1 . The use of AI (artificial intelligence) is becoming more common in many branches of industry and online shopping. Traditional lines of work, such as goods transport and driving, are developing in a similar direction although mainly out of public view. Scientists at the University of Göttingen have now investigated how efficient (高效的) the use of AI can be in the commercial management of trucks.

“Digital applications—as well as machine leaning, a kind of AI—are increasingly applied to operations and courses in the transport area,” explains Professor Matthias Klumpp from the Faculty of Economics. “The question in the commercial area, however, is whether or not this contributes to achieving goals.”

To answer this question, the researchers compared the work efficiency of truck drivers with their main use of AI applications. Looking at trade delivery by truck, they studied three groups: the first drove completely following human decision-making models; the second used a combination of human and machine; and the third depended completely on fully automated decisions.

The researchers found that an intelligent combination of human work and decision-making abilities with AI applications promises the highest transport and driving efficiency. “On average, the second group achieved the most efficient transport trips, with the fewest interventions (干预) and off-course from the best path.” one researcher said, “Clearly, neither a completely human decision-making structure nor a fully automated driving system can promise to meet current goods transport requirements.” The scientists therefore summarized that despite the progress of AI in the field of transportation by truck, human experience and decision-making abilities will still be necessary in the longer term. However, the challenge is that a wide range of training and qualification (资格) needs will come along by working with Al applications, especially for simple goods transport activities.

3 . Your best friend that follows you around when the sun comes out - your shadow - doesn’t serve an important function like your heart or brain, but what if you could use shadows to create electricity? When using solar panels (电池板) that are powered by light, shadows can be boring because it means electricity can’t be created. However, researchers from the National University of Singapore have engineered a way to create power from the shadows present everywhere.

A team of the university created a machine that can collect energy from shadows. It is created by placing a thin coating of gold onto silicon (硅). Like in a normal solar panel, when put in light, the silicon electrons (电子) become energized and the energized electrons then jump from the silicon to the gold. The voltage (电压) of the part of the machine that is placed in the light increases relative to the dark part and the electrons in the machine flow from high to low voltage. They are sent through an external circuit (外电路) creating a current that can be used to power another machine. The greater the contrast between light and dark, more energy is provided by the machine.

The team is working on improving the performance of the machine, borrowing approaches from solar panels to gather light. Increasing the amount of light the machines can receive allows them to better make use of shadows, as well as developing shadow energy collecting panels that can successfully gather from indoor lighting. The team is also researching the use of other materials other than gold to drop the price of the machine, meaning they would be more cost effective and easier to apply in society.

Shadows are present everywhere and perhaps one day in the future we will be able to collect energy from them by placing the shadow-effect energy machine around the world in places that have been considered unfit for solar panels to work, or indoors. “A lot of people think that shadows are useless,” Tan says, but “anything can be useful, even shadows.”

4 . Where do you usually put your toothbrush?   Do you keep it in the bathroom? How’s your toothbrush looking these days? Even if you can’t see it with a naked eye, experts say it may be saturated(使饱和)with millions of toilet germs!

Dr. Charles Oerba, a germ expert, is a microbiology professor at the University of Arizona. He says there are approximately 3 million bacteria per square inch in most toilet bowls, and every time you flush it without closing the lid, those millions of bacteria droplets spray into the air as far as twenty feet away and dirty everything in their path. And a common victim is your poor toothbrush, usually, left out on the bathroom sink, right?

So, what do we do? Dr. Gerba says it’s easy. Close the toilet lid before you flush—that’ll greatly cut down the germs, which will otherwise float in the air. And wash your toothbrush every few days in mouthwash or peroxide to get rid of any germs hiding in it. You can even put it through the dishwasher to sanitize(消毒)it. And always store your toothbrush in a closed cabinet.

