An Oklahoma man who was once diagnosed(诊断) with lung cancer and told he only had three months to live says he's now cancer-free thanks to a cheap deworming(驱虫) drug meant for dogs. 

Joe Tippens was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2016. Despite treatment for the disease, by January of 2017,the cancer had spread to other organs. Doctors advised him to go home and say his goodbyes because he only had three months. Tippens thought he was going to die, and with nothing left to lose, he was willing to try anything in hope of a miracle（奇迹）, even a dog dewormer called fenbendazole. 

The desperate cancer sufferer came across the strange treatment while reading a post online. The post catching his eye read "If you have cancer or know someone who does, give me a shout". Joe had already signed up for an experimental treatment that doctors said wouldn't save him but might help him live a little longer. But he decided that getting in touch with that poster couldn't hurt, either. 

To his surprise, that person was a vet(兽医), who told Joe scientists had accidentally discovered a dog deworming drug seemed to attack cancer cells in mice. One of the scientists conducting the research had been diagnosed with brain cancer, but she started taking fenbendazole and within six weeks her cancer disappeared. Joe decided to have a try. 

Tippens continued receiving treatment in hospital, but he also placed an order for fenbendazole. He didn't tell his doctors about it, though. Three months later, when he had another scan to check the spread of his cancerl he was shocked to learn that there was no sign of the cancer anywhere in his body. 

There are also studies that suggest the drug basically starves cancer cells and kills them. Still, many doctors are sceptical about the drug and recommend that patients stick to classical treatments. 

The robot watched as Shikhar Bahl opened there frigerator door. It recorded his movements, the swing of the door and more，analyzing this data and readying itself to imitate（模仿）what Bahl had done. It failed at first, missing the handle completely at times, grabbing it in the wrong spot or pulling it incorrectly. But after a few hours of practice, the robot succeeded and opened the door.

"Imitation is a great way to learn, "said Bahl, a Ph. D. student at the Robotics Institute (RI) in Carnegie Mellon University. " Having robots actually learn from directly watching humans remains an unsolved problem in the field, but this work takes a significant step in enabling that ability."

Bahl worked with Deepak Pathak and Abhinav Gupta, both faculty members in the RI, to develop a new learning method for robots called WHIRL, short for In-the-Wild Human Imitating Robot Learning. WHIRL is an efficient computation program for visual imitation. People constantly perform various tasks in their homes. With WHIRL, a robot can observe those tasks, gather the video data it needs and then go about practicing and learning to accomplish the tasks on its own.

The team added a camera and their software to an off-the-shelf robot, and it learned how to do more than 20 tasks—from opening and closing appliances, cabinet doors and drawers to putting a lid on a pot, pushing in a chair and even taking a garbage bag out of the bin.

Current method for teaching a robot a task typically relies on reinforcement (强化) learning. In reinforcement learning, the robot is typically trained on millions of examples in imitation and then asked to adapt that training to the real world.

This learning model works well when teaching a robot a single task in a structured environment, but it is difficult to extend and deploy (调动). WHIRL can learn from any video of a human doing a task. It is capable of being easily expanded, not limited to one specific task and can operate in realistic home environments.

A rare wild flower is being re-established in Devon fields thanks to some four-legged helpers. A conservation charity called Planflife has employed donkeys as "ecosystem engineers" to encourage the return of the endangered small-flowered catchfly.

The catchfly was once found all across Britain but now it only grows in small areas of Wales and the south and west of England. Experts blame its decline on modern farming practices. The flower flourished around the edges of sandy fields where farmers grew their crops, but because of weedkillers that were used to remove "unwanted" plants, and fertilisers to boost crop yields, its habitat has largely disappeared.

Plantlife teamed up with the Donkey Sanctuary, a charity that looks after donkeys in the UK and around the world. It owns several farms across Devon and the UK, where it takes care of hundreds of rescued donkeys, as well as maintaining habitats for other wildlife. More than 20, 000 seeds have been scattered on fields at the sanctuary's main Devon farm, and it is hoped that many will grow into plants this summer. They will provide food for threatened bird species such as linnets, yellowhammers and skylarks. Plantlife then aims to get the donkeys themselves involved, testing whether catchfly seeds benefit from being trampled into the ground as the donkeys take their exercise. Many plants have seeds that must be pressed into the soil in order to germinate.

"We're incredibly grateful to partners like the Donkey Sanctuary who are helping these fantastically rare wild flowers come back from the edge of extinction, "Cath Shellswell of Plantlife told The Guardian newspaper. "We look forward to seeing small-flowered catchfly return and we are working with the sanctuary to ensure that this tiny plant has a thriving future. "