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.

2 . The Notting Hill Carnival is London’s biggest street festival and one of the most famous carnivals in the world. The carnival is an important cultural event for London’s Afro Caribbean community and celebration of multi-cultural British life.

Notting Hill Carnival takes place in London every August bank holiday. Bank holiday refers to a public holiday, for example Christmas Day. It is the most colourful and largest street event in the UK. The festival celebrates the traditions of the Afro-Caribbean community, who immigrated to England from the West Indies in the 1950s. They brought with them the Caribbean idea of the carnival, with colourful costumes, parades, steel bands and street dancing. The tradition to hold the carnival began in 1964 and it has taken place every year since then.

Preparations for the carnival start many months in advance. Costumes need to be made, and floats built, ready for the carnival street parades. Steel bands practise traditional Caribbean music on instruments built from used oil buckets. Just before the festival, the streets are decorated with yellow, green and red banners, and recording devices are set in place to carry the rhythmic sounds over the loud noise of the London traffic. The carnival is celebrated over three days, and is full of music and colour. Parades of steel and brass bands, floats, and dancers in colourful costumes make their way through the narrow London streets, watched by tens of thousands of people. The streets are lined with stands selling tropical fruits, such as fresh mangoes, watermelons and pineapples. Everyone in London dances—young and old, black and white—and even the policemen on duty take part in the fun. For these three days in August, a little Caribbean magic touches the streets of London.

3 . It was Thanksgiving Day a few years ago. My daughter was sitting on the couch watching the parade. My dogs kept lifting their noses to sniff the turkey slowly cooking in the oven. And my sons and I were secretly getting a piece of pumpkin pie with cream to hold us until dinner was done. As we lifted our forks I said, “Life is short! Eat dessert first!” Then I smiled as we ate our pie with delight and gave the outside part to the dogs.

Later I decided to take my oldest dog, Snoopy out for a walk. As we slowly walked through the ankle deep leaves I let my mind wander to memories of Thanksgivings past. I could see my grown children as babies sitting in their high chairs covered in mashed potatoes. I remembered all of those years spent visiting their grandparents and all of the special foods they made. There was sausage stuffing, noodles and cheese, and fried potatoes. There was turkey and delicious desserts made with love. And there was the three day nap (小睡) you wanted to take after dinner.

Even more than the food were the memories of joy that stuck in my mind and stayed in my heart. There were the smiles and hugs, the shared stories and laughter, the love so freely given at this time of the year. I went back inside with all of them flowing through me. I felt both glad and sad at the same time. I was happy for all the blessed times we had shared over the years and sad that they had flown by so fast. Most of all, though, I felt at peace and thankful to God for this wonderful life we are given here.

The truth is the more you love, the more thankfulness fills your heart. The more you love, the more joy you create in your life. Make the most of each day you are given here then. Be thankful for the glorious gift of life. Be the blessing you were meant to be and make every day Thanksgiving Day.

4 . In the small village of Goss in Austria, a century-old brewery tradition had a novel transformation towards Sustainability (可持续性), Göss in home to the Gösser Brewery, the world’s first large scale zero-carbon brewery.

Owned and operated by the Heineken Group, the world's third-largest beer maker, the Gösser Brewery was relaunched as a zero-carbon facility in June. The brewery produces 1.4 million bottles of beer every day using a mix of entirely renewable energy sources, including hydropower, biogas and waste heat. This has brought its carbon emissions (排放) down from 3, 000 tons a year to zero.

Andreas Werner, brew master at Gösser Brewery said, “Our Cöss brewery may be in a small town but our goal was to make a big influence. I am proud of what we have achieved for the Heineken Group and want to help our other breweries and the wider brewing industry makes renewable energy part of their energy mix, just as we have done.”

The brewery is helping Heineken achieve its commitment to a 40 percent reduction in CO2 emissions from production by 2022, which is kept in the company’s Brewing a Better World stability strategy.

To power its production, the Gösser Brewery uses 100 percent hydropower sources for eletnicity-35 percent from biomass for heating, 10 percent from biogas from waste water, 3-5 percent from a solar plant, and 50 percent from biogas generated from the spent grain fermentation (发酵) tank.

For this creative move towards sustainability, the brewery won the EU Sustainable Energy Award and Citizens Choice Award in June. The awards cognize creative projects in energy efficiency and renewability in Europe. “The Goss brewery is the stand-out example of this work and our commitment to sustainability,” Roland Verstappen, Heineken’s director for public and movement affairs said.

