Predicting extreme weather events is a tricky business. Changing climate conditions have increased the frequency of severe storms, floods, and heatwaves, along with larger wildfires. As a result, scientists are using artificial intelligence（AI）techniques for more accurate forecasts that help to minimize damage and save lives.

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have worked together with meteorologists （气象学家）to analyze more than 50,000 weather satellite images to quickly identify storms. They found comma-shaped cloud formations that often lead to severe weather such as hail, blizzards, high winds, and thunderstorms.

Computers were then taught using computer vision and machine learning to automatically detect these clouds from satellite images, with almost 100 percent accuracy, in less than a minute. By refocusing meteorologists' attention on potential storm cloud formation the AI tool helped predict 64 percent of severe weather events and beat established detection systems.

Expensive supercomputers are often used to process vast amounts of data needed for accurate weather prediction. But powerful Al methods can run on smaller computers. Climate risk and planning company ClimateAI uses a technique to downscale global weather forecasts to a local scale, cutting down on costs and computing power.

It uses a machine learning technique that pits two neural networks against each other. The neural networks - designed to work like neurons connected in the brain-fight and train each other using global weather data until they get a result.

Using this method ClimateAI researchers generate highly accurate and inexpensive local forecasts for hours or days ahead. And because it is not as costly, it allows poorer countries affected by climate change to use forecasts to change the way they farm, build bridges, roads, or homes, and adapt to extreme weather.

Average costs associated with extreme weather events in the United States have increased steadily since 1980. These have costly impacts on cities' basic services, infrastructure, housing, human livelihoods, and health. AI helps us to calculate that risk and can be used as a preventive measure.

On Grytviken island in the South Atlantic Ocean lies the South Georgia Museum, one of the most remote museums in the world. 

South Georgia Muscum is located in the island's old whaling station. Whaling, or the hunting of whales for their usable natural products, such as meat and oil, ceased there in 1964. The building that now houses the museum once served as the whaling manager's home and office and went unused for over 20 years before it opened to the public as a museum in 1992. 

There are no passenger flights to or from Grytviken, so the majority of visitors arrive on a ship. The island itself only sees about 10, 000 visitors a year and there are no permanent residents, only a group of 20 scientists, maintenance staff, and museum workers who brave the island's cold weather conditions. Traveling to the museum requires advance planning. South Georgia Muscum staff all travel to the island from abroad for the southern hemisphere（半球）spring，or mid-October， and most come from the United Kingdom，around 8, 000 miles north. 

The museum, which offers free admission, "aims to make this history and heritage accessible both to the visiting public and to those unable to visit this remote region through education, exhibitions and outreach", according to its website. It houses a natural history collection, artifacts, exhibitions related to the early history of sealing and whaling as well as Antarctic explorer Sir Emest Shackleton, and more. The museum rooms are named after individuals who contributed to the growth or conservation of the island in some way.

The temperature is ideal for visitors October through December, but still, daytime highs don't often reach above 40 degrees Fahrenheit. For those who work there, Internet access is patchy and fresh food options are rare. It's not a place for everyone, but for the staff that calls it home for parts of the year, it's a unique form of paradise. "Stepping away from the world has been a treat, " said Pierce, one of the staff.

George Nakashima always insisted that he was a simple woodworker, not an artist. Even though major museums exhibited his works and the director of the American Craft Museum called him a national treasure, Mr. Nakashima rejected the label of artist. For almost fifty years he simply went on shaping wood into beautiful chairs, tables, and cabinets.

Nakashima had a clear goal. He intended to make each piece of furniture as perfect as possible.  Even making a box was an act of creation, because it produced an object that had never existed before. Initially Nakashima used local wood, sometimes from his own property. Later, he traveled to seek out English oak, Persian walnut, African zebrawood and Indian teak. He especially liked to find giant roots that had been dug out of the ground after a tree was cut down. Nakashima felt that making this wood into furniture was a way of allowing the tree to live again.

Most furniture makers prefer perfect boards, but Nakashima took pleasure in using wood with interesting knots (结疤)  and cracks.  These irregularities gave the wood personality and showed that the tree had lived a colourful life.

He never failed to create an object that was both useful and beautiful. One early piece Nakashima designed was a three­legged chair for his small daughter, Mira, to use when she sat at the table for meals. The Mira chair became so popular that Nakashima later made both low and high versions. Another famous piece, the conoid chair, has two legs supported by bladelike feet. Always, Nakashima's designs were precise and graceful, marked by the simplicity that revealed his love for the wood.

As the years passed, Nakashima's reputation grew and he received many awards. His children Mira and Kevin, now adults, joined the team of craftspeople in their father's studio. Nakashima's dream of integrating work and family had come true.