3 . If you are a fruit grower — or would like to become one — take advantage of Apple Day to see what’s around. It’s called Apple Day but in practice it’s more like Apple Month. The day itself is on October 21, but since it has caught on, events now spread out over most of October around Britain.

Visiting an apple event is a good chance to see, and often taste, a wide variety of apples. To people who are used to the limited choice of apples such as Golden Delicious and Royal Gala in supermarkets, it can be quite an eye opener to see the range of classical apples still in existence, such as Decio which was grown by the Romans. Although it doesn’t taste of anything special, it’s still worth a try, as is the knobbly(多疙瘩的) Cat’s Head which is more of a curiosity than anything else.

There are also varieties developed to suit specific local conditions. One of the very best varieties for eating quality is Orleans Reinette, but you’ll need a warm, sheltered place with perfect soil to grow it, so it’s a pipe dream for most apple lovers who fall for it.

At the events, you can meet expert growers and discuss which ones will best suit your conditions, and because these are family affairs, children are well catered for with apple-themed fun and games.

Apple Days are being held at all sorts of places with an interest in fruit, including stately gardens and commercial orchards(果园). If you want to have a real orchard experience, try visiting the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale, near Faversham in Kent.

4 . A strong coffee after a poor night's sleep is the kick-start many people need in the morning but new research suggests that it might be best to have a bite to eat first.

A study has found that drinking coffee first can have a negative effect on blood sugar control - a risk factor for diabetes （糖尿病）and heart disease.

“We know that nearly half of us will wake in the morning and, before doing anything else, drink coffee --- subjectively the more tired we feel, the stronger the coffee,“ said Professor James Betts, at the University of Bath in the UK.

For their study, researchers at the University of Bath got 29 healthy men and women to take part in three different overnight experiments, with at least a week between them.

In one, the participants had a normal night's sleep, roughly from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., and were asked to consume a sugary drink on waking in the morning. They then experienced an interrupted night's sleep, where the researchers woke them every hour for five minutes by sending them text messages to which they had to respond — and upon waking were given the same sugary drink.

On another night, participants experienced the same sleep interruption, but this time were first given a strong black coffee 30 minutes before consuming the sugary drink.

They found that one night of interrupted sleep did not worsen the participants' blood sugar and insulin （胰 岛素）responses when compared to the normal night's sleep-- although previous research suggested that losing many hours of sleep or many nights of poor sleep could have a negative effect. However, strong black coffee consumed before breakfast actually increased the blood sugar response by around 50% — suggesting that relying on coffee after a bad night to stop feeling sleepy could limit your body's ability to tolerate the sugar in your breakfast.

5 . We recognize our friends’ faces. And we’re not alone. Many social animals can identify individuals of their own species by features of their faces. That's important, because they need to be able to change their behavior depending on who they meet. And a recent research has shown that some species of monkeys, birds, and domesticated (家养的) animals can even tell different faces apart by looking at photographs alone.

Ethologist Léa Lansade of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment did an experiment to find out how well horses can recognize individual people in photographs.

She and her team first taught the horses how to “choose” between two side-by-side pictures by touching their noses to a computer screen. The horses were then shown photos of their present keeper alongside faces of unfamiliar humans. They had never seen photos of any of the people before. The horses correctly identified their current keeper and ignored (忽视) the stranger’s face about 75%of the time. In fact, even though the horses didn't get it right every single time, they were at least as correct in picking out their earlier keeper as they were at identifying their present one.

The results suggest that not only can horses differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar human faces, they also naturally understand that photographs are two dimensional representations (二维呈现) of real life, without any other intimations such as smell or sound. And they’re even better at this than our oldest animal parter, the domestic dog.

In addition, horses seem to have a strong long-term memory for human faces, like their long lifespan and history of domestication. In future experiments, the researchers would like to test whether looking at photos of people that they have had bad experiences with in the past might cause horses to act anxious or even avoidance. So maybe think twice before doing anything that might give a horse a long face.

