1 . Self-image is a mental blueprint or picture of ourselves - our own conception of the sort of person we are. Self-image is built up from our own beliefs about ourselves, the beliefs formed from our past experiences, successes, failures, relationships, etc.

Once a belief about ourselves is programmed into our minds, we act upon it as if it were true. Our positive beliefs are developed when we do something successfully or are recognized by people around us. Our negative beliefs are also developed when we give in to negative ideas. When we fail in something, some of us conclude that we are unsuccessful, unwanted, condemned, etc.

Thus, self-image is the key element in determining whether our internal guidance system functions for success or for failure. It sets the limits of our accomplishments, It determines what we can and cannot do. Self-image creates your character and your personality as well.

You may think the concept of self-image being an internal guidance system was got from the thought of a trained psychologist. In reality, the idea came from Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon who was more interested in helping people by giving them emotional facelifts, rather than just physical ones.

“Expand the self-image and you expand the ‘area of the possible’,” said Dr Maltz.

Maltz determined that the human brain and nervous system function as a kind of goal-seeking device similar to that used to guide airplanes on automatic pilot. Maltz’s idea is simple: each one of us is capable of taking control of our self-image and programming our automatic guidance system for success. According to Maltz, all behavior is defined by the self-image and no real behavioral change can take place unless the self-image is changed.

4 . If you think of a game of fetch, you might picture a dog running back and forth, eagerly recovering a ball. But a new study shows that they’re not the only pets that like the game: Cats play fetch, too, just on their own unique terms.

The researchers discovered almost 1,000 owners of 1,154 cats to find out if and why. According to their findings, nearly 95% of the cat owners reported that their cats fetched items naturally. One respondent said his cat returned the toy completely for no reason.

Fetching was mainly first noticed when cats were under I year old. What’s more, “cats who fetch largely determine when they engage in fetching activities and actively influence the play behavior of their owners,” according to the study. “So, it can say a bit about cats being in control of their interactions and being in control of their environments, even being in control of us. You might even go so far to say,” says Jemma Forman, the co-author of the study.

But the motivation for cats to fetch objects seems to be different from that for dogs. Cats are more likely to play on their own with objects similar to prey (猎物). For dogs, play is more social, involving either another dog or human.

In general, play has major advantages for both the pet and the owner, as it not only helps to prevent attack towards, the owner, but also models the act of preying on real animals, an important kind of play behavior. “So even if your cat doesn’t play fetch, obviously it’s a really good idea to try and engage them in any sort of play. Play does have a lot of benefits,” says Forman. “It’s about owner acceptance to your fur baby,” she says.

6 . A lot is unknown about how babies begin to connect names with objects in their environments. A study by Indiana University researchers offered a fresh view on how babies get this in human development. Before they can speak, babies between the ages of 7 and 11 months have this ability.

To carry out their study, Smith and Clerkin made a list of objects and the heard names of objects as they appeared in babies’ daily lives. They then considered how these experiences influence babies’ memory (记忆) systems.

“When scientists think about how babies manage to learn words, they’ve traditionally focused on the development of babies’ learning abilities,” Smith said. “This is not wrong. But if you pay more attention to the babies’ learning environments, you see their learning tasks and abilities differently. We need to study these learning environments because that will tell us more about what children need to learn a word.”

A full understanding of the learning environments could make researchers and doctors develop useful methods to deal with children who are considered “late talkers”. The environments can be changed to help children who are learning a language more slowly than others.

“The idea is that over long periods of time, the memory for visual objects is being built up slowly in the brain,” Clerkin said. “When a word is spoken at a certain moment and the related memory is reactivated (激活) to the name, the babies can make a connection rapidly.”

7 . The tickbird and the giraffe have a connection relationship that some scientists describe as win-win relationship and some as parasitism (寄生). This interspecies partnership is imbalanced in favor of the giraffe because it can live without the tickbird, while the tickbird is dependent on the giraffe for food resource.

The giraffe is a large mammal that lives in Africa along with other large grass-eaters. All these and many others host the tickbird. This bird has long been thought to remove ticks (扁虱) from its host, to the benefit of both—the bird eats the ticks, and the host is relieved of blood-sucking, disease-carrying insects—but recent studies reveal that this process is less than good. A secondary benefit to a host from the tickbirds’ presence is a sort of early warning system, since the birds make a loud sound if they sight an enemy. This is of less benefit to the giraffe than to other hosts because the giraffe has the advantage of great height and keen eyesight and is fully capable of spotting predators without the bird’s assistance. The tickbird is likely of greater benefit in this capacity to the nearsighted rhino.