Here’s one more tip from Dr. Gerba, who says our kitchen sink is probably dirtier than our toilet. “If an alien came from space and studied the bacterial counts, he probably would conclude he should wash his hands in your toilet and go to the bathroom in your sink.” He says that’s because the kitchen sink is a great place where E. coli(大肠杆菌)to live and grow since it’s wet and damp. Bacteria feed on the food that people put down the drain or—that’s left on dishes in the sink. To reset your sink’s bacteria count back to zero, you’d better regularly wash it with hot water and sanitize your sink with special chemicals. In fact, you may want to do it every day or before preparing dinner.

6 . Robots have rolled into retail(零售), from free-moving machines in Giant Foods Stores to autonomous shelf-scanners in Walmart. They free up workers from routine tasks, but that's only the beginning.

The real benefit of retail robots is the opportunity to capture more data about the products on the shelves and customer buying patterns, which can increase efficiency and accuracy in stock management. The key is using retail robots as data-collectors within an internet-of-things (IoT), which creates an intelligent digital ecosystem by combining a complex network of connected devices, objects, and sensors gathering data. With robots in stores, retailers already have the beginnings of IoT solution. For example, Auchan Retail Portugal is launching autonomous shelf-monitoring technology in its supermarkets. As the robots move around the stores, they capture photos of every shelf, which are then put into digital form and turned into analysis about out-of-stock goods.

Such detailed data is incredibly valuable in retail. For traditional retailers, however, merely tracking what consumers purchase does not paint the entire picture. The real competitive advantage for retailers comes in knowing what they couldn't purchase but wanted to. That's where robots come in.

In the not-too-distant future, robots may be able to do more than those. Consider a retail robot scanning grocery store and detecting that supplies of sugar-free peanut butter are decreasing at twice the rate of regular peanut butter. That real-time discovery then activates an automated(自动的) order for more sugar-free peanut butter to be sent to a specific store.

As product cycles speed up, retailers will need to become even faster in identifying micro-trends in consumer behavior to produce, distribute, and supply the goods and services that customers want right now. The key to it may be a robot walking around freely, bringing data from the consumer into the data management system in the cloud.

7 . Accompanied by her father, using a combination of aid and free climbing and taking advantage of some special equipment and ropes for protection, 10-year-old Selah made it to the top of El Capitan on June 12 after five days of big wall climbing.

Climbing the challenging and adventurous Nose route of El Capitan was a labor of love for Selah in more than one way. Her parents , Mike and Joy Schneiter, fell in love on this 3,000- plus-foot huge rock and she has always wanted to feel the way that her parents felt when they were up there together. Selah showed great interest in rock climbing at an early age. She wore her first rock-climbing equipment shortly after she learned to walk. She first dreamed of climbing El Capitan when she was 6 or 7.

El Capitan is a famous mountain-sized rock in Yosemite National Park. Getting to its top is no easy task. It's taller, as reported, than the tallest building in the world-Dubai^’s Buri Khalifa. El Capitan and its difficult Nose route, which runs more than 3,000 feet high up the center of the rock's face, is considered one of the world's hardest big wall climbs and has attracted the best climbers over time. But never before had a youngster accomplished it.

Selah's achievement caught national attention. Outside Magazine called her the youngest documented person to climb the Nose. Ken Yager, president of the Yosemite Climbing Association, said he also couldn't think of anyone younger who has done it.

Selah is humble about her El Capitan accomplishment. "I'm not necessarily a special kid or anything like that, she said. "There were a few times when I would be so worn that it would kind of discourage me from holding on. But overall, it was just great to keep plugging away.”

Selah shared this advice for other young climbers dreaming of big walls, "It doesn't take necessarily a super special person to do something like that. You just have to put your mind to it.”

8 . Understanding the link between a clean environment and human life is not a new concept. In fact, it was noticed as early as ancient Rome. Today we see how green living has infiluenced our everyday lives. There is a growing community of people who embrace a zero waste lifestyle and make changes to the way they live to reduce their carbon footprint.

Living a zero waste lifestyle means doing one’s best to achieve the aim of not sending anything to a landfill. People who adopt this lifestyle ultimately cut down on their waste by reducing what they need and want. They reuse what they own, sending few things to be recycled.

