Over 40 years ago, a country music DJ convention (大会) was held every year in Nashville, Tennessee. Many country performers used to attend (参加) the convention to give their performances. Fans would go to Nashville hoping to see their favorite performers. In the end, so many fans began showing up in Nashville that a festival named Fan Fair was born.

    The first Fan Fair was held in April 1972, in Nashville for four days. Some of country music's biggest stars attended. There were about fifty thousand fans. The first Fan Fair was so successful that planning began almost immediately for 1973. The date was changed to June, when the weather would be better. Over one hundred thousand fans attended the second Fan Fair.

    Every year brought so many performers and fans to Fan Fair that, in 1982, it was moved to the Tennessee State Fairgrounds. Fan Fair stayed at the fairgrounds for another nineteen years.

    There was always the unexpected during the festival. In 1974, former Beatle Paul McCartney attended. In 1992, more than six hundred reporters from Europe, Asia, and South America went to cover the appearance of a popular star, Billy Ray Cyrus, who had introduced a new country line dance. In 1996, Garth Brooks, who made a surprise appearance, signed autographs (签名) for 23 hours.

    In 2001, Fan Fair returned to downtown Nashville as the world's biggest country music festival. Now, over one hundred and twenty-five thousand country music fans go to Nashville every June. As you can imagine, those who want to attend Fan Fair must plan ahead. For example, they need to buy a ticket several months ahead of time. Of course, there's much more to prepare.

    The human brain contains 10 thousand million cells and each of these may have a thousand connections. Such enormous numbers used to discourage us and cause us to dismiss the possibility of making a machine with human-like ability, but now that we have grown used to moving forward at such a pace we can be less sure. Quite soon, in only 10 or 20 years perhaps, we will be able to assemble a machine as complex as the human brain, and if we can we will. It may then take us a long time to render it intelligent by loading in the right software (软件)or by altering the architecture but that too will happen.

    I think it certain that in decades, not centuries, machines of silicon (硅) will arise first to compete and then do better than their human ancestors. Once they do better than us they will be capable of their own design. In a real sense they will be able to reproduce themselves. Silicon will have ended carbon's long control. And we will no longer be able to claim ourselves to be the finest intelligence in the known universe.

    As the intelligence of robots increases to match that of humans and as their cost declines through economies of scale we may use them to improve environments. Thus, deserts may bloom and the ocean beds be mined. Further ahead, by a combination of the great wealth this new age will bring and the technology it will provide, the construction of a vast, man-created world in space, home to thousands or millions of people, will be within our power.

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    It was dinner time for the Rangers, a group of mostly Indigenous (本地的) Australians who had spent a long day cleaning up the polluted beaches of the continent's northern coast. Soon they would be eating freshly caught fish and seafood cooked under the stars on an open fire, as their ancestors did.

    The Rangers are of more than 100 Indigenous groups spread across Australia who have taken on the job of protecting the land of their forefathers. In Arnhem Land, they are the protectors of 3,300 square miles of land and sea. They comb the beaches by hand, picking up as much rubbish as possible. The task is very difficult as each day it delivers waves of new rubbish.

    For the Rangers, cleaning the beaches is more than a vacation. For a people whose culture is strongly tied to the land, protecting the environment is equal to preserving their history.

    However, colonization forcefully broke their connection to the land generations ago. Indigenous people were displaced and their cultural practices outlawed. Tens of thousands of years of traditional land management ended, and as a result many parts of the country now face serious disasters from invasive plant and animal species, bush fires and land mismanagement.

    In recent years, the government has restored more than 20 percent of Australia's land to Indigenous owners. Since 2007, the Indigenous Rangers Organizations have been at work protecting this land.

    Luck, one of the few non-Indigenous employees working with the Rangers, said the combination of old and new techniques and an appreciation for the culture of Indigenous workers has been critical to the program's success.

    "You are working with staff who see the world different to you, so there is a much higher focus on the cultural aspects of work and life," he said.

    "Being a ranger is a source of confidence. You feel strong," said Terence, a senior ranger. "Here we still live on the land. The culture is still alive."

    Over the centuries the French have lost a number of famous battles with the British. However, they've always felt superior in the kitchen. France has for centuries had a reputation for cooking excellence, and Britain for some of the worst cooking in the world. But according to a recent survey, that reputation may no longer reflect reality.

    In the survey, 71% of the Britons said they cook at home every day, while only 59% of the French said they cook daily. British home cooks spend more time cooking each week and also produce a greater variety of dishes than French home cooks.

    The reaction in London was predictably enthusiastic. British food has greatly improved since the 1990s. Once upon a time, the menu for many family meals would have been roast beef, potatoes and over-cooked vegetables, but not now. Home cooks are experimenting with the huge range of ingredients now available in British supermarkets and are preparing all kinds of new dishes, using the cookbooks that sell millions of copies every year. As a result, there's much more diversity in British food now, compared to French food, which tends to be very traditional.

    Some French people say that the survey did not show the whole picture. They agree that during the week French women don't cook as much as they used to because most of them work and don't have much time. They tend to buy ready-made or frozen dishes, but many of them make up for it on the weekend. There's also a difference between Paris and the countryside. It's true that people in Paris don't cook much, but elsewhere, cooking is still at the heart of daily life.

    For many French people, opinions about British food have not changed. When Bernard Blier, the food editor at a magazine, was asked about British food, he replied: "I don't go out of my way to try it. It is not very refined. You can say that I'm not a fan at all."

If you've ever seen a sparrow steal your dog food or a crow open a garbage bag, you get a sense of that some birds have learned to take advantage of new feeding opportunities—a clear sign of their intelligence. Scientists have long wondered why certain species of birds are more innovative than others, and whether these capacities stem from larger brains or from a greater number of neurons（神经元）in specific areas of the brain.

It turns out that it's a bit of both, according to a recent study by an international team that included members from McGill University published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The researchers used a new technique to estimate the number of neurons in a specific part of the brain called the pallium in 111 bird species. The pallium in birds is equal to the human cerebral cortex（大脑皮层）, which is involved in memory, learning, reasoning, and problem-solving, among other things. When these estimates about neuron numbers in the pallium were combined with information about over 4,000 feeding innovations, the team found that the species with the higher numbers of neurons in the pallium were also likely to be the most innovative.

"The amount of time chicks spend in the nest as their brains develop might also play a crucial role in the evolution of intelligence," says McGill University Emeritus Professor Louis Lefebvre who spent more than 20 years gathering examples of feeding innovations. "Larger species of crows and parrots, which are known for their intelligence, spend longer in the nest, which allows more time for the brain to grow and accumulate pallial neurons."

The results of the study help to deal with previously opposed views of the evolution and significance of brain size and show how a life-history perspective helps to understand the evolution of cognition.