【推荐1】Jumping worms are wriggling their way across the United States, greedily swallowing protective forest leaf litter and leaving behind bare soil. They replace other earthworms, insects and ground-nesting birds, and disrupt forest food chains. They can harm more than 12 acres in a single year, changing soil chemistry and microbial communities as they go.

Jumping worms are often sold as compost worms or bait. And that is partially how they’re spreading. Fishers like them because the worms wriggle and swing like angry snakes, which attracts fish. They’re also marketed as compost worms because they eat up food leftovers far faster than other earthworms.

But when it comes to ecology, the worms have more worrisome features. Their eggs are so small that they can easily attach to a hiker’s or gardener’s shoes, or can be transported in mulch, compost or shared plants. Hundreds can exist within a square meter of ground.

Jumping worms grow faster and reproduce faster — and without a mate, so one worm can create a whole invasion. Jumping worms also consume more nutrition than other earthworms, turning soil into dry tiny balls that resemble coffee grounds or ground beef. This can make the soil unfriendly to native plants and young trees and far more likely to be harmed.

Scientists have been working hard to get a good handle on these worms. But there’s still a lot unknown, making it hard to predict how much farther the worms might spread and into what kinds of environments. One important question is how weather conditions affect the worms. For example, a long-term drought this year in Wisconsin seems to have killed off many of the worms. Soils filled with wriggling worms just a few weeks ago now hold far fewer. Perhaps that’s a hopeful sign that even these hardy worms have their limits, but in the meantime, the attack of worms continues its march — with help from the humans who spread them.

【推荐2】About I in every 160 children in the world have autism(自闭症)and it cannot be completely cured. Lots of people are working hard to help those children. And luckily. there are also robots to help them. A Hong Kong professor named Catherine has developed an educational program using role-playing robots to help children with autism improve their social skills. The program. Robot for Autism Behavioral Intervention (RABI). is for children with autism between the ages of 3 and 18. It aims to help them be more social and deal with conflict. According to Catherine, more than 1,200 children have taken part in the program since it started in 2015.

As we know. it is difficult for people with autism to communicate with others and they feel anxious about half of the time. The robots teach them social skills in order to reduce their anxiety. In a typical class, two small robots act out social scenarios(场景)on a table, helping the children see the difference between proper and unacceptable behavior. After that. the children try out their social skills in their daily life.

Muse Wong, 41, said her 5-year-old daughter has been in the program for seven months and her social and communicative skills have improved a lot.

More than 20 non-profit groups and public schools in Hong Kong and Macau have joined the program. Catherine hopes the project will reach more children with autism.

"We believe RABI can help children with autism improve their social and behavioral skills. and in turn improve the quality of their life."she said.

Thank you. robots!

【推荐3】There have been many fine films over the past several years about characters struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. But few of them have gone as deeply and frighteningly into the corners of a deteriorating mind as The Father, a powerful new drama built around a spellbinding performance from Anthony Hopkins.

At this point in his long career, Hopkins would seem to have exhausted his ability to surprise us, but his work here is nothing short of astonishing. His character, also named Anthony, is 80 years old and has dementia. At the beginning of the movie, his daughter, Anne — played by Olivia Colman — stops by his London apartment to check on him. Her father's condition has taken a turn for the worse, and his temper has become severe enough to send his latest live in nurse packing. Anthony is stubborn and defiant and insists that he can manage on his own. But that's clearly not the case, given his habit of misplacing his things and his inability to remember names and faces, Anne's included.

As The Father goes on, the more it becomes clear that it's his own mind that's playing tricks on him. What makes the movie so unsettling is the way it wires us directly into his subjective experience, so that the foundations of the story seem to shift at random from scene to scene. A man suddenly appears in the apartment, claiming to be Anne's husband, which is odd, since just a few moments earlier, Anne seemed to be single. Anne goes out shopping for groceries, but when she returns, she's played not by Olivia Colman but by another actress, Olivia Williams. Even the apartment itself begins to shift. You notice puzzling differences-wasn't there a lamp on that hallway table just a moment ago?

The story in The Father may be complicated but it's also heartbreakingly simple: man grows old and loses his memory, and his daughter, after lifetime of love and devotion, must begin the long painful process of saying goodbye. Hopkins shows us Anthony's struggle to keep his sense about him. It's a striking performance-and an impossible one to forget.