If you need a reminder that nature is awesome, here are some beaches around the world that naturally glow (发光). Time to add these to your travel list!

Gippsland Lakes, Australia

During the day, the Gippsland Lakes are like any other: you can swim, water ski, or sail. But at night, the landscape begins to glow due to bioluminescent algae (生物发光的藻类). In 2006, massive rainstorms caused large amounts of algae to enter into the lakes. It glows whenever the water is disturbed, but it has slowly faded with time, which is welcome news for the lakes’ ecosystem.

The Maldives

This glowing beach in the Maldives is just one of the attractive features of the nation. The sand on this beach glows in the dark because of sea shrimp (海虾). These tiny organisms give out blue light for up to a minute, lighting up your path as you walk across the beach.

Halong Bay, Vietnam

Halong Bay is one of Vietnam’s most popular tourist destinations, but it’s not just because of its famous islands covered in green rainforests. At night, boat tours take people out on the water to see the blue-green light from the algae.

Dongying, China

The dreamlike sea in Dongying gives us a strong desire to travel unlike any other travel destination. The glow-in-the-dark algae is found mostly on the rock formations along the shoreline, which gives them a blue-green glow. Plus, it acts as a natural warning light if you’re swimming at night.

The Chinese giant salamander (中国大娃娃鱼) is not cute. Weighing as much as an adult human, it has brown skin, a giant mouth and mistrustful eyes. It is also one of the world’s most endangered species. And yet unlike the giant panda, the giant salamander rarely makes the news. Why do some animals strike a chord with (引起同情) humans while others draw little more than disgust?

“One of the biggest factors is ‘cuteness’. Physical characteristics such as big eyes and soft features remind us of human babies,” said Hal Herzog, professor atWest Carolina University. “The salamanders are a vital part of their ecosystem. Yet, like rats and snakes, the main instinct (直觉) they inspire in humans is disgust. ”

According to Graham Davey, professor at the University of Sussex, we learn to criticize certain creatures at a young age. “Babies are not born with disgust. It’s probably passed socially, culturally and within families. Some animals are disliked due to their resemblance (相似) to primary disgusting things, while others are perceived—rightly or wrongly—to pose a direct danger to the beholder. In terms of threat to humankind, disease and illness are bigger than being attacked by an animal,” Davey said. This might explain why most of us don’t find lions and bears unpleasant—they are covered with the same type of soft fur that coats toys for children, even if it might be better to avoid one in real life.

As with most things, popular culture has a huge effect on how society regards animals. Whereas the movie “Free Willy” prompted a wave of sympathy for the protection of endangered killer whales, “Arachnophobia” only made more people hate spiders.

Not that favoring certain cute or cool species is necessarily a bad thing for conservation. When we protect an iconic species, we protect their habitat and therefore all the organisms within it also benefit. But such species can become a victim of their own popularity. One recent study suggested that a “virtual” presence of wild animals such as elephants and tigers—be that on computer screens or T-shirts—can fool people into thinking they are more common in the wild than they really are.

In the good old days, gold miners could seek out visible spots of bling at the surface in order to find deeper, richer veins. These days, prospectors must examine samples of dirt for more minute traces suggestive of a hidden mine below. Analysing water from boreholes can also provide clues, but boreholes are scarce and new ones are costly and time-consuming to drill.

Trees offer an alternative that has come off in Australia. The idea has been around since the 1940s but, until now, never practical. Some trees have roots that reach deep underground, drawing up water and, along with it, tiny quantities of minerals that end up distributed throughout the tree. In this way, even lofty leaves bear traces of what lies far beneath. In areas where there is no gold, leaves may have a background level of 0. 15 parts per billion (ppb) of gold; on gold-rich sites that can rise to 4ppb.

In proof-of-principle studies over the last few years, Nathan Reid and his team at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, have shown that biogeochemical prospecting closely agrees with the surface and groundwater analyses. Inspired by these results, Marmota, an exploration firm, put the method to the test at its Aurora Tank site, 50km from the highly-productive Challenger mine in South Australia.

Leaves collected immediately around a known deposit that lies beneath ten metres of rock contained traces of gold. Further samples were taken 40 metres apart around known deposits, and at wider spaces farther out. This turned up several anomalies, where gold seemed to be present but other tests had shown nothing. “The usual surface sample testing was saying ‘Don’t drill here’,” says Colin Rose, Marmota’s executive chairman, “but the tree sampling was saying ‘Drill here’. ” Then came the pay-off. Drilling revealed a five-metre-thick vein with 27g of gold per tonne, more than 30 metres below the surface. A metre-thick inner layer held an impressive 105g per tonne.

Marmota is keen to explore further. Prospecting with trees is starting to look less like a scientific curiosity and more like a golden opportunity.

Perhaps more than any other category of professionals, creative types are expected to thrive in brainstorms. In the public’s imagination, their offices are filled with fidget toys and Post-it notes in an array of colors, all meant to absorb some of the energy of a group of fast-thinking, well-dressed people deep in idea mode.

But a new report based on a survey of 20,000 creatives from 197 countries suggests that, in fact, a majority of these professionals—including writers, musicians, and photographers—find that brainstorming is largely unhelpful for solving a creative challenge.

The survey was conducted by the Dutch file-sharing (文件共享) company We Transfer. “In the creative world we hear an awful lot about cooperation, but it seems that while working together is essential to bring an idea to life, it’s not that good for shaping ideas in the first place,” notes Rob Alderson, WeTransfer’s former editor in chief.

In the instinct to schedule meetings, it appears that we often neglect to give participants a chance to prepare and form their thoughts. It’s a crucial step that was championed by Alex Osborn, the legendary advertising executive who popularized brainstorming. “Osborn repeatedly appreciated the virtues of being alone, of time spent far from the distractions of others, as part of his own creative process,” Lila MacLellan from Quartz has noted.

In polling creatives around the world, WeTransfer surfaced some fascinating geographic differences. For instance, when it comes to the biggest distractions to thinking about ideas, the French are more likely to blame their social life than their jobs, their partners, or social media. The Japanese, meanwhile, tend to point the finger at their partners.

Though the growing body of evidence suggests brainstorming may not result in the best ideas, it isn’t entirely useless. A Northern Illinois University study underlines its value as a team-building activity rather than a tactical (策略的) meeting. If nothing else, practicing tacit (心照不宣的) rules of brainstorming—positivity, openness, building on others’ ideas—promotes team spirit and trust.