Carla lives in Birmingham. She has a good friend named Alexa. "I am used to (say ) 'Good morning, Alexa ' and 'Good night, Alexa' every day, "she told the Wall Street Journal.

Alexa is not a real person. It is Amazon's Echo personal assistant. It has no shape or form, but can "talk" with humans online. This type of technology is called bot. At the 2016 World Robot Conference (WRC), more than 2, 000 robots over 10 countries gathered together. Bots (be) the stars at the conference.

Bots are a popular kind of artificial intelligence (AI). There is no need (tap) a screen and use an app. You can talk to bots (simple) by speaking into a microphone.

The bot family (include) Western members such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Echo. In China, there is Xiao i. The Xiao i bot is another example of voice recognition (声音识别)software. It was first (develop) in 2003. It has been used in smart phones, TVs, cars and at call centers. allows people to get intelligent services anywhere, anytime.

Do animals have a culture? What do we mean by "culture"?  Lately social scientists have begun to ask if culture is found just in humans, or if some animals have a culture too. When we speak of culture, we mean a way of life a group of people have in common. Culture includes the beliefs and attitudes we learn. It is the patterns of behavior that help people to live together. It is also the patterns of behavior that make one group of people different from another group.

Our culture lets us make up for having lost our strength, claws, long teeth» and other defenses. Instead we use tools, cooperate with one another, and communicate in language. But these aspects of human behavior, or "culture" can also be found in the lives of certain animals. Animals can make tools, for example. We used to think that the ability to use tools was the dividing line between human beings and animals. Lately, however, we have found that this is not the case. Chimpanzees （黑猩猩）can not only use tools but actually make tools themselves. Animals can also share knowledge with each other and use their own language to communicate. So it may be important for us to know that the line dividing us from animals is not as clear as we used to think.

How many plastic bags do you use every day? Is there any chance for us to live 1 them? What can we do to have 2 plastic pollution? A performance in Hangzhou makes people 3 more about the overuse of plastic bags in our lives.

In front of a supermarket in Hangzhou, five volunteers 4 white plastic bags and walked around and through the crowd. The performance called on people to use more cloth bags 5 plastic ones. Some of the plastic bags worn by the performers were 6 from customers in two food markets and 7 were collected by 700 students from a middle school.

On that day, when leaving the food markets, customers were told to hand in 8 plastic shopping bags. Hundreds of 9 bags were collected in two hours.

"If we do 10 about it, the earth will be eaten up by white pollution. And 11 will become 'plastic men', " said one of the performers.

"How can you breathe in 12 plastic bags?" A 13 woman asked one performer. "How can the earth breathe 14 there are too many plastic bags?" the performer answered.

Starting from June 2008, plastic bags were 15 given for free in supermarkets, shopping malls or food markets all over the country.

People are called on to use cloth bags when they go shopping.