There's a good chance that something you've bought online has been in the hands of a " picker". These are the workers in warehouses (仓库) who pick, pack and ship all those things we ordered.

At Amazon and other companies, they're working side by side with robots. Experts say while the robots are replacing some human workers, the machines aren't quite ready to take over completely.

When a robot finds its storage unit,' it slides underneath, lifts it up and then delivers it to a worker they're called pickers. On a recent day, the computer told a picker to grab what looked like a fantasy board （#t 3#)game. The picker found it, packed it and placed it on the conveyer belt.

"In a traditional fulfillment center where the workers would walk to the different items, it can take hours to fulfill a customer order," Robinson says.

Now, with the help of robots, that task takes minutes and fewer humans.

So is this a sign that we're entering a new industrial revolution?

" It's definitely going to take over a lot of jobs ", says Karen Myers, a scientist at SRI, one of Silicon V alley's oldest research centers.

At the same time, she says, " We're running against the limits of technology. " Take the picker at the Amazon fulfillment center for example. Myers says those skills prove to be uniquely human.

"Our fingers are incredibly flexible and the current generation of robotic operators are getting much, much better," she says. "But they're just not quite there yet."

There's also the robot's brain.

Remember that board game the Amazon worker was looking for? She could barely see the box when it was filled into the storage bin——but she could tell it was a board game. Robots can't do that.

Technologists say that, increasingly, humans will work side by side with robots——instead of robots working alone.

Amazon says robots and humans enabled the Tracy warehouse to fulfill customer orders faster. That means more customers and more human workers.

   Onions make you cry, add flavor to food and win popularity for their medicinal benefits. Now the vegetable has another use—_____ green energy.

Anew system debuts（首次亮相）on Friday that _____ onion juice into electricity at Gills Onions, the largest fresh onion processor in the United States.

The Oxnard, California-based company _____ its new onion-fueled power to reduce its electric bill by $700,000 a year and _____ its annual greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30,000 tons.

The _____ ending to this green energy tale, however, started with another question: how to _____ onion waste.

“_____ we peel an onion, 35 to 40 percent of the onion comes off before we have a(n)_____ onion. That's the top, tail and skin around the onion, and _____ we can get to the meat,” said Steven Gill, co-owner of the 25-year-old company.

They used to pull the waste to the fields for compost（混合肥料）, but that turned out to be a tough ______. Ten years ago, Gill started looking at technology for a(n) _____, including microturbines（微型燃气轮机）.

“We ______ cutting the skins into pieces and extracting all the ______, which is very high in sugars, and bacteria love that stuff,” Gill said.

In the new system, bacteria ______ methane（甲烷）gas from the juice. The gas then goes to two 300 kilowatt fuel cells, creating ______ power for 460 homes. If everything goes smoothly, ______ are that the company will get 35 to 40 percent of its electricity from the on-site generator.

The company ______ $ 9. 5 million in the project and will receive $2. 7 million from Southern California Gas Co. _____ cutting its electric bill, the company will save $400,000 in costs and expects paybacks in the new future.

The onion grower now has a new ______: to be a zero-waste facility in the coming decade.

“We want to ______ it all the way through and make the full circle,” Gill said.

   After years of research and tests, the hybrid car was developed and put on the market. It's an interesting and exciting new improvement in today's world as we look for better ways to protect the quality of the air we breathe and protect our natural resources.

The quality of our air is affected by many different things. But one of the largest sources of air pollution is the burning of fossil fuel such as coal and gasoline which is used to power a car's engine. The Environmental Protection Agency（EPA）has set national standards to help control the level of harmful pollutants sent off into the air, and the automobile industry has acted by producing the hybrid car that uses less gas and therefore causes less pollution.

A hybrid car is a combination of a regular car that runs on gasoline and an electric car that is battery-powered. Some people tend to think that since the hybrid car is partially electric, you have to plug it in to charge it. But that's not how it works. The 144 volt battery pack（电池组）is actually recharged through the energy that is produced when the car's brakes are used. This is referred to as "regenerative braking", because it generates electricity.

Although the hybrid car still runs on gasoline most of the time, this helps it use less gas than a regular car. When the driver stops at a traffic light, the engine automatically shuts off to save fuel. Then, as soon as the driver puts the car in gear and touches the gas pedal（踏板）, the engine starts backing up.

Have you ever ridden in a car with someone which ran out of gas？That probably wouldn't happen if you were riding in a hybrid car. It flashes a warning on its computer screen that says, "I am low on gas. "When it completely runs out, the warning reads, "YOU ARENOW OUT OF GAS！"Then the electric power supply starts to work to let the driver travel a few more miles to a gas station.

I'm Li Hua. Recently we had a discussion _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Best wishes！

Yours sincerely，

Li Hua

   Humans have been keeping animals as pets for tens of thousands of years, but Dr Jean-Loup Rault, an animal scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, believes new companions are coming: robot pets.

“Technology is moving very fast,” Rault told ABC News, “The Tamagotchi in the early 1990s was really the first robotic pet, and now Sony and other big companies have improved them a lot.”

This may not sit well with pet lovers. After all, who would choose a plastic toy over a lovely puppy? But Rault argues that the robotic kind has a lot going for it: “You don’t have to feed it, you don’t have to walk it, it won’t make a mess in your house, and you can go on a holiday without feeling guilty.” The technology also benefits those who are allergic to pets, short on space, or fearful of real animals.

It’s not clear whether robot pets can replace real ones. But studies do suggest that we can bond with these smart machines. People give their cars names and kids give their toy animals life stories. It’s the same with robots. When Sony stopped its repair service for its robot dog Aibo in March 2014, owners in Japan held funerals.

As an animal welfare researcher, Rault is concerned about how robotic pets could affect our attitudes towards live animals. “If we become used to a robotic companion that doesn’t need food, water or exercises, perhaps it will change how humans care about other living beings,” he said.

So are dogs and cats a thing of the past, as Rault predicts? For those who grew up with living and breathing pets, the mechanical kind might not do. But for our next generation who are in constant touch with smart technology, a future in which lovely pets needn’t have a heartbeat might not be a far-fetched dream.