Melbourne Girls’ College is removing all its bins (垃圾箱) in classrooms and the yard and asking students to take their rubbish home to encourage them to move towards zero waste.

Even the school’s 20 recycling (循环) bins will be removed, because the failure of SKM Recycling means the college’s plastic (塑料) and glass recycling is now sent to be buried. Paper can still be recycled at school, because recycling for that is still operating.

As part of the change, volunteer students will check children’s daily food. Those who bring “zero waste” lunch boxes will be rewarded. Students using only reusable packaging (包装) will receive a reward such as keep cups.

Yes, the rubbish that students take home may still be buried, but teacher Paula McIntosh says the new rule will help persuade families to buy fewer packaged goods and reuse containers. She said the activity of Greta Thunberg had encouraged the school, showing that the acts of one person “can lead to great change”.

Ms. McIntosh admits that some parents may not have the time or means to avoid food in single-use packaging, but it’s trying to get as many people as we can to avoid it. She says she got the no-bins idea from national park guidelines, which ask visitors to take rubbish home with them.

The leader of the school Karen Money says, “We talk a lot, as educators, about the serious problems the world faces, and if we don’t start taking action behind that talking, then it’s just empty.”

An Austrian company Tec-Innovation recently showed smart shoes that use ultrasonic sensors (超声波传感器) to help people suffering from vision impairment to discover obstacles(障碍) up to four meters away.

Known as InnoMake, the smart shoe aims to replace the decades-old walking stick that millions of people around the world depend on to get around as safely as possible. The currently available model relies on sensors to detect obstacles and warns the wearer through shaking and a loud alert sounded on a bluetooth-linked smartphone. That sounds impressive enough, but the company is already working on a much more advanced version that incorporates cameras and artificial intelligence to not only detect obstacles but also their nature.

“Not only is the warning that I am facing an obstacle relevant, but also the information about what kind of obstacle I am facing. Because it makes a big difference whether it’s a wall, a car or a staircase.” Markus Raffer, one of the founders of Tec-Innovation, told TechXplore.

”Ultrasonic sensors on the toe of the shoe detect obstacles up to four meters away. The wearer is then warned by vibration and/or acoustic signals. This works very well and is already a great help to me personally.” Raffer, himself visually impaired, added.

The current version of the InnoMake shoe is already available for purchase on the Tec-Innovation website, for €3,200 per pair.

The advanced system is integrated in the front of the shoes, in a waterproof and dustproof case. It is powered by a heavy-duty battery that can last for up to one week, depending on use. The battery can be charged in just three hours, using a USB cable.

The next step for Tec-Innovation is to use the data collected by its system to create a kind of street view navigation map for visually impaired people.

“As it currently stands, only the wearer benefits in each case from the data the shoe collects as he or she walks. It would be much more sustainable if this data could also be made available to other people as a navigation aid,” computer scientist Friedrich Fraundorfer explained.

The Meta company has announced a research project to create translation software that works for everyone in the world. It’s part of a growing effort to serve almost 20 percent of the world’s population who do not speak languages covered by present translation systems. “Properly understanding one foreign language is hard enough, let alone (更不用说) so many different languages in the world,” said Scott Mann, the co-CEO of Flawless AL. “Nowadays, the only way to do translation has been to turn to human translators who have learned foreign languages and try to break language barriers (障碍) for different uses.”

Work on improving translation software has been underway for decades. New technology has been developed to ensure accurate (精确的) translations from one language to another. Meta is planning a long-term effort to build MT (machine translation) tools that will include most of the world’s languages. The company is building a new AI model called No Language Left Behind. It will learn from languages with examples and use them to enable expert-quality translations in hundreds of languages.

“Breaking language barriers would be great, making it possible for billions of people to have information online in their native or preferred languages,” the Meta company said. “Advances in MT tools won’t just help those people who don’t speak one of the languages that are widely used on the Internet today: they’ll also change the way people in the world share ideas. Better translation software also makes good business sense. When companies go global, it’s hard to have native-speaking support agents for every language. So if the translation software can help them chat with and email their customers,the efficiency (效率) can be immediately improved.”

But some experts say that Meta’s machine translation project faces great difficulties. “The industry is still in the research mode (模式), and we’re excited to be a part of that, but it’s not about presenting a product that eight billion people will start using tomorrow.” said Jesse Shemen, the CEO of the translation software company.