Many people who adopt the zero waste lifestyle claim to be frustrated by the many harmful chemical substances found in beauty and cleaning products. They also find the uses of disposable items and excessive packaging. For example, how many times have we had to peel away layers of plastic wrap and cardboard before finally taking out the item which we had bought? Instead of buying pre-packed food and goods, those who identify with the zero waste philosophy tend to shop in stores that allow them to make purchases and bring their own cloth bags and glass jars to store their purchases.

Many people may have the misconception that it is easier to live a zero waste lifestyle in the West. Nevertheless, Malaysian environmental journalist, Ms. Aurora Tin, has proven that a zero waste lifestyle is possible even in the Asian context. Instead of going to the supermarket to buy pre-packaged foods, Ms. Tin now visits the wet market and brings her own bags for vegetables. She has even stopped using store-bought toothpaste and makes her own toothpaste from coconut oil and baking soda. This lifestyle may be too big a change for the average person, but we could follow her suit to make gradual changes to our own lives.

9 . Think of Japan in the spring and the image that comes to mind is likely the country’s famous cherry blossoms, also known as “Sakura” — white and pink flowers, blooming across cities and mountains.

The flowers, which experience a “peak bloom” that only lasts a few days, have been loved in Japan for more than a thousand years. Crowds celebrate with viewing parties, flocking to the most popular locations to take photos and have picnics underneath the branches.

But this year, cherry blossom season has come and gone in the blink of an eye, in one of the earliest blooms on record. Scientists warn it’s a symptom of the larger climate crisis threatening ecosystems everywhere.

Yasuyuki Aono, a researcher at Osaka Prefecture University, has gathered records from Kyoto back to 812 AD from historical documents and diaries. In the central city of Kyoto, cherry blossoms peaked on March 26, the earliest in more than 1,200 years, Aono said. And in the capital Tokyo, cherry blossoms reached full bloom on March 22, the second-earliest date on record.

The peak bloom dates shift every year, depending on numerous factors including weather and rainfall, but have shown a general trend of moving earlier and earlier. In Kyoto, the peak date stayed around mid-April for centuries, but began moving into early April during the 1800s. The date has only dipped into late March a handful of times in recorded history.

“Sakura blooms are very temperature sensitive,” said Aono. “Flowering and full bloom could be earlier or later depending on the temperature alone,” he said. “The temperature was low in the 1820s, but it has risen by about 3.5 degrees Celsius to this day.”

This year’s seasons in particular influenced the blossom dates, he added. The winter was very cold, but the spring came fast and unusually warm.

10 . Each year, the women of Olney and Liberal compete in an unusual footrace. Dressed in aprons (围裙) and headscarves, they wait at both towns’ starting lines. Each woman holds a frying pan with one pancake inside. At the signal, the women flip (轻抛) pancakes and they’re off!

This “pancake racing” tradition is said to have started on Shrove Tuesday, 1445, in Olney. Shrove Tuesday is the day before the Christian season of Lent (大斋戒) begins. During Lent, many people decide to give up sugary or fatty foods.

Legend says that in 1445, an Olney woman was making pancakes to use up some of her sugar and cooking fats before Lent. She lost track of time and suddenly heard the church bells ring, signaling the beginning of the Shrove Tuesday service. Realizing that she was going to be late for church, she raced out the door still wearing her apron and headscarf and holding her frying pan with a pancake in it. In the following years, the woman’s neighbors imitated her dash to church, and pancake racing was born.

The rules are simple. Racers must wear the traditional headscarf and apron. They must flip their pancakes twice - once before starting and once after crossing the finish line. After the race, there are Shrove Tuesday church   services. Then Liberal and Olney connect through a video call to compare race times and declare a winner.

In both towns, the races have grown into larger festivals. Olney’s festival is an all-day event starting with a big pancake breakfast. Liberal’s festival lasts four days and includes a parade, a talent show, and contests that feature eating and flipping pancakes. Although the women’s race is still the main event, both towns now hold additional races for boys and girls of all ages.