5 . On 19 March 2018, you were born. I knew absolutely nothing of you and hadn’t even considered adding another member to our family.

You see, at that time I was becoming increasingly concerned about our teenage daughter. She had been spending more and more time away from the family, bad tempered and unsociable. She seemed unhappy most of the time. She had talked of wanting a dog for a long while, so I thought: if I do this for her, it will boost her mood, get her out more and give her a new focus.

To my surprise, our daughter’s reaction was not what I expected when I introduced the two of you-had 1 made a mistake?

I soon began to understand that you were not going to bring her out of her sadness. Yet you still needed taking care of, so, naturally, most of the duties of your care fell upon me.

Then, in July, our daughter was diagnosed with anorexia (厌食症). Our lives were turned upside down, as she faced the biggest challenges of her life. My husband and I had different ideas about what would be the best course of action to take; the illness sent the whole family into chaos. Without you, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity, to find clarity. On our walks together, you gave me the freedom to think clearly and rationally (理性地). I found a calmness that I never would have, had I been at home with Google.

In September, we kept our daughter off school and I looked after her, putting everything else on hold. During that time I bonded with her and she bonded with you. She rejoined school in the middle of September, and was slowly but surely on the road to recovery.

Thank you for your constant love and playfulness, and for showing me the simple pleasures of life. But most of all, thank you for being my light in the dark.

6 . Bird expert Stephen Kress remembers the first time he encountered puffins (角嘴海雀). “I was totally amazed from the moment I saw them,” he says. Two years after his first encounter, while teaching at a nature camp in Maine, Kress learned that the state's puffin colonies were all but destroyed by hunters in the late 1800s. The puffins were killed for their eggs, meat and feathers.

Kress decided to learn more about these “special birds.” His fascination grew into Project Puffin, a decades-long effort to bring the puffins back to Maine. Kress ran the project while working for the National Audubon Society, a major bird conservation nonprofit in the US.

Project Puffin’s origins lie on an uninhabited seven-acre island, six miles off the coast of Maine, called Easter Egg Rock. The tiny island, accessible only by rowboat, is free from predators (捕食者) and edged with rocks under which the puffins nest.

Starting in 1973, Kress’s team collected chicks from Greet Island, off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, which had a healthy puffin population. The team hand -raised puffins in artificial holes, feeding them vitamin-enriched fish twice a day. “They would come out when they were six weeks old and they would work their way to the edge of the island and swim off,” says Kress.

For four years, however, none of the birds returned to the island to breed (繁殖). The project’s supporters began to question whether they would ever succeed. “That's when I began trying to think like a puffin,” Kress says.“Puffins nest in colonies because they like being with others of their kind and large groups provide protection from predators.” He thought that the young puffins did remember the island but were not brave to come ashore. Kress’s new idea was to place wooden puffins around the island, to help the birds feel safe. It worked.

Thanks to his pioneering method, Project Puffin says there are now around 1,300 pairs of puffins nesting on islands in the Gulf of Maine. What's more, the techniques Kress developed to save puffins are now used by seabird conservationists around the world.

7 . It's no secret that social media can make the lines on what's reality and what's fantasy unclear. But new research at York's Faculty of Health now shows how young women interact with images online can affect how they feel about their own bodies.

The research appears in the journal Body Image. The study was conducted by Jennifer Mills, associate professor in the Department of Psychology and Jacqueline Hogue. It focused on young women, aged 18 to 27 years old, who liked or commented on photos of people whom they considered to be more attractive than themselves.

The research included 118 female college students from countries all over the world. Participants reported their ages, diverse ethnic groups, whether English was their first language, and years of education in an online questionnaire six weeks before the experiment. Each participant was given a questionnaire where they had to indicate how satisfied or dissatisfied they were with their appearance or body image by using a specific standard.

Participants were then randomly assigned into one of two experimental conditions. One group of participants were asked to log into Facebook and Instagram for a period of five or more minutes and find one peer (同龄人) who they felt was more attractive than themselves. After looking at the photos, each participant was asked to leave a comment of their choice. In the other group, participants were asked to do the same task but this time they commented on a post of a family member whom they did not think was more attractive than themselves.

The results showed that these young adult women felt worse about their own appearance after looking at social media pages of someone that they considered to be more attractive than themselves. Even if they felt bad about themselves before they came into the study, on average, they still felt worse after completing the task. However, the data showed that participants’ views on their own appearance were not affected when interacting with the posts of their family members.