1 . Starting a band across multiple time zones proved to be tricky. Shaky Wi-Fi and other technical difficulties meant they were often out of sync. And being even half a second off from one another wrecked their sound. To fix this, they created a sort of musical assembly line. Baltimore Paul and Rotterdam Paul wrote and recorded a basic track, then e-mailed it to Manchester Paul.

2 . Brilliant though it is, Project Debater has some weaknesses. It takes sentences from its library of documents and prebuilt arguments and strings them together. This can lead to the kinds of errors no human would make. Such wrinkles will no doubt be ironed out, yet they also point to a fundamental problem. As Kristian Hammond, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University, put it: “There’s never a stage at which the system knows what it’s talking about.”

3 . The letter explains some of the immediate actions the site team has taken to mitigate the flood damage, like bringing in water pumps and repairing brickwork. But it’s clear that these measures will not be enough.

4 . These findings are good news for life in the universe as they dispel concerns that potentially habitable planets could not form too close to very massive stars. Previously, scientists thought the intensity of ultraviolet (紫外线的) radiation produced by massive stars would interfere (干扰) with the distribution of dust and gas in planet-forming stars, possibly preventing the formation of rocky planets like Earth, for instance. The NGC 6357 group contains more than ten super bright and massive stars, suggesting most of the group’s matter is exposed to high levels of ultraviolet radiation.

5 . How long we stay on the clock and how we spend that time are under careful examination in many workplaces. The young banker who eats lunch at his desk is probably seen as a go-getter, while his colleagues who chat over a relaxed conference-room meal get dirty looks from the corner office. “People from cultures that value relationships more than ours does are shocked by the thought of eating alone in front of a computer”, says Art Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin. Social interaction has been shown to lift mood (情绪) and get people thinking in new directions and in ways that could help improve any post-lunch effort.

6 . When I volunteered as a social worker at a domestic violence shelter in a developing country, I imagined the position for which my university experience had prepared me. I imagined conducting intake interviews and walking around from organization to organization seeking support that the women would need to rebuild their lives. When I arrived, I felt as if I already had months of experience, experience gained in the hypothetical situations I had invented and subsequently resolved single-handedly. I felt thoroughly prepared to tackle the situation I assumed was waiting for me.

I arrived full of zeal. Within moments, my reality made a sharp break from which I had expected. The coordinator explained that the shelter’s need for financial self-sufficiency had become obvious. To address this, the center was planning to open a bakery. I immediately enthused about the project, making many references to the small enterprise case studies I had researched at the university. In response to my impassioned reply, the coordinator declared me in charge of the bakery. At that moment, I was as prepared to bake bread as I was to run for political office. The bigger problem, however, was that I was completely unfamiliar with the for-profit business models necessary to run the bakery. I was out of my depth in a foreign river with only my coordinator’s confidence to keep me afloat.

7 . Everybody loves a fat pay rise. Yet pleasure at your own can disappear if you learn that a colleague has been given a bigger one. Indeed, if he has a reputation for being lazy, you might even be shocked and angry. Such behaviour is regarded as “all too human”, with the assumption that other animals would not be capable of this finely developed sense of grievance (不满). But a study by Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which has just been published in Nature, suggests that it is all too monkey, as well.

8 . “As with all things, the secret to managing your finances like an adult is a constant strive for balance,” Waters says. “Have fun along the way, but don’t let the tail wag the dog.”

9 . People have been manipulating (操纵) organisms for human benefit since at least the dawn of agriculture, genetic editing is becoming widespread, and a few artificial organisms have been manually assembled in the past few years — copying the body forms of known animals. But this research, for the first time ever, “designs completely biological machines from the ground up, “the team writes in their new study.

10 . Duchess Nina’s work during World War II was not without its risks. She frequently risked her life to save animals, often driving through perilous areas.