6 . This month, Germany’s transport minister, Alexander Dobrindt, proposed the first set of rules for autonomous vehicles (自主驾驶车辆). They would define the driver’s role in such cars and govern how such cars perform in crashes where lives might be lost.

The proposal attempts to deal with what some call the “death valley” of autonomous vehicles: the grey area between semi-autonomous and fully driverless cars that could delay the driverless future.

Dobrindt wants three things: that a car always chooses property (财产) damage over personal injury; that it never distinguishes between humans based on age or race; and that if a human removes his or her hands from the driving wheel — to check email, say — the car’s maker is responsible if there is a crash.

“The change to the road traffic law will permit fully automatic driving,” says Dobrindt. It will put fully driverless cars on an equal legal footing to human drivers, he says.

Who is responsible for the operation of such vehicles is not clear among car makers, consumers and lawyers. “The liability(法律责任) issue is the biggest one of them all,” says Natasha Merat at the University of Leeds, UK.

An assumption behind UK insurance for driverless cars, introduces earlier this year, insists that a human “ be watchful and monitoring the road” at every moment.

But that is not what many people have in mind when thinking of driverless cars. “When you say ‘driverless cars’, people expect driverless cars.”Merat says. “You know — no driver.”

Because of the confusion, Merat thinks some car makers will wait until vehicles can be fully automated without operation.

Driverless cars may end up being a form of public transport rather than vehicles you own, says Ryan Calo at Stanford University, California. That is happening in the UK and Singapore, where government-provided driverless vehicles are being launched.

That would go down poorly in the US, however. “The idea that the government would take over driverless cars and treat them as a public good would get absolutely nowhere here,” says Calo.

7 . Do you remember the last time you received a postcard? The UK’s family-owned oldest postcard firm, which has been publishing postcards and calendars since 1880, will close this December. The reason? It says instead of penning a card, people are putting photos up on Facebook or Instagram or using WhatsApp to show friends and family at home just how much fun they’re having.

If you get a postcard from someone who’s away somewhere, it’s as much the thought that they’ve gone through the hassle (麻烦) of choosing a postcard, working out where to get a stamp from, finding a postbox and then the postcard making that journey through to you. That’s the value of the postcard. But that time has gone.

Brothers Charles and Harry Salmon, the fifth generation of the family to run the firm, said the popularity of social media had had a huge impact on the business. People are also tending to take shorter holidays, meaning they are likely to have arrived home long before their postcards. As a result the business was no longer viable.

“Increasingly challenging trading conditions and changes to the nature and size of the market for its publications have resulted in uncertainty over the future of its trade,’’ the brothers wrote in a letter to suppliers and newsagents.

As a result they were announcing a proposal to withdraw from publishing. The number of postcards sold each year is reported to have seen a sharp decline to about five million from 20 million just 25 years ago. But the firm said that as well as the drop in the number of postcards sent, “we have also had to consider that there are no more members of the family who wish to join the business.”

8 . Twice every month, Miranda Sam, a 66-year-old Ghanaian, visited the China Traditional Herbal Hospital, a private herbal facility at Pokuase, a suburb of the Ghanaian capital, for treatment.

“I was squeezing lemons, and when I finished, I could not get up or even move my legs, so I went to the hospital and did an X-ray examination, but they saw nothing. Meanwhile, I could not walk and was in a wheelchair,” the retired worker said. Hence Miranda decided to visit the herbal facility. “On two occasions, I had to do acupuncture(针灸), and I have found great relief. Now I walk unaided, so I keep coming for treatment,” she said.

As Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is gaining popularity in Ghana, many acupuncture clinics run by Chinese doctors pop up in the country. However, the China Traditional Herbal Hospital was established by 52-year-old Ghanaian business owner Bediako, after his fruitful encounter with the effects of TCM in 2012. With the help of a Chinese lady, Bediako set up a small clinic specializing in TCM. Years on, the facility has subsequently grown into a bigger herbal hospital. The hospital treats patients with a combination of local and Chinese herbal formulas. It supports this with the application of traditional Chinese medical methods.

