The UK's largest coffee seller, Costa Coffee, has promised to recycle half a billion coffee cups a year by 2020 to deal with plastic waste. The move, which means recycling the same number of cups it puts onto the market, would account for a big percentage out of the 2.5 billion takeaway cups thrown away across the country every year.

    Though marked as recyclable, most of paper coffee cups end up on landfill(垃圾场) or being burned due to the plastic lining(涂层) used to make them waterproof. By paying waste collectors to take coffee cups to certain places, Costa hopes to increase the rate at which cups are recycled. Finally, all a customer will need to do to make sure their cup avoids landfill is throw it into a standard recycling bin.

    Started following the Environmental Audit Committee's report recommending ministers take action to deal with coffee cup waste, the campaign has pushed for action from governments and businesses and promoted possible solutions. Starbucks has promised ￡7m to develop a "fully recyclable cup" following pressure from campaigners, while Waitrose, a supermarket, has planned to stop using disposable(一次性的) coffee cups from its stores by autumn.

    The company has entered into a partnership with five national waste collectors – Veolia, Biffa, Suez, Grundon and First Mile – that between them cover public spaces across the UK including hospitals, universities and transport hubs. The coffee company is also working with paper factories to make sure their products are recycled effectively. James Cropper, for example, has plans to upgrade 500 million cups a year to create plastic-free packaging. By building more partnerships with waste contractors in every area, Costa means to hit its half a billion mark within two years.

    With one report showing the number of takeaway drink cups thrown away in the UK is set to rise by a third by 2030, and the government recently failing to tax some coffee to discourage cup use, it falls to businesses to act on the huge amount of waste from their products.

    Commenting on the announcement, Environment Minister Therese Coffey said: "Congratulations to Costa on taking this significant step to help coffee lovers do the right thing and increase recycling. We all have a responsibility to our environment and this is a significant step by a British business which should increase the number of disposable coffee cups we recycle in this country." "We want to help companies become plastic free and through our 25 Year Environment Plan we are putting in place the aims to encourage all of us to play our part in ending the pollution of plastic waste in our natural environment."

    A new study suggests that people who drank a certain amount of alcohol（酒）had a lower risk of cancer and death than those who drank more or none during a nine-year period. And with each additional drink a week, the risk of cancer and death from any cause increased, the scientists reported.

    However, the study found only an association between alcohol and cancer and death, and did not prove cause and effect, the researches said. What sets the new study apart, said lead study author Andrew Kunzmann, is that previous studies looked at cancer and death separately. “What our study does is combine the two outcomes together and we find that lighter drinking is associated with the lowest risk of cancer or death,” Kunzmann said.

    But Kunzmann noted that the participants（参与者）were all older adults. That means that “we're not really showing what happens in younger people if they drink,” he said. Also, it's difficult to account for other lifestyles that could have affected the results. “These could also influence health. But the results did take into consideration differences in diet, smoking and education among participants,” Kunzmann noted.

    The researchers said that they hope their study sparks conversation about reducing the suggested alcohol intake in countries' guidelines. “We're not telling people what they can or can't do or what they can or can't drink,” Kunzmann said. “We're just trying to give them reliable evidence so that they can make their own informed, healthy decisions.”

    A picture speaks a thousand words. And with over a thousand emoji pictures to represent our words, who needs to speak or write any more? According to Professor Vyv Evans of Bangor University, emoji is the UK's fastest-growing language in history. These little electronic pictures started life in Japanese mobile phones in the 1990s and are now hugely popular. They have inspired fashion, like the real-life dress copied from the dancing lady emoji, and are even recognized as art! In New York's Museum of Modern Art you can now see the first set of the 176 original emojis.

    Why do we love them so much? They allow us to personalize text and have fun as we express ourselves, make people laugh and be creative in how we use them. UK teenagers also told us they really appreciated the fact that emojis are quick and easy.

    People have their favourite emojis. In the UK, the most used emojis are ' face with tears ofjoy', ' face blowing a kiss' and 'Iove heart'. Maybe (with emojis at least) the British are more fun and romantic than people think! Companies such as McDonalds have also tried to use people's love of emojis to make advertisement. They used a series of emojis to tell a story of a disappointing day given a happy ending by a visit to McDonalds. Unluckily for McDonalds, most people added the vomiting(呕吐) emoji to the blank space after the story.

    What is the future of emoji? Is emoji developing so rapidly that it will soon compete with English as a global language? Or is technology changing so fast that emoji will soon be forgotten when the next big thing comes along? It is hard to say and even technology and language experts are divided on the subject.

    What do you think? Keep your eyes open for new developments!

