Every year, the staff of Popular Science barricades itself in a room to fight. No, this is not some nerdy (书呆子；笨蛋) fight club; it's where we select our Innovation of the Year, the breakthrough that we agree is the most important from the previous 12 months. Below are some examples.

Getting through daily life without the use of one's hand can be quite difficult. While prosthetic (假体的) hands have seen great progress over the years, a new smart prosthetic hand built by BrainRobotics is attractive. The hand is powered by an AI software that allows it to "learn" from its user. The hand is still being tested, but one tester is able to successfully play a song on the piano with the hand. The hand is expected to cost somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000, which is cheaper with the use of 3D printing. It allows each hand to be printed to fit the user.

The fuel not only takes up space on the spacecraft, but also increases its weight, making it more expensive to launch. But a new type of spacecraft, the LightSail 2 satellite, could end this problem by using the thrust (推力) of photons (光子) bouncing off the spacecraft to sail through space. It takes advantage of the thrust and needs little to no fuel to move through space. LightSail 2 will return to Earth in one year.

Lenovo has introduced a laptop that can be folded up like a book. You can use it anytime and anywhere if you want to. It can also be held like a traditional laptop. It can be held flat, just as you would hold a tablet, or folded like a book when you're lying in bed. It has already been on the market.

Food delivery workers have hard jobs. Can robots do the same job? US company Postmates has designed a meal delivery robot called Serve. With two eyes and four wheels, it can drive down footways thanks to the cameras inside it. Still, a human driver can control it remotely if there are any problems. The company has begun testing the robot in some parts of San Francisco, the US.

Can you imagine a morning without technology? Probably you didn’t realize how many times you use technology before you go out of your home every day. 【小题1】   Some examples of that include, our toast bread that we probably take for breakfast, or our listening to the news before we go out. Even if people don’t think about it, technology is a very important part in our life.

【小题2】 Technology not only makes our life easy, but actually it also makes our work easy. One example of that is an office where everything is done by computer. Also some teachers use technology to review or even to teach. Some people think that technology some day is going to replace humans. As a matter of fact, technology permits that we could have a wide use of our natural resources.

Technology is used to improve production.【小题3】Now exist a lot of new medicines and techniques that permit us to have a better life. For example, some days ago I watched in the news that a new machine would help paralytic(瘫痪的)people to walk again.

Technology also offers a lot of ways to entertainment.【小题4】 This device permits the player to play against people in all parts of the world without device in his or her hands, which is just great. Some people could think that those games just make people overweight and lazy. But in a lot of those games body movement is involved, so people actually exercise while they play.

Technology is just a way to make our lives easy, and it is our responsibility to use it wisely.【小题5】   I feel so thankful for that!

China will follow up on its successful mission (任务) to the far side of the moon by sending a probe to Mars next year, one of its top space scientists said Sunday. Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, said the red planet was the natural next step. “Next year we’ll launch a Mars probe to orbit around the Mars, land on it and probe it,” he said. China will also send another probe to take back samples from the moon’s surface.

Wu’s comments came as a Mars simulation(模拟) base opened in Qinghai’s Qaidam Basin. According to the state-run Global Times, while the red rocky area bears a strikingly similarity to Mars, it’s extremely difficult to simulate Mars due to its special natural features and hostile environment—low air pressure, strong radiation and frequent sandstorms, as well as vast differences in geography.

China didn’t send its first satellite into orbit until 1970, by which time America had already landed an astronaut on the moon, but it’s been catching up fast. Since 2003, China has sent six crews into space and two space labs into Earth’s orbit In 2013, China successfully landed a rover, Yutu 1, on the moon, becoming only the third country to do so.

Last December, China landed another probe and a rover, Yutu 2, on the far side of the moon. Progress has been slow going since then: due to the extreme conditions there, the rover often has to hibernate to preserve its capabilities for further exploration, Wu said. “The temperature there is minus 190 degrees Celsius, which all components and parts cannot stand. So we let it sleep for a while, making sure it can spend the night safely. A few days ago, it woke up automatically to work. We’ve gained lots of data in the past few days, and we're going to make the data known to the world,” Wu said.