about $100 to make. But its designers hope to bring that cost down.

As robots are gradually introduced into various real-world environments, developers and roboticists (机器人专家) will need to make sure that they can safely work around humans.

In recent years, they have introduced various approaches for estimating the positions and predicting the movements of robots in real time. Researchers at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco in Brazil have recently created a new deep learning model to estimate the pose of robotic arms and predict their movements. This model is designed to increase the safety of robots while they are working together and interacting with humans.

"Inspired by the need to anticipate accidents during human-robot interaction, we explore a framework (机制) that improves the safety of people working close to robots," said Djamel H. Sadok, one of the researchers who carried out the study.

First, Sadok and his colleagues wrote a custom data set containing images of scenes in which a robotic arm is interacting with a nearby human user. To create these images, they used UR-5, a robotic arm created by Universal Robots. Sadok and his colleagues estimated their framework's performance in a series of initial tests, where they tried to estimate the pose and predict future movements of a UR-5 arm, as it was helping a human user. They found that it achieved very promising results, detecting the robotic arm's pose and predicting its future movements more exactly.

In the future, the framework developed by this team of researchers could be used to improve the safety of both present and newly developed robotic systems. "We now plan to expand our framework to human pose detection and provide the estimation of robot and human pose," Sadok added. "By combining both data, we can work on the prediction of both movements, preventing further risks."

As people continue to use the Internet more, they share more information about themselves. It is important to protect yourself and stay safe online.

(1) ________ When searching for information online, you should check to make sure that you are accessing a trustworthy site. When you need that wireless connection, always use private Wi-Fi. Installing antivirus software and enabling your firewall will add another layer of protection against hackers.

Besides, although our generation is often thought of as experienced in using social media, many people use the same password for their logins. (2) ________ Instead, you can create different passwords for each of your accounts. Using numbers and special characters (@, $, *) will make your passwords stronger.

(3) ________ By keeping your accounts private, you can see who is following you and has access to your posts. Don't accept requests from people you don't know. (4) ________

While these tips can help you stay safe from getting hacked, you may still be hacked. (5) ________ If you cannot get into your accounts, make sure you contact those companies as soon as possible. If your device has been hacked, it is best to completely remove your device storage. Stay safe!

Most people would say they are familiar with dogs. They act as our (1) and working animals. They have (2) together with humans for a long time. Every dog owner will (3) that their dog is entirely one of a kind. What they may not (4) is that their dog can be identified by a total stranger.

As it turns out, each dog's nose print is as (5) as a human's fingerprint. And it can be used to (6) it with its owner if that dog gets lost or (7) its owner. In China, a company allows users to (8) their dogs' noses and upload those pictures to an online database of nose prints. Thus, vets can (9) them against a database of lost dogs.

Dogs and their (10) have even helped humans in (11) ways. For example, dogs can shake off water quickly. It is an efficient way of (12) water from their fur. A dog can shake off up to 70% of the water on its body in just four seconds. The method is so effective that it has been (13) by washing machine manufacturers. They wanted to find better ways to (14) clothes. The most interesting (15) of dogs is probably how much they love us. There's science behind that, too. But it might be better to leave it a wonderful mystery.

Humans have little difficulty (1) __________ (recognize) one another. We may not recall a name, (2) __________ we can usually remember if we've seen a face.

And we know that no two faces are exactly alike. Even "identical" (3) __________ (twin) have slightly different faces. Each human face is truly unique, (4) __________ makes seeing someone's face a great way to confirm their identity.

And now we have invented machines that are able to recognize faces, which they are doing daily for innumerable purposes (5) __________ lightning speed.

Governments, financial institutions, border security and police services are increasingly using facial recognition technology. This allows them (6) __________ (confirm) an individual's identity quickly. Systems are becoming so capable that (7) __________ wanted criminal can instantly be picked out from thousands of people. All that (8) __________ (require) is an image in a database to compare with the image of any number of people in a crowd.

Ordinary people, too, (9) __________ (use) facial recognition to unlock their phones, their computers and other devices. Such systems are (10) __________ (general) quite secure.