Now, people may feel it surprising that given rise to by technological advances, one growing nuisance(讨厌的东西)，is the “junk” telephone call. Actually, without further human assistance, those calls are distributed by machines which can be programmed to dial numbers automatically. Once a number is reached, the machine delivers a prepared sales voice or even records the receiver’s response.

The machine, which can call hundreds of numbers during a regular business day, does present some problems. Certain of the devices, particularly the cheaper ones, do not disconnect if the person called chooses not to listen and hangs up.

This has the potential to cause tragedy, as well as anger and inconvenience. Woman in the Midwest, for example, attempted to call a doctor for her mother, who had just collapsed with what appeared to be a heart attack. The phone did not present a dial tone but a recorded sales voice, which would not stop even after the woman hung up the phone. Fortunately, a neighbor’s phone was usable, and help was in place in time.

Certain models of the dialing devices can record orders for the product being sold. This has resulted in some bizarre situations. A family in Texas, for example, found that a $10,000 worth medicine was ordered by their healthy 75-year granny. Another family discovered that their three-year-old child, who didn’t know how to read, had subscribed to several adult magazines for which the parents were then being billed.

Many people regard the junk telephone call to be even more offensive than junk mail which is usually possible to recognize and discard without opening or reading it. A phone call, however, can’t be recognized as junk until it has been answered and at least a portion of the message heard. Some people have turned to the continuous use of answering machines on their home telephones while others find the answering machines equally objectionable as the junk calls. In reference to all the facts, some kind of regulation of the nuisance should be in place.

A human-like robot has gotten a job working alongside humans at a factory for the first time.

Apollo, the autobot, has two aims, two legs and two eyes and is an average human height of 5 feet and 8 inches or 172 cm. The robot’s job is to fit boxes and containers and move them around the factory, but its designer, Apptronik, says future versions could be used to do housework around the home. While robotic machines are already used to sort grains, help doctors and police officers in training and clean the floor, Apollo is the first human-like robot to be put to work in a human job.

Apptronik said the robot was given human features such as arms and legs to help people feel more comfortable working with it. The robot only does basic tasks at the moment, but it will offer more and more features as the technology is developed.

At the moment, Apollo’s battery only lasts four hours, which means it has to do half day shifts compared to its human co-workers, who tend to work eight hours a day. Cardenas said that his company has built two Apollo robots so far and are now building four more. Apptronik plans to produce less than 100 test versions that companies can try out before it starts producing the final version in 2024.

Economists believe once robots like Apollo are mass-produced and introduced into the market, they could be used to fill jobs in aged care, manufacturing (制造业) and security.

Other companies m the race to build human-like robots include Tesla, Boston Dynamics, Samsung Electronics and Hanson Robotics. Last year, Tesla said it was planning to have thousands of human-like robots within its factories. Last year Tesla introduced its robot, Optimus, which is said to be learning to navigate (导航) on its own, sense the world around it, and pick things up on its own. Boston Dynamics introduced Atlas, considered the world’s most advanced human-like robot which has proved capable of walking, dancing, doing backflips (后空翻), and jumping.

Microplastics are one of the largest environmental problems we face. They are tiny bits of plastics less than 5 mm long. Now a tiny robotic fish that might help tackle one of the problems of plastic pollution has been invented by scientists in China.

The bionic little swimmers have been programmed to wiggle their way through water collecting microplastics as they go. The robofish are only 15mm long. Yet, they can travel quite quickly as they clean. They move by flashing a laser on and off in their tails. It causes the tail to flap side to side which drives the ‘fish’ forward through the water. As they swim along, any nearby microplastics get drawn towards the robots and stick to them.

Not only is their shape inspired by marine life but also is the material they are made out of. Instead of being made out of the traditional materials used for soft robots that can be damaged easily in the water, this one was made from a material that takes inspiration from mother-of-pearl. Mother-of-pearl is found on the inside surface of clam(蛤蜊)shells. As well as attracting microplastics, the material could also heal itself after being cut, still maintaining its ability to adsorb microplastics. Because it’s so durable and can swim as fast as it does (for how small it is), the researchers say that it could be used for monitoring microplastics and other pollutants in the hard-to-reach places of complex underwater environments.

Microplastics have been found nearly everywhere. They’ve been found in our oceans, on top of mountains, in some of the food we eat and even in the stomachs of some marine animals. One of the biggest problems with microplastics is, because of their size, they are difficult to clean up. This is especially true of microplastics in the ocean. The scientists hope that their tiny fish-shaped robots can one day help tackle this global problem. At the moment, the robofish are something called proof of concept. It just means that the scientists were able to make something that proves their idea worked.

Now that the team has shown that their idea works, they are going to keep working on it. They hope to create new versions that can dive deeper and absorb more microplastics.