Must-read New Fiction Books
We all have a few tried-and-true fiction favorites, but there's something special about a brand-new, hot-off-the-press novel. Whether it's your favorite author's new release or a new writer's first work, great fiction books make the perfect escape from ordinary life. That's why we've rounded up a list of the best new books released in February.
Age of Gold by Jerry Lapoor
Jerry Lapoor's latest action-packed novel unfolds like a crazy movie. This thriller begins when a wealthy man's car gets out of control. But when the dust settles, the rich man is nowhere to be found. How and to where does he disappear? With an exciting plot that will carry you from old-money houses to small agricultural villages, Age of Cold will take you on an unforgettable ride across a vast land.
City Under One Sky by Rachel Young
In the book, Young presents a crime story set in a small town. Detective Sara Kennedy has been sent to investigate a case. But soon after arrival, Sara gets snowed in with the 205 townsfolk living in the same apartment building. Who is hiding the key to the crime? And is there anyone she can truly trust? The appealing story, strange but distinctive characters and unexpected plot are just a few of the reasons why City Under One Sky gains its popularity.
Lady by Jess George
Lady is an irresistible fiction from Jess George. The story of Mary's fresh start at adulthood is shot through with themes of family, race and discrimination, womanhood and the immigrant reality of feeling torn between cultures. Though struggling with life in London as an African, Mary jumps at every chance to stand on her own feet.
By the late 1960s, abstract painter Harold Cohen had represented Britain at important festivals with his oil paintings and was seeking a new challenge. "Maybe there are more interesting things going on outside my studio than inside it," he thought. Cohen turned from the canvas (画布) to the screen, using computers to find new ways of creating art. In the late 1960s, he created a program that he named Aaron. It was the first artificial intelligence software in the world of fine art, and Cohen first presented Aaron in 1974 at the University of California, Berkeley. Aaron's work has since graced museums from the Tate Gallery in London to the Sand Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Now, with AI dominating the headlines, a new exhibition at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, "Harold Cohen: Aaron," running through June 2024, draws attention to Cohen's pioneering work. The Whitney is offering something deeper than most previous Aaron exhibits: a real-time experience, in which visitors can watch the software produce art.
Cohen seeded Aaron with all sorts of knowledge: about basic objects, physics, and fundamental techniques of drawing. Aaron uses this knowledge to follow instructions, complete tasks, and make decisions like human beings — a very different approach from today's generative AI art programs, which don't draw from scratch (从头开始) but rather rely on databases of images. Versions of Aaron still generate output, but anything done after Cohen's death in 2016 is not considered genuine.
The Whitney is showcasing two versions of Cohen's software, along with the art that each produced before Cohen died. The 2001 version, Aaron KCAT, generates images of figures and plants and projects them onto a wall more than ten feet high, while the 2007 version produces jungle-like scenes. The software will also create art physically, on paper, for the first time since the 1990s. "It is absolutely thrilling," said Christiane Paul, the museum's director of digital art, "to have one of those remarkable treasures of digital art in the collection."
Peru is prepared to approve new laws that would make it easier to investigate and punish researchers who engage in academic cheating, including paying to have their names added to a paper.
The move comes as Peru's national science agency seeks to crack down on authorship buying and other dishonest practices. It recently removed two scientists accused of dishonest publications from a national registry that is key to receiving government sponsor, job promotions, and salary bonuses. And officials are investigating more than 170 other researchers at a Peruvian media report claimed were involved in academic misconduct, including 72 listed n the national registry who work at 14 universities in Peru.
The new laws will empower universities and government officials to punish such behavior. Dishonest publishing practices "transcend mere moral misbehavior" because they enable researchers to obtain government and private funding without telling the truth, says Edward Málaga Trillo, a member of Congress who is the driving force behind the bills, which lawmakers are expected to finalize early this year. "These individuals are operating academic cheating."
Peru's academic community has been struggling with a rising tide of false authorship and related problems. One cause, some researchers say, is a 2014 law that aimed to stimulate research by rewarding researchers who boost their publishing output. For example, under a scoring system used by universities, researchers can earn five points for authorship in a high-impact journal, and two points when the journal is lower impact. A massing points can bring bonus payments and career promotion.
Signs of dishonest publishing can be obvious, notes Nahuel Monteblanco, president of Cientificos. pe, a Peruvian group that investigates misconduct. Many of the papers cited by Punto Final have numerous co-authors from different nations with few prior publications on the same subject. "If your colleague consistently publishes 20 articles a year with co-authors from other countries, that's highly suspect," Monteblanco says.
Evolution (进化) can perform extraordinary makeovers; today's airborne songbirds evolved from the wingless, earthbound dinosaurs that wandered millions of years ago. But some organisms seem to be unchanged—in other words, escape natural selection. The coelacanth, a modern-day fish, is nearly identical to its 410-million-year-old fossils.
Scientists have long wondered how these species do so. It has been assumed that natural selection keeps some species unchanged by selecting for moderate or average qualities (stabilizing selection) rather than selecting for more extreme qualities that would cause a species to change (directional selection).
But a study published in the National Academy of Sciences USA contradicts this idea, showing that evolution constantly favors different qualities in seemingly unchanging animals to improve short-term survival. In the long term, though, "all that evolution cancels out and leads to no change," says the study's lead author, James Stroud.
Stroud and his colleagues studied four lizard (蜥蜴) species, all relatively unchanged for 20 million years. The researchers caught members of these populations every six months for three years. They measured each lizard's head size, leg length, mass and height, as well as the size of its sticky toes (脚趾头), noting which individuals survived. Stroud expected to observe stabilizing selection at work preserving moderate qualities. Instead he saw clearer evidence of directional selection: some lizards with unique characteristics, such as stickier toes, survived better.