    "Dad," I say one day, "Let's take a trip. Why don't you fly and meet me?"

    As a manager from IBM, my father's job filled his day, his thought, his life. While he woke up and took a warm shower, I had fun under the Eiffel Tower. While he tied a tie and put on the same Swiss watch, I rowed a boat across Lake of the Ozarks.

    My father sees me travelling without a purpose, nothing to show for my 33 years but a passport full of funny stamps. He wants me to settle down (安定下来), but now I want him to explore the world.

    He agrees and we meet four weeks later in Rapid City.

    "What is our first stop?" asks my father.

    "What time is it?"

    "Still don't have a watch?"

    Less than an hour away is Mount Rushmore. As he looks up at sculptures of the four Presidents in granite(花岗岩), his mouth and eyes open slowly, like those of little boy.

    "Amazing," he says, "How was this done?"

    A film in the information center shows sculptor(雕塑家) Gutzon Borglum devoted 14 years to the sculptures.

    We look up and I ask myself, "Can I devote my life to anything?"

    No directions, no purpose. I always used to hear those words in my father's voice. Now I hear them in my own.

    The next day we're at Yellowstone National Park, where we have a picnic.

"Did you ever travel with your dad?" I ask.

    "Only once," he says. "I never spoke much with my father. We loved each other—but never said it. Whatever he could give me, he gave."

    The last sentence—it's probably the same thing I will say about my father. And what I want my child to say about me.

    In Glacier National Park, my father says, "I've never seen water so blue." I have, in several places of the world. I can keep traveling. I realize— and maybe a fixed job won't be as boring as I think.

    Weeks after our trip, I call my father. "The photos from the trip are wonderful," he says. "We have got to take another trip like that sometime." I tell him I've decided to settle down and find a fixed job, and I'm wearing a watch.

    Google previously announced successful tests of machine learning systems designed to assist doctors. In one case, Google reported AI had examined eye diseases with equal accuracy to doctors. Other tests showed that machine learning can be used to study large amounts of patient data to predict future medical events.

    Now the company has published two new studies showing a high level of success in identifying metastatic breast cancer. Metastatic means that cancer has spread from its main area to other parts of the body. Metastatic breast cancer is one of the deadliest, causing about 90 percent of all breast cancer deaths worldwide.

    In metastatic breast cancer patients, the cancer often travels to nearby lymph nodes（淋巴结）. Usually doctors examine lymph node tissue under a microscope to see whether cncer is present Google notes that previous studies have shown that up to one-fourth of metastatic lymph node classifications end up being changed after a second examination. In addition, studies show that small metastatic material can be missed up to 67 percent of the time when examinations happen under extreme time restrictions.

    Google says it created a mathematical algorithm(算法).The algorithm, called Lymph Node Assistant, is trained to find characteristics of tissue affected by metastatic cancer. When the system examined tissue images (图像), it was able to differentiate between metastatic cancer and non-cancer 99 percent of the time. In addition, the Lymph Node

    Assistant is highly effective at finding the positions of the cancers. Some of these positions would be too small for doctors themselves to identify. The research also showed that the algorithm method can reduce the usual time needed to examine the disease by about 50 percent.

    But Google makes clear the Al-based system is not meant to replace the work of medical professionals. Instead, it is designed to reduce the number of false identifications and help doctors work faster and more effectively.

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is practically everywhere today. There are so many products out there which use AI. Some are being developed, some are already in use, and some failed and are being improved, so it's very difficult to name a few of them and regard them as the best.

    Vi

    It is an AI personal trainer which is mainly concerned with fitness and coaching. It, however, requires the use of bio-sensing earphones and other fitness tracking equipment (设备)! It can play your favourite music while you work out and all you have to worry about is the exercise you're doing.

    Deep Text

    Do you ever wonder how an ad appears suddenly just when you are looking for something similar? This is because of Deep Text. It uses real-time consumer (消费者) information to produce data which in turn is used to target consumers. Thus, if you search online for flight tickets from Bangalore to Delhi, it is very likely that an ad relating to hotels in Delhi will soon follow.

    Hello Egg

    If you live alone and miss your mother because you always miss your breakfast or don't know what to eat for dinner, then Hello Egg is exactly what you are looking for. A very healthy choice of the 2-minute noodles and oats, Hello Egg provides you with a detailed weekly meal plan about the needs of your body. It is truly a modern AI-powered home cooking tool for the young.

    Wordsmith

    You can put Mr. Smith into your Microsoft Excel using their free API, and let it write up detailed analysis (分析) of the stories behind your numbers. It can produce detailed reports on thousands of pages of spreadsheets in seconds.