【推荐2】All short-haul flights out of Heathrow were cancelled while Eurostar passengers in London queued around the block. Gatwick Airport is shut and will not reopen until Tuesday. The government has apologized for spoiling so many people's Christmases and the Met Office (气象局) has warned of more snow and ice in parts of the UK overnight.

Heathrow airport officials said no more than a third of all flights would operate until Wednesday and warned passengers to expect delays and cancellations, possibly until Christmas Day. Overcrowding was so bad in some areas that passengers with flights scheduled to depart from terminals 1 or 3 on Monday were told not to travel to the airport. It was said the south runway would remain closed on Tuesday and advised people not to travel to the airport unless their airline had confirmed the booking.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said aviation was a “safety-first business”. And in a statement, Mr. Hammond said rules on night flights would be relaxed for the next four days to help deal with the backlog. This would mean allowing incoming flights to arrive through the night.

Elsewhere in Europe, airports in Frankfurt, Paris, Florence and Amsterdam were severely disrupted (混乱) in addition to disruption to road and rail travel. By Monday evening, problems on the motorways seemed to be easing but BBC Travel was reporting severe disruption on the M25 in Surrey and the M58 in Merseyside.

【推荐3】JP Morgan Chase, the world’s biggest fossil fuel funder, has noted in an internal report leaked to Extinction Rebellion that the company “cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened.”

Most of the science inside the report is not shocking to the casual reader, but the analysis is most concerned about climate change caused by fossil fuel. These include possibilities like the sudden collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which would send sea levels more than 10 feet higher than current levels and displace millions of humans. Another terrible case is that the melting permafrost sends more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, causing more warming, and in turn more the melting of ice sheets, and carbon emissions. Of course, these are already happening. The real danger behind the motivation for this internal report lies in the possibility that the Earth’s climate could reach a tipping point.

Many believe the emergence of the internal report should serve as proof convincing enough for world leaders to take collective and decisive action. However, the attitude of many world governments towards the development of fossil fuel can surely make the global situation even worse for future generations now.

However, the report doesn’t mention other banks, or even JP Morgan itself, even though these institutions are often the ones blamed in enabling this crisis, according to a Gizmodo report. “Changes are occurring at the micro level, involving shifts in behavior by individuals, companies and investors,” says the Extinction Rebellion report. It goes on to suggest that these micro-level changes “will push emissions in the right direction,” but says nothing about government oversight, or actions that many believe is necessary to reverse the current course of the climate crisis.

It’s still half way even though one has made 90 miles out of a 100-mile journey. Humans may still fail the journey if they doesn’t persist to the last. Therefore, something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive.

【推荐1】IQ is often considered as an important driver of success particularly in fields such as science, innovation and technology. In fact many people have endless fascination with the IQ scores of famous people. But the truth is that some of the greatest achievements by our species have primarily relied on qualities such as creativity, imagination, curiosity and empathy (同感).

Many of these characteristcs are rooted in what scientists call “cognitive (认知的) flexibility”—a skill that enables us to switch between different concepts or to adapt behavior to achieve goals in a novel or changing environment. Cognitive flexibility provides us with the ability to see that what we are doing is not leading to success and to make the appropriate changes to achieve it.

Cognitive flexibility may have affected how people coped with the pandemic lockdowns (疫情封锁) which produced new challenges around work and schooling. Some of us found it easier than others to adapt our routines to do many activities from home. Such flexible people may also have changed these routines from time to time trying to find better and more varied ways of going about their day. Others, however, struggled and ultimately became more rigid in their thinking.

Flexible thinking is key to creativity. It also supports academic and work skills such as problem solving. For example, visual artists may be of average intelligence but highly creative and have produced masterpieces. Creativity is also important in science and innovation. We have discovered that successful businessmen who have created multiple companies are more cognitively flexible than managers of a similar age and IQ.

Cognitive flexibility is also associated with high recovery from negative life events as well as higher quality of life in older individuals. It can even be beneficial in emotional and social cognition: studies have shown that cognitive flexibility has a strong link to the ability to understand the emotions, thoughts and intentions of others.

Neuroimaging studies have shown that cognitive flexibility is dependent on a network of frontal brain regions. There are a number of ways to objectively assess people’s cognitive flexibility including the Wisconsin Card Sorting test and the CANTAB Set Shift Task. And the good news is that it seems that you can train cognitive flexibility.

【推荐2】As the government encourages “social distancing” in the fight against coronavirus, people are facing the prospect of being told to stay at home for weeks. But what if a parent or older person in your life doesn’t already have access to video calling tech?

“You might want to consider getting a specialized device to make video calls to your loved ones,” says Kate Bevan, an editor of a consumer magazine. “Once they’re set up, they’re very simple to use but you do have to dig through settings in their apps to connect them and that’s not always as easy as it might be.”

Age   UK,   the   charity   for   older   people, says that the choice of technology should be “as user-friendly as possible” for those unaccustomed to controlling video-chat software. “Something integrated like a video call app on a smartphone, tablet or a laptop with a built-in camera, for example, will often be easier,” says Caroline Abrahams, the charity director. “Older people may also prefer physical interfaces (界面) like a mouse rather than a touchscreen.”

“To protect people’s privacy, it will be important to ensure that any new devices are secure and not likely to be hacked (非法入侵), and that anyone using a new device has access to ongoing support to help them learn how to use it and deal with any issues or problems,” she adds.

An   integrated   kit   can   be   the   easiest solution. Amazon, Google, and Facebook all have smart devices with screens for video calls. One problem with all these devices is their expense and another is their need to be on a stable wi-fi connection at all times. Sometimes, a smartphone might be the better option.

But a new smartphone, even a mid-range one, can be much more expensive. And Bevan warns against hand-me-downs past a certain age. Apart from lower camera quality, there can be security concerns. “If you’re considering passing old smartphones and tablets on to a relative, do be careful that they’re still getting security updates,” she says.

【推荐3】I know a lot of people have the urge to stick their head in the sand and pretend this could never happen to them. “But all that does is leave us open to not being prepared,” Dr. Abigail Hardin, a rehabilitation (复原) psychologist said. And that is exactly the last thing Dr. Abigail Hardin wants to see during this epidemic.

“Our brains do not function well under great stress. And when it's time to go to the hospital, you're going to be under immense stress. So it's much smarter to prepare in advance,” Hardin said, which is why Hardin says she was motivated to write “The COVID—19 Survival Guide: How to Prepare for, Manage, and Overcome a Coronavirus Infection.”

Hardin's first steps for accomplishing this? Taking continuous health precautions and creating a COVID—19 preparedness kit. "The preparedness kit is an equal to the medical kit that you put in the trunk of your car as an emergency kit," Hardin said. “Women who are pregnant often pack a kit to go to the hospital to give birth. This is the same.”

Hardin says most items in the kit are things we already know to pack in case of emergency. But it also includes important documents such as powers of attorney (授权书) and wills—documents that the National Institute on Aging recommend preparing in advance of a medical emergency. It includes things like an advanced directive or living will. Those will really help the care team provide care for us in a way that will improve the recovery process.

Hardin's book also goes over the list of care providers you could meet if hospitalized with the virus, including lead physicians, specialists, nurses and therapists. “I think there're larger problems here that we as a health care system need to address and one of them is making sure that in the future, when something like this happens, we do have psychologists available everywhere because no one deserves to go through this alone," Hardin said.