The study offers "a good explanation for why we see what we think is stabiliring selection," says Tadashi Fukami, an ecologist studying evolution at Stanford University. Many new qualities are evolving in the short term, but they don't provide a crucial advantage over the long term. In other words, species staying unchanged may simply have found the best possible combination of qualities for lasting success in their environment. So what happens when the lizards' environment changes more dramatically? To help answer this bigger question, Stroud is still making trips to visit the lizards.
How to charge an electric vehicle (EV) is one of the biggest concerns people have when working out whether going electric is right for them. It is true that sometimes gaining access to reliable charging can seem a bit tricky. .
First, download an app with a comprehensive map of the public charging points showing their locations, how powerful they are, and whether they're working. All this is vital information because, even if you have public charging points nearby, you will need alternatives in case they re in use. .
A growing number of property owners are renting out their charging points and driveways to other local EV drivers when they're not using them. . Thus, your car gets charged, the owners make money, and emissions are reduced.
. For example, when your car is running out of juice, you'd just pull up to a battery-change station from your car brand and sit in the car while a fully charged unit is changed in. The Chinese EV brand Nio does this, but isn't available in the UK as yet.
For now, if charging access remains difficult for you, it's still possible to go electric—in part. . Many hybrid (混合的) cars are now good for 50 miles of electric running before you need to use the engine. So, if most of your driving is local, you might only need to find a charger once or twice a week, while you have the backup of a fuel engine for long journeys.
A. But it may be easier than you think
B. It actually worked out much cheaper
C. There are also other innovative ways to get your EV going
D. A plug-in EV combines a petrol engine with a smaller battery
E. A "fast" charger usually takes eight hours to fully charge an EV
F. So you need to get a good feel for where your nearest points are
G. You can-find a map of homeowners whose charging points are available
My father, Paul Andrew Figura, was a die-hard fisherman. In my 1 , we went out fishing in all kinds of weather, catching and missing nearly every fish in countless waterways.
Whenever we 2 , Mom would ask: "What time will you be back?" "When we can't see the 3 ," Dad would respond. He often 4 it. Sometimes Dad would ask me to 5 some food and water and we'd fish the entire day. I observed firsthand his insistent, rapid-ire casting technique, to which he credited as a 6 factor behind his success. It was one 7 after another after another.
The greatest life lesson that Dad taught me involved dealing with those times when the fish weren't 8 Days when the weather was awful, when the mosquitoes were biting, when my hands were cold. Times when I just wanted to 9 and go home. Dad's 10 ? "Son, you're not going to catch any fish unless you 11 your line. Keep casting," he'd say.
I learned early the importance of 12 and willingness to keep trying different fish food if you wanted to catch them. Sooner or later they'd 13 I took that same attitude into my school work. 14 , I got many awards at college. I applied it 15 to whatever job I had as an adult and it made me the person that I am today.
Wearing Hanfu and sitting in front of a Chinese zither (筝), Peng Jingxuan, a young Chinese student, moves her fingers gently along the strings on a street in Paris, France.
Peng has shared more than 200 (origin) videos online, with the most popular one featuring the theme song of the movie A Chinese Ghost Story viewed over 16. 61 million times, "I love how she's representing her culture in a (set) where people are not familiar with it. You can tell she's proud of her background and her music," one of her fans commented.
Chinese zither(筝),or guzheng, is an ancient musical instrument with 21-26 strings and a length of 1.63 meters, Peng (fall) in love with it when young and has been practicing it for years. Hardly finding Chinese instruments (play) on the streets in Paris, she took along her guzheng began her street performances to sharpen her skills. The more she performed, the more she felt a greater sense of responsibility (spread) Chinese music and culture.
Considering her audience's (unfamiliar) with Chinese songs, Peng made adaptations, for she received positive responses. She also performed Western pop songs that local people could relate , entertaining them with beautiful melodies in a (refresh) style.
1.你的观感；
2.你的建议。
注意：
1.写作词数应为 80个左右;
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Most people think that procrastination (拖延症) is a negative habit. But people like me who routinely put off doing assignments, are likely to defend our "slower" approach to getting tasks done.
I'm the only procrastinator in my family. My parents and sister were all born with the "do it right now" gift. They are always in a rush, as if closely rushed by an invisible deadline. Personally, I prefer a more relaxed pace. When my parents voiced their concern about my tendencies, saying "Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today," "No way!" I responded, confidently presenting my research as a defense. It said people procrastinated when they need to solve a problem or commit to a topic or project. In these cases, delaying a decision can be beneficial. This was because our minds continue to reflect on problems even when we were not actively thinking about them, which could lead to more creative solutions. My findings filled me with satisfaction and pride. My method of getting things done was just as good as my sister's…or so I thought.
At school we'd been talking about architecture and design. As part of the final assessment my teacher Mr. Smith announced an exciting project that each student would have a month to complete. We were expected to choose our materials, construct a small building and make use of things we had learned in class. Not only would the winners receive extra credit, but the winning constructions would be proudly displayed in the cafeteria. "I have no clue how I could get it done," my friend Nate sighed in despair. I didn't say anything. Not because I shared his anxiety-but because I was not nervous at all. I loved hands-on projects! Picturing my brilliant! work exhibited in the cafeteria, I was fully convinced that I would definitely produce something that could impress everyone. So relaxed was I that I didn't give it a second thought for weeks
注意：
1.续写词数应为 150 左右;
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Before I knew it, I had only one day left for the project.
That taught me a great lesson.
