【推荐2】For years, the U.S. has experienced a shortage of registered nurses. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that while the number of nurses will increase by 19 percent by 2022, demand will grow faster than supply, and that there will be over one million unfilled nursing jobs by then.

So what's the solution? Robots.

Japan is ahead of the curve when it comes to this trend. Toyohashi University of Technology has developed Terapio, a robotic medical cart that can make hospital rounds, deliver medications and other items. It follows a specific individual, such as a doctor or nurse, who can use it to record and access patient data. This type of robot will likely to be one of the first to be implemented in hospitals because it has fairly minimal patient contact.

A robot's appearance affects its ability to successfully interact with humans, which is why the RIKEN-TRI Collaboration Center for Human-Interactive Robot Research decided to develop a robotic nurse called Acntroid F. It is so human-like that some patients may not know the difference. This conversational robot companion has cameras in its eyes, which allow it to track patients and use appropriate facial expressions and body language in its interactions. During a month-long hospital trial, researchers asked 70 patients how they felt being around the robot and “only three or four said they didn't like having it around”.

It's important to note that robotic nurses don't decide courses of treatment or make diagnoses. Instead, they perform routine and laborious tasks, freeing nurses up to attend to patients with immediate needs. This is one industry where it seems the interaction of robots will lead to collaboration, not replacement.

【推荐3】Craig Blackburn, a father and car fan, built a Batmobile for his son's hope of using the vehicle to brighten the lives of sick children. And now he hopes to use it for more than just his son's hope after seeing the children's reaction to the Batmobile.

Based on the number of failures he had seen in car enthusiast groups, he estimated that only about one in fifty attempted constructions was actually finished and he realized what a slim chance he had.

Mr. Blackburn started the project at the beginning of 2015 after hearing a friend in the US was doing the same thing. It started with importing an outer shell overseas, before he picked a friend's brains who had a background as a worker in a car factory to gain knowledge of how to build the car. With the help of his friend, Mr. Blackburn built the Batmobile in 18 months with the cost reaching six figures.

Mr. Blackburn hoped to add a flamethrower（喷火器）to the back of the vehicle and said he had thought about building the Tumbler, a vehicle that was used by Batman in the film The Dark Knight. Though Mr. Blackburn encountered plenty of difficulties to get over during the construction, in September 2016, the car made its first show at the Carnival of Flowers in Toowoomba.

“It was great. It was so good to see kids' and adults' excitement at seeing the Batmobile,” Mr. Blackburn said. As a result, the car lovers hope to make the car work on the roads as soon as possible, so Mr. Blackburn can visit sick children and take them out with his son.

【推荐3】If you know a bottle of water has been recycled from urine (尿液), will you drink it? Chinese astronauts have done so.

China National Space Administration(CNSA)says it uses a high-tech machine to recycle wastewater. The machine will recycle everything from sweat, the water for washing hands, shower water, water used for brushing teeth, and even urine, to make drinking water.

It saves CNSA millions of YMB each year. At present, each CNSA astronaut uses about 4.4 liters of water every day. It costs about ￥150 million a year to transport water up to space.

The urine recycling system is needed for astronaut stations because it won’t have to ship up as much water to the station by space shuttles or rockets. Besides, it’s important as the space station is about to expand from three people living on board to more.

The recycling system was brought up to the space station last August by space shuttles. The three-man crew stood holding their drinks and congratulated engineers in CNSA center that worked on the system.

“This is something that has been the stuff of science work,” astronaut Chen Dong said before taking a small mouthful. “The taste is well worth trying.”

Is the water clean? Scientists say the wastewater will go through a very complicated (复杂的) process. For example, different chemicals will be put in the wastewater; the water will be heated to 130C to get rid of bacteria. The recycled water is thousands of times better than the water from a city tap, scientists say.

【推荐1】One devoted man is helping to make sure that children with poor living conditions won’t go hungry during the school day.