They cross through the host’s hair looking for insects as their food. According to the researcher Paul Weeks, reporting in the journal Behavioral Ecology, tickbirds can and do enlarge tick bites and other wounds on their host body to seek for food resource, making the host-tickbird relationship unfair. The host, like the giraffe, however, would have a hard time keeping tickbirds off itself. So they tolerate the birds who cling to their bodies and chow down selectively at the buffet on the giraffe’s body.

8 . Scientists at Stanford University have designed a new paint that could help reduce our growing dependence on air conditioners and heaters. It comes in a variety of colors, and if used properly, it could seriously reduce electricity bills and emissions.

The paint is capable of reflecting about 80 percent of mid-infrared light (中红外光) from the sun, which is 10 times more reflection than traditional colored paints. When used on the outside of a building, the paint keeps heat out, and it can be used on the inside to keep heat in. As such, the developers of the paint say it provides a “year-round energy-saving solution” that can be used in a variety of climates.

When tested in artificially warm conditions, the paint reduced the amount of energy needed to cool the enclosed space by almost 21 percent. Tested in artificially cold conditions, it reduced the energy needed to heat the space by 36 percent. Across an entire building, researchers estimate the paint could save 7.4 percent of the energy needed to heat or cool a mid-sized apartment building.

Different from other paints, this new version from Stanford is not just pure white or silver. Its variety of colors include white, blue, red, yellow, green, orange, purple and dark gray. This rainbow is possible because the new paint has two layers that are applied in a series. The first is the reflective bottom layer, which contains silver aluminum flakes (铝片). The second is an infrared transparent top layer that contains colorful nano-particles. Both of these layers are water-resistant and work in humid and hot environments.

“For both heating and air conditioning, we must reduce energy and emissions globally to meet our zero-emissions goals,” says material scientist Yi Cui from Stanford. The team continues to refine their technology and hopes to commercialize the paint in the future.

9 . In the past few years, Sam Altman, the father of ChatGPT, has become the hottest face in the world of AI. Many industry leaders, AI researchers see ChatGPT as a basic technological change, as meaningful as the creation of the web browser or the iPhone.

Some believe it will deliver a utopia (乌托邦) where everyone has all the time and money ever needed. Others believe it could destroy humanity. Still others spend much of their time arguing that the technology is never as powerful as everyone says it is.

Mr Altman, a slim, 37-year-old investor from the suburbs of St. Louis, sits calmly in the middle of it all. As chief executive (总经理) of OpenAI, he hopes to balance the many possibilities as he moves this strange and powerful technology into the future.

He believes that artificial intelligence will happen one way or another, that it will do wonderful things that even he can’t yet imagine and that we can find ways of making up the harm it may cause. It’s an attitude that mirrors Mr Altman’s own track. His life has been a fairly steady climb towards greater success and wealth, driven by an effective set of personal skills. It makes sense that he believes that the good thing will happen rather than the bad.

He is not necessarily motivated by money. Mr Altman’s wealth is not well recorded. But he said he holds no stock (股票) in OpenAI. The only money he stands to make from the company is a yearly salary.

Georgeann Kepchar, who taught Advanced Placement computer science course, saw Mr Altman as one of her most talented computer science students—and one with a rare knack for pushing people in new directions. “He had creativity and vision, combined with the ambition and force of personality to make others be willing to work with him on putting his ideas into action,” she said.

10 . Young children are always growing bigger than their shoes, which create s a lot of waste. However, a company, Woolybubs, came up with new shoes that don’t get thrown away when they no longer fit the owners; they get dissolved (溶解) instead.

Woolybubs was created by Megan and Jesse Milliken, once a shoe designer in a famous company, who are the parents of three young children. They know firsthand how much waste a family creates. Sure, clothing and shoes can be handed down to younger children but there comes a time when they end up in a landfill (垃圾填埋场). So JesseMilliken and his wife started talking about changing their lives and doing something to help the planet. Therefore, Milliken left the company where he worked. Then he and his wife began to focus on one of the most wasteful parts of the clothing market — shoes.

The new shoes are actually made of 100 percent silk that is coated with a special form of plastic called PVA that is used in lots of other products. The shoes are made to last long enough to be handed down to a second child. “It took us almost a year to develop this special material,” Milliken said. The baby shoes won’t dissolve if you handwash them, or if you get caught in the rain; they only decompose if they are boiled for 40 minutes. The liquid (液体) that remains after boiling is safe.

Woolybubs also has shoes that are made from other recycled materials. When these shoes wear out, they can be sent back to the company to be recycled. The company decided to continue searching for new ways to make its products greener .“We are always looking for new solutions to reduce the environmental influence on the planet,” Milliken said.