Strokes(中风) account for 1.3 percent of all hospital admissions in Ghana, and 6.3 percent of all hospital deaths. But Bediako is confident that as more people with these conditions turn to the natural methods of healing, the pain and death rates would subside. “A gentleman was brought here three weeks ago, who could not sit, stand, or walk. He was first taken through acupuncture. I observed him on camera 30 minutes later, squatting(蹲), standing, and walking. You come here with your pain but will leave with a smile. That is our feature,” he said.

The hospital has started a second facility in Ashaiman near the capital, with plans to open other branches across the country to meet the growing demand.

9 . When the young donkey Daisy May came to us，she was pregnant. With no donkey experience. I was unprepared for what might come next.

After some difficulty，Daisy’s baby was born. I thought the poor thing was dead. I planned to put the loss behind us and make sure she never got pregnant again. Just then，I heard a little noise. I couldn’t believe that baby was breathing and looking at me!We called him Samson，and of course I became his mother as much as Daisy was.

When Samson was nine months old，I had to separate Daisy and Samson for a few hours a day to wean(使断奶)him，but otherwise he went wherever she did. I think she would be lost without him. His donkey stepdad Bernard taught him to always be ready to have fun. They enjoy playing football together and going for a roll on a hot summer day.

I asked a worker to make a harness(马具)for my three little donkeys. When I brought it home I taught them one by one how to pull a cart. Samson watched and freely followed Daisy. When he was three，I put the harnness on him and he knew exactly what to do.

That was 15 years ago. Now，the most exciting thing about Samson is that he has become a little renowned. People come from all over to see him perform. The neighbors bring their grandchildren，and my sons bring their friends.

Samson shakes hands，unties my shoe，picks up a hat and more. And when I ask him if he has any bad habits，he tries to pick my pocket!He surprisingly learned these tricks himself. I just ask him to do them and he understands.

The relationship I have with my“baby”Samson has been an amazing experience. Every day is a fun day with this superstar donkey.

10 . For several decades, there has been an extensive and organized campaign intended to generate distrust in science, funded by those whose interests and ideologies are threatened by the findings of modern science. In response, scientists have tended to stress the success of science. After all, scientists have been right about most things.

Stressing successes isn’t wrong, but for many people it’s not persuasive. An alternative answer to the question “Why trust science?” is that scientists use the so-called scientific method. If you’ve got a high school science textbook lying around, you’ll probably find that answer in it. But what is typically thought to be the scientific method — develop a hypothesis (假设), then design an experiment to test it — isn’t what scientists actually do. Science is dynamic: new methods get invented; old ones get abandoned; and sometimes, scientists can be found doing many different things.

If there is no identifiable scientific method, then what is the reason for trust in science? The answer is how those claims are evaluated. The common element in modern science, regardless of the specific field or the particular methods being used, is the strict scrutiny (审查) of claims. It’s this tough, sustained process that works to make sure faulty claims are rejected. A scientific claim is never accepted as true until it has gone through a lengthy “peer review” because the reviewers are experts in the same field who have both the right and the obligation (责任) to find faults.

A key aspect of scientific judgment is that it is done collectively. No claim gets accepted until it has been vetted by dozens, if not hundreds, of heads. In areas that have been contested, like climate science and vaccine safety, it’s thousands. This is why we are generally justified in not worrying too much if a single scientist, even a very famous one, disagrees with the claim. And this is why diversity in science — the more people looking at a claim from different angles — is important.

Does this process ever go wrong? Of course. Scientists are humans. There is always the possibility of revising a claim on the basis of new evidence. Some people argue that we should not trust science because scientists are “always changing their minds.” While examples of truly settled science being overturned are far fewer than is sometimes claimed, they do exist. But the beauty of this scientific process is that it explains what might otherwise appear paradoxical (矛盾的): that science produces both novelty and stability. Scientists do change their minds in the face of new evidence, but this is a strength of science, not a weakness.