Students taking Georgia Tech's online Knowledge-Based Artificial Intelligence course received some surprising news. Jill Watson one of the nine teaching assistants(TAs) that had helped them finish the challenging course for the past five months was not a ‘‘she'' but an “it”—an intelligent robot!

    Watson is the brainchild of Ashok Goel, who teaches the popular online course. The Professor-of Computer and Cognitive Science in the School of Interactive Computing came up with the idea as a way to deal with a number of questions posed by students in the online forums(论坛). According to Goel, every time the course is offered, the 300 or so students that enroll post over 10,000 questions which are often repetitive. This led Goel to wonder if a smart robot would handle the questions which require standard responses.

    Having worked' with IBM's Watson technology platform in the, the professor knew it would be ideal for his artificial TA: Jill Watson. The artificial intelligence system that uses natural language processing and machine learning to analyze large amounts of data has even been cleverer than human competitors on the television show. It would therefore easily be able to handle routine questions that required little “thinking”.

    The professor and his team of graduate students began by populating Jill's memory with 40,000 questions and answers from past terms. Then came the testing stage. At first, Jill was not very good and often gave strange answers. It often got stuck on certain keywords. By the end of the semester, Jill had attained enough knowledge and skills to participate in forums without any management from Goel, or the other assistants.

    Opened in 1847, the London Zoo is the world's oldest scientific zoo. Today it houses over 760 different species of animal and is the only zoo in London where you can experience big animals.

    Explore the “Into Africa” exhibit (展览) where you can come face to face with some of Africa's most unusual animals including hunting dogs, or try “Meet The Monkeys” an exciting walk-through experience. Other top exhibits include the Butterfly Paradise, where you can enjoy many species of butterfly as they fly around you.

    Make sure you don't miss feeding time at the Penguin Beach and find out more about these popular creatures from the zoo's experienced keepers. Penguin Beach, with a very large pool and underwater viewing areas, allows visitors to be close to the penguins like never before.

    Built in 2013, Tiger Territory is a great experience taking visitors deep into the world of these wonderful creatures.

    Rainforest Life is London's only living rainforest, where visitors can meet a variety of beautiful rainforest species including. In the all-new “Night Life” area you will discover the bats, and rats.

    With over 12,000 animals to see and incredible animal displays taking place throughout the day (including feeds and keeper talks), no visitor leaves disappointed. Learn more about London Zoo in our Interview with a Zoo Keeper on our London Pass Blog.

    You can visit the London Zoo for free with a London Pass—a fantastic saving of £23 for adults and over £16 for children. Children aged 3-4 will be charged on entrance fee for London Zoo.

    We all need to eat. So, meals could be a chance to stop what we're doing and spend time with the people in our lives. A recent study from a team of South Korea suggests that eating together has many good effects on children and teenagers while frequently eating alone may lead to poor eating habits and poor food choices. People who eat alone more than twice a week have a greater risk of developing high blood pressure.

    There are benefits of family dinners on children and teenagers.

    In 2014, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) looked at data from nearly three-quarters of the world's countries. Among its findings is the fact that students who share a main meal with their families are less likely to hate school. Children who eat a main meal with their families are also less likely to take drugs (毒品).

    In the report, titled "The Importance of Family Dinners (VIII)," researchers say that teens who have frequent family dinners are more likely to say their parents know a lot about what's going on in their lives.

    Another study from the University of Montreal finds that children who eat with their families experience long-term physical and mental health benefits. These children are physically in better shape and drink fewer sugary soft drinks. These children also seem to have better social skills and are less violent.

    One of the researchers, Pagane, involved in this study is a professor at the university. She says that mealtimes with parents possibly provide young children with firsthand social events, which helps them have better communication skills.

    I've come back to check on a baby. Just after dusk I'm in a car down a muddy road in the rain, past rows of shackled (戴镣的) elephants, their trunks swinging. I was here five hours before, when the sun was high and hot and tourists were on elephants' backs.

    Walking now, I can hardly see the path with my phone's flashlight. When the wooden fence post stops me short, I point my light down and follow a current of rainwater across the floor until it washes up against three large, gray feet. A fourth foot twisted above the surface, tied tightly by a short chain and choked by ring of metal spikes (尖刺). When the elephant gets tired and puts her foot down, the spikes press deeper into her ankle.

    Meena is four years and two months old, still a child as elephants go. Khammon Kongkhaw, her caretaker, told me earlier that Meena wears the spiked chain because she tends to kick. Kongkhaw has been responsible for Meena here at Maetaman Elephant Adventure, near Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, since she was 11 months old. He said he keeps her on the spiked chain only during the day and takes it off at night. But it's night now.

    I ask Jin Laoshen, the Maetaman worker, why her chain is still on. He says he doesn't know.

    Maetaman is one of many animal attractions in and around tourist-crowded Chiang Mai. Meena's life is set to follow the same track as many of the roughly 3,800 captive (被捕获的) elephants in Thailand. When Meena is too old or sick to give rides—maybe at 55, maybe at 75, she'll die. If she's lucky, she'll get a few years of retirement. She'll spend most of her life on a chain.

    Researchers at the University of Chicago have trained an artificial intelligence system, to write fake reviews on Yelp, a website showing customers reviews on shopping or something else, and it's pretty hard to tell them apart from a human review.

    Their study, which will be presented at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in October, aimed to throw attention onto how easily these systems can write reviews like humans and how damaging they can become if they're not monitored properly.

    Since many small businesses rely on online reviews to help grow and keep their reputation, a future where someone—like a rival or angry customer—could crazily fill their page with negative reviews written by a machine is pretty worrying.

    And, according to the research team, the threat goes far beyond a bunch of fake reviews on Yelp. "In general the threat is bigger," Ben Y. Zhao, one of the authors of the study, said. "I think the threat towards society is large and it really misleads users and shakes our belief in what is real and what is not. I think that's going to be even unimaginable."

    To test how believable these reviews came across, the researchers invited 40 volunteers and had AI generate five fake reviews for 40 actual restaurants. The volunteers were asked how useful they thought the review was and whether or not they thought it was fake. The AI reviews ranked as "effectively indistinguishable" from real reviews，according to the study. Further, the fake reviews were given a 3.15 "usefulness" rating, compared to a 3.28 rating for human reviews.

POETRY CHALLENGE

    Write a poem about how courage, determination, and strength have helped you face challenges in your life.

Prizes

    3 Grand Prizes: Trip to Washington, D.C. for each of three winners, a parent and one other person of the winner's choice. Trip includes round-trip air tickets, hotel stay for two nights, and tours of the National Air and Space Museum and the office of National Geographic World.

    6 First Prizes: The book Sky Pioneer:A Photobiography of Amelia Earhart signed by author Corinne Szabo and pilot Linda Finch.

    50 Honorable Mentions:Judges will choose up to 50 honorable mention winners, who will each receive a T-shirt in memory of Earhart's final flight.

Rules

    Follow all rules carefully to prevent disqualification.

    ■Write a poem using 100 words or fewer. Your poem can be any format, any number of lines.

    ■Write by hand or type on a single sheet of paper. You may use both the front and back of the paper.

    ■On the same sheet of paper, write or type your name, address, telephone number, and birth date.

    ■Mail your entry to us by October 31 this year.