【推荐1】Russians have made important contributions to the development of science and technology, which has changed our daily life. Here are three Russian contributions for you to read.

Yogurt

Yogurt has a long history. Many Bulgarians claim it, was accidentally discovered in the country around 4, 000 years ago. But there was a Russian biologist named Elie Metchnikoff.    1    

Metchnikoff travelled to Bulgaria and found a lot of people who were a hundred years old or older there. He then investigated the eating habits of residents and found that they often drank fermented (发酵的) milk.

He also read Bulgarian researcher Stamen Grigorov’s research. In 1905, Grigorov discovered one of the main bacteria in Bulgarian lactic acid bacteria (乳酸菌) responsible for transforming milk into yogurt.

So Metchnikoff came up with a theory that lactic acid is good for human health and prolongs human life.     2     He lived to be 71, longer than the average life expectancy at the time after consuming “untold gallons” of yogurt according to Time magazine.

Helicopter

Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky was born on May 25, 1889 in Kiev, which at the time was part of Russia.    3     Both of his parents were physicians, giving Sikorsky the scientific grounding that he needed to develop aircraft ideas.

In 1939, he achieved his goal. He completed the VS-300, piloting the craft himself during its first flight.

Periodic table

Have you ever memorized the periodic table of elements(元素周期表)?    4     It is a single document that helps the study and research of chemistry.

On Feb. 17, 1689, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev wrote down in a hurry the symbols for the chemical elements.    5     Thus, he invented the periodic table.

It was perhaps the greatest breakthrough in the history of chemistry. Indeed, nothing quite like it exists in the other subjects of science, according to Scientific American.

【推荐1】Due to the effects of climate change, new species of birds are coming to the UK.A recent study by the RSPB and Durham University has found that European birds have been migrating further north by an average of 300 miles. While fewer birds, such as the tufted duck, are returning for the winter months, there has been an increase in other species as they seek a new holiday home or a quiet stop-off!

It's thought that in the UK, we will gain many more species than we'll lose through climate change -a 3°C change won't affect the migrations of most birds, so birds such as robins, blackbirds, blue tits and greenfinches will still be regular visitors to our gardens. Climate change has been affecting domestic birds though-the Dartford warbler, a species that was literally down to just a couple of pairs in the UK in the 1960s, has been spreading further north from it’s traditional home in south-east England. Other birds such as green woodpeckers and nuthatches have already been regular visitors to the country, but have now started to spread further north, with some even going as far as northern England.

Scops owls have also been regular visitors, mostly in the south of England. And over the next 50 years or so, these visitors will eventually start to settle in the UK as they continue to· breed(繁殖)and adapt themselves to the conditions.

Other birds are, for the moment, just passing through on their migration, using the UK as a pitstop. The exotic-looking hoopoe - a striking black-and-white-winged bird, the size of a mistle thrush----regularly passes England's south coast and, although it doesn't breed here, up to 100 of them can turn up during the spring.

As climate change continues, there's nothing to suggest that these birds won't continue to breed northwards during the next decade and spotting them will become a regular occurrence throughout the country.

【推荐2】Generative AI must seem like a superweapon to people who aim to cause disagreement and argument online. Deep-fake videos imitate public figures. Crowds of conversational chatbots worsen conflict, and efforts to detect and relieve such campaigns remain in their early period.

But can Generative AI also negotiate confict? Chris Bail, a leading expert on artificial intelligence and human behavior, and his colleagues have conducted research indicating that Large Language Models such as ChatGPT can make online conversations more productive, reduce incivility, and increase willingness to have difficult conversations across social disagreements. What’s more, they’re already seeing practical applications. Inspired by such research, Nextdoor, a community-based social-media platform that has struggled to boycott online poison, recently launched a successful, large-scale (大规模的) effort to reduce incivility.

In a study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Chris Bail and his team examined whether Large Language Models can teach people conflict-negotiation techniques on a large scale. They enlisted a large group of people with different opinions about gun control and paired them to discuss this topic with someone who does not share their view on an online chat platform the team built.

After exchanging several messages on their platform, half of the research participants began to receive pop-up messages suggesting alternative phrasings for the messages they were about to send to their chat partner. These pop-ups employed GPT-3 to rephrase each post using conflict negotiation principles — without changing the opinion expressed within them. Participants had the option to send these rephrased versions of their message or ignore them.

The researchers found that GPT-3 is surprisingly good at processing difficult conversations. People whose partner used the AI-generated re-phrasings described the conversations as more productive, less stressful, and expressed greater willingness to consider alternative viewpoints.