On the table before me are two little robots, making pleasant robot beeps with their eyes being active. 【小题1】, one of them turns to deal with the noise with surprisingly quick speed. The other just watches my face, turning slowly to keep focus on me as I move around. These are prototypes for Vector, the latest robot from Anki, the company behind both the Cozmo and the OverdriveRC.

You can ask it questions, play games with it, and even pet it. But Anki doesn't want you to focus on Vector's functionality. 【小题2】. And because Vector is completely autonomous, you can do something completely surprising for a new piece of technology: Just ignore it, and let it do its own thing.

If you're familiar with the Anki Cozmo robot, you already have a sense of what Vector looks like.【小题3】, it's small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. It has a little lift arm that's only able to pick up a tiny plastic cube.

【小题4】. Using a combination of sensors, it builds a little map of its surroundings. If it detects a new object, it'll go check it out and see if it can be pushed around. It pays attention to sound and is able to recognize faces. It's more self-sufficient than the Anki Cozmo robot. 【小题5】

However, Vector is a long way from a "home robot". To achieve that goal, the engineers, animators and designers at Anki are trying their best.

It is practically inevitable: sometime around the age of 40 people start to need reading glasses. Try as they might, there’s no avoiding it. One mobile app creator claims that practicing with their technology can train your eyes to see better.though some eye doctors are not sure.

The reason why many people eventually need reading glasses is that the lens (晶状体) of the eye loses   flexibility with age, and has trouble focusing on nearby objects. The condition is called presbyopia (老花眼), which is just a natural side effect of aging.

The first app claiming to work out the solution is called GlassesOff. First you take a test given by the app, and then follow its customized training course. Three days a week, for 12-15 minutes, you’ll go through a series of visual exercises, such as recognizing small gray letters on a gray screen. After two or three months, it claims that you can kiss your reading glasses goodbye.

“We wanted to develop an application that can help people improve their reading ability by improving the way that the brain processes information.” says GlassesOff CEO Nimrod Madar. Until recently it wasn’t possible because scientists did not understand how the image processing capability of the brain actually works. “GlassesOff comes up with the idea of neuroplasticity (神经可塑性). Studies have shown that through training new connections can be made in the brain So that it can continue adapting to the world around us. In terms of vision, this means that through training, the brain may be able to form new connections that allow it to clearly process text even when the text is blurred by aging eyes.

In a 30-person study published in Scientific Reports in February, some participants were able to read letters 1.6 times smaller after using the app. Adults aged 40 to 60 years old had the most success. The study also found that the users’ eye health improved by an average of 8.6 years.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, it probably is. “Human vision quality is determined by the physical eye and the way he brain reads the information that the eye captures,” says Rhee, a doctor from Harvard University. “To think that we can reverse (逆转) presbyopia only by neuroplasticity is just not accurate.” It might not make a huge difference in terms of fighting presbyopia, but brain training could make a difference for younger people whose eyes are still more flexible.

A designer is recently creating floral installations (花篮) on the streets of Manhattan, New York, that are meant to brighten the days of healthcare and other important workers.

Lewis Miller’s most recent creation is an arrangement popping out of a rubbish can at the corner of West 58th Street and 10th Avenue. “They were very simple. It was just cherry branches. ” Miller said. “ We didn’t disclose the location(位置) so nobody could necessarily go and find them. But plenty of people did find them and then they found his Inslagram information. A post with pictures of the “flower flash” as Miller calls them has gotten more than 16,000 likes in less than a day. “Listen, I’m kind of bored. I’m a creative person. I did something new and it took off,’’ Miller said. It still surprises me reading the comments from yesterday like really how much it feeds peopled souls.

Miller has been dotting Manhattan with floral sunrises for a few years with his arrangements popping out of those New York City hot dog carts (推车) and even construction equipment.

“ And the combination of which is so hard aggressive, compared with flowers which are the exact opposite of that,” Miller said.

Vogue magazine once wrote about him but it’s the reaction from the public many of whom have been restricted inside for weeks that he values most.

“If you can just stop, pause and just have one second of joy - that’s amazing because that’s one of the things that’s so lacking and it’s hard,” Miller said.

As one person on Instagram put it, New York City rubbish has never looked so pretty.