Mary’s Meals, an organization founded in 2020 by Scottish farmer Magnus Macfarlane-Barrow, provides needy kids in 12 countries with free meals at school each weekday. The group’s aim is to ensure that students have food in their stomachs so they can better fix their attention on the study in class.

Macfariane-Barrow, who runs Mary’s Meals on his father’s farm, told CNN that the entire operation started with a conversation he had with a teen living in a poor state. He said, “In 2002, I was in Malawi during a year of terribly short of food, and I met this family — the father had died, and the mother was dying with her six children around her. I began talking to her oldest child, Edward, who was about 14, and asked him, ‘What are your hopes?’ And he said, ‘I’d like to have enough food to eat, and I’d like to go to school one day’” And that was it.

In its first year, the group fed 200 children in need. Since that time, it has made rapid progress. Last month, Mary’s Meals fed more than I million children every school day. That was 5 million meals every week. “The million is this amazingly important, but we are far from satisfied. Our work’s just beginning. We’ve proven that this works, and now we’ve just thinking about the next child,” said MacFarlane-Barrow.

He and the group recently celebrated the achievement in Malawi, where the program began. So far, the program has had very good results. In Malawi, schools that carried out the Mary’s Meals program saw a 24 percent increase in the number of new students within the first six months.

【推荐2】Yoga (瑜伽) is a kind of sport. It is very popular around the world now. Everyone, young or old, men or women, can do yoga.

There are many reasons why people like yoga. First, yoga can build up your muscle. Your body will become stronger and more flexible. Second, yoga helps you get rid of stress. What's more, yoga can help your mind stay calm. To put it simply, the reason why so many people are falling in love with yoga is that they are discovering how wonderful it is for their mind, body and spirit.

Yoga began in India about 5,000 years ago. At that time, people wanted to be free, healthy and live a long life. As a result, this kind of exercise was born. The early yoga was part of the religion (宗教). It was usually taught one to one—one teacher and one student. Later, it was accepted by more people.

Yoga is an Indian word that means “to join together”. There are three parts of yoga altogether: exercise, breathing and meditation (冥想). In the past, people paid more attention to the spirit. The idea behind the exercise was to join the mind, body and spirit as one.

With the development of the exercise, more and more people are doing yoga as a way of keeping healthy. Among them, office ladies enjoy doing yoga most. Yoga can give them peace, help them feel relaxed and have fewer worries and illnesses.

【推荐3】A newly-published study has shown that loneliness can spread from one person to another, like a disease. Researchers used information from the Framingham Heart Study, which began in 1948. The Framingham study gathers information about physical and mental health, personal behavior and diet. At first, the study involved about 5,000 people in the American state of Massachusetts. Now, more than 12,000 individuals are taking part.

Information from the Framingham study showed earlier that happiness can spread from person to person. So can behaviors like littering and the ability to stop smoking.

John Cacioppo, a psychologist in the University of Chicago, led the recent study. He and other researchers attempted to show how often people felt lonely. They found that the feeling of loneliness spread through social groups.

Having a social connection with a lonely person increased the chances that another individual would feel lonely. In fact, a friend of a lonely person was 52% more likely to develop feelings of loneliness. A friend of that person was 25% more likely. The researchers say this shows that a person could indirectly be affected by someone’s loneliness.

The effect was strongest among friends. Neighbors were the second most affected group. The effect was weaker on husbands and wives, and brothers and sisters. The researchers also found that loneliness spread more easily among women than men.

The New York Times reports that, on average, people experience feelings of loneliness about 48 days a year and that every additional friend can decrease loneliness by about 5%, or two and a half fewer lonely days.

Loneliness has been linked to health problems like depression and sleeping difficulties. The researchers believe that knowing the causes of loneliness could help in reducing it.

The study suggests that people can take steps to stop the spread of loneliness. They can do this by helping individuals they know who may be experiencing loneliness. The result can be helpful to the whole social group.