Siri is an artificial intelligence (AI) that you can carry around in the pocket, where it waits patiently to be told what to do. In the week we spend together, my AI assistant has performed admirably in finding me restaurants, or the location of the nearest coffee shop.

    A typical command might be: “Reserve a table for two at a good French restaurant in San Francisco.” Siri responds by presenting a list of top-rated restaurants that can be booked on OpenTable.com. If you say which time you want, it can book you a table without your lifting a finger. In some ways Siri is just a fancy program to the 35 websites it can connect to, from taxi booking websites to movie review databases (数据库). But what's new is the way it can analyze the intentions of its users and use those sites to put them into action.

    Siri attaches possibilities to the explanation of each word and compare your location with other data, some of which you must provide yourself. To send email reminders, Siri obviously needs to know your email address. To “find me the flower shop closest to work”, it needs to know where you work. To pay bills or buy airline tickets, it would need to be linked to your credit card.

    That raises the question of how far we are willing to trust a piece of software that can go and do things for us based on what it “thinks” we mean. Siri may be simple, and always shows its explanation of a command before carrying it out. But it gives users a preview of a new balance between privacy, trust and convenience that the expansion of AI into everyday life is likely to develop.

    It took place at the Biltmore Hotel. My grandmother, my mother, and I were having lunch after a morning spent shopping. I gladly ordered a Salisbury steak. When brought to the table, it was accompanied by a plate of peas. I do not like peas now. I did not like peas then. I have always hated peas.

    “Eat your peas,” my grandmother said.

    “Mother,” said my mother in her warning voice. “He doesn't like peas. Leave him alone.”

    My grandmother did not reply, but leaned in my direction, looked me in the eye, and spoke out the fateful words that changed my life, “I'll pay you five dollars if you eat those peas.”

    I only knew that five dollars was a huge, nearly unimaginable amount of money, and awful as peas were, only one plate of them stood between me and the possession of that five dollars. I began to force them down my throat.

    My mother looked livid (铁青色的). My grandmother had a self-satisfied look and said, “I can do what I want, Ellen, and you can't stop me.” My mother glared at her mother. She glared at me. No one can glare like my mother. If there were a glaring Olympics, she would undoubtedly win the gold medal.

    I, of course, kept shoving peas down my throat, and every single pea made me want to throw up, but the magical image of the five dollars floated before me, and I finally swallowed every last one of them. My grandmother handed me the five dollars with satisfaction. My mother continued to glare in silence.

    That night, at dinner, my mother served two of my all-time favorite foods, meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Along with them came a big, steaming bowl of peas. She offered me some peas, and of course I declined. My mother fixed me with a cold eye as she heaped（堆积) a huge pile of peas onto my plate. Then came the words that were to haunt (萦绕) me for years. “You ate them for money,” she said, “You can eat them for love.”

    It's common knowledge that there are many benefits to being fit, but one large new study found that skipping out on the gym is practically the worst thing you can do for your health. In fact, the study claims not exercising might be more harmful to your health than smoking.

    New findings, published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open, detail how researchers at the Cleveland Clinic studied 122,007 patients from 1991 to 2014, putting them under treadmill (跑步机) testing and later recording death rates. Researchers found a clear connection between a longer, healthier life and high levels of exercise. The report calls for health care professionals to encourage patients to achieve and continue a strong and healthy fitness routine.

    Although it is widely understood that an active lifestyle can lead to a healthy life, the study concludes that a lifestyle which involves much sitting but little activity is equal to having a major disease and the simplest cure is exercise.

    Dr Wael Jaber, co-author of the study, called the results totally surprising. “Being unfit on a treadmill or in an exercise stress test has a worse prognosis (病情预断), as far as death, than being a smoker or suffering from high blood pressure,” Jaber told CNN. “We've never seen something as noticeable as this and as objective as this.”

    The study also took a look at the risk of being overactive and found that extreme exercisers do not face higher risk of death: the research found that the more a person exercises the lower their death rates.

    Scientists in Britain have managed to teach bees to pull strings (线) to get to food and then pass on what they have learned to others in their colony (群体) — showing a high level of intelligence despite their tiny brains.

    Researchers at Queen Mary University of London said the experiments, often used to test the intelligence of apes (猿) and birds, showed for the first time that some insects are up to the task, and can also pass skills on through several generations.

    The findings add to the evidence suggesting the ability for "culture spread"— the ability to learn and pass on knowledge and skills — may not be exclusive to humans.

    In the research, published in the journal PLOS Biology on Tuesday, the scientists were able to train 23 out of a group of 40 bees to pull strings with their legs and feet.

    The strings were attached to discs — or artificial "flowers"— containing food at their center but placed under a transparent (透明的) screen. The bees, spotting the food beneath the screen, learned to pull the "flowers" out by pulling the string with their legs and feet to be able to get to it.

    From another group of bees given the chance to solve the task without any training, only two of 110 were successful.

    Another group of bees was then allowed to observe the trained bees pulling the strings, and 60 percent of them successfully learned the skill. Finally, trained bees were put in colonies, and the scientists found the technique spread successfully to a majority of the colony's worker bees.

    Lars Chittka, a Queen Mary University professor who guided the project, said the team is interested in figuring out the brain processes behind the bees' learning and teaching skills.

The following are reviews of four films.

Happiness(Romance)★★★

Happiness tells the story of two people who work for different advertising companies. They talk on the phone all the time and don't like each other. But then they correspond by email and fall in love. This movie is very popular with teenagers and people who like romances. It also has beautiful music.

I Scream(Thriller)★★

In I Scream,Paul is a young man who joins a thriller club. Each of the members tries to frighten the others. Paul is told to stay in an old house for the night. Everyone who has tried to stay in the house before has died. This movie is very frightening but also quite silly. It doesn't make sense for Paul to stay in the house when things start to go wrong. It is only for people who like thrillers.

Paul's Heroes(Comedy)★★★

This is a very funny war movie set in World WarⅡ. Six soldiers have to get to Italy to take secret messages to the American army there. In the movie, they dress up as women and fight with Italian workers. You can guess the ending, but it's great fun getting there.

____ (Drama)★★★★

This is a very good drama with Jack Ross, who plays a hardworking truck driver. His wife becomes ill and he has to find a doctor who can help her. In his travels he meets Dr Lloyd (Phil Driver) who has found the cure for the illness, but Jack Ross has only twelve hours to get the medicine back to his wife on the other side of America. This is an excellent movie, which is very exciting.

According to a new Agriculture Department report, U. S. forests could exacerbate global warming because they are being destroyed by natural disasters and are losing their ability to absorb planet-warming gases as they get older. The report predicts that the ability of forests to absorb carbon will start declining after 2025 and that forests could release up to 100 million metric tons of carbon a year as their emissions (排放) from decaying (腐烂的) trees go beyond their carbon absorption. Forests could become a "substantial carbon source" by 2070, the USDA report says.

The loss of carbon absorption is driven in part by natural disasters such as wildfires, tornadoes and hurricanes, which are increasing in frequency and strength as global temperatures rise. The disasters destroy forestland, destroying their ecosystem and decreasing their ability to absorb carbon, according to Lynn Riley, a senior manager of climate science at the American Forest Foundation. Aging forests also contribute. The report found that older, mature trees absorb less carbon than younger trees of the same species, and U. S. forests are rapidly aging.

This trend is likely to continue, as forests come under increasing threat from climate change and exploitation (开采). The typical tropical (热带的) forest may become a carbon source by the 2060s, according to Simon Lewis, professor in the school of geography at Leeds University. "Humans have been lucky so far, as tropical forests are cleaning up lots of our pollution, but they can't keep doing that indefinitely," he said. "We need to cut down fossil fuel emissions before the global carbon cycle starts working against us."

U. S. forests currently absorb 11 percent of U. S. carbon emissions, or 150 million metric tons of carbon a year, equal to the combined emissions from 40 coal power plants, according to the report. The loss of forests as natural carbon absorbers will require the U. S. to cut emissions more rapidly to reach net zero. "As we work to decarbonize (碳减排), forests are one of the greatest tools at our handling. If we were to lose that, it means we will contribute that much more in emissions." Riley said.