Nearly 700,000 people have taken part in the world’s largest wildlife survey, helping to countthe numbers of wild birds in the UK. The Big Garden Bird watch is organized every year by a charity called the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). It is a chance for people to record the birds that visit their garden, balcony or local green space. The survey gives the RSPB a snap shot of how different types of birds are doing, and whether their populations are going up ordown.

This year more than 11 million birds were counted. The house sparrow was the most commonly-seen garden bird, with more than 1.7 million recorded sightings. However, despitehitting the top spot, its numbers are lower than in 2021.

There was a rise in greenfinch numbers, which gives hope that the species may be recovering from a big drop in population over the last 30 years, mainly caused by disease. The survey alsoshowed that numbers of jay, a colourful member of the crow family, have increased by 73%compared to 2021.

Almost 60,000 schoolchildren took part in the survey, which involved spending an hour innature counting different types of birds. Wood pigeons were the most commonly spotted by schools,with an average of eight seen by the schools that took part. Blackbirds came a close second.

The Big Garden Birdwatch has been running since 1979, providing valuable information onthe welfare of the UK’s wild birds for the last 43 years. The RSPB’s chief executive officer. Rebecca Speight said, “I’s been brilliant to see so many people taking part this year, taking timeout to watch and reconnect with birds.” she added. “Spring is amazing. Spring sees the return of nature’s biggest music festival, the dawn chorus. Open your back door, a window or simply stepoutside and listen.”

Researchers have found a way to use software to teach a human-like robotic hand new skills. The discovery could one day make it less expensive to train robots to do things that are easy for humans to do. The researchers are with OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research group started in 2015.

OpenAI researchers announced last week that they had taught a robotic hand to recognize different qualities of a colorful object The object was a small, six-sided box with different numbers and colors on each side. The researchers wanted the robotic hand to show them a specific side of the box. The machine was able to turn the box around until the desired side was shown.

The act may seem simple. But it shows a big improvement in how the machine learned to do what the researchers were asking of it.

All the learning happened inside a software-based re-creation of the real world, or a simulation. The machine was then able to bring everything it had learned into the physical world. That jump helps solve what had been a big problem for robotic hands.

Ken Goldberg is a robotics professor in University of California Berkeley. He did not join in the OpenAI research. But he did review the work released in late July. He called it “an important result” in getting closer to the goal of having self-taught machines.

Lilian Weng is a member of the technical team at OpenAI who worked on the research. She told the Reuters news agency that the group now aims to teach the robotic hand even more complex tasks.

Several times a month, you can find Doctor Daniel Nadeau in the Ralph’s market in Huntington Beach, California, wearing a white coat and helping people learn about food. He notices the pre-made macaroni (通心粉) and cheese boxes in am other’s shopping cart and suggests she switch to wholegrain macaroni and real cheese.

Nadeau says sugar and processed foods are big contributors to the rising diabetes (糖尿病) rates among children. “In America, over 50 percent of our food is processed food,” Nadeau tells her. “And only 5 percent of our food is plant-based food. I think we should try to reverse that.” This mother agrees to try more fruit juices for the kids and to make real macaroni and cheese. Score one point for the doctor, zero for diabetes.

Research findings increasingly show the power of food to treat or reverse diseases, but that does not mean that diet alone is always the solution, or that every illness can benefit substantially from dietary changes. Nevertheless, physicians say that they look at the collective data and a clear picture emerges: that the salt, sugar, fat and processed foods in the American diet contribute to the nation’s high rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

By prescribing (开处方) nutritional changes or launching programs such as “Shop with your Doc”, they are trying to prevent, limit or even reverse disease by changing what patients eat. The program will offer patients several bags of food prescribed for their condition, along with intensive training in how to cook it. They believe teaching people about which foods are healthy and how to prepare them can actually transform a patient’s life. And beyond that, it might transform the health and lives of that patient’s family.