Tetraplegic patients (those who can’t move their upper or lower body) are prisoners of their own bodies. Now a robot arm is to help them interact with their world. This research was completed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Professor Aude Billard and Jose del R. Millan worked together to create a computer program that can control a robot using electrical signals from a patient’s brain.

First, the user wears an EEG cap to have their electrical signals inside their brain scanned (扫 描) effectively, which are then interpreted by the machine-learning algorithm (算法).The computer then sends signals to the robot arm to determine how it moves. As the robot arm performs a motion,the algorithm is looking to get feedback from the user when it makes a mistake: perhaps it moved too fast, or too violently. The end goal is that the robot can learn the right movements for a task in a given context. For example, you might want the arm to use a bit of force to throw a paper ball, but you might want it to be gentler when putting glass bottles.

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As cultural symbols go, the American car is quite young. The Model T Ford was built at the Piquette Plant in Michigan a century ago, with the first rolling off the assembly line (装配线) on September 27, 1908. Only eleven cars were produced the next month. But eventually Henry Ford would build fifteen million of them.

Modern America was born on the road, behind a wheel. The car shaped some of the most lasting aspects of American culture: the roadside diner, the billboard, the motel, even the hamburger. For most of the last century, the car represented what it meant to be American—going forward at high speed to find new worlds. The road novel, the road movie, these are the most typical American ideas, born of abundant petrol, cheap cars and a never-ending interstate highway system, the largest public works project in history.

In 1928 Herbert Hoover imagined an America with “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Since then, this society has moved onward, never looking back, as the car transformed America from a farm-based society into an industrial

The cars that drove the American Dream have helped to create a global ecological disaster. In America the demand for oil has grown by 22 percent since 1990.

The problems of excessive (过度的) energy consumption, climate change and population growth have been described in a book by the American writer Thomas L. Friedman. He fears the worst, but hopes for the best.

Friedman points out that the green economy (经济) is a chance to keep American strength. “The ability to design, build and export green technologies for producing clean water, clean air and healthy and abundant food is going to be the currency of power in the new century.”

What has the use of cars in America led to?

“If you look at where hydrogen is going to be produced in Europe in the next million years, it’s in two countries, Spain and Portugal,” said Thierry Lepercq, the founder and president of HyDeal Ambition, an industry platform bringing together 30 companies. “Hydrogen is the new oil.”

Lepercq is working with companies like Spanish gas pipeline corporation Enagas and global steel giant ArcelorMittal to design an end-to-end model for hydrogen production, distribution and supply at a competitive price. Criticism has centered on green hydrogen’s higher cost compared with highly-polluting “gray hydrogen” drawn from natural gas. Lepercq argues that solar energy produced in Spain is priced low enough to compete.

Globally, Lepercq said, “Electricity is 20% of energy consumption. What about the 80% that is not electrified? ... You need to replace those fossil fuels. Not in 50 years’ time. You need to replace them now.”