It used to be mostly the military that used small, unpiloted aircraft, called "drones". The little planes were very costly. But as they have dropped in price more people have begun to use them. Rescue workers and farmers are among the new users.

The fast rate of the development of computer technology, image sensing devices, satellite navigation and smartphones has led to lower-priced drones. Researchers and developers have learned how to build smaller and less-costly drones, Moviemakers are using drones to film from the sky. Historians use them when they explore ancient buildings. Rescue workers use them to look for people. And now farmers are using them to watch over their crops.

Romain Faroux is a French businessman who starts companies. His father was a farmer. He believed drones could help farmers. He helped create a company that developed a small drone that could be controlled by people on the ground. They called it "Agridrone". It uses a special "optical sensor" to examine crops. The technology used is similar to that used by smartphones-except it has wings. A computer program directs the drone to fly over the crops. The sensor on the drone records four different-colored "bands" of sunlight that are reflected off the crops.

Jean-Baptiste Bruggeman is a farmer. He says the drone flies over his crops at different times of the season. He says this provides a lot of information about his crops. The drone pictures show him the exact amount of fertilizer the crops need. It also shows exactly where the fertilizer is needed.

Romain Faroux says farmers use information collected by the Agridrone to place fertilizer only in areas where it was needed. This saves money and reduces pollution. Before they used the drones, farmers would put the same amount of fertilizer everywhere. Drones also save time because farmers can examine up to three hectare in about a minute.

Foldable Future has Arrived

Tablets(平板) are really useful devices(设备), but their big screens always make them as a burden to carry around without a bag. Wouldn't it be great if there were a phone with the powers of a tablet that could be folded up and fit into the hand?

Now something like a tablet-shaped but foldable phone is about to show up. In February, South Korean electronics company Samsung and China's Huawei both produced foldable phones, the Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X. Mobile phone use has entered the “foldable future”, The Verge said.

The technology could change our lives in meaningful ways. These devices, because of their bendable screens, give us the larger screens we want. Meanwhile, they still fit easily into the pocket.

The technology could change other devices too. For example, we could make TVs that stick to walls like posters, or fold up easily to hide away in drawers. In crowded modern cities, they will help us to make full use of space.

In a speech, Samsung’s senior vice president of mobile product marketing, Justin Denison, called the foldable screen “the base for the smartphone of tomorrow”. “It's a white paper for us to do something beautiful together,” he said.

According to tech news website Android Authority, the necessary parts of foldable phones were difficult to produce. In 2012, nine out of every 10 OLED screens produced were not perfect. Today, that 10 percent rate has been improved to between 50 and 90 percent. However, at present these foldable devices are expensive. For example, the price of Huawei Mate X is 17,500 RMB. That's a price that few people will be able to afford.

But if the foldable device isn't going to change the world overnight, there is no doubt that it is coming. Patrick Moorhead, an industry analyst told The Verge, “Few are debating if foldable mobile screens are the future of smartphones; the only question is when and by whom.”

A new study published in the National Academy of Sciences provides a measure of how far “deepfake” technology has progressed. The results suggest that real humans can easily fall for machine-generated faces. “We found that AI-generated faces are highly realistic,” says study co-author Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The result raises concerns that “these faces could be highly effective when used for criminal purposes.”

The synthetic (合成的) faces for this study were developed in back-and-forth interactions between two neural networks. One of the networks, called a generator, produced an evolving series of synthetic faces like a student working progressively through rough drafts. The other network, known as a discriminator, trained on real images and then graded the generated output by comparing it with data on actual faces. The generator began the exercise with random pixels (像素). With feedback from the discriminator, it gradually produced realistic humanlike faces. Ultimately, the discriminator was unable to tell a real face from a fake one.

After collecting 400 real faces matched to 400 synthetic versions, the researchers asked 315 people to separate real from fake among a selection of 128 of the images. Another group of 219 participants got some training and feedback about how to spot fakes as they tried to separate the faces.

The first group did not do better than a coin toss at telling real faces from fake ones, with an average accuracy of 48.2 percent. The second group failed to show dramatic improvement, receiving only about 59 percent, even with feedback about those participants’ choices.

The researchers were not expecting these results. The finding adds to concerns about the accessibility of technology that makes it possible for just about anyone to create misleading still images. Another concern is that such findings will create the impression that deepfakes will become completely undetectable and as a result, scientists might give up on trying to develop countermeasures (对策) to deepfakes.

The researchers end with a straightforward conclusion after emphasizing that misleading uses of deepfakes will continue to pose a threat: “We, therefore, encourage those developing these technologies to consider whether the associated risks are greater than their benefits. If so, then we discourage the development of technology simply because